The Shemale As A Figure in Art

Voyeurism (the reluctance or refusal of the eye to allow the other senses to appreciate the female's nudity) is the basis of fetishism, Beyst believes" "So strong is the 'perverse' desire to witness the tactile and genital exaltation, that the erotic eye all too easily overlooks that it is merely enjoying signs: to maintain its position, the eye should above all not remember that those signs only refer to what is doomed to remain invisible forever. Therein, the eye resembles the devotees of the golden calf: they take the representation for the invisible original.

They are worshipping an idol-a fetish. Through forbidding precisely what it wants to see, the erotic eye creates the very void that is doomed to remain empty forever. What is supposed to disappear in it, resurfaces from within. Out of this move is born the primeval fetish." The emphasis on attempts to make the genitals appear to be more aesthetic and to heal the wound that the vagina appears to represent result in focusing the attention on the signs of orgasm rather than upon the orgasm itself so that "the primeval fetish becomes unrecognizable" as "it goes hidden behind ever new fetishes of the second generation: fetishes of the fetish.
Again, as with the golden calf, these fetishes of the second generation used to be worshipped with a devotion that is meant for the original, which goes hidden behind an aesthetic veil."