(NSFW)What do Christians think of foot fetishes?

It’s no different than a butt or a boob attraction. I’m a Catholic. Any thought about someone sexually is a venial sin

Jesus’s feet were washed by (possibly) literature’s first “hooker with a heart of gold.”

The Bible won’t guide you here, but my gut feeling is modern Christians don’t have much of a positive view on it. But that’s because Christian churches have generally spent the past ~1600 years encouraging priggishness. From my reading of the New Testament, Jesus seems fairly gender- and sex-tolerant, at least for his place and time, though it’s hard to say exactly what his sexual mores were.

Fetishes can be anything. My wife has a fetish for pockebooks. They are everywhere in my house. I accept this and just consider this is “her bag”.

Foot fetishes are acceptable, as long as you just look and do not touch. Then, it becomes a crime.

Didn’t Jesus wash the disciples feet before the last supper?
Sounds like a tradition, not a fetish.

I’m Christian (and a liberal), but why should a foot fetish be different than anything else that someone likes? As long as you’re not being perverse or harming someone else (or being a creepy stalker about it) you can like whatever you like. In moderation. LOL.

They call ‘em “Marys”

Ummmmm… I don’t think a foot fetish is wrong unless you’re like, cutting the feet off and using them as some wacko Christian gone Pagan ritual…

Jesus loved foot baths. ‘Nuff said.

@everephebe: Perhaps, but I think there’s an element of moral indignation missing there for that to make the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope. Far from being a whore-ish castoff engaging in a desperate trade, Shamhat was doing her duty and maybe even loving it (7 days?). Rahab (in Joshua) probably comes closer than Shamhat, but Rahab is just a pawn in the game – neither story contains a moral about this lowly whore giving her (maternal?) best – Rahab is profiting here too. We actually have the trope in Luke 7:36–49, and I’m not aware of anything quite like it earlier.

Christians are just people and have all the same feelings, urges, wants, desires and vices that anyone does. That is why it is so unnatural for anyone to stay celebate. When we try and do this then the thing they are trying not to do becomes a very serious problem. And it fails.

@bolwerk I may have to concede that Shamhat might not quite qualify for the heart of gold, but that’s arguable. I don’t think being “being a whore-ish castoff engaging in a desperate trade” is one of the qualifications; nor do I think that “maybe even loving it,” or “profiting,” would be disqualifications.

However I feel my point stands, that the bible is far from the oldest document containing a hooker. And there are certainly examples that predate Mary that could qualify for the heart of gold aspect even if Shamhat does not.
Rahab as you say.
Vasantasena

I’d cite more but I’m lazy.

Jesus/Mary might be the first literary example of foot fetishism. I dunno.

I have no idea what modern doctrine on fetishes is, since the majority of Christians I know would rather talk about anything than sex. Since it isn’t really a cohesive monoculture, I’d suspect that the real answer is the same as my favorite joke: do old people wear boxers or briefs?

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Depends

As a cynical asshole, I suspect that if you asked a varied bunch of folks who call themselves Christian, you’d get more “Oh, yuck” responses than “Oh, yeah.” Of course, this is just my suspicion.

Those who mentioned the washing of feet need to realize that washing feet is not a foot fetish. A foot fetish is the sexual arousal caused by feet. Im sure you all already knew that. I had a feeling that some of you would have mention foot washing as a joke. Some of you may not care much for Christianity but at least have some respect for those that do. I only asked what most Christians feel about foot fetishes since the Bible doesn’t even mention anything about it.

@everephebe: it’s definitely not the oldest document containing a hooker who is helpful, but the hooker with a heart of gold trope is a bit more than just that.

@bolwerk
Wiki says this:
The hooker with a heart of gold (also the whore with a heart of gold or the tart with a heart) is a stock character in which a “fallen woman”, usually a prostitute, is a kindly and internally wholesome person.

Wiki goes on to list Vasantasena, who predates Mary by more than 200 years, as an example.

Who came first, that is which literary Hooker was the first with “a heart of gold,” is debatable but Mary is not she. However Mary is an excellent example of the trope and certainly one of the most notable and memorable.

@everephebe: Wikipedia is often stupid and illiterate. It’s absolutely true that prostitutes played roles in literature (and religion) as long as literature (and probably religion) has existed. The woman who washed (perfumed?) Jesus’s feet, implied to be a whore (it may have been Mary, or another unnamed woman, or two separate incidents I think with both taking place somehow in the vicinity of someone named Simon – one involving a prostitute and one involving Mary who was not), takes on a literary role that cannot be identified before the New Testament AFAICT. Wikipedia may cite Vasantasena, but it doesn’t explain why, so I can’t really comment. I’m skeptical that anything before the Biblical story could really fit the trope because, even when it’s not exactly paralleled, the trope today is meant to hearken back to the Biblical story as a commentary on leadership, power, kindness, compassion, or perhaps even the role of women or lower classes, etc.. Is that really seen with Vasantasena?

The LDS have a ceremony in the Temple where the Prophet and Apostles wash each other’s feet every Thursday. It is tradition that the highest do to show we are all equal and no one is better than another and it is to show respect for others just as Christ did to his Apostles.

@bolwerk You’re correct the Bible is amazing. And beats all other books, at everything.

