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This Is Why You’re Kinky, According To Science - Notes From Your Dominatrix - Medium

Victoria Gray 4-5 minutes 5/12/2021

You can stop agonizing over the why and start enjoying your kinky sex life now…

Victoria Gray

Photo by Artem Labunsky on Unsplash

Working as a dominatrix, I hear a lot of reasons from people about why they are kinky. No two people have the same experience however. A list of reasons for peoples kinks is as broad and varied as the people who are kinky. The reasons to kink are as unique as kinky people. Of course, there are some common themes I hear often.

Kinky because of something that happened in adolescence or puberty.

Kinky because of unrealized desires (there are so many kinky virgins addicted to fetish porn!)

Kinky because they recognize that their desires aren’t in line with what society says they should want. Sometimes turning shame into a kink itself.

Kinky because of trauma.

The last one was interesting to me for a long time. Although people in the BDSM community talk openly about how submitting to someone elses sexual powers in a controlled way can be empowering, no-one really wants to talk about the link between kink and trauma directly. It’s an open secret.

Of course, I have met a lot of people who are kinky because of some trauma. They usually recognize the link pretty quickly. Maybe they were mistreated as children, or by an authority figure. Perhaps an early relationship was abusive and they’re trying to regain some control of the narrative by finding others who can fulfill that role in a safe, consensual way.

Just because people can easily identify this to their dominatrix and write about it online doesn’t mean that there isn’t a bunch of stigma inside the BDSM community and out around trauma and peoples choosing BDSM as a way to process that trauma.

Part of why we’re all so obsessed with consent, is because this narrative has been pushed on kinksters online. So many people need extra consideration, extra effort put in to make sure every single act, every single part of realizing fantasies is completely consensual and discussed before hand.

We cannot escape the power dynamics involved in much of what we do. We cannot escape the reality behind much of what we do.

But, is it all about trauma? Is trauma always the big pink elephant in the room when people are getting their kinky on?

Traditional psychoanalysts — as in, Freud’s school of thought, the same guy who thought women who wanted to have sex for pleasure had something wrong with them — says that most people are kinky because there is something wrong with them, and that thing that’s wrong with them is that most kinky people are dealing with some sort of trauma.

As it turns out, science has some answers for us that flip this common yet shameful narrative.

Although there is a proportion of people who are seeking kinky experiences who have recognized the trauma link, that is actually a small proportion of people. This 2020 study, and this 2021 study both show how small the proportion of people interested in kink for the purposes of regaining some autonomy after trauma are. In fact, trauma seems to be right down the bottom of people’s list of reasons to slip into their best latex.

Instead of people dismissing kink as something abhorrent or something that only dysfunctional or traumatized people are interested in, it seems that science is agreeing with what I have been saying for years now. Kink is a behavior that regular people want to participate in and the stigma around kink causes people undue anxiety and distorts peoples perceptions of their own sexualities.

As a lifestyle and professional domme, I appreciate these findings and that research is going into BDSM, fetish and kink. Research that shows our preferences are not as deviant as people believed in past centuries.

Although it can be fun to be involved with kink because it is a bit naughty or taboo, there is a lot of anxiety and misinformation out there. It feels good to be on the side of science in explaining that kink can be a normal, healthy part of ones sexuality that we engage in for fun. Much like how most adults engage in a variety of our sexual interests.

Have your fun. You can stop questioning the “why am I kinky?” now and start embracing the “how can I get my kinky on?”