I really like kinky people.
Well, I’m sure there are kinky people in the world whom I wouldn’t like – no group is totally free of stupid or mean people – but on the whole when I learn that a person is kinky, I’m inclined to think well of them.
Why?
Sex positivity is part of it. Kinky folks have often had to take a long, hard look at sexuality – their own and the world’s – and come to the conclusion that their own desires are actually completely FINE, in the context of consenting adults, and that people who don’t agree with them (a) can go fuck themselves and (b) are probably suffering from that self-imposed moralizing and narrowly conscribed ideas about sexual expression, and are therefore to be pitied.
That combination of I-pity-you and you-can-go fuck-yourself rings very true to me. I appreciate both the empathy and the lack of tolerance for bullshit.
Kinky folks tend to be sex positive, too, in their willingness and ability to create space for various sexual tastes. Just as they’ve learned to accept their own sexual variety, they’ve learned to tolerate, accept, respect, and celebrate the sexual variety of their fellows in the kink community. Clothespins your thing? Groovy! Breath play? Right on, be safe ya’ll! Nipple clamps? Leather? Chains? Cages? Blood? Do yer thing.
(Gay and lesbian bi bigots piss me off for the same reason: look, YOU’VE faced discrimination, you know how hurtful it can be, so what the fuck are you doing discriminating against someone else?? I actually know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t make it piss me off less.)
Consent is another part of why I like kinky people. This is something that came up when I was discussing consent with students earlier this week: in the BDSM community, folks often invest quite a bit of time and effort in getting clear about boundaries and consent, in a way that folks who feel more at home in the mainstream sexual scripts rarely feel they need to, to their detriment.
I don’t know, might all of this just sound like gross over-generalization, like saying I tend to like Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists? It’s true that I do tend to like people in three of those groups (Christians often make me twitchy and anxious), and it’s true that I just tend to like ALL people, at least for their basic personhood.
But being a member of the kink community is special. Its innate relationship to sexual desire, sexual identity, sexual communication, sexual behavior, makes it a meaningful predictor of folks who are less likely to freak out when I talk about vaginas in public.
See, I’ve been watching this TV series called “Wire in the Blood;” I can’t recommend it, even though I’ve bothered to watch every episodes, because it conflates BDSM, sex work, sexually explicit media, and homosexuality with violent crime, which I object to on principle. It’s a clear case of illustrating that sex is wrong and the punishment for it is a tortured death.
What I like about the show is the main character, Tony Hill, a clinical psychologist who does criminal profiling. He’s simultaneously socially obtuse and deeply empathic. and he often has conversations about vaginas, semen, and similar things at an inappropriate volume in inappropriate places. HE doesn’t judge the sexualities of the folks involved, no, he’s matter-of-fact about sexual variety in a way that alarms others. He is periodically demonized for his empathy with people who vary widely from the norm.
All of those things are familiar experiences to me.
The show, essentially, is a heightened version of my reality: a world where most folks conflate sexual variety with sexual DEVIANCE, and believe it is kissing cousins with violence, abuse, and criminal insanity.
Anyway. Watching it made me want to say out loud that I like kinky people because they tend to be better at a lot of stuff than vanilla folks.
Quite the opposite of what TV would teach us, eh? Well, those TV producers and writers et al, they can go fuck themselves, the poor dears.
emily nagoski
16 Responses to “kinky”
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Great post – I couldn’t agree more.
It is true, too, that there is a strain of “I’m kinkier than you” in kink communities. Unfortunate.
I don’t think that the kinky people I know necessarily pity vanilla foks. There can be room for ‘This is what I want with consenting adults, and that’s okay, but it’s not for everyone and that’s okay too.”–or at least there should be.
Okay, I apologize: I just re-read that part of the post, which specifically refers to people who condemn or judge the kinky. True enough.
I have to point out that despite the whole kinky=psychopathic elements of WITB, one extremely positive aspect of the show is Carol Jordan: She never has to go undercover as a prostitute in skimpy clothes. She’s not personally tortured. She doesn’t rely on her sexuality to do her job but loathe herself for doing so. She’s not longing for a husband, or kids, or shit scared of either. She’s a normal woman doing a tough job very well, and yet she’s still likable and interesting and sexy. Female characters like that are really, really hard to come by. They can be tortured and broken or sexy and super human, but rarely above average and recognizable. The replacement character (Alex Something?) is also okay, but the show creators stuck her with a pretty cliched single mum shtick that isn’t nearly as engaging as the Tony/Carol dynamic.
PS. Try the books. They’re a little less repressive, and Tony’s impotence is dealt with in some interesting ways. And I’ve got to give Val McDermid props for creating solid lesbian characters who aren’t Lesbian Characters. (I say this a a lesbian with a lot of affection for, but also some impatience with, lesbian genre fic.)
Tony’s impotent? As in, erectile dysfunction?