I concede wiki isn’t always up to snuff. But I already told you, I was lazy, and proving you wrong would be easy if I had time to read the hundreds of stories the predate the bible looking for what you specifically would deem a good example of the Tart with a Heart trope. I believe there is a telling moment in the old testie where Solomon[?] says something about there’s nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
id est: We done stole most of this shit content from other older mythological stories… er… traditions.

… What was the OP about again? I forgot.

@everephebe: Just where did I say I think the Bible beats anything at anything? I’m not even Christian.

If you are so desperate to prove me wrong, be my guest and read hundreds or thousands of pages of stuff few modern readers can wrap their heads around. You’d be taking a bet against what amounts to a fairly broad literary consensus, far as I know. Other tropes have origins in other sources – Greek myth, Renaissance art, folk tales, even modern literature, and in many cases we aren’t even sure (Gilgamesh might be the earliest example of a journey trope, but that was undoubtedly based on even older folk legends). The hooker with a heart of gold trope is one that’s pretty certain though, and it just so happens that the New Testament was the apparent source.

If you want (pedantic) proverb to answer Ecclesiastes, look to Latin: nova ex veteris – the new is born of the old. I agree you’re naming things that approached, and perhaps even influenced, the hooker with a heart of gold found in the NT, and that in turn influenced other writers to create what amounts to a trope that, for whatever reason, resonates with readers down to this day. It’s just that those things aren’t why the trope exists because they don’t have the resonance of the NT story.

@bolwerk I gave you a great answer…

But,
“It’s just that those things aren’t why the trope exists because they don’t have the resonance of the NT story.” In your opinion.

What influenced that NT story? Historical fact, nope, previous similar stories? Probably. If Christianity wasn’t spread all over the world by the Romans, it’s possible our major influence for the Hooker with a Heart of Gold would be Venus or somebody else. I mean I think I see your point.

And really the burden of proof isn’t on me, it’s on you because you made the claim first about Mary or whoever cried on Jesus’ feet and washed him with her hair. Which admitted is a great story. It’s moving and well-written. I’m not desperate to prove you wrong, I’m interested in you proving yourself correct or not. And interested in why you think this particular story is the original source of the trope. It is rather likely to not be the original, rather the most popular and well known version of the trope today.

I like nova ex veteris, I’ll try and remember it.

What does any of this have to do with my question?

@Mikewlf337 unfortunately I learned this lesson a long time ago…anytime you mention anything remotely religious in a question it turns into a great biblical debate

@SpatzieLover That is true. There are so many off topic responses on this thread. The fact that they are ignoring my question completely is something I find extremely rude.

I feel for you. You asked a legitimate question.

@everephebe: What exactly do you expect me to prove? A probability or a possibility? Yes, older things certainly influenced the NT testament story. I said as much myself, and that’s kind of a duh. I said from the very beginning when I entered this thread,

> Jesus’s feet were washed by (possibly) [emp. added] literature’s first “hooker with a heart of gold.”

I didn’t even say “likely,” “probably,” or some other superlative adverb. It’s still up there for you to look at.

But there’s a nugget of originality in the NT testament story that, so far as can be told, isn’t predated in any extant records I’m aware of, and there seems to be rather broad agreement about that. I’ve acknowledged all along there’s a possibility something predates the trope. In fact, my suspicion is most literary works that old echo tropes from something lost to written record, or that maybe were never written down before. It’s hard to imagine that one isn’t, given the cultural sensibility injected into it (e.g., the surprise that the whore can do something so wonderful while all the virtuous men sit and judge).* Given how much ancient literature is simply lost, we’ll probably never know, and now the origin for writers later is the NT – not the OT, Sumerian legends, Greek myth (what does Venus even remotely have in common with this?), or anything else.

* I’m kind of suspicious about your claim that it would have come about elsewhere. It didn’t need to come from the NT, but my personal hunch is this particular trope is one born of the cultural sensibilities surrounding post-Alexandrian Greek-Jewish interactions, sometime between Alexander’s and Jesus’s times. It doesn’t seem like something the lecherous, materialistic Greeks (or Romans) would care about by themselves, given how their society saw prostitutes. It doesn’t sound like something the pre-Maccabees Jews, without the injection of Greek rationalism, would care about much (God already told them what they can do to whores, I think). It really doesn’t fit Hindu ethics so well either, given the caste system. I could see it in Buddhism, and there’s even a kind of similar characterization there of a horndog Buddha trying a life of leisure with a princess – who herself goes on to become enlightened. However, just because it could have come out of Buddhism doesn’t mean it did, and it seems to be a matter of historical record that it did not.

So to sum it up I don’t think there is anything wrong with washing feet or having a fetish to do so and I am Christian.

@bolwerk We should either PM or agree to disagree, because it’s distracting from the original post. I also never said Shamhat was the definitive one either. It’s an interesting debate, and probably personal preference, or at least subjective. As far as where the trope comes from. Without evidence and years of research, which hopefully someone has already done. :D If you want post this topic as a question, maybe we can get people like @mattbrowne and other dignitaries to weigh in?

[mod says] I realize this question is in the Social Section, but could you please get back to the actual topic? Feel free to start a new discussion for your side debate, or take it to PMs.

@Mikewlf337 the bible doesn’t say anything about a lot of things, like leather fetishes, panty raids, pole dancers, s&m, serial killers, drag queens or Mormon polygamy. Why center on foot fetishists?