Your Kink Can Be Cringe (And That's Okay)

You can't help what turns you on--even if it's basic.

As a writer, I feel like I’m under the obligation to write things that haven’t been written before, or at least contain some degree of unique insight (I’m aware some people would argue I succeed in neither of these pursuits but my article The Goon Cavemen, about millennial pre-porn masturbation stories, begs to differ.) I think all writers (or artists of any stripe) have this obligation. They should make sure that they’re not churning out derivative, done-so-many-times junk, assuming they want to be seen as a “good” writer (although obviously there’s still a market for repetitive and predictable content.)

I do not think sex has to be like this. I think that your kinks—or even just vague things that turn you on—are completely out of your control. I wouldn’t say a kink is a sexual orientation, necessarily. But kinks are not intentionally crafted. Some people develop kinks by watching porn and saying, “Oh, I guess I am into bored and nonchalant women getting pleasured while playing video games” (I recently discovered this is a real thing—not, not my thing! Please let me build my Sims Tudor mansion in peace!) I think other kinks might start before people even have a concept of sex, or stem from some random thing they saw in a cartoon as a child (I remember seeing a Twitter thread of people with a hypnosis fetish saying that cartoons where a character was hypnotized by an attractive woman were their “aha” moments.) Some kinks also come from a variety of societal values and the (near) universal connection between taboo and turn-ons.

There’s probably a spectrum, but either way, I don’t think people choose their kinks. They certainly don’t sit down and say, “Let me figure out what’s going to turn me on—better find something unique and interesting that nobody has done before.” And yet, that’s how so many people treat sexual tastes—even the sex positive people who are, in theory, against kink shaming, will see a kink that just feels a bit too predictable and say, “Ugh, don’t tell me you’re into that basic tryhard thing!”