My initial thought is video games, everything has pros and cons, sure. However, it feels like anyone not into video games views them extrodinarly negatively. Any other hobbies parallel to that in your opinion?
My initial thought is video games, everything has pros and cons, sure. However, it feels like anyone not into video games views them extrodinarly negatively. Any other hobbies parallel to that in your opinion?
Drawing fetishist NSFW art. A friend of mine was (and probably still is, I just haven’t had any contact with them for ages) pretty good at drawing. If you’re into hentai and/or furry stuff, there’s a non-zero chance you’ve seen his work. He also did some more “exotic” drawings on commission.
He (allegedly) wasn’t particularly into it himself, but he was good at it, he had a creative outlet, and it gave him a couple of extra bucks per month.
Apparently there are quite a few art majors who turn their “useless” art degree into a living by making hentai, especially furry stuff.
The only visual art that is truly appreciated as it should
I’d go one further and say kink itself!
Sure it’s not for everyone… But people act like it’s some crazy abomination, when most of the time it’s just some variation of sex + roleplay.
I had a friend of a friend who is a bona fide Dom. She was particularly wealthy considering the reputation of the sex trade. Her practice catered to Financial District and C-Suite types who could afford her services. She told me these powerful people invariably develop a kink where they want to be dominated and humiliated as a “grass is always greener on the other side” reaction to their usual position of power and dominance. What blew my mind is that she said sexual release during sessions was a minority. Most got that at home from trophy spouses. They craved the psychology of bondage, domination and humiliation. Clientele included women too.
Humans are weird and wonderful.
As a woman very involved in the lifestyle scene (as opposed to the professional scene). Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons people wind up into it, and what your friend describes is the cliche stereotype of the person who pays for pros, but a lot of the lifestylers are similar to a lesser degree.
And yeah it’s not a given that you’re even allowed to have sexual release in a kink event, and sometimes it has to be in a specific room. The sensations, the mind games, the role play, the pain, etc. is often the primary thing happening to the exclusion of other stuff. A surprising amount of bdsm events are just discussion groups and classes.
Thanks for sharing. Can you characterize the people beyond the cliché I spoke of? Is it everyone from all walks of life or do certain people gravitate to it. It makes no sense to me and I don’t know anyone other than this friend of a friend.
It’s definitely skewed towards neurodivergent people, but not exclusively.
Lots of trauma on both sides of the slash (ie both in dominants and submissives). Reenacting a variant of how it felt to be bullied or yelled at/hit by your parents or even so far as reenacting sexual violence done to you within a safe space where you can end it at any time is remarkably healing, and it’s easy to from there just fall in love with all of it. And on the dominant side that can be a form of taking control back in your life. A friend of mine got into being a Domme at her second husband’s request, but she fell in love with it because it returned to her the feeling of control that her abusive first husband had stolen from her.
Sensory seeking behaviors are super common in the bondage scene and the sadomasochism scene.
For people with social difficulties the extent to which everything is negotiated and clearly communicated is really refreshing, and then since there’s so much neurodivergence things like flat affects, saying stupid shit without thinking, etc is generally understood and not mistreated.
There’s also just generally a hippie/weirdo/alternative vibe to the community. You’ll meet reiki practitioners and you’ll see arguments over whether fire cupping actually does anything besides bruising the hell out of a back by people who do it for fun and generally agree that bruising the hell out of a back can make it feel better outside the bruising because of endorphins and distraction. Oh also a hell of a lot of nonmonogamy.
I’m sure there’s more if I think of it. Ultimately, you have to be a bit weird to take the moves from “i think this is hot in theory or in erotica” or “we do this in our bedroom” to “I’m interested in going to a discussion group/class/social event/play party about this in person where I live”. The first event is terrifying to actually walk into. And then it’s another big step to actually go to enough that people remember who you are or to get involved in a more community focused side of the scene like the leather community
I’ve heard this stereotype before of “powerful people want to be dommed.” But I feel like I need more compelling evidence. My null hypothesis is that power accumulated in real life either corresponds to or has no relation to the desire for power in a sexually charged space. However, the “powerful people wanna be dommed” trope persists because:
All good points. I really don’t know. I was only relaying what I remember from what pro told me over drinks at a party. It is fair to say that she was speaking about her wealthy clientele, not the BDSM cohort as a whole.
The convo actually came up because we were lamenting the price of quality leather goods. One was talking about a leather couch he bought and was sick of various bonded leather garbage and the dearth of quality leather goods. Another was talking about bridle/saddle leather, and another was talking about gunbelt/holster and leather jackets. This piqued her interest and she jumped into the convo because high end leather is a big big part of her business and the cost of her operations. Once she shared what she did, everyone was fascinated and she was the belle of the ball so to speak. She was reluctant to reveal her business at first because she was nervous about how a party full of squares would react. We all loved her. She was sweet, funny and very very smart, even in a party with a bunch of scientists.
She really knew her leather, and even suggested custom leather shops that could help us all out. Turns out a lot of family run bespoke leather crafters that do horse tack and similar goods, also do bdsm gear. Leatherwork is leatherwork I guess. There is a LOT of money rolling around in there for the few who cater to elite markets.
I don’t presume to have a handle on the bdsm disaspora, and I recognize I got a small peek through a straw that night.
I suppose that’s possible, but I feel like I’ve talked to a lot of people in the kink space who developed their particular interests from a young pre-pubescent age, before they were even really sexually aware. A shocking number of kinksters will tell you that they feel that their fascination came “preinstalled”. 😅
This makes sense to me in the context of the story I relayed. Executives tend to draw mostly from a pool of high functioning psychopaths. That is preinstalled. So presumably the kink would be too.
I’m reasonably vanilla myself, but I know that if I liked something “weird”, people judging me for it wouldn’t help anyone, least of all myself.
I’ve known a few furries over the years, and while I don’t understand it, being in the periphery of the community numbed me enough to “weirder” stuff. They’re not hurting anyone (well, other than their wallets. Do you have any idea how much a pursuit costs? Jfc…), so I don’t see why they’re not any less deserving of acceptance than people who prefer ass over tits, etc.
In my experience with kink communities, shame can really do a number on people’s psychology. It feels like there are always two camps of people: the ones who simply learn to say “fuck it” and embrace their weird side, and those who really become very depressed and self-isolating because they’re made to feel like an aberration. That level of internal conflict, where you spend your entire life fighting against your own (otherwise legally and ethically non-problematic) desires due to internalized shame is a dark and dangerous path.
And like… I get it. To an outsider, any kink that you don’t have can definitely seem weird, gross, undesirable, etc. But then again, even vanilla sex acts can seem gross when you imagine other people doing them. Still, I think a lot of people in the kink space end up struggling with negative feelings about themselves.
Plus, there are a certain group of very puritanical and judgemental people who desperately want to describe (without any psychiatric qualifications) any behavior they don’t understand as being “mental illness”, but ironically, I think the most mentally healthy thing any kinky person can do is simply to accept and embrace their kink.
My message to any kinky people out there is to do whatever you can to accept yourself. Unless your kink involves something that is seriously dangerous to yourself and others, or otherwise legally or ethically dubious, then odds are that the best thing that you can do is just come to terms with being, as Rick James said, a “superfreak”.
Maybe that’s why I’m so OK with people with non-default sexual preferences: I’m pretty weird myself, I just happen to be reasonably mainstream in terms of sexuality.