There are quite a few tropes around sexuality that we often take for granted. One of them is the notion of the loud homophobe being a closeted homosexual. Many in the LGBTQIA+ community resent this as a weaponisation of their identities, and others I know tell me it's true often enough to be useful. I can't speak to that, although I will say that listening to how preachers describe various things as "temptation" could be illustrative of their own desires.
Growing up kinky, my exposure to the more vanilla sexual content was kind of unmotivating. I found myself uninterested in looking at genitals, especially when they were rubbing together. I was already working out that the kinky stuff was my version of this, and I ended up becoming a kind of prude that I suspect a lot of us were. I took a misguided pride in the fact that I wasn't interested in the "porn" my peers were making fools of themselves over, while being utterly ashamed at the stuff that did interest me.
I still do this. I've tried to stop doing some of the more obvious "tells", though. Ever since Jillian Keenan wrote about how she used the term "S&M" instead of "BDSM" to mask herself as an outsider, I realise I have done exactly this. But I remain rather sexless in person.
I was reminded of this phenomenon by the latest draft of the Shiniez series of BDSM relationship comics. If you have not picked this up yet, it is a must-read! The drafts are often posted to DeviantArt, and yesterday's installment contained these panels, which flash back to two long-standing characters revealing their kinky sides to each other at university:
That is my one regret: I never made a friend around whom I could be myself in a way I can't be around others.
