To think someone's sexual predilections reflects on their broader character?

[MonTuesWeds]

Just that really. I feel like I came of age in a time when we were encouraged to believe that someone's 'intimate preferences' were just that, and that they were completely isolated from that persons wider self and personality. I just don't think that's true though. I suppose I'm wondering two things here, firstly if IABU I'm thinking this now but secondly - am I the only one who has felt the pressure not to judge someone on what 'they're into' providing it was always fully consensual.

I know. That’s what I said. 🙄

Why do you think something harmless like dressing up as a dog or wearing a nappy is disgusting? I don’t actually think most people would.

I've just always been i take anyone as they come and all it depends on personality and how I get on with them.

I don't need anyone to tell me what they identify as, I really don't care. If you're nice I will get on with you, if you're not I will try by best to understand you and find a common ground to like you.

It really is that simple.

I disagree OP, born in mid 1970's and never had an issue with people being themselves until this "trans" movement happened a few years ago and enveloped people who are paedophiles and lots of teenagers who were normally confused.
You would never know my interesting preferences as they involve no-one except my husband and me.

I don’t think anyone is disputing the rights and wrongs of kink necessarily. I personally couldn’t give a shit what consenting adults choose to do sexually and I don’t think most people are wrong for enjoying whatever they enjoy but I think OP is referring to is how the kink came about. The psychology behind it.

A lot of sexual activity is about exerting power over others or being submissive to others in an acceptable way, and enabling people to express that side of their personality in a safe space. Sometimes there is a dark element to how and why people get their sexual gratification in certain ways, and it can be creepy, nobody can deny that.

If it doesn’t harm anybody though, it’s up to the people involved. It still doesn’t mean it has absolutely no meaning at all and isn’t linked to elements of personality.

Off topic- but this is bollocks

MN has a range of views…I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single thread where everyone is in agreement ever.

I’ve seen people spout a lot of dumb shit on here- including very misogynistic and victim blaming crap, but they’ve always been challenged by many other posters.

MN is not a single type of person.

Its also ironic that this comment is made in a thread where there is post after post criticising the OP for questioning kinks and what it means about the person. Sounds like every poster on this thread has a non- vanilla sex life!

but to answer OP’s question, I think there’s a difference between a kink and someone who is evil and controlling in real life also bringing that into the bedroom/intimate relationships.

I'm a gay woman who is into BDSM. I like being submissive (though don't mind domming my wife). I like restraints and impact play. I like to feel degraded.

There's nothing wrong with me. Irl, I'm a MH nurse. I'm known for being compassionate and a good listener. I come across a bit eccentric (neurodiverse) and have very nerdy interests. I'm pretty much known as a loveable dork. My bedroom activities don't say anything about me as a person. I'm a little awkward (again due to neurodivergence), but extraverted. I'm not afraid to lay a boundary, or stick up for myself or others. I'm also a very outspoken and opinionated feminist.

There is a fine line between pleasure and pain. Pain can release endorphins, which is why it feels good. Just how some people feel good after an intense work out. BDSM has been a thing for as long as sex has been a thing. I don't know why it's so hard to accept that people just have different sexual preferences. Sensory play (like restraints and blindfolds) and giving your full trust to someone can be exciting and highly erotic with the right person, as can letting someone else take complete control be. As for the more niche kinks with pee etc, this is often about the humiliation aspect/people playing with the taboo. Not my cup of tea, but it isn't harming anyone.

Having said that, if I was straight, I'd feel different. I wouldn't want to submit to a man as it's a different dynamic (tbh I think I'd more love humiliating and domming men, lmao). There are a fair amount of dodgy men on the kink scene, and you have to be careful. There are definitely men who use it as an excuse to abuse, or they've seen too much porn. Equally though, I met a lot of nice male friends who just happened to naturally enjoy dominating. There are plenty of male subs too!

You are confusing kink with abuse. Me letting my wife use a cane on me isn't abuse. Because I asked for it and like it 🤷 informed consent is key in kink, and anyone not following informed consent will be rapidly removed from kink circles.

