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I’ve been thinking about the word “kink” lately. We use it pretty freely when talking about sex, but who actually decides when something crosses the line from sex into “kink”?
What makes that especially interesting to me is that the word originally meant a twist or bend. Eventually, it came to describe sexual interests outside what was considered “normal.”
But “normal” has changed quite a bit.
So I’m curious: What makes something a kink to you rather than simply something you enjoy sexually?
And does the label even matter?
It used to mean an "unusual sexual practice with a partner, especially one that objectifies someone". A kink was negative, some kind of perversion, like bondage or sadomasochism. Nowadays, however, the usage has broadened so much that I think it merely means "sexual preference".
I think you’re right that the word has lost much of the negative baggage it once carried. What I find interesting, though, is that if “kink” has broadened to mean almost any sexual preference, I’m not sure where the boundary is anymore.
Maybe that’s actually the point. What one generation considered kinky can become pretty ordinary to the next. At some point, “kink” may tell us less about the activity itself and more about what a particular person or culture considers outside the norm.
To me, a kink constitutes a specific sexual interest that draws you into exploring it further. In this way, kinks are more personal today, I think, than they ever have been.
Kinks used to be secretive - something that you might discover reading a pornographic magazine but generally not well known. The internet forever changed that.
You may not have the opportunity to explore a kink with a partner, but that’s one area where masturbation reigns. Masturbation inspired fantasy allows you to explore just about anything.
I think you’ve hit on something with the idea of exploration. Maybe a kink isn’t simply something we enjoy, but something we’re curious enough about that we want to explore it, even if that exploration never leaves our imagination.
And the internet certainly changed the landscape. Before it, you might have had a particular fantasy for years without knowing whether anyone else shared it, or even having a name for it. Now you can discover in about five minutes that not only does it have a name, but there’s also apparently an entire community devoted to it!
That does make me wonder, though, how much of what we call our kinks we actually discovered within ourselves, and how much we discovered because the internet put something in front of us and made us think, “Huh. I never thought about that before.”