From foot fetishes to BDSM, our turn-ons are shaped by life, not lineage

I want to start by getting one thing straight: no one was “born with a latex fetish. That fantasy might work for porn, but science (and common sense) says otherwise.

While it’s true that some aspects of sexual orientation have a modest genetic influence, the specifics of what turns us on? That’s way more about the world we grow up in than the DNA we inherit. There’s no single gene that makes someone crave dominance, submission, feet, pain, praise, or praise while in pain. What turns us on is complicated, and that’s okay.

Research shows that certain sexual behaviors and orientations can run in families, but not in the way people think. We’re not talking about a “kink chromosome” hiding next to your eye color. A massive genetic study found the heritability of sexual orientation sits at about 0.32. That means the environment (your upbringing, culture, early experiences, and who you talk to about sex) is twice as influential as your genetics.

Now let’s zoom in on fetishes and specific preferences. According to behavioral genetic studies, there is barely any evidence to support the idea that people inherit particular fetishes. In fact, what science suggests is this: our sexual preferences are learned, layered, and lived. They are shaped by everything from early memories and media to shame, exploration, trauma, and joy, and no, your dad liking leather doesn’t mean you will too. That’s not how this works.

We need to stop pretending sexual preferences just “happen to us.” The truth is, we build them, consciously or not, over time.

Some preferences can emerge from early life experiences: a smell you associate with intimacy, the way power made you feel in a certain moment, or how your body responded during a time you felt completely safe, or completely forbidden. Others might be linked to dopaminergic pathways, meaning they are tied to your brain’s reward system and how it responds to novelty, or taboo. Even that’s not deterministic. It’s not your biology writing a script, it’s you, interacting with life, that does the writing.

Genetics may open the door to sexual curiosity, but experience decides what’s behind it.

This science matters, because there is still so much shame surrounding fetishes, especially for racialized folks. Afro/Indo Caribbeans have historically been hypersexualized, dehumanized, or labeled deviant for expressing desires outside the norm. So, when someone says “It un inna mi family,” it might be a joke, but it also reveals how deeply we’re looking for a biological reason to justify our desires. To be safe in our skin. To make it “make sense.”

Here’s the truth; you don’t need biology’s permission to want what you want. Letting go of the idea that fetishes are inherited means we can stop trying to “prove” their validity with science, and start talking about them with honesty, consent, and emotional literacy.

One of the biggest studies on sexual genetics, published in Science, confirmed what many of us already felt; there is no “gay gene,” no fetish gene, no simple code that defines what makes someone: straight, queer, kinky, or vanilla. Instead, sexuality is polygenic, shaped by thousands of tiny genetic influences, each doing a little, none of them running the show.

This means we are not bound by biology. We are also not stuck with someone else’s narrative.

We are, each of us, free to explore our sexual selves with curiosity, consent, and clarity, not because we were born this way, but because we are human. We’ve lived, felt, and interpreted experiences in our own unique, sometimes messy, sometimes magical ways.

So no, your foot fetish didn’t come from your mother’s side, but it’s still yours, and it’s still real.

If you ask me? That’s way more interesting.