I saw someone take that meme "Its just jokes. Jokes that are based in ideas. Ideas that I'm reinforcing" and they turned it into "It's just kink. Kink that is based in ideas. Ideas that I'm reinforcing"
So I wanted to unpack why kink is not an equivalent social and rhetorical force the same way that jokes are.
tl;dr
1. Jokes have an inherent cultural reach that kink does not
2. Jokes are a choice, sexual attraction is not
3. Jokes are always expressions of values, kinks can be too, but are just as often emotional manifestations coping with broader cultural values.
Jokes create culture, kink is primarily just cleaning up the mess of culture by playing pretend.
Jokes are an unavoidable reality of every single human social interaction. Your friends, family, people you meet on the street, TV, internet, movies...ALL human social interaction uses humor to communicate ideas at some point. You joke with children, you joke with parents, you joke at church, you joke at work. It is inescapable.
Jokes are often funny because they make surprising observations that resonate with some level of truth. Humor also puts your in a place where you let your guard down. It's a space where a lot more things are given a pass. That is fundamentally why humor is such an effective rhetorical device for the spread of ideas.
What starts as a joke, spreads the more people find it funny, people internalize it because they are in a relaxed and receptive state when laughing. If that happens repetitively...you can very much end up with measurable real-world consequences for marginalized people. All minorities are painfully aware of this. Absurdist humor is a thing, but jokes generally directly reflect core values.
So let's look at kink. Sex by itself is demonized in our culture. You do not see it on TV, it's only implied in movies, you only do it in private with your most trusted partners, never ever in public. Kink is even more transgressive, and so it cannot meaningfully impact culturally attitudes on the same scale.
Where do kinks come from? They often arise from people's worst fears. All the same brain chemicals that make you excited out of fear, are the very same chemicals your body uses to make you sexually excited. It's not a surprised that there's material cross-over here. This is something that cannot be controlled. Someone may want with all your heart to only have good, just, and morally acceptable sex, but many people's bodies simply do not agree. No conversion therapy has ever been proven to change this fact.
60% of women have fantasized about nonconsent at some point in their lives, do these women value rape? Do they actually want to be raped? Of course not! Women live in a culture where their desire itself is taboo, noncon fantasies are a natural expression of wanting to feel desired without having to feel guilty! All kink is a metaphor for other things!
That said, CAN a man have a rape kink AND be a misogynist? Certainly. But correlation is not causation. Banning noncon kinks isn't going to fix him, because it did not create him.
Any person that engages with transgressive social forces through kink has to be judged by how safely they perform that kink, and the values that stand for outside of the bedroom.
blakekathryn
prguitarman
germansingergirl
2087
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
theartofmadeline
