Schrodinger Sex, or Why Mainstream Dating is Way Too Kinky for Me.

[emanix]

Dear world, I am a hardcore kinkster and 'vanilla' dating is way too kinky for me.

Content note: Explicit discussion of sexual assault, 'vanilla' culture, and rape. Also some incredibly heteronormative pronoun use in some paragraphs (because cultural critique).

I'm bent over a table amidst a group of strangers, with my skirt somewhere up

Comments

[anonymous]

Yikes! This piece is problematic. You quite literally said that you are okay with your kinkster friends doing rapeplay, but not with people who call themselves vanilla doing it. That is a bit condescending.

You do have a good point that saying, "every woman secretly wants this," is inappropriate and endangering for safety.

[emanix]

Is it condescending to say 'I think what you're doing is a lot more risky than you realise, and here is why I wouldn't do it

[anonymous]

What do you see as being unconsidered, on principle, in the Vanilla paradigm? Most know they have a choice. If adults choose to participate in that paradigm it is on them to accept the risk. My issue is not the core statement, but that you seem to assume a class of adults is inherently less capable of understanding risk.

[emanix]

Honestly I think human beings in general are terrible at understanding risk. It's why people freak out about flying in aeroplanes but happily get into cars without caring about the fact that travelling by road is far more dangerous per passenger mile. It's why we talk to children about stranger danger, but not about what to do if they're being abused by a family member (which is sadly statistically far more likely).

At the same time, I'm not going to tell people how they should or shouldn't make choice about what they do with their own bodies. I'm just going to carry on explaining why *I* won't go there.

[anonymous]

Very interesting post. As a very much "vanilla" female, I think it comes down to vanilla people assuming vanilla things will happen during sex. Clearly, that's naive, though I admit, in my 20's it would have never occurred to me that saying to a partner "I want you to be in charge and do with me what you want" could ever mean anything more than what you call boring vanilla sex. And when I wanted to have my arms held down, or my body pinned against the wall, my partner would clearly know when I no longer moaned in pleasure and told him to stop. In fact, I never had to say stop, because it was pretty obvious when I was no longer enjoying myself and we'd move into a more comfortable position. The thing with vanilla sex (in my personal, and fairly limited experience) is that any sign of distress or discomfort is a sign to stop. I would say "rape play" in vanilla sex is not at all what "rape play" in kink might look like. "The other trouble with Schrodinger Sex is that, even if it goes well, it is almost without exception bad sex.

[emanix]

I am utterly bemused every time I see someone equate the idea of establishing themes and boundaries before hopping into bed with someone with 'taking away the unexpected'. It's like saying that agreeing to play in one particular key would ruin improvisational jazz