This is a text adaptation of an audio message I posted for free on my OnlyFans on Oct 9, 2023.

I talked in my piece last week about what we know—or, more accurately, what LITTLE we really know—about how kinks and fetishes develop, and how the medical and scientific fields have historically done the kink community pretty dirty.

But even within the kink and fetish scene, where we’re all at least speaking from a place of personal experience, I think we can still get led astray a bit. And that brings us back to this idea that perhaps these “deviant” sexual desires develop as a response to trauma or childhood abuse or neglect. I hear this speculation come up fairly frequently from people across a variety of kinks and fetishes.

People say things like:

• “I’ve experienced sexual violence, and maybe that’s where my attraction to pain and degradation come from.”
• “My parents were cold and a bit neglectful, and that’s why I’m stuck in regression, seeking a loving Mommy to care for me.”
• “My mother was a spanko, but she had no outlet for it, so she spanked me. It was abuse.”
• “I was a sensitive boy, not tough enough for my dad or the kids at school. They made fun of me, and now I get off being dressed up like a sissy and teased.”

It’s very common for people with kinks and fetishes to have some form of past trauma—because it’s very common for people in general to have some form of past trauma. And these past traumas might colour our sexuality and shift it in a direction, but I personally don’t think they cause us to develop kinks or fetishes in the way a broken bone may cause nerve damage.

There’s two main observations that support this argument for me. One: plenty of vanilla people experience trauma, and they don’t develop kinks or fetishes. And two: I also personally know a number of people with kinks or fetishes who’ve experienced very little personal trauma.

And in fact, I’m one of those incredibly lucky people. I’ve lived a blessed life with a happy childhood and remarkably little personal trauma. And yet my sexual fantasies have ALWAYS involved elements of pain, control, power exchange and humiliation or embarrassment. I don’t think I’ve ever reached orgasm without fantasizing about scenarios that involve those things. I’m a well-adjusted, functional person and I have no reason to believe my sexual fetish—or anyone else’s—is a form of damage.

In fact, I think maybe it goes kind of the opposite way. I think our kinks and fetishes are innate parts of us that can ALSO be accessed as a creative tool to help us process and heal from trauma.

Let me give some examples…

• Someone who’s experienced sexual violence and wants to do a CNC scene is giving themself the opportunity to recontextualize and transform their experience. Even though they’re acting out certain elements of danger and loss of power, in this version, they’re doing it with someone they can trust, who will stop instantly if they use their safeword. They’re reclaiming.
• For men who were shamed or bullied throughout childhood for not being masculine enough, putting on a pink, frilly dress can be a powerfully transgressive act—and even if there’s a shame element there, it’s erotic shame, a source of arousal and pleasure. 
• Someone compelled to regress back to an earlier stage of development has the opportunity to experience the healing unconditional parental love and attention they didn’t get.

(Those are just a few possible examples; maybe you have your own you’d like to add?)

There is some dark shit in life we all have to go through and process, and kink can be a safe place to explore some of those darker elements of ourselves. We play with things like pain, control, helplessness, power. These are scary and difficult things. But perhaps like children drawn to the frightening imagery in an old fairy tale, we’re drawn to explore these darker elements of our humanity in a creative way that helps us make sense of them and of ourselves. And the beautiful thing about exploring these things through our sexuality is that they can become ways to deeply connect us to another person or people, and even be pleasurable.

When you boil it all down, sex—and I mean sex in the broadest possible term, not the heteronormative act of penetration—sex is about pleasure. Even in cases of sadomasochistic scenes where the experience in the moment may be one of pain and unpleasantness, it’s still about pleasure in the end, though perhaps not the version of pleasure we’re used to seeing in mainstream society. Almost none of the scenes I do with non-romantic partners involve orgasm, and many don’t even involve arousal, and yet these experiences are sexually fulfilling in a deeper sense, not to mention, yeah, powerful masturbation fuel. Many things that are unpleasant in the moment are a source of deep pleasure when we fantasize about them beforehand, or relieve them afterwards. It’s still ultimately about pleasure in the end, even if the pleasure is simply the sense of aliveness and authenticity that comes with acting out your deepest fantasies.

Here’s one of my favourite quotes on pleasure, an annotated version, from the book “Come as You Are” by Emily Nagoski:

“Pleasure is a gateway to accessing your fullest, truest personhood. Pleasure is where you find a no-holds-barred connection with yourself and with those you love most. You are allowed to like pleasure. And the first step toward that is simply to notice it with non-judgement.”

That non-judgement part is huge. Erotic fulfillment aside, it can be incredibly healing to confide your deep, dark sexual fantasies to someone and have them respond with enthusiasm and acceptance, or especially have to have them GET IT and share your interests. It makes you realize that this strange, misunderstood aspect of yourself that may have caused you pain or shame isn’t actually a curse, but a source of joy and pleasure. The curse isn’t the desire itself, but the judgment society puts on it, and the way we can internalize those beliefs. It’s powerful medicine simply to reassure people that their desires are healthy and okay, and that they’re not alone.

I’ll get to wrapping up with one more quote, this one from the Hite Report, a study of female sexuality from 1976. Here’s a definition of sex I find accessible for myself and the kink and fetish community:

“Sex is intimate physical contact for pleasure, to share pleasure with another person (or just alone). You can have sex to orgasm, or not to orgasm, genital sex, or just physical intimacy—whatever seems right to you. There is never any reason to think the “goal” must be intercourse, and to try to make what you feel fit into that context. There is no standard of sexual performance “out there” against which you must measure yourself; you aren’t ruled by “hormones” or “biology.” You are free to explore and discover your own sexuality, to learn or unlearn anything you want, and to make physical relations with other people, of either sex, anything you like.”

I’d like to modernize that last bit by paraphrasing, “relations with other people, of any gender,” but the passage is still way ahead of its time and honestly still feels a little ahead of our time now when I read it out today. Mainstream culture and media still has a whole lot of rules about what sex and sexuality SHOULD be, but anyone who’s here in the kink space and having these discussions, I think we’re on our way. 

So, discuss: Has exploring your kink or fetish helped you thrive, process trauma, relieve stress or find joy? To what degree is engaging with your sexuality a creative exercise or outlet? What helps you move beyond feelings of shame about your kink or fetish?