"Wow Salmon, you're back after 2 days? How long until you get tired and go move on to some other niche corner of the Internet?"
So quick rundown of my whole saga right? 24yr old guy who finds pornography way to early in life. Gets addicted and fucks himself up a bit until he tries to do No Nut November back in 2023. Realizes not viewing explicit material makes him happy. Tries nofap for a little. Likes it and sees some benefit, but realizes a lot of that is just a ton of neurotic far-right men who struggle with their sexuality. Leaves it and now has to do the hard thing and come to terms with his libidinal urges and eccentric sexual tastes.
Are we all on the same page now?
Cool, so kink is a weird thing sometimes and while I've never been active until now, the community has been in my periphery for a while and I got to say I have become the enlightened centrist and think most people have this shit all wrong. On one hand we have the trads and conservatives with their appeals to tradition, God, and normalcy and on the other we have the progs (because "progressive" is too long even though Ive probably wrote way more trying to explain it than if I had stuck to proper spelling) who believe in full sexual liberation that moves towards a socially libertarian society free of all forms of sexual prejudice - these are all things we probably all know well and of course everyone sides with each side to varying degrees. So in this landscape how does one actually figure out how what is cool and good for the individual and for society? Well let's first start with the issues...
It was one man on Twitter that once said "man I hate all furfags, queers, degenerates, (slur), (slur), (yadda yadda you get it.)" Where does prejudice towards deviance come from? While some might just chalk it up to fear and hate I think they do a very big disservice to prejudice's role in a society. From a completely steel-maned position, prejudice is a sort of immune system towards society. It is useful to an extent because it serves to prevent detrimental changes. For the most part things in the past have worked well enough. After all, how would the present day exist if it didn't? Given this knowledge it can be seen as a reasonable assumption that any change is much more likely to leave things worse off than if one were to remain in the status quo. This is where your trads and hard-line conservatives lie. "Kink, homosexuality, ect. is degeneracy. It negatively impacts the social fabric and must be destroyed. We have gotten to where we are today without it. And we might not get to tomorrow with it."
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the conditions of yesterday are not the same as today, and things are not right only because they are traditional. As our understanding of human nature has changed we can understand the roots of certain behaviors more clearly (a great example is homosexuality. Once seen as devilish sodomy by the Christian West, it has now been understood as a natural deviation in sexual desire) and a societal apparatus can be constructed to account for such changes (civil partnerships, gay marriage, normalization of the LG and B.) To the prog this is sure evidence that all that crap in the past must be done for. Since "look at the suffering from our predecessors! If only we let go of our archaic ways we can reach a more equitable society." And for a lot of what has happened they are right, but that is not to say the progressive way will always be correct.
I should clarify by what I mean by prog. I do not mean in some political micro sense of this issue or that issue. I mean in the broad philosophical view - that the flattening of hierarchies and increasing of social allowances is required for a better society. This is a view many radicals have (look up "radqueers" if you really wanna see gay strawmen come to life in horrific fashion) and it's implementation has had disastrous effects. Let's see some of the proponents of this ideology. Famous Queer theorist Michel Foucault believed in and pushed for the elimination of age of consent laws. The founder of Queer Theory Gayle Reuben in her paper "Thinking Sex" advocates for Boy-Lovers (read: pedophiles). And many a radical queer today have pushed for early porn introduction a.k.a. EPI. (Think Gigglygoonclown's grooming discord or fwucky and the pedo-punk zine)
This might sound like fear mongering and straw-maning but despite my joke in my first post I do believe you should do your own research. Gayle's paper is easily found online and it's less than 20 pages. Foucault's entire political positions are also very public. Clearly this is not the way forward either. So where does one turn?
Id like to suggest a personal favorite of mine. The Ecologist and Anarchist Derrick Jensen. His philosophy is a synthesis of the progressive temperament contained by a concept not really talked about in sex communities: secondary effects. What is a secondary effect? Well it's an effect that is usually unintentional and does not come from a direct interaction with the initial cause. A secondary effect of me trying to get to work is air pollution from my motorized transport. A secondary effect of me wanting to look hot is a lowered risk of injury from more developed muscles. I hope you get the idea. Outside of its initial reaction everything has secondary effects. Many even have more - tertiary, quadrary, quintary (I just wanted an excuse to use those words sorry) and so on.
Sex has many secondary effects. In the completely reproductive hetero sense sex increases the need for baby shoes. Gay sex probably decreases the proportional need for marital aids from unfortunate queers not being able to stick it in their wives. So what about kink? Well kink can be seen as a sort of escalation of sexual acts. It is an addition to the intimacy and the acts. This in itself has some repercussions. For one decreased sensitivity to traditional sexual stimuli. For instance I can see a man whose naked and keep it in my pants. But have that guy caged and with a pup mask and fuck it I'd be diamonds hard in an instant. Now on a personal level that might not be that terrible since it's just me and whatever I'm just a guy. But extend that out to a whole society. If everyone was like that then we might have a problem on our hands. The world's supply of leather an neoprene gets used up for hoods and every other person has mad ball chaffing from improperly fitting cock cages. Arguably most importantly, an entire society now needs a whole lot more just to get it on. While I don't know what that would mean, Id wager it would provide some new issues we luckily don't have to deal with today. This is a dramatic example but it shows that somewhere from only me having this desire and everyone having this desire some issues would emerge.
If the whole of society was one big folsom street fair you'd see the problem. Kink isn't some categorical imperative that will only bring good things if everyone embodies it, and honestly does it have to be? It's like a loaded gun. I think it's cool. I have one and I know others that have one too. To have one you better have your shit in order and give it the respect it deserves or you might hurt yourself or others. It's usually best not to flaunt it if you have it and you should only take it out on special occasions at certain places. And for the love of God I kinda don't like the idea of everyone having it.
Keep swimming upstream, or something to that effect.
- SalmonMoed