On Fetish Meme, Richard asks
If you could remove your kinky sexuality, become ‘vanilla,’ conventionally sexualized would you?
Would you rather have normal erotic needs than face the challenges and frustrations of being unlike the majority?
Read the whole question here.
I wouldn’t, and I’ll give two reasons, one sensible and one not.
The not sensible answer is that I’ve had plenty of vanilla relationships, and I find that type of sex comparatively boring. (It’s not boring, just by comparison.) It’s not really clear to me whether people who are not interested in kink find vanilla sex just as interesting as I find kinky sex, or whether the kink really represents an additional layer of fascination. It feels like the latter to me. I don’t want to give that up.
The more sensible answer is that once I started to pursue kinky sex, I found it was easier to find sex and relationship partners than it was before. Going to a bdsm club is, for me, a far more likely way to meet partners, lovers, or boyfriends (apparently; Joscelin is my first in eight years) than my usual technique of sitting at home never meeting people and occasionally seeking partners on Craigslist or some dating personals site. So, for me, the specificity helps rather than hinders.
(This is true even without assuming a high ratio of male bottoms to female tops; I originally went to the club as a bottom.)
6 responses so far ↓
Jason // 15 December 2007 at 1:41 pm
I can’t even imagine 8 years without a partner. Nor can I imagine Internet dating — I guess I’m a hopeless technophobe. I find it very hard to be attracted to someone I haven’t met in person at least once (in a holistic sense; obviously I can respond physically to an image of a beautiful woman, especially without clothes). I find it impossible to go without thinking about/wishing for a partner.
Richard // 15 December 2007 at 6:14 pm
I went even longer than eight years: talk about throwing away your life! I was so hurt I thought I’d never want to touch anyone again.
I met my last two lovers on the web. It is possible to see all the wonderful lovely human qualities in emails, IMs and blog posts. The sexually attractive personality transcends surface qualities. And I think that the way details in profiles alert people to obvious incompatibilities is a good thing.
Richard // 15 December 2007 at 6:15 pm
I went even longer than eight years: talk about throwing away your life! I was so hurt I thought I’d never want to touch anyone again.
I met my last two lovers on the web. It is possible to see all the wonderful lovely human qualities in emails, IMs and blog posts. The sexually attractive personality transcends surface qualities. And I think that the way details in profiles alert people to obvious incompatibilities is a good thing.
maymay // 15 December 2007 at 10:50 pm
I don’t think it’s the fact that you presented as a top or a bottom that makes you initially attractive to attendees at BDSM events, it’s the fact that you’re a woman. Women who are bottoms are indeed less of a rare commodity than women who are tops, but they are a highly sought-after commodity nonetheless. The fact that you turn out to be a rather expressive and clearly loving woman is simply icing on the cake, but dear, your gender does have benefits in this subculture, and opportunities to find compatible-enough partners is one of them.
You might find this post of mine an interesting read, especially if you disagree.
devastatingyet // 16 December 2007 at 2:27 am
I don’t disagree, May.
Tonight at the club there were 4 femdom scenes going on and 2 mandom ones. That was fun.
Dw3t-Hthr // 16 December 2007 at 5:39 pm
My reaction to this kind of question is always off on something of a tangent: the concept of “Would you be vanilla?” isn’t a question limited to “erotic needs”.
It’s a question of “Would you like to be someone completely different, with a perspective so alien as to be incomprehensible from where I am and probably unable to sustain my life as it is?”
And I look at that, like any sane, rational person with a satisfying and functional life, and say, “Hell no.”
My kink isn’t something compartmentalised and hidden away that only comes out when I’m fucking; it’s threaded all through me. I don’t even know if the kink is a manifestation of a deeper personality trait that would have to be scourged out to make me not kinky, for that matter; it’s tied in with my care for the people around me (which among other things makes me not like my mother), my religious dedication, my work. Why would I want to give any of that up?
Because it doesn’t come apart, and there’s no sense in pretending it does.