Testing conventions and kink

Ooh, I saw you on OKCupid! (And whether you know it or not, you stalked me.)

I think it's too individual to judge, but bisexuality can be kinky if it's... not sure how to put this non-offensively... not serious. That is, if you're equally attracted to men and women and you sleep with both, that's not kinky, but if you're mostly attracted to women but stretch your boundaries to experiment with a man, that's kinky.

[Speaking of my problems with terminology, I hate OkCupid's use of the term "stalk" for "looked at someone's profile." It seems otherwise like a particularly good matching service though. Send me a "woo" some time. :-) And yeah, now that you mention it, "kinky" really would be a better word for one's take-a-dare approach to boundaries. That's great, actually. Thanks, Holly! --fl]

On the coattails of the previous comment and your response, I would have to say for me "kink" has always meant that which pushes one's own boundaries. What's kinky for me is vanilla to another; what's everyday normal to me is "out there" to someone else. It's a fluid term, personal to the couple and situation.

[I can handle that up to a point. It puts adolescent negotiations in an awkward light though. Having sex for the first time might involve crossing a boundary but I'm not sure many people would call it kinky. :-) Thank you, Bunny. --fl]

I'm with you on "why is it kinky to be bisexual" -- I think that goes right back to stereotyping that bisexuals are wild, that we are merely experimenting or looking so desperately for sexual thrills that anyone/any body will do. (Which I personally think goes back to people really wanting binaries -- notice that the general line of thinking in our culture that leads to seeing gayness as acceptable is that somehow gay people are oriented "differently", as if genetics or hormones flipped a little switch in the brain that's normally on "heterosexual.")

But I'm really not with you on your definition of kink, and I actually have a problem with it.

Before I start, let me say that "kink" is not generally my favorite word to describe BDSM and other non-mainstream sexual behaviors (even though I use it sometimes myself), and I'm actually a bit bothered by people using "kink" when they mean "sadomasochism" -- it's as if they're trying desperately not to startle people who aren't likely to be very friendly to us anyway. It reads to me like "well, how can I talk about sex in front of Grandma without her disapproving? Perhaps if I say 'penetrate' rather than 'fuck'?" When you just know Grandma is going to need the smelling salts anyway.

I tend not to like "BDSM" for the same reason. While I understand and agree that D/s and SM are not the same thing, and that "BDSM" is a way of acknowledging this, the term has always struck me as a way of hiding/tucking away "sadomasochism," as if to say "Oh, we don't do that icky pain stuff. Well, no, we do, but really! It's understandable! I can explain! It's cuddly and nice! It has a context! Nobody would ever do it for its own sake! We're not brutes!" When I don't think anyone has any obligation to make their sex cuddly-sounding for others' comfort. Rough, brutish consensual sex is a good thing, pain play for it's own sake is a good thing, and neither need D/s frameworks to excuse it somehow by making it less bodily and more symbolic.

That said, I completely fail to see how kink is something you feel guilty or weird about doing. I think that taking a word away from a subculture like that is disturbing and maybe a little dangerous. How does that interpretation of the meaning of the word differ in any way from what anti-sex conservatives who assume that sex outside of the mainstream is soulless, hateful, and guilt-ridden? You seem to be offering a supposedly sex-positive take on the same old crap: those people over there are doing something soulless, and I know because they used a word that made me wince.

And besides, why would it be bad to get off on doing things that would shock or titillate other people? I can see how if that was your only turn-on, ever, you could find yourself in a downward spiral of trying more and more extreme sex to get the same shocked reactions out of other people. But is this really what anyone who likes the idea of being "naughty" or transgressive is doing?

I don't think so. I think there are a lot of people who have particular ideas about what counts as "naughty" that come directly from how they were raised. I think that thrill can last for some people even when the sex act itself has long since become regular same old same old to most people. "Way back when, no one was supposed to get up to THIS, and I still get a charge from doing it and imagining someone from back then catching me at it." Why would that be strange? Why would that person necessarily need all new interests to get off?

["...those people over there are doing something soulless, and I know because they used a word that made me wince." Actually that *does* happen to me, Trinity -- they have sex for reproduction only, with the lights out, man on top, woman gritting her teeth and thinking of England, and they word they use that makes me wince is "normal." And it makes me wince not because in my opinion they're practicing a particularly rigid and stylized form of uninformed, and therefore non-consensual D/s, it's because when we allow them to call that "normal" it gives them a form of positional authority in society to not just *brand* but *stigmatize* everyone who's turned on by something more than, or other than, that specific activity. I probably need to make this more clear more often, but my goal in this isn't to take the word "kink" away its practitioners, it's to take the word "normal" away from the relatively small minority that practices it.

Also I happen to agree with you on the way the acronym "BDSM" is sometimes used to wave its hands at the panoply of preferences that don't necessarily overlap as much as outsiders seem to think they do.

