By Airial Clatney
Once widely stigmatized and isolated, the kink community and kink practices have acquired more visibility now than ever, thanks to platforms like Fetlife, and a more open and accepted discourse around sexuality. For those folks that are unfamiliar with these practices, we're talking a huge variety of consensual intimate and erotic behaviours like bondage, spanking, role playing and modelling of 'master/slave' dynamics. Despite the general public's attitude shift about kinky practices, the desire for these practices remain classed in a clinical context as a disorder, and more specifically, 'paraphilic disorder', where the word 'paraphilia' means a psychological condition, rather than a choice. This can commonly result in persistent social conflict for people who identify as part of the kink community, who remain needing to challenge societal resistance and legal prohibitions about the significance of their sexual practices.
I was curious in learning about how kinky people are affected by these challenging and often, demeaning discourses about what is often a significant part of what makes them human. It turns out that the majority (86% in one study) of self-identified kinky humans totally appreciate their kinkiness because it adds at least one positive element to their quality of life (for example, the kink community supported them in overcoming a challenge). On the other hand, in this same study, some people (14% of the sample) admitted that internalizing the stigma of their kinky identity caused them loneliness and severe depression. If you have never heard of the 'Minority Stress Theory', it basically says that noticeable health differences in sexual minorities are in the most part caused by hostility from homophobic culture. I think it would be important though to acknowledge that roughly 14% of adults have depression, so for argumentative sake, it is possible that the 14% of the sample that reported internalizing stigma and depression, could reflect these statistics.
To end on a positive note, stigma is such a powerful force, and although we have a ways to go in normalizing the desires of consensual kink, it was so interesting finding that so many people who are active in the kink community showed such resilience despite the existing stigma and that they were able to translate their experiences into positive ones.
Citations:
Hughes, S. D., & Hammack, P. L. (2019). Affirmation, compartmentalization, and isolation: narratives of identity sentiment among kinky people. Psychology & Sexuality, 10(2), 149-168. Mojtabai R, Olfson M, Han B. National Trends in the Prevalence and Treatment of Depression in Adolescents and Young Adults. Pediatrics. 2016;138(6). doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1878