When I first found kink on the internet, it seemed as if it opened up a whole new world of People Like Me. Outside of those whispers with my childhood friend, I’d been pretty much alone. I’d had slightly kinky boyfriends, of course, but none of them went as far as me. It was rather to exciting to find that there were people out there who felt the way I did, and to meet them in real life and to be able to talk about this forbidden stuff.
But several years later, I’m finding that I still haven’t met anyone who is exactly like me, sexually. I’ve recently got back into reading people’s weblogs, and I’m finding I’m a bit of an oddity. Maybe it’s not just me, maybe we all are. Maybe our kinks are so individual, that it’s unlikely we’ll come across anyone who is exactly the same.
So what’s so special about me? What sparked this post off today was reading the latest instalment of Bitchy Jones’s diary. I love reading her posts, and very much agree with her idea that ‘femdom’ is misrepresented. When she describes what it feels like to hit a man, I feel so glad that somebody else can explain how sexy and compelling this thing is. But then I read about her opinion on stockings and strapons, and realise that I’m out on my own again. Yes, only men are supposed to like stockings. But my stocking fetish goes right back to childhood, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Recently I’ve been reading some posts about humiliation, and again, I’m reminded that nobody feels quite like me.
This is why it’s impossible for me to leave my boyfriend (I still haven’t thought of a name for him), of course. We don’t have exactly the same kinks, but we’re so close that it works very well. It’s more than that: he understands and doesn’t question my kinks. There’s no ‘why on earth would you be into that?’. I could have ended up with somebody who liked being hit, but didn’t like the other stuff I like. I say ‘like’ as if these things are mild preferences, when in fact they are more like cravings, obsessions, compulsions.
And that’s the huge challenge for kinky people, isn’t it? Finding somebody who is compatible enough, sexually, to practice our kinks with. (If they’re compatible as a partner in other ways, we must treat them like the precious rarity that they are and never let them go!). Nice as it would be to have someone other than your lover understand you, it’s probably too much to expect to find friends, acquaintances and fellow bloggers with exactly the same kinks too.
I think we’ve all had this general observation – that nobody else out there on the web is quite like us. Actually, over time, I’ve found some people who feel very compatible in various ways, sometimes despite the genders being reversed or whatever. (And, for what it’s worth, I think humiliation is a pretty common fetish even though a lot of people write about how they don’t have it.)
Comment by devastatingyet — February 13, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
Part of the problem is that we all are so staggeringly different. Another part of the problem is that it is difficult to describe our desires succinctly. If a man says he is into being humiliated, that does not tell much. One needs lengthy discussions to understand what he means by humiliation.
People even bicker over the “correct” meaning of a word. Not a month goes by that I do not encounter somebody explaining what a “true master” or a “true submissive” is like or somebody trying to adjust himself or herself to these stereotypes and failing.
Comment by Jonah — February 13, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Lorelin, you are correct. We do not have exactly the same kinks, although they are fairly similar. What we do share are being generally kinky and being happy (keen even) to share each others kinks. We are very lucky. Not so lucky are the other readers of this blog who have had to endure two smug, self-satisfied comments from me in less than a fortnight.
Comment by bdsmslave5 — February 14, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Devastating, yes, maybe the gender is less important than the kink. There is some ways in which I feel a man in my position might have a different experience though, and in the past I’ve particularly looked for other women who were ‘the same’. And yes, I’m sure there are lots of people out there who are into humiliation. There are lots of bits and pieces which I read which make me think ‘that’s just like me’, but they are not all written by one person
.
Jonah, I agree about the difficulty of describing it. I’ve been part way through writing a post on humiliation for a few days – I keep stopping because it’s difficult to describe, and I imagine that my idea of it isn’t the same as other people’s. Yes, the stereotypes are unhelpful – there’s not a typical type of submission or dominance which has more value than the others.
Comment by lorelin — February 14, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Commenter no.3 (I’m getting around to the name at some point), keen is the word. I think being pretty close on a lot of it makes us happier to experiment with the stuff which doesn’t quite match. I don’t think there’s many things that one of us is into but the other would absolutely hate. Happy Valentine’s Day – maybe this would be a good time for some forbidden-kink-exploring?
Comment by lorelin — February 14, 2008 @ 8:07 pm