This is totally random and I canāt fully express what Iām trying to say but: āitās okay to not want to do kinky stuff in the bedroomā is an important message, but itās missing something and Iām not sure what.
I mean, for one thing, itās okay not to want to do anything in the bedroom, and we DO talk about consent, but thereās still this...assumption that a certain set of acts are the Basic Package that constitutes Normal sex, and that all the āweirdā stuff is in steps up from there or something, and that being an allosexual individual means you get the Basic Package.
So we donāt often tell people that itās okay not to want to do oral or to have penetrative sex. In particular, no one encourages people to evaluate whether itās okay to āexpectā that of their partners in the same way they do with ākinkyā stuff.
So like, I keep seeing people criticizing the fact that ākinkyā stuff is becoming Expected and Normal, but as an autistic person whose sensory experiences are very different from whatās āexpected,ā itās like...nothing in particular should be Expected and Normal? āThey might not be into that/enjoy thatā is just as true of the most ābasic, vanillaā sexual acts you can think of as the most out-there weird crap you can think of? Thereās no single specific act that every single sexually active person should be presumed to enjoy?
Something I noticed from Pervocracyās old Cosmopolitan reviews (and a few advice column things) is that people would ask āhelp, my partner asked me to do X in bed, what do I do?ā And a lot of times the answer was that you should be a good sport and give it a try, unless the thing was judged to be obviously unreasonable and then of course it was wrong of your partner to bring it up and the column writer gets to be judgmental about this gross kink thing that no one would want to do.
Itās this weird āeverything not mandatory is forbiddenā thing where youāre supposed to do what your partner wants and itās selfish to refuse, unless you can make the case that the thing they want is bad and gross and in that case they should be shamed for wanting it.
In a situation where you arenāt able to set boundaries, you resent other people for having desires. In a situation where you can only set boundaries around kinds of sex considered bad enough, then you end up making the case that the thing your partner wants is bad and gross and shameful and make them feel bad for bringing it up.
So when people are like ābeing kinky is ok! Itās not shameful and gross!ā it gets taken like weāre trying to add additional items to the unspoken list of stuff thatās compulsory if your partner wants it. But the framework of compulsory ānormalā sex is already fucked up! It needs to always be ok to say ānot my thingā whether itās ānormalā sex that everyone else likes or something weird that grosses you out.
We're spending all this time trying to come up with the perfect list of Stuff Everyone Will Obviously Happily Do, when what's more needed is to normalize the idea that everyone gets to have preferences and boundaries, even in the most intimate (and romantic and committed and Obviously Soulmated) relationships.
As someone who greatly enjoys a lot of stuff deemed ākinkyā but is no ok with a lot of ānormalā sex things, I hate the idea that kink is seen as an addition to ānormalā sex things. Because I like ākinkyā stuff itās assumed Iāll automatically be fine with whatever they think is normal sexual activity. Itās seen as backward or inverted to be an asexual bondage enthusiast or a masochist that doesnāt want to have sex.
