So in light of the recently-declared kink week, and my remark that I think kink is subjective, I want to start things off with a question for all you readers - even the lurkers! Come on, click on over from your RSS reader.
What does “kinky” mean to you? Is it particular acts? (If so, which ones?) Is it more of a mindset kind of thing? How do you understand that word in your personal lexicon?
I’m looking forward to hearing people’s answers!
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25 Responses to "What’s kinky?"
This seriously reminds me of the old joke, “Sexy is when you use a feather. Kinky is when you use the whole chicken”. Kinky has very little meaning in my lexicon because things I consider sexually appealing other would consider kinky. It’s just one of those words that I don’t really think about as having levels or degrees of application. There are things I like, and things I don’t like but nothing I consider ‘kinky’. Just fun.
Kinky is being unconventional. Doing something that skirts the edges of the socially acceptable norm.
The thing is when your social circle is accepting of your unconventional behavior even embracing of it, are you now unconventional?
Am I kinky because I practice BDSM or because I keep honeybees. Depends on who you ask. What about the fact that I raise carnivorous plants. How about being in a poly relationship? Not all swingers are into BDSM. But how many vanillas have been in a three way?
I like being unconventional. I like being different. I like not being a team player. And most of all I appreciate not giving a damn about how others view me. Most men can’t even walk into a lingerie store without being noticeably uncomfortable. I like being able to go in and know what I am looking for and being able to ask for it in the correct term and size.
Because in the end I may be kinky but actually I just may be confident.
Tell you what: how about we get “feminist” and “pornography” settled; then we can move on to “kinky”? ;-)
kinky- things some people do that squick other people out :)
A kink is a bent, or an inclination. If you have “kinks” plural, and they go in different directions, one might be considered to match that descriptive. Thus kinky is the adverbial form, descriptive of an act, or action, that is not, by definition, straight and narrow, not the road more traveled, the ordinary, everyday, banal, boring missionary position sort of road, but the extraordinary path, the off the beaten path, the way of not for every day use. Kinky is the exhilirating, exacerbating, edgy, whipsaw dislocation of tone’s particular bent. The kinkier one is, the more bent from in front, from the side and bottom, from both ends, one actially is. To “define” from the Latin de finus, to put an end to, by its very meaning limits a word to only this and not that. Kinky defies that limitation, by defying definition. One person’s kink is another’s straight and narrow. Even our parts are remarkably different, each from the other. Each one of us invents what makes us hot, the sex-sells ad exec, and the Valley petty pornographer, may pull together a saleable fantasy, but we each create our own sense of our deepest desires.
I’d define kinky as something that is not directly physically stimulating, but that is otherwise sexually stimulating. Using a vibrator during sex isn’t kinky because OF COURSE it’s gonna feel good and help get you off. But being tied up, spanking, domination, roleplaying, talking dirty, etc. is kinky because it’s stimulating in ways other than pure physical sexual stimulation.
That’s my definition, at least.
Hmmmm… I like the word itself (can I get a puppy and name it Kinky?), but I don’t identify any specific acts or mindsets with it - probably because of the stigma and judgment attached to the word.
I dunno.
Kink = Pleasure = Good
In popular culture, kinky usually means spanking, BDSM, leather… stuff considered not “normal.” So then we need to define normal but there’s no way I’m spending the rest of my day trying to do that.
What I do want to point out, however, is the way that kinky is increasingly coming to mean “exciting” and vanilla is increasingly coming to mean “boring” especially in porn.
E.g. from the comment above:
“…ordinary, everyday, banal, boring missionary position sort of road…”
Who says missionary position has to be boring?
Just thought I’d wave a flag on behalf of all the vanillas out there :D
I’m not ready to get all up in this yet, as I want to hear more people’s definitions/thoughts first, but just one thing… Ms. Naughty, I had the same reaction as you to that statement! Hell, missionary is one of my favorite positions!
I think kinky is writing about sexual topics in a comment form that’s guarded by an adorable little baby chick.
I love just “regular old” screwing! It’s been around since the beginning for a reason–it gets the job done. I don’t think we have to define un-kinky as boring or bad. Kinky is the chocolate sauce on the ice cream (or sometimes, the cherry, the sprinkles, the whipped cream, etc.) but the penetration itself is still ultimately the ice cream that’s the reason for the whole sundae.
Did you use an ice cream metaphor because of “vanilla,” or was that just a handy coincidence?
Coincidence. Possibly the power of subconscious suggestion…
Mmmm, ice cream
This reminds me of my Sex 2.0 session; we never were able to define it. I’m with Ms Naughty when she wrote “…there’s no way I’m spending the rest of my day trying to do that.”
I’ll cosign that it truly is subjective. One man’s bukake is another woman’s shibari.
OMG. That is so going in my header quotes.
Ren’s definition is fun: “kinky- things some people do that squick other people out” Not least because most people are actually squicked by the kind of lights-out/man-on-top/hole-in-the-sheet/reproduction-only/only-till-he-ejaculates kind of sex that’s supposed to be the paragon of “normal” sex. Or at least the stereotype of it. Even though at this point only a very small fraction of the U.S. population practices anything like it.
Anyway, continuing my not-always-welcome passion for rhetorical I think “kink” means only what turns us on while squicking us out! Everything else from ATM to fur-suiting is “normal” because it is (or ought to be, dammit) normal for adults to do whatever floats their boats with other enthusiastic adults without anyone else “othering” it with judgmental labels.
Me, I really like “missionary” too — hey, Victorians invented it too!
figleaf
I tend to think of “kink” in terms of social/personal/sexual things (as opposed to the physical term for what you get in a wire or rope) as being almost equivalent to “quirk”.
To be “kinky” is simply to have (several) quirks to one’s sexuality.
That kind of leads to the idea that everyone is kinky in one way or another, since everyone has their own quirks to their personality and surely consequently, to their sexual nature as well!
So I think the term “kinky” tends to get used for things that are obviously quirky, rather than just the things that individuals do that make them individual.
I sometimes think in terms of statistics, and the “Normal Distribution”, which is definied by a (mean) average, and a “standard deviation” - kinky is the areas “beyond the standard deviation”!
Kinky is anything my mother wouldn’t do.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much on the list of things my mother wouldn’t do! So, I couldn’t use that definition.
Kink is whatever blows my mind.
I agree that kink is almost purely subjective. When someone says “Oh, that’s kinky!” they mean it’s something (sexual) that they wouldn’t normally do, that they think most people don’t normally do. But the idea of normal changes from person to person, so it depends heavily on who’s doing the defining.
I think when we call ourselves kinky, we’re saying that what we do sexually is special or different from “mainstream” sex in some way. It’s easy to identify as kinky if you participate in BDSM or furry sex or other things that are often linked with the word in pop culture, but I think lots of other people apply it, too. It’s like saying “Yeah, I’m sexually adventurous and it rocks!”
[...] is my reply to a question posed by Amber Rhea on her blog BeingAmberRhea.com. She posed an interested question to her readers [...]
Personally, I think kink is something that is sexually stimulating that may be outside of the “norm”. I guess I usually use it to talk about BDSM related stuff.
Meh … ever since I met you, I thought you were delightfully nerdy smart, as well as twisted; coupled with spankably cute …
But then again, my kinks are common knowledge. *laughing*
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