I do think there is probably a psychological element that drives our sexual preferences, whether you are kinky or vanilla. But honestly, if we all say and thought about why we like what we like and why we act the way we do in the bedroom, no one would be having sex. Unless you have other issues and use sex as self destructive behaviour or whatever, it really doesn't need psychoanalysing.

Take feederism - even if both parties are fully consenting, does that really make it ok? It has lead to people losing all quality of life and even death from obesity-related diseases.

You can find the idea of them disgusting. Anyone can find anything disgusting. There are plenty of sexual fetishes that I would find utterly gross, weird and inexplicable, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with people just because they don’t share my disgust.

That doesn’t mean the people who like them are doing anything wrong, or that you’re entitled to make judgements about their character based on them, or claim that what they do to enjoy themselves with other adults is somehow harmful, or the sign of a warped mind.

I can list plenty of things that make me shudder with disgust, including coriander, tomato juice, the smell of spearmint, children with sticky hands, babies getting food all over their faces, other people’s feet, aromatherapy massages and tinned vegetables. That doesn’t mean I think there’s anything wrong with people who aren’t similarly horrified by them. Same with sex - if two people share a love of being pissed on or whatever, that’s really not my thing and my first thought is ‘Eww.’ But they’re not harming anyone by sharing that fetish with each other so I hope they have a lovely time.

MN has a variety of opinions, yes, but there are some very defined ones which you can always be sure that the majority will hold and the minority who hold different opinions will be called lots of names and have all kinds of accusations made about them

Take boxing

Both parties consent to being hit but sometimes they can end up with brain damage...

When I was maybe six, there was a brief story on the news about a man in some other country who was going to be publicly caned for littering with chewing gum. And I was fascinated by this. Were his pants going to be down or up? Were other people going to watch? How hard was he going to be hit? If his pants were down, was someone else going to pull them down, or did he have to do it himself?

I have no history of abuse, and my parents didn’t let me watch any children’s TV shows that centered around violence or characters fighting each other (think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Why did I find some sort of nascent eroticism in this story? I don’t know.

Just because people don't share your kink doesn't mean what the sex they have is less good.

I don’t think anyone is saying it’s ‘less good’. It’s just that there are people on this thread that are implying that very straightforward forms of sex are the only forms of sex that are healthy and acceptable, which is simply not the case.

This thread reminds me a bit of threads about tattoos, where dozens of people who hate tattoos get genuinely cross and super-judgemental about other people having them. Whereas people who love tattoos literally never get cross about other people not having them. Nobody with a tattoo is looking at a tattoo-free person and thinking ‘Ew, they’re awful because they don’t have any tattoos’. Same with sexual kinks. Nobody with a kink gets angry about couples not having kinks. Nobody with a kink would start a thread saying ‘AIBU to think there’s something wrong with people who don’t have any kinks?’ It’s entirely the other way around.

@HuffleMyPuffle but this thread has predominantly been people criticising the OP for being judgemental and narrow minded, yet most posters are saying mumsnet is full of pearl clutching sex-phobes

I agree. Someone who enjoys inflicting pain or humiliation or endangering a sex partner’s life by choking them is not going to be a good person in everyday life. And as PP says, paedophiles can be charming — but that’s a tactic to get close to their victims.

It’s horrific that we’re expected to honour men’s sex fetishes while they do so much harm to women.

I’m into bdsm. In my experience guys who are into it have a far better understanding of consent and put far more emphasis on female pleasure and safety than most vanilla guys. You wouldn’t generally guess that they are into it from meeting them and they have all sorts of personalities and careers - I’ve recently “played” with a paramedic, a primary school teacher and a therapist.

There are all sorts of theories about why people might be dominant or submissive in bed. For me it feels innate - in that I have always known I am sexually submissive and that is where I have always gone in fantasy even before having any exposure to porn etc. That is quite a common experience. It probably does say something about who I am and my personality but not in a very obvious way.

And it’s complicated. I think bdsm (both dominance and submission) can be about escapism, getting out your head, sensation, novelty, edginess, occasionally working through trauma.

