This is Why You Shouldn’t Kink-Shame

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hadriantemple:

I was recently contacted by a follower with a question. What follows is part of a conversation I had with him (reproduced with permission and with all possible identifying details removed, and with a few additional thoughts added)

“You said kink chooses us, but what if the kink that gets me aroused is a kink I don’t want? What if it’s something that repulses me at times? I am very ashamed that I even have interest in this lknk, so ashamed I can’t bring myself to tell anyone about it. How do I get rid of it???”

What makes kink kinky is that it violates some facet of what we were taught is proper. Dominance and submission eroticize selfishness and non-egalitarianism, for example. Incest role-play and race play push on hot-button issues. Things like piss play, spit, and rimming involve things we are taught are ‘dirty’. So part of why you are attracted to something that repulses you may be precisely that you’ve been taught to be repulsed by it. It’s the idea of violating the rules that makes this thing seem sexy to you.

It’s also possible that you are attracted to something that violates your idea about who you are. Submissiveness is arousing for some men precisely because it’s behavior that violates their idea of what a man is supposed to be. The issue is dissonance between who they think they are supposed to be and who they actually are or how they behave during sex.

Sometimes our kinks are connected to experiences we had when we were first discovering sex. One of my first clear experiences of being attracted to another man sexually was watching a male stripper on tv. As a result, I’ve always had a thing for male strippers and guys undressing. So it’s possible that something imprinted on your sexuality when you were first discovering sex, and now that thing seems erotic to you.

(At this point I asked him what the specific kink was. He was not comfortable telling me, explaining that the only time he had told someone, that person had shamed him badly and it had left him afraid to discuss his kink, even with a professional. But he did confirm that he wasn’t talking about pedophilia or anything similarly illegal or unethical.)

Me: I firmly believe that we don’t choose our kinks. So we should not be ashamed of them because we cannot control the fact that we have them. But we can control whether and how we act on them. Some desires cannot ethically be acted on. We cannot get true consent from children or animals, so pedophilia and bestiality must never be acted on. But kinks such as cross dressing, piss, or diapers, while strange to those who don’t have them, are not things that deserve to be shamed.

You say that you want to get rid of your fetish. I am not a psychologist. But the reading I’ve done on kink leads me to think that actually getting rid of a kink is almost impossible. These desires are embedded below our conscious, rational mind. We can’t just turn them off. But we can make friends with them and come to an agreement with them. By accepting and indulging them in a reasonable way—for example with consenting partners and clear rules about where and when—we can lesson the intensity of the desire for them, the same way can can lessen our desire for chocolate cake by having a piece periodically.

But that requires us to not view our kinks antagonistically. If we view them as evil or shameful things, we are giving them more power over us, and trying to stuff them away is like trying to push down water with a sieve. Your kinks will keep bubbling up, trying to get your attention.

So I can’t tell you how to get rid of your desire. As far as I know, that’s not possible. My best advice is for you to accept it and, assuming it’s not something unethical or plainly illegal, that you try to accept it as a part of your healthy sexual desires.

I realize that’s not what you want to hear. But finding a way to make friends with your kink will make you happier and healthier in the long run. Wanting piss play or erotic torture or whatever it is doesn’t make you bad person. It just makes you a person whose sexuality falls outside the mainstream. That’s a frightening place to find yourself, but once you accept it and find others who will indulge you in it, it gets a lot easier.

You are a human being, and you deserve to be loved for who you are, kinks and all. Your kinks can be life-affirming sources of joy, even the darker ones that involve things like humiliation. But it sounds like you need to work through a pretty heavy sense of shame first. That clearly won’t be easy for you. But there’s a lot of pleasure and happiness waiting for you if you can come to a place of self-acceptance about your desires.

Papa Tony:

In the self-help biz, there is a common phrase:

That Which You Resist, Persists.

Here is an excellent example: When the news erupts that the famous HellAndDamnation!!! preacher has been discovered in the bushes outside of somebody’s bedroom window, wearing two scuba-diver’s wetsuits and a lightbulb up his ass. In the modern age, NOBODY is surprised That is a classic example of being unable to stop obsessing about the forbidden, sinful thing,

Here is another: Does Utah have the highest porn consumption rate in the United States? 

All of that “PORN COMES FROM THE DEVIL” noise just makes the “dirty stuff” more attractive and obsessive.

Think of Yourself as a Diamond

Every human being has many facets, like a diamond. Bullying in our larger society starts kicking in with a vengeance at puberty. We don’t want to be shamed, excluded or attacked for being a nerd, a geek, a fag, or something else UNWANTED.

So, we adapt our conversations. We watch our phrasings. We HIDE those “dirty” and “shameful” facets of ourselves that other folks might not like, if they ever found out. We keep showing only the acceptable sides of our essential natures. This means that other people’s opinions matter more than ours.

So, we give away our power. Other folks only have as much power over us as we choose to give away. It is an actual choice. You can choose otherwise. I promise.
Here Is My Personal Example

Every day, I am kind, forgiving, gentle and affectionate. I am a mensch - a stand-up guy, loved by many.

I also have a ravenous Dragon inside of me. It needs to express itself sometimes. I have an urgent need to allow the Beast to walk the streets.

How do I reconcile these wildly-different parts of myself? I choose to ONLY indulge my wilder kinks with eager, willing playmates. They thank me lavishly, after we play. I am unashamed of my entire being, because I can still look in the mirror and see the kind of man that I like to think that I am.