An Open Letter About Globophilia and Pedophilia

I have edited this post in response to actions by the party about whom I originally wrote it. But I have retained the following paragraphs:

I also would like to ask all my fellow balloon lovers to make sure they are above reproach. Though I would like to think I didn't need to say this, it harms all of us when a balloon fetishist posts pictures of minors—no matter how innocent the picture itself—with balloons, or makes inappropriate comments on pictures and videos, or dares minor children to perform acts with balloons to satisfy their own desires.

And it's not enough to refrain from those behaviors. We need to call those who make us look bad to the carpet as well, as publicly as possible, as adamantly as the behavior demands.

We are already handicapped by the fact that the object of our desire is perceived as a child's toy (see my take here on that subject, among others). We have to separate our sexual interest in balloons from anything connected with children.

Otherwise, the haters of the world will win, and instead of seeing documentaries about men in the woods doing blow-to-pops, or men in their bedrooms stuffing balloons up their shirts, we may start seeing alarmist reports about balloon fetishists molesting children.

And at that point, the truth won' t matter even one little bit.

Please fight the good fight!

Seen On Twitter

I post and follow on Twitter, but not very often. It started as a way to promote my book, and that score it has been spectacularly unsuccessful. But I haven't deleted my Twitter account because it does add some dimension to the research for my new book.

I keep a search going for the words "balloon fetish." Not so much to find other fetishists (Facebook, it turns out, is much more fruitful for that), but to see what people are saying about balloon fetishes. Mostly, I see very little posting by actual fetishists; what I mostly see is promotional posts by balloon fetish sites, and posts by people who have recently watched either Strange Sex or National Geographic's Taboo.

And the reactions are usually not positive. Now, as an indicator of how the general public feels watching a segment about balloon fetishism (albeit a narrow and misleading one, in both cases), tweets are probably not very helpful. When you consider who tweets, and what they normally tweet about, you might expect to get more "I just saw something really weird" posts than "I just saw this and found it very interesting" or "I was watching this and I really didn't have much of a reaction to it" posts.

Still, it's disturbing to see so many posters responding to these documentaries with LOLs and WTFs. And for a while I tried to set them straight, sending a link to my short, but more reasoned page on the subject on my book's site. But I realized that it was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. No one who does posts like that is going to change his or her mind because a real fetishist tweets something to them. Maybe if one of their own friends came out to them as a fetishist. Or maybe not.

It makes people feel secure and more powerful socially to reject something that hints at "otherness." Especially young adults, from whom most of these posts seem to come. We just have to accept the fact that our sexual oddities cause discomfort to most of those who don't share them.

Of course, I'm sure that any of my gay and lesbian friends could have told me that.

Not For Me To Say

I don't consider it my place to explain what globophilia is, or what it is not. I can describe what my particular brand of globophilia involves, what it makes me think, and how it makes me feel, to the best of my ability.

But it is a widely varied beast, this fetish, this attraction to a rubber bag filled with air. If you read other writers on the topic (yes, I'm not the only one, much to my own surprise), they will tell you about the fetish with some confidence, even as they oversimplify.

People with a balloon fetish, they will tell you, are called "looners." Well, some are, and bloggers and magazine writers and porn sites have picked up on the term. I can't stand it. It's flippant and silly and makes us sound crazy. Having strong sexual feeling about balloons may, in itself, be a bit off-kilter. But I assure you I am quite sane. And I am not a "looner." I am a globophile.

The bloggers will tell you that the globophiles come down to two types: poppers and non-poppers, the first getting off of balloons popping and the second getting off on balloons without popping them, and that any variations are just degrees along this continuum. Again, a vast oversimplification. It's kind of like saying that, in politics, there are liberals and conservatives, and everyone falls somewhere on the line between the two.

But as with most things in life, it's not nearly that simple. I'm what might be called a popper. I pop balloons, and I love to watch women pop balloons. But only if they pop the balloons in certain ways. I like to watch women blow up balloons until they pop. I like to watch them sit on them or squeeze them. But I really feel disappointed if a woman pops a balloon by stepping on it or sticking it with a pin or with her fingernails. And I absolutely loathe popping a balloon with a lighter or a cigarette.

And, by the way, popping balloons also scares the crap out of me. And I like to watch women do things that don't involve popping balloons, too, like cuddle them next the their breasts, or just blow them up and tie them, or stuff them into their clothing, or sit on them without popping them (which is entirely possible, in case you didn't know that).

Now there are globophiles who like nothing better than pin popping or cigarette popping or bare feet popping, or any number of methods that do nothing for me. And there are those who hate popping because it scares them, and those who hate popping even though it doesn't scare them and those who don't particularly hate popping, but just don't find it sexually gratifying.

And that's just a small taste of the great variety of interests covered by this one term, globophilia, or balloon fetishism, if you prefer. Because people with a sexual interest in toy balloons are, first and foremost, human.