I’m not sure why massage is supposed to fall under the heading of “vanilla” play. Unless maybe it’s its familiarity as “foreplay” that breeds contempt. But there’s so much more to massage than “candles and a backrub!”

The range of sensations you can create with massage goes from ethereal to enervating, devastating to divine. It requires a great deal of trust in multiple dimensions. A well-designed massage table, even a light one, can easily support an amazing amount of kinetic force, motion, and weight. The right height for massage happens to be the right height for a lot of other activities. They’re designed to resist water, oil, and silicone-based lubricants. And where there are massage tables there’s usually plenty of sheets, towels, heat sources, ice, and privacy. They easily accommodate service or dominance, submission or surrender, and best of all.

Best of all, switching is encouraged.

By the way, by arguing that massage isn’t “vanilla” I’m not arguing it must therefore instead be “kinky.” Quite the opposite. I think it nicely demonstrates the false distinction between the two. First because the overlap too broad for the distinctions to be useful. Second because the distinction is incomplete. Consider, for instance, that people who approve of “kink” are likely to also be far more accepting of “vanilla” massage whereas most of the “only for procreation” crowd are going to regard massage with as much suspicion as they would spanking. Finally? Certain subsets of “kinky” people are likely to dismiss both massage and spanking as insufficiently edgy and therefore equally “vanilla” activities.

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Incidentally, there’s a Half-Nekkid Thursday meme version of this post here.

It’s really annoying, and patronizing, and counterproductive to refer to sexually aware people who don’t drool down other people’s blouses (without a negotiated invitation anyway) as “sex geeks.” Or geeks, period.

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Which gets to something Ghostorchid said about “vanilla” vs. “kink” approaches to sex in comments to Miriam Perez’s post at Feministing

I feel like there’s sometimes a tendency in the alt.sex and sex blogger scene where it’s “all kinks respected” but it’s okay to make little jokes about “vanilla” or to imply that more conventional folks would benefit from “more creativity” and “exploring” and whatnot. There’s this tiny assumption that they’re a little repressed, playing on the safe side, or missing out.

I also feel like there’s an assumption that trickles around in alt sex communities that the alt sex scene is the “healthier, better alternative”, when it’s really just as great and as screwed up as every other scene. I get frequently told I should try more kink stuff by people who don’t understand or can’t believe that I’ve had horrible experiences in the kink scene. They insist I was just with the wrong people, although I was surrounded by radical self-identified feminist types who departed feeling like they’d exhibited great sexual politics while I felt sad and betrayed and erased. It’s as though alt.sex and kink is the cure-all to sexual power issues.

She said it here.

Before I go anywhere else with this I want to acknowledge Orchid Ghost’s unhappy experiences. They’re way too common in kink where, unfortunately, the “smartest people in the room” effect — where it’s assumed that if we’re doing it we must be doing it right so if you don’t like it you must be doing something wrong — can be as common as anywhere else something new or unfamiliar is practiced. There’s also the plain old ordinary fact that players and users are as likely to attach themselves to sexual advocacy groups as anywhere else (in non-sexual terms see eternal attempts by “young socialist” and “anarchist” groups to hijack or subvert social-organizing and protest movements.) And finally, like any other complex skill involving technology, emotions, and/or body fluids, it’s easy for beginners to get hurt — either by themselves or because those who are adept forget that it’s not “intuitive.” (Computer pundit John Dvorak correctly quipped that the Unix operating system is intuitive once you thoroughly understand it.)

That said…

The common assumption is that “vanilla” equals “normal” and “kink” means alternative, naughty, radical, or (especially) transgressive. Instead “vanilla” implies a patriarchal and heteronormative, reproduction-centric, penis-in-vagina-intercourse-till-male-ejaculation-focused form of sex where negotiation terminates with a woman’s “consent” to let the man proceed to “take” her as he sees fit.

Whereas “kink” tends to include any sexual activity with any combination of individuals, orientations, body parts, and sensory preferences (including the traditional “vanilla” ones) with the significant difference being that consent signals the beginning rather than the end of communication, negotiation, and shared decision-making.