And finally, about the transgression-as-thrill thing. I think I really am prudish about that in the sense that I'm not confident I personally have the emotional maturity to handle it responsibly. Thanks. --fl]

[Update: See also Holly's cool cool insight "'Am I doing this because I'm a little bit messed up?' is a separate question from 'Does that make it wrong?'" Where I come down is no, most of the time it's not wrong, in fact it's perfectly normal." --fl]

Kinky is when you use the feather...

Perverted is when you use the whole chicken...

:)

[I remember laughing my ass off the first time I heard this because it made total sense despite being, of course, utterly ridiculous. I heard it in the early 1980s about two minutes after what I took to be a related joke: "Q: How did the punk rocker cross the road? A: He was stapled to a chicken." (Maybe it's just because I spent a couple of summer vacations at a relative's chicken farm...?) Thanks, Selena. --fl]

Selena - Maybe I'm being literal-minded, but that saying never made any sense to me. Because people literally do use feathers but no one sane actually uses a chicken. It's more like "kinky is when you use the bathrobe belt, perverted is when you use leather straps." Except that's not catchy and probably says more about your budget than your sexuality anyway.

Hm. "Kinky turns you pink; perverted turns you purple"? A little too obtuse and only works for white people.

Ooh, I got it! "Kinky is when you use an ice cube, perverted is when you leave it in there."

["...no one sane actually uses a chicken. " Oh-ho! Lightweight!!! :-) Seriously, while it's a nice light illustration you're right that it doesn't work if you try to take it literally. Thanks, Holly. --fl]

As far as Holly's question goes... been there, asked that, internalized oppression sucks. :) I don't mean that to be insulting or gruff, I just would have to know a lot more about what "messed up" means to even parse it, and my gut says it parses to something I'm not sure I like. And I'm not sure why you would bring "messed up" up as a comment to my comment, either...

ehh? splain. this is way too vague for me.

As fat as "normal" goes, I'm not entirely convinced "lay back and think of England" IS what most vanilla, mainstream people are up to. Maybe I'm just way more of an optimist than I think I am, but it seems to me there's been at least enough of a sexual revolution that most people I've ever met, even the people who subscribe to some creepily rigid sexual norms, believe that both women and men deserve pleasure.

As far as "kink" goes, though, I'm not at all convinced it's always self-hating (though I do, like I've said, think it's over-used.) It can be hard to find a word for "sexual interest" or "sexual proclivity" that doesn't sound clunky and clinical. Some folks use "fetish," but that's also used for a style of dress so it's confusing, and there's also the fact that, clinically, it means "can't get off without [whatever]" which is not often the case with people. So saying "sexy boots are his kink" is often easier than "sexy boots are his interest" or whatever. I'm not sure why the word "kink" should be considered so stigmatized that it should be forcibly excised from daily conversations. Maybe I've just never heard it used as any sort of deep insult so it doesn't resonate that way with me.

[For me Holly's "messed up" is great short-hand for a line from your first comment "I think there are a lot of people who have particular ideas about what counts as 'naughty' that come directly from how they were raised." I appreciated your distinction, and hers, because yeah, enjoying something purely as a reaction to having been previously denied or repressed is pretty cool. Also I think a couple of times now I've gotten the impression that you've gotten the impression that I think kinksters use the term out of guilt or self-hatred. Not bloody likely! As with your meditation on the radical expansion of the realm of "vanilla" sexuality in the last 40 years, I just feel that the line between the two has blurred. Think about it! "Kink" once meant "things that were illegal in 47 states." Now, even in places like Alabama (vibrator are still illegal) and Massacheusetts (oral sex is still illegal) 90% of the population routinely does that. And the word for *anything* that 90% of a population does is *normal!* So! As long as we're able to say "hey, it's perfectly normal to be kinky, 90% of the population is kinky to some degree or another" then I'm all for it. Do some people play harder than others? Sure! Just like sports you got jogging and rugby but even though one only leaves you pink and the other leaves you purple nobody's saying one of those is abnormal. So why let anyone pull that shit for sex? (Hope that makes more sense than my first explanation.) Thanks, Trin. --fl]

"Hm. "Kinky turns you pink; perverted turns you purple"? A little too obtuse and only works for white people."

And that's also BDSM (unless "turns you purple" means something other than "leaves a bruise (on a white person)", which to me is a lot more specific. Kinks can be everything from "I have a thing for role-playing involving pirates" to crossdressing to feet to that gross guy who gets off on maggots crawling on his wang (if you REALLY want a link, just ask.) None of those necessarily turn even the white folks purple.

[So when I hear "everything from..." with dress like a pirate at one end and maggots at the other I go asking myself what could be left out of that broad a range and I'm thinking it's this narrow little new-moon of a sliver, and I think those sliver-lovers got some kinda gall claiming that tiny chunk that *they* do "normal" and everything else *we* do *not* normal. As I said a minute ago I don't mind saying "almost everybody's kinky, it's perfectly normal." What I *really* mind is when someone says "unlike almost everybody else *we're* normal." Know what I mean? (It plays both ways of course. We probably wouldn't have to look that hard to find somebody *somewhere* trying to claim you're not normal if you can't handle maggots during sex.) Thanks, Trin. --fl]