Origins

I don't know where kinkiness comes from. But I do have some theories.

One theory is that we are normal and everyone else is just repressed. These are primal urges - to inflict pain, to control. We are not born civilized, but savage. Only by learning to empathize with the victim do we learn not to take pleasure in the suffering of others. I have a good friend who is currently raising two boys, and my phone conversations with her are a good indicator of this. When the conversation is interrupted by the phrase, "We do not hit people in the head with airplanes!", to me that seems a fairly strong support of this theory.

But then, we are civilized. Our lifestyle would not be possible without elaborate social rules and the capacity to adhere to limitations. If we routinely crossed the boundaries of consensuality and safety - say, by landing one another in the emergency room on a regular basis - we'd never survive as a community. Another theory suggests that masochism and submission are the products of civilization. We are all taught to submit to others - our parents, teachers, government and society - but only some of us find submission personally fulfilling and/or erotically charged. Perhaps we are, again, the normal ones, in that taking enjoyment in submission is part of the subtext of the culture, but we take the subtext and make it overt.

I think that it is entirely plausible that fetishes, like phobias, can be traced back to early childhood experiences. My most powerful fetish is for restraint. I would say bondage, but people tend to associate bondage with rope, whereas I prefer other methods. Being restrained is immensely erotic for me, and has been so ever since I can remember. But it is not merely the physical sensation - it is the social dynamic of captivity. It must be someone's intent to hold me "against my will" and to make me helpless in order for me enjoy it to the fullest.

My mother tells me that when I was a small toddler, I was hospitalized for a severe flu. I don't remember any of it. But she tells me that the doctors had to restrain me in order to give me IV fluids and medication. I have a strong suspicion that this incident is the source of my fetish for restraint. From a very early age I loved playing games that would result in being tied up. I even invented some of my own and demanded that other children play them with me. I remember seeing scenes in movies and on TV that fascinated me, and until I was older, I couldn't really tell you why.

This isn't the scene I remember from You Can't Do That On Television, but it's a good one. The quality is poor, but I think you'll get the gist:



Then there's this scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Don't even get me started on the fact that the whole movie is about a guy with a whip.



No. You don't hate to do it. Just admit it. Who would hate to do that? Only a crazy person would hate to do that.

Over the years I went on to fantasize about David Bowie's character in Labyrinth, among other things. Not like there's no D/s overtones in THAT relationship, now are there.



By the way, the game I invented was called "catch the princess". I was the princess. The other children had to catch me and pretend to chain me to a wall. I knew that this was something the grownups should not know about, but I couldn't say why, exactly. And this was definitely going on before Labyrinth came out. My fantasies always had a fairy-tale tinge to begin with. My stuffed animals got tied up, too. The "bad" stuffed animals always had a villain, a loyal assistant and a dumb assistant, and one of them would invariably end up suspended from a bookshelf.

So, was it the hospital stay? Or was I just born like this? Who can say.

I do tend to think there's something to the idea that we are the sane ones in an insane world. Power is everywhere. We operate within complex power structures on a daily basis, and they function more efficiently the less we are aware of them. Kink is an expression of awareness of power, a drawing back of the veil over modern life. We make overt what others repress. In that way, it is incredibly subversive. And the subversion is part of what makes it fun.