Annoyingly complicated humans

One of the problems when writing about the origin of kinky preferences is the tendency to treat the personal as the universal. It’s human nature to assume individual experiences are widely shared, or even that they are the default experience. That’s particularly problematic with something as complex and multifaceted as kink is.

An interesting comment from Budman reminded me that not everyone traces their preferences back to early childhood. He feels that his triggers came from early adolescence. That’s something I’ve seen reported by others. I’ve also seen posts from people who came to kink even later, years into their adulthood. It was something that they grew into, not an itch that was always lurking under the surface of their sexuality. Humans are annoyingly complicated.

For me however, my kinky nature was in place long before adolescence. How else can I explain me and Penelope Pitstop? As I’ve posted in the past, I loved watching this show as a child. There was something especially tingly about watching Penelope be tied up and placed in peril. Like the magic act I talked about yesterday, it wasn’t a formative experience. There was no traumatic or exciting event that got associated with cartoon bondage. I just loved the idea of control and how it could be taken away. Reaching adolescence just slotted the next piece of the jigsaw in place for me.

I think the fact that people come to different kinks, in so many different ways, and at so many different times, emphasizes the problem in trying to associate particular interests with only single formative events. After all, how many people experienced similar events, and didn’t become kinky? We never hear from the guy who was dressed up as a girl by his sisters, and didn’t become a cross-dresser. Perhaps there’s an underlying predisposition in just a fraction of the population to having a flexible sexuality. One that casts a wider net for stimulus. Some people are always aware of it, some access it via childhood events, some as their sexuality emerges in adolescence, and some discover it via experimentation in later life.

Having mentioned Penelope Pitstop, it seems fitting to close with this image. It has similar feel, with an extravagantly costumed villain, and a helpless well bound victim. Fortunately for the purposes of this blog, it’s a rare reversal of the damsel in distress trope. It’s entitled Fred Stolen by a Villainess and is by the artist Barry960.