That “vanilla” people think it’s “kinky” to continue negotiating after consent has been given says all anyone needs to know about why both terms are almost perfectly inappropriate and non-descriptive terms.

And returning to Orchid Ghost’s unfortunate experiences, simply calling one’s self “kinky” can be as empty as calling one’s self “sex positive” or (from back in the 1960s and 1970s) “sexually liberated.” But it is the case that “kink” has more of a framework for intentionality, negotiation, and a “principle of least surprise“ than “vanilla…” which (speaking of principle of least surprise!) can include the inherently non-consensual, non-negotiated and extraordinarily transgressive “penis in popcorn box“ stunt. Just sayin’

Update: In comments SnowdropExplodes says Dw3t-Hthr talks about being the “clean up crew” when people have been “smartest in the room“ing.

Matthew Yglesias, the only pundit I’m aware of with a formal education in philosophy, came up with a very brief account of why some words are more difficult to repurpose or “reclaim” than others.**

Jessica Valenti notes that GOP consultant Alex Castellanos thinks it’s sometimes “accurate” to call a woman a “bitch.”

To perhaps overanalyze, the trouble here is that “bitch” is what they call a “thick moral concept” in the philosophy game. A “thin” moral concept purely expresses a judgment — so you might say something was “good” or “bad” and that doesn’t carry any descriptive content apart from the ethical evaluation. But there are also thick moral concepts like “brave.” To call an act “brave” is to praise it, just like calling it “good” is, but it’s not merely to praise it — you might agree that someone has done something praiseworthy but still say “brave” is an inappropriate description because it didn’t involve risk in the right kind of way.

One of the ways in which sexism in our society works is that there are several highly-gendered thick moral concepts of which “bitch” and “slut” are probably the most salient. It’s true, of course, that some women do manifest the non-normative descriptive qualities associated with those terms. But the crux of the matter is that the alleged accuracy or lack thereof of such a term is besides the point, the concepts themselves are part of an inherently sexist conceptual scheme — the terms just are the moral vocabulary of the sexist.

I lifted his entire post from here.

Contrast calling someone a dick vs. a pussy: Both are topically identical expressions of disapproval but they’re not just topical — they contain cartloads of assumptions about gendered power.

Contrast instead “vanilla” and “kink,” each of which carries an implication of sexual abnormality (boring on the one hand, transgressive on the other) when in fact most practices in either category are actually pretty normal.***

At any rate, while I really don’t expect everyone to drop their favorite terms, or even insults, on my say so or Yglesias’s, I think he’s nicely captured why I think it’s a good idea to try and capture rhetorical high ground. Vibrators aren’t “kinky” they’re normal, hemp rope isn’t kinky it’s normal, even the missionary position isn’t “kinky” it’s normal… even though it’s tailor-made for role-playing seriously repressed colonial Victorians. And similarly “sluts” don’t have more than an arbitrary “number” of partners over a lifetime, normal people do.

Actually I think if we want to challenge thick moral concepts consider the fate of the poor word “normal,” which surely deserves repurposing beyond it’s current claustrophobic connotation. It’s not that “kink” isn’t interesting or erotic about kink, it’s that “normal” turns out to be far more interesting, and erotic and… well… kinky than even kinky people are willing to let on.

As a libertine prude I believe we’re all actually pretty normal.” As a prudish libertine I believe there’s a wonderful variety of different kinds of normal to choose from!”

[** I’m not positive, for instance, there was ever a recoverable non-perjorative meaning for “slut.” That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying, just that it might turn out to be very hard. —fl]

[*** For instance oral sex, once referred to in underground personal ads with the code word “French Culture,” was until recently considered extravagantly kinky. And/or perversion. And/or sodomy. Regardless of the sex of the participants. And meanwhile man-on-top/missionary/lights-out/through-a-hole-in-the-sheet/only-for-procreation/only-till-male-ejaculation practice — the üuber vanilla act — is arguably flag-raisingly deviant. —fl]