History of Fur Fetishes

[rabbitfur]

Hey fur folks,

I'm really interested to explore/discuss what we know about fur fetishes through history.

I'm framing this largely in the context of American history because that is what I'm familiar with, but do not mean to exclude discussion of other cultures... would be fascinated to learn more.

We know the huge influence the fur trade has played on American history, especially in the last couple hundred years. I find it hard to believe that our common interest is a recent invention, but can think of a few factors involved in its historical discussion... fur being more common as normal clothing, taboo in openly discussing sexuality being a few.

Still, I'm curious what you know about historical accounts of the fetish... books, articles, stories from older fetishists, anything.

I know of but have not read Venus in Furs. Let me know if it is worthwhile.

[LeComte]

I guess it's much older than we think. It just wasn't called fetish earlier. Some reasons stayed the same since then (fur as a symbol of power, its softness, the animal origin).

If you hadn't read Venus in Furs you should, it's worth the time, even more so since the book is rather short.

If you really want to dive into the topic you can check out these rather academic books (which I haven't read):

• Valerie Steele: Fetish - Fashion, Sex and Power
• Julia Emberley: The cultural politics of fur

[furnz]

Cultural politics of fur is definitely worth a read.

It's very informative about safe, peta and the petrochemical industry...

And of course women and fur😉

[Shy_Fur_Guy]

It might be a little off topic but "Fur, Fortune and Empire" by Eric Jay Dolin is worth a read if you are interested in the history of the American fur trade. Nothing dealing with the fetish element, but a solid look at how fur became a symbol of status in American society.

[Furever Heidi]

I would skip reading Julia Emberley: The cultural politics of fur, in favour of something more worthwhile, like a Batman comic. I chose to read it as part of some background research for a term paper I wrote on the moral and ethics of fur in fashion in my uni years doing a fashion degree.

Furs were the first clothing mankind adopted so you've lots of history to go at. Good luck. it's a pity writing didn't come along until centuries later.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Furever Heidi

[rabbitfur]

Thanks for the suggestions so far everyone - stoked to check them out.

Does the collective here know of famous or historical figures who have had a professed or suspected fetish? I've read about Liberace's fascination before. I'm hopeful to read about historical events that were influenced by a powerful person's fetish.

[Furever Heidi]

I don't think you are going to find any books extolling the fetishes of its author or others. By its nature a fetish is a personal thing seldom shared. You only need to read posts here to see the number of folk who are scared to open up to girlfriends and wives to see what I mean. At best I think your discoveries will all be anecdotal and subject to the vagaries of personal perception rather than by any hard facts.

[minkme]

I had this book called: Delicious Sex: A Book for Women and the Men Who Want to Love Them Better.  Its written by Gael Greene.  The book is a How to" book.  It give one ideas. there is a chapter on fetishes.  It also mentions fur fetish.  Wearing a mink coat with nothing underneath.   and other fetishes.  That's how I broke the news about my fur fetish to my wife.  I said, hey, let's try this..... That was over 30 years ago.  The book is still in print and its updated.  I do not know if fur fetish is still mentioned but maybe someone here can check it out and let us know.  

[Marcel]

I wonder if people in the stone age had a fur fetish lol

[furlvman1]

I remember buying a fur jacket from a farrier in the Midwest and he had said i could pick it up at a party just a few miles from me. I regret not doing so.

We had a furrier close in town a few years ago, whom it was said, had after hours parties at the fur shop. It was hinted at these being sensual parties.

Yes, fur fetishism is probably more alive than we know. This fetish is known as Doraphilia. 

[Furever Heidi]

12 hours ago, Marcel said:

I wonder if people in the stone age had a fur fetish lol

I think they were maybe to busy running after or away from this lunch to have time to get a hard on thinking about their mates shaggy mammoth skin coat. 😀

[Worker 11811]

23 hours ago, Marcel said:

I wonder if people in the stone age had a fur fetish lol

Back in the pioneer days or even prehistory, people just had sex.

Whether it be a woodsman or a caveman, if a man wanted sex, he'd grab a woman who struck his fancy and just go to town.  I knew a professor who is an expert in anthropology and who wrote several research papers on Ice Age human settlements.  I remember his comment to me, verbatim, as well as I can recall:  "Prehistoric humans would fuck anything that they could catch."

Fur?  I guarantee that our ancestors used it for sex.  No doubt in my mind.  It's a great way to get your rocks off!  It always has been and it always will be, as far as I am concerned!

Fur fetish?  I don't think our ancestors understood the concept the way we do, today.  The concept of "fetish" (more correctly, "paraphilia") is an idea born out of the field of psychiatry which didn't come into common use until the 1800's when people like Freud brought it to the public consciousness.  There were some as far back as Hippocrates who theorized about psychiatric problems but these things weren't as well understood until recently, about one hundred years ago.

