Kinks.

[swestrup]

I happened to learn about one of my friend's sexual kink's today. Wasn't anything particularly "out there" as these things go, but it got me thinking. About half my friends have various kinks that I know about. Some have large collections, in designer colours.  As a result I often simply assume that everyone is at the very least "gently bent" in one way or another.

Then again, every once in a long while an acquaintance of mine will proclaim themselves to be completely vanilla and straight and boring, as if this were somehow a good thing, and I end up wondering about sampling statistics and selection effects.

So, what do folks think is the most likely scenario:

1. There's a bell curve of kinkiness with most folks in the middle and the vanillas and the truly twisted at the ends.
2. Most folks are boring and vanilla but I only hang with interesting folks, and they have their delightful quirks.
3. Everyone has some strange thing that turns them on, be it rhubarbs or fuzzy dice, but some folks refuse to accept and/or admit that, even to themselves.

Or is the truth some scenario that I haven't even considered?

Comments

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

my kink(s) would scare you senseless... assuming you have sense(s) to begin with.

[swestrup]

I believe you, considering those that I already know you have!

scare you...

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

as well they should. :D

[galialuna.livejournal.com]

You might just be a magnet for kinky people.
Think about it...
:P

[pythonian.livejournal.com]

I think the truth lies somewhere in between options 2 and 3. Although in your case, I would imagine it slides toward option 2 if you view "vanilla" more as a relative term rather than an absolute point on the spectrum of kinky. :-)

Speaking of your case, do you have a kink or three? ;-)

[swestrup]

Of course. I already mentioned the rhubarb...

[sasori.livejournal.com]

As with most things, it's a bell shaped curve, though being a bell shaped curve does not preclude the latter half of 2, that your sample is not taken from one end of the bell (bell-end. pffffft!). Nor does it preclude 3, with an infinitesimaly small number of people having no kinks.

Hence all of the above, because 1 is true.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this.

[swestrup]

This still leaves the question of whats at the hump of the bell curve? Vanilla, or slightly bent?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say exactly in the middle of "Vanilla" and "Bent as all hell", as this is a hard scale to put numbers on, you'll have to decide for yourself where that is.

Umm, that was me above.

[sasori.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, Vanilla is already a kink of its own. I'd say you'd have to start your scale at 0. Which is even less than celibate (as that doesn't preclude kinks, I'd put 0 at dead.

Re: Umm, that was me above.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Um, I don't think dead precludes. Or ... well, it's complicated.

Re: Umm, that was me above.

[sasori.livejournal.com]

In regards to having the behavioral proclivites, as opposed to being a target of them.

Dead Can Hump

[swestrup]

Well, we just need the nanotech to mature a bit, and we'll soon be able to animate corpses for whatever devious purpose we like.

A bit more mature, and we can even ensure that they like it...

Re: Dead Can Hump

[foms.livejournal.com]

You people really ought to read Quad World, by Robert Metzger.

[sps.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that the thing with the aardvarks and the megaphone is COMPLETELY NORMAL. NORmal. NorMAL.

[pythonian.livejournal.com]

Ooooooh, he said AARDVARKS! Oooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaah, AAARRDDDVVVARRRK! oh YES!

Ah, that's better!

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

Don't encourage him!

It starts with aardvarks and the next thing you know it's platypus.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it is by nature a multidimensional space, so this 'bell curve' of which you speak would have to be a thousand-dimensional hat. Second, behaviour is very contextual (much more so than people's models of their own behaviour), so the hat is very floppy. Third, what the hell is vanilla, anyway? The thing most conducive to the survival of the species? But that's what our genes are trying to figure out; in some real sense that's where the kinkiness comes from. It's certainly not whatever some Pope tells you to do.

Indeed, on reflection, doing whatever the Pope tells you is pretty far out along the D/s axis, wouldn't you say? I mean, he's neither accessible nor cute...!

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

Indeed, on reflection, doing whatever the Pope tells you is pretty far out along the D/s axis, wouldn't you say? I mean, he's neither accessible nor cute...!

We had this conversation before... didn't we agree that the Pope's accessibility and/or cuteness were relative to their values?

Re: average in a multidimensional space

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

Once they set out, with computer graphics, to draw an average face. They took a huge number of photos and measured eyebrow length, thickness, slant, colour, lips, eyes, etc. etc. etc.

Then they synthesized an image for which all those measurements would be average.

The resulting image was of a startlingly beautiful face.

Yet true beauty is rare. Average in a multidimensional space is rare, too.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

I do not think it is something that can be quantified. They are all notions and interesting, vanilla, twisted, strange, normal are all definitions that you come up with but have no scientific value.

Person X lives a total BDSM relationship with person Y. Y Orders X to live the next 5 years in total celibacy without entertaining any sexual fantasies, dressing modestly, having good old missionary sex once a month with the lights out.

Person A lives your average vanilla marriage as described above with person B.

Where do you set them in your curve?

Anyhow, my point was just that I don't think one can distribute sexual behaviour between consenting people in a bell curve, not in the kinkiness level.

Hrmmm

Unless you equate kinky=not common. SO then I guess you would have a bell curve distribution with how often people indulge in actions. With little people being utterly asexual and little people being into strange fringe bahaviours and the bulk being more or less into acts more or less defined as kinky.

But then you would have to add sociological-religious-cultural-geographical factors. In some cultures male/female anal sex is common and considered normal but no self-respecting women would perform oral sex on a man. In order cultures it is the reverse, So which one is more kinky?

One last aspect you would have to take into consideration is what peopel themselves consider what they do. Some would find bondage normal and not kinky but watching porn very outlandish. And vice-versa.

Everything you can think of can be kinky.

If everything is kink, nothing is kink.

In the end, everybody lies.



Oh and you attract strange people in your social circles.