Thank you for your long and well-thought out answer. It helped me organize my thoughts more and fill some holes in my theories, so I'm glad you replied.

I think some people are born with an essential predisposition to them, and they will develop one, hell or high water. There is something biologically essential about these people. There appear to be several different clusters, so we're likely looking at several different aetiologies.

I feel like you might be right about this. I don't have any studies to prove it, but I do feel like there's some people out there who are just predisposed to getting caught up in certain fetishes/paraphilias or other obsessions/fascinations. Like with the yaoi readers. There are millions of people in Japan reading this stuff, and yet you don't hear about an FTM transgender craze in Japan. Millions of girls on the internet read this stuff, but only an (extremely loud and annoying) tiny minority become FTM, and somehow, the ones that do become FTM all have a similar kind of profile, they all have a similar kind of thing going on on the inside that allowed them to make the leap from "hmm...this is kind of hot..." to "OMG! this is my entire life now! I am the anime guy!" I do feel like this is a situation that needs psychiatric intervention when it gets to that point where it is affecting the person's quality of life and their sense of reality.

I wish there was more research on paraphilias, what triggers them, is there really no cure (deep down I feel like there must be? If you aren't born with a latex fetish but acquire it later on, surely there must be a way to un-acquire it? Re-wire that brain to feel indifference or disgust towards the latex? Something?)

And of course, if we ask this same question about transgenders, that's called conversion therapy, so the likelihood of anyone researching this stuff right now is extremely low.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation! Take care!