Four kinds of fetish...

My friend Furcissy makes a very interesting point:

For everyone that gets turned on by a scenario, a handful have a fetish for the activity and the majority have a fetish for the situation surrounding the activity. I think that many subs may feel like they have a larger kink-interest base than they really do because of this.

If you read the rest of his post, you'll find he means that the fetish can be for...

• ...the act or situation itself - let's call it a True Fetish.
  For example, I have a chastity fetish. I like being locked in my chastity belt (sort of). I also like being mildly whipped (sort of). Furcissy likes humiliated by being feminized (but hates it).
  
• ... the situation implied by the act - let's call this a Hazard Fetish.
  The fetish act that kicked off this line of thought was "being ignored". One several occasions, Furcissy spent several hours kneeling in a corner, and was most likely forgotten during this time. He came to the conclusion that it was nice if this was a possibility, but not if it were a main activity.
  I, like many others, crave roles in which a whipping is a constant hazard. I don't really enjoy the actual pain, but I do enjoy the sense of powerlessness, and the sense-enhancing fear implied by the possibility. Of course, I need to be whipped from time to time to make the thing real, but I wouldn't enjoy "games" in which all that happened was me getting flogged.

I'll add a third category; a fetish for...

• ...the sense of horror associated with an act or situation - call it the Horror Fetish (duh).
  This is all to do with using fear to heighten arousal, and very little to do with what you'd actually want to do in real life. The fantasy usually doesn't stretch much further than the act, or the moment of entering the situation. Into this bag go most castration and cuckolding fantasies.

It's very easy to get these mixed up.

True and Horror can look similar, because both can involve a lot of aversion. The only obvious difference is that the True focuses on the after, whereas Horror is all about lead up.

True and Hazard, meanwhile, are separated by degree. The problem is that fantasies tend to drift towards the intensities of Hazard at the expense of more livable True - e.g. it's easier to imagine being whipped until you bleed, rather than a quiet day as a slave.

Why does this matter? Because you need to be very careful what you wish for...