If you wanted to find out about the history of using fur for sex, I'm sure that there are plenty of places where you could find out but, for fur fetish, I doubt that there is much writing on the subject before the early to mid 1800's.  There might be a few things written as far back as the time of the American Revolution, the late 1700's but, before that, writings are likely to be sparse or non-existent.

[LeComte]

5 hours ago, Worker 11811 said:

Back in the pioneer days or even prehistory, people just had sex.

Whether it be a woodsman or a caveman, if a man wanted sex, he'd grab a woman who struck his fancy and just go to town.  I knew a professor who is an expert in anthropology and who wrote several research papers on Ice Age human settlements.  I remember his comment to me, verbatim, as well as I can recall:  "Prehistoric humans would fuck anything that they could catch."

Fur?  I guarantee that our ancestors used it for sex.  No doubt in my mind.  It's a great way to get your rocks off!  It always has been and it always will be, as far as I am concerned!

Fur fetish?  I don't think our ancestors understood the concept the way we do, today.  The concept of "fetish" (more correctly, "paraphilia") is an idea born out of the field of psychiatry which didn't come into common use until the 1800's when people like Freud brought it to the public consciousness.  There were some as far back as Hippocrates who theorized about psychiatric problems but these things weren't as well understood until recently, about one hundred years ago.

If you wanted to find out about the history of using fur for sex, I'm sure that there are plenty of places where you could find out but, for fur fetish, I doubt that there is much writing on the subject before the early to mid 1800's.  There might be a few things written as far back as the time of the American Revolution, the late 1700's but, before that, writings are likely to be sparse or non-existent.

The concept of a "fetish" is surely new. And way back then people just had sex. Nevertheless people might have admired the associations coming along with fur (good hunter, power, ec.) and therefore had a thing for fur.

Anyway fur workmanship surely improved since ancient times. And there were surely times when fur was dirty after some time, worn out or smelled very often. So fur was maybe seen rather in a practical manner.

[Furever Heidi]

I don't think fur gained a "fetish" status until it became an accessible item for the masses to wear which really began with the exploitation of Canada by the French and later by The Hudson Bay Company. They were really the pioneers of a large scale fur trade up until then it could be considered as a small domestic industry supplying local needs. Although London was the word trade supplier of quality cat skin gloves. And when you consider that skins were cured by treading them in vats of urine and hides were stretched on frames and the rotten flesh was scraped off them and then treated with saltpeter which was derived from urine one must have had a strong stomach to put up with the stench to be a fur fetishist, or mad from the mercury vapour used in the making of beaver skin top hats.

So I believe the "condition" existed some 200 years before it gained the newly fashionable label of a "fetish" coined by the New Gods the psychiatrists.

[minkme]

On 1/21/2021 at 3:30 PM, furlvman1 said:

I remember buying a fur jacket from a farrier in the Midwest and he had said i could pick it up at a party just a few miles from me. I regret not doing so.

We had a furrier close in town a few years ago, whom it was said, had after hours parties at the fur shop. It was hinted at these being sensual parties.

Yes, fur fetishism is probably more alive than we know. This fetish is known as Doraphilia. 

That would have been interesting to see the party at the fur shop. Does that mean that he sells "used furs"?

[furlvman1]

2 hours ago, minkme said:

That would have been interesting to see the party at the fur shop. Does that mean that he sells "used furs"?

They were a long time fur shop, mostly new furs. Likely they were very closed and exclusive parties. I would have loved a fly on the wall's view.

[LeComte]

20 hours ago, Furever Heidi said:

I don't think fur gained a "fetish" status until it became an accessible item for the masses to wear which really began with the exploitation of Canada by the French and later by The Hudson Bay Company. They were really the pioneers of a large scale fur trade up until then it could be considered as a small domestic industry supplying local needs. Although London was the word trade supplier of quality cat skin gloves. And when you consider that skins were cured by treading them in vats of urine and hides were stretched on frames and the rotten flesh was scraped off them and then treated with saltpeter which was derived from urine one must have had a strong stomach to put up with the stench to be a fur fetishist, or mad from the mercury vapour used in the making of beaver skin top hats.

So I believe the "condition" existed some 200 years before it gained the newly fashionable label of a "fetish" coined by the New Gods the psychiatrists.

Mass adoption is surely crucial. Anyway on portraits from Renaissance onwards nobles were often depicted wearing fur. Yet these were usually men. After the enlightenment men's fashion became more modest. So it's really hard to say what was the reason and when fur fetish took of.

