ABSTRACT
Men's foot-fetish Internet websites are a useful source of information on the satisfactions men gain from high heels. The sites tend to be coy about the sex of their creators and contributors. Woman-blaming is a common technique used to obscure the workings of male domination. It has been most used in relation to men's violence against women, i.e. male criminologists, male lawyers, say that victims cause it by wearing the wrong clothes, or mothers cause it by being too clingy or too distant from their abusive sons, or wives cause it by being more educated than their abusive husbands. Sexologists, the 'scientists' of sex, agree that foot and shoe fetishism is the commonest kind. The most important criterion for recognition of a harmful cultural practice is damage to the health of women and girls. The excitement of contemplating women's pain and deformity may lie behind that symbol of high culture in the West, the ballet shoe.