I would also say that many women like an element of male dominance in bed (evidenced by the popularity of fifty shades) and choking, playing with pain etc are just a continuation of that spectrum. A lot of women have rape fantasies, some want to role play those but essentially no woman actually wants to be raped - there is a world of difference between doing a “rape” scene with a safe word and real rape. If a man has a corresponding fantasy, I wouldn’t infer from that that he actually wants to rape someone.

Because the ones who are anti-kink are resorting to insults and abuse...

Stop equating pedophilia with kinks

And stop acting like only men have kinks

I bet you know at least one person who you would say is a "good person" who has some kinks you would be repulsed by

For the eight billionth time: there is a difference between a kink shared between consenting adults and acts of sexual abuse. ANY sexual practice or interest is abusive if it’s done without consent. If your favourite sexual thing is kissing, that would be abusive if you went around kissing people without their consent - that doesn’t mean being into kissing is harmful in itself.

Voyeurism is illegal if the person being watched doesn’t consent. Then, it becomes an act of sexual abuse. But there are plenty of ways that people explore voyeurism with other consenting adults. That is harmless.

Exhibitionism is simply enjoying being watched. If people express that through forcing non-consenting people to watch them, then that is an act of sexual abuse. But going to a sex club and having sex in front of a consenting audience is not abuse, and is harmless.

Clearly, there are people who fantasise about scenarios involving non-consent. But the vast majority of those people would never in a million years do the thing they fantasise about, and would be pretty appalled if you suggested they did, because they are fully aware that it would be abusive.

The only circumstance in which someone’s sexual interest becomes harmful to anyone else is when someone commits an act of abuse, in which case it is the abuse that is the problem, not the kink itself.

I bet you know at least one person who you would say is a "good person" who has some kinks you would be repulsed by

That's not a gotcha. There are all kinds of things you might not know about a person you consider good, which would make you change your mind if you did know about those things.

Well then it doesn't matter if it's sexual or not does it?

And if your whole perception of someone changed because of something that in no way affects you then you don't really value that relationship

I really like having my arse smacked and my hair pulled and I sometimes like sex to hurt a bit. I like being pinned down and I like being called certain things. I find a degree of pain physically pleasurable - always have. If I ask my partner to do that because I love it, how am I ‘honouring men’s sex fetishes’? He’s happy to do it because it brings me pleasure and he likes seeing me excited. Similarly, he has a thing for being bitten and scratched. I’m delighted to do that because he loves it. The thing that brings us pleasure is turning each other on. Neither of us would get pleasure from doing those things to someone who didn’t want them.

People who are into age play are getting off on the fantasy of crossing the age boundary during sex. Whether that is mainly about sexual desire for children, or sexual desire around trabdgressive and damaging sexual acts, it's really not a good thing.

This is precisely where the OP is right. A person may well find he (or sometimes she) is turned on by these kinds of things. But, knowing how damaging things like sexualizing children are, the response of a person of strong character would be to not do those things.

How will that manifest in the person's life otherwise? Hard to say, but anyone thinking that getting off is more important that respecting sexual boundaries meant to protect children may very well be selfish and have poor judgement about their own satisfaction in other ways too.

Similarly men that like to watch sissy porn and dress as women to get off feeling degraded - yes, this will affect their view of women overall - they think it's fundamentally degrading to be a women, how is that not going to spill into their lives?

No need to be rude though is there?

Say you were to find out that someone you know and love - someone who has always been kind, generous, supportive towards you and to people in general, has never been anything other than compassionate and works really hard to make other people happy - was into bondage or watersports or going to sex clubs with her ready and willing husband. Would you suddenly think she was an awful person after all, and that the fact she and her husband liked weeing on each other in private for pleasure meant that she was just faking the decades of kindness and support she’d given you?

So what, though? Who is being harmed by me being ‘perverted’ for fun with my partner? How is it affecting anyone else? Who is making ‘excuses’? There’s nothing to excuse.

I find being cuddled by my partner physically pleasurable. I also find having my bum smacked my partner physically pleasurable. Presumably, you don’t have a problem with someone enjoying a cuddle. So why do you have a problem with someone enjoying a slap on the backside? It doesn’t have any impact on your life, any more than my choice of wallpaper or how strong I like my tea has any impact on your life.