[furenthusiast]

Not directly about the history of fur fetish, but if you if you want to get an overview about fur in history, you can find some information in some of the the books of this collection:

https://mega.nz/file/To12TZTS#n1c5pLb5wjgUzwiuoirk4_3lBnTKY-Od4F91pSQchsk

Password: furbooks

[coyote 1]

Although my grandfather grew up in Ohio. At 20 YO he made his way to California in search of gold. This was in 1898 right after finishing at Case Western. The first trip out was just exploratory. I loved listening to his stories. On my 8^th birthday he gave me a 22 / rifle and taught me how to respect a firearm. Somewhere around age 10 or 11 like every male I became sexual maturity.

One afternoon I was out checking some of my traps I found a red fox in one. I shot him, released it from the trap and took it home. Nothing went to waist. The fox meat was used to feed our pets and the pelts were either used to make something or sold. As I was dressing down the fox my grandfather came outside to offer help. He noticed how tented my tight blue jeans were and started to chuckle and teased me in a good way. He was so gentle; he knew that the soft fur of that fox was stimulating me? He could also see how embraced I was. He smiled and said there is no reason to be embraced.

He went on to say when I was going west there were enormous times, I would dream about being with your grandmother. There was no place to take a shower. On cold nights when I wanted to f relieve the tension as I thought about her. I did not want to undress, nor did I want to get my long johns wet. Using an animal’s fur coat to ease and relieve the tension, is as normal and natural as taking a pee when you first wake up. Every man in those days who was on his own in the wilderness would often (if available), use fur to induce and alleviate his sexual tension and fantasies.

Because of my grandfather’s open honesty. I did not grow up thinking of fur as a fetish nor did any of my friends. We just knew that it is an incredibly soft material that gives us "instant gratification" when the need arose. In fact, I kept a pelt from a small animal in my backpack as a boy. There were numerous occasions as a teenager; it seemed like my thing was in constant needed of attention. In fact I did not learn the word “fetish” until I joined this group.    

[dongleboy]

Wow! Thanks for that, Coyote 1. 

 

[LeComte]

On 1/24/2021 at 9:12 AM, furenthusiast said:

Not directly about the history of fur fetish, but if you if you want to get an overview about fur in history, you can find some information in some of the the books of this collection:

https://mega.nz/file/To12TZTS#n1c5pLb5wjgUzwiuoirk4_3lBnTKY-Od4F91pSQchsk

Password: furbooks

Thanks so much! Very valuable! Now I got something to read for lockdown.

[minkme]

Thanks for sharing your story

[Furever Heidi]

On 1/24/2021 at 8:12 AM, furenthusiast said:

Not directly about the history of fur fetish, but if you if you want to get an overview about fur in history, you can find some information in some of the the books of this collection:

https://mega.nz/file/To12TZTS#n1c5pLb5wjgUzwiuoirk4_3lBnTKY-Od4F91pSQchsk

Password: furbooks

An excellent collection. Thank you. I'm hooked.

[Joe]

On 1/24/2021 at 3:12 AM, furenthusiast said:

Not directly about the history of fur fetish, but if you if you want to get an overview about fur in history, you can find some information in some of the the books of this collection:

https://mega.nz/file/To12TZTS#n1c5pLb5wjgUzwiuoirk4_3lBnTKY-Od4F91pSQchsk

Password: furbooks

So grateful to read this thread, and begin to read the selections from this collection I previously hadn't known about.   Thank you!

[Shy_Fur_Guy]

Not my review but I came across this gem on Goodreads for "Fur Fortune and Empire." I think I got a good cardio workout in with all the eyerolling I did. I figured you would get a kick out of it.

 

Read in June 2016

We read this for an animal rights reading group. I did not expect it to be really animal-friendly, but I was interested in this history. But not only is the book not overly friendly to animals (following the speciesist but accept language tradition of referring to a species of animals in the singular; i.e., beaver were being trapped, rather than beavers, which removes any semblance of individuality from the lives being [brutally] taken and lumps them together as a a unit or, in this case, product), but the author also seems uninterested in newer scholarship (there are one or two exceptions) -- particularly from the point of view of Native Americans. Although he does mention at the outset that it is troubling that most contemporary sources are from the white/European/American perspective, he does not make any effort to find pretty much anything from other points of view. This becomes particularly apparent in the over-long, rather boring chapter(s) on the Mountain Men, and one gets the feeling the author, like many before him, romanticized these people.

Although Dolin's history shows that Native Americans (and he mainly refers to them as Indians, occasionally distinguishing between one tribe/nation and another, and frequently lumping them all together) welcomed the European traders and trappers, and Dolin makes some effort to show how, once a number of Native Americans became indebted to the Europeans (and later, to the American traders) and thereby were forced to sell off the only thing they had to pay their debts - their land - and even if this seems plausible for the earliest of traders, by the time large numbers of English people start appearing in North America, there is the question of how much resistance there might have been by the Native Americans, and it is a question that is either not thought about by the author or glossed over. Dolin takes some time to explain how Native chiefs at points wrote and plead with European traders to stop providing alcohol as a trade and how the Europeans and Americans did not heed those wishes, but again, he does not spend much time on this.