Yup, quite explicitly so. It’s pretty much the only mainstream crime fiction series I can think of with a male protag that isn’t a proto-type ‘manly-man’ with rampant boners included.
It’s been a few years since I read the books, but I rated them much higher than I do the TV series. I seem to recall them treating various forms of sexuality fairly gently and even handedly.
Yup, ED. Which is why his yearning for Carol remains from afar. He’s one of the few male characters I’ve ever read whose prime worry is his desirability, but who nevertheless engenders respect in the reader.
Also, as I recall, in the books it’s clearer that psychopathy often manifests in sexual ways (or sex becomes interlinked with psychopathic tendencies) because sexuality is marginalized and “shameful” in society, not because sexual expression leads to criminality.
There are also some complex explorations of rape trauma that, again as I recall, are more realistic and victim-friendly than most depictions of rape.
“…folks who feel more at home in the mainstream sexual scripts rarely feel they need to, to their detriment.”
So much wisdom in those last three words.
An elaborate version below:
“But you know what? The real monster is way, way bigger than the blood players and the erotic asphyxiation fetishists. The truth is that plain old body-to-body sex is risky. If I flog someone, I do not run the risk of getting them pregnant. If I tie them up, I am not going to transmit hepatitis C. Face-slapping and verbal humiliation are highly unlikely to infect anyone with HIV. But having standard-issue penis-to-vagina sex—now that shit can kill you! And it’s often some of the most poorly negotiated, least talked about and questionably consensual sexual behaviour out there on the market. So why, exactly, is the onus on BDSMers to be more consensual than everyone else?”
via
http://sexgeek.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/its-not-about-sex-and-other-lies/
Huzzah! Good ‘un!
“I appreciate both the empathy and the lack of tolerance for bullshit.”
Thanks Emily. This is my new (attributed) signature quote.
It took me awhile to be able to read this post. I hope you’re still watching, Emily.
I don’t know how on-topic this comment is, and I hope it doesn’t provide more fodder for the all-kinks-are-sick crowd. But one thing I have NEVER seen addressed is what my experience with kink was.
I spent several years in a BDSM relationship. I am male. I was the bottom. My partner was female and was the domme. It’s taken several years of therapy post-relationship to figure this out, but the reason I was a sub was because of my crazy self-image. I spent so long thinking I was basically a rapist by virtue of being male. I spent so long hating my sexuality by virtue of having been raised Catholic. Add a partner who wasn’t interested in either sex or intimacy – but was OK with BDSM – and you had a recipe for disaster.
I am born-again vanilla. I still fantasize about BDSM but I would be incredibly scared of being in a BDSM relationship again. What do you think, Emily? Am I the only person who’s been through this?
@SMincognito I know some great kinky people and I am one, too, but if you go through some of the kink blogs and things, you’ll see that there are discussions about abusive people who have recast themselves as dom types.
I’ve worked (at professor jobs) with a couple of these last. I know they were in the “community” because they said so — and knew things about it, so they weren’t faking. At work they tried to operate as though they were in a D/S scene 24/7; it was tiresome.
So yes, I’d be careful if I were you. The things to be the most careful of, though, based on what you’ve written, are your guilt, your fear of sexuality, and partners who actually avoid sex and intimacy.
I’m not a shrink, though, and I don’t even know you, so take what I just said with a grain of salt — it’s based completely on my reading of your words here, not on any special knowledge.
@Smincognito,
I’m sorry you had that experience.
I do know that your experience is not especially uncommon. People enjoy BDSM for an enormous variety of reasons, sometimes including things that might be helpful to resolve, and by their nature they can leave people vulnerable and open to unethical or abusive partners. It can be helpful in reconciling mental issues, but it also opens up the possibility of abuse.
There are some efforts around where I am to raise awareness of signs of unhealthy BDSM relationships, but fundamentally what might be unhealthy for one person might not be for another. I also know there’s been a push around here to have kink-friendly therapists who can provide support and outside perspective in a non-judgmental setting.
BDSM is a spectrum. It absolutely doesn’t have to be all-encompassing or boundary-less. If you want to talk with other people who may have had similar experiences and are willing to talk about them you might try some online groups. I admire the _survivors_ group on livejournal. It is sex-positive and has had discussions of BDSM after having gotten out of abusive relationships in the past.
I loved this blog. My Master sent it to me, i think as reassurance that everything is gonna be okay when i meet a BUNCH of kinky people this weekend!
It really m ade me laugh, poor dears!
Thanks for the laugh and putting it out there in a direct manner. Although my tendencies lean a little more towards vanilla than BSDM or swinging, I love talking about sex in all forms, always have. I’ve been right there with you talking about vaginas and the different types of orgasms with a female bartender I’d met only an hour before. It’s part of why I went into selling sex toys for a living. I can help women learn to accept and embrace their sexuality in a sex positive environment without judgment from me. Plus the fun fun fun I (or we) have testing out new products on the market.