Your Kink is Not Interesting

I was once involved with a man who liked Andrew Dice Clay (if you've read my book, you know that mine was a youth of indiscretions). Once, while he and a friend laughed along to the alleged entertainer's extremely bad jokes, he caught me without a smile on my face. “You must be easily offended,” he scoffed.

“No,” I said. “I'm just not easily amused.”

Their faces fell in a way that proved this a much greater burn than I'd anticipated. Good. I was a socially awkward introvert who hated faking enthusiasm—and the man's comedy objectively sucked. For once I'd managed the snappy comeback without looking solely like the humorless bitch.

Today young women are supposed prove they're as cool with nasty sex as they are with nasty comedy. The obsession with “sex-positivity,” the “queering” of norms, the proliferation of ever-more specific sexual identities, and a peculiar reverence for “sex work,” coupled with a fear of the much-maligned act of “kink shaming,” means young people are vilified if they don't throw confetti every time a straight man humps a tree. Helena Kirschner describes navigating Tumblr as a thirteen-year-old, where a “pornified” view of women prevailed, conventional sexuality was seen as “bigoted,” and failing to appreciate “dangerous, kinky, scary sounding sex” got her shamed as “vanilla.”

Once upon a time, we recognized oversexed straight men as part of the landscape of patriarchy. Sadists exhibited “toxic masculinity.” Voyeurs and pedophiles were exploitative, not marginalized. Fetishists had an unhealthy obsession. Sexual deviants were creepy—not interesting.

Then queer theory came along. Underserved minorities need equal access to employment and housing, as well as protection from violence, it reminded us—and rightly so. It made sense to extend those rights to gays and lesbians, it added. Though sexual orientation itself isn't always visible, partners are, and families shouldn't have to spend their lives in hiding. Fair enough.

Then the demand for equal access morphed into a demand for celebration, which wasn't strictly necessary. Your Catholic landlord should let you rent his apartment. He doesn't have to fly your flag or invite you to sing in his choir.

Then sexual minority status morphed into mere sexual deviation. As if oppression was not a need to leave the house without getting beaten up, but a need to air your sexual proclivities for public approval so you can shake that nagging suspicion you're a pervert. Thanks, Foucault. Activists “will always include a contingent who mistake exhibitionism for activism,” writes gay conservative Douglas Murray. I don't agree with everything presented in “The Madness of Crowds,” recently recommended to me by a friend, but on this he is correct.

When I was involved in the poly community, a question arose on our bulletin board. Were men with multiple wives properly called “polyamorous?” Were they welcome in the poly community? Didn't they, in fact, have a history of subjugating women, often for religious reasons? Weren't they fundamentally different from other constellations of poly relations? Some thought so. Others disagreed. This was my first experience with the tension between those who want to celebrate all sex and those who've noticed some proclivities are exploitative, off-putting or just plain basic. A dude wants to get off with multiple women? And he'd be happy to reframe that as an enlightened moral choice? Who'da thunk?

I'd written half this article when I stumbled, completely by accident, upon a tweet by a self-described “ABDL” complaining about his online haters. The acronym means, I'm sorry to now know, “adult baby diaper lover.” His haters appeared in the thread, eager to split hairs about which aspects of his kink they opposed and why. But his inner fantasy life didn't need to be announced—and he'd have no haters to debate if he'd saved it for his dating app profile. Likewise, it doesn't need to be analyzed. Those of us who find him an immature, creepy exhibitionist with too much time on his hands don't need to justify that position. Yet somehow, society has agreed that we're the weird ones.

Somehow, the employer of a man who teaches high school in fetish-gear boobs of sex-doll proportions can only respond to this act of indecent exposure with a statement defending the teacher's “gender rights.” Somehow, the journal Qualitative Research rushed to publish a PhD student's account of his feelings as he jacked off to comics of Japanese schoolboys. It seems, in the tradition of prior movements aiming to “destigmatize,” the self-centered cad has become the “differently sexual.”

Dear men who swallow barbie heads for kicks. We know you aren't getting the love you crave. But you're not an oppressed minority, or even an interesting variation of human. I'm sorry to inform you that you're rather run-of-the-mill, as men go. If women aren't applauding you, it's because we, as the half of the population who doesn't climax whenever a strong wind blows, prefer partners who are attentive and present. We're not mad that you want to like sex. We just want to like sex, too.

Maybe we're not easily offended. Maybe we're not humorless prudes or kink-shaming bigots. Maybe we're just not impressed. Maybe, like Andrew Dice Clay, you're a bog standard horny dude who's a little too proud of himself.