I still found this book pretty interesting and was fairly accepting of the facts Dolin presents up until page 178, where he writes of fur trader Manuel Lisa, engaging in unnecessary editorializing about this trader/trapper's characteristics: born of Spanish parents in New Orleans, Lisa nevertheless has a "Mexican" face, with "rascality" written all over it. If one turns to the pictures in the book and finds the painting of Lisa, he looks like any other tightly-wound white man from 1818. It was at this point I began to really distrust Dolin's history, and realized that by his using mainly contemporary sources, or sources -- for the most part, I didn't count -- dating to the very early 20th century, he is not presenting a full picture of the history of the fur trade. Further, he takes letters written by Mountain Men and presents them as truth (well, he does in one instance, for trapper Jedidiah Smith, who writes the most ridiculously transparent piece of self-serving bullshit I have read in a while to describe why he is a fur trapper. Dolin writes in all sincerity: "Grueling, extensive, and dangerous expeditions were typical of Smith's entire career as a mountain man. He was driven not only by the desire to find beaver and explore new lands but also by his devotion to those he left behind." (Italics are mine.) Dolin's source is this letter: "It is, that I may be able to help those [of the family] who stand in need...that I face every danger...traverse the mountains covered with eternal snow...pass over the Sandy Plains in heat of summer, where I may cool my overheated body...that I go for days without eating, & am pretty well satisfied if I can gather a few roots, a few snails...." (239). When you read about Smith's refusal to leave California at the direction of its then-Spanish governor (among other things), you do not get the feeling this is a self-sacrificing young man who would have preferred to stay home and keep books or something. For Dolin to take this really rather self-aggrandizing letter at face value of proof of Smith's intentions makes me question a lot of other facts presented in this book - particularly, again, as so much is based on early history and personal narrative.

Dolin also presents many of the Native Americans who oppose the trappers and explorers as bent on revenge; particularly in the chapter about the mountain men and their exploits, he seems to use the fact that other Native tribes were against, say, the Blackfeet or Mojave as a kind of justification for the European/white expansion, though he doesn't put it in quite those terms. The way Dolin words these passages reflects this: "a few...[Mojave were] eager for revenge..." (p. 237) and in cases where trading posts were disputed by the Americans and British over the Oregon Territory, Dolin makes no mention of what the Native Americans of those lands thought, did, or felt. He doesn't even say "the resources on the Native reaction were not easy to locate, and therefore I have left it out rather than speculate" or something of such nature. When Dolin writes of Nez Perce and American trappers coming against the Blackfeet, he gives no context for this, and comes at it from the perspective mainly of the Lewis and Clark expedition and one guy named Colter, who receives over two pages of description for what he went through.

There is also, of course, the millions, if not billions, of individual animals who were murdered for fashion and other things - particularly beavers, buffaloes, and sea otters, according to Dolin. His chapters on beavers and sea otters are where the book really becomes interesting, but I have to wonder why the other millions of animals who were killed for fur appear only in the epilogue, and why buffaloes only rate mention at the end of the book. There are also a couple of footnotes and passages that tell of entertainment the mountain men engaged in while visiting the Spanish-run territories, or just things they did for fun, such as pitting bears against bulls. The descriptions are so violent I had to skim through them (there is also a small section describing a beaver trap, and it's written in a rather dry, academic way; Dolin reserves his horror for the treatment of the mountain men by others, it seems. He doesn't even seem too horrified that the mountain men would sometimes trade their wives - usually Native American - during a card game). He does describe some things as "carnage," I will give him that; particularly the slaughter of the buffaloes and of seals, but even though this is definitely not an animal rights or pro-animal book, I didn't expect quite so little about the animal victims themselves. They are the very ones who the fur trade was/is literally built on, and yet they rate the least mention within the cast of characters. As I read, I became quite angry at times at the way these people - John Jacob Astor, who, if I thought of at all, I thought was probably involved in banking or something -- whose fortunes were made literally off the backs of beavers and otters and seals and bears (oh yeah, and there is that passage where a mountain man runs into a mama grizzly and she and her cubs end up dead) and raccoons and squirrels and rabbits and on and on and on. Occasionally he alludes to some of this - as in the years when the trappers couldn't find any beavers to kill because they had killed them all.

The history of the fur trade is complicated, and trying to fit in several hundred years of one aspect of American history must have been a pretty daunting task. Nevertheless, Dolin's book is uneven, and if he wanted to keep it at its current length, he certainly could have removed a lot of the stories of mountain men and individual traders and their journey up the Missouri River. There could be more current scholarship from the point of view of various Native Americans, and certainly a little more information on the carnage and devastation of the animal victims. There could be less infatuation or romance of the mountain men.