Kink Is Healthy

MY NAME IS ALEXANDER. MY NICKNAME IS BEASTLY. I WRITE ABOUT SEX.

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Hi Beastly. Years ago when I was much younger, I got involved in a “Fight Club” scene, although it WAS a bit different. It was a small group of gay men (in NYC) who liked rough sex, to put it mildly. Unlike the “Fight Club”, the prize wasn’t money – it was ass – I own you for tonight. Also, unlike the fight club, we had rules, as most of us had jobs. Rules – No head work, no visible marks, no solar plexus, no kidney or ball punches, although I know there are men who enjoy ball work.

All else was on the table. I gotta confess that I enjoyed the hell of it. Here I am, many many years later, and living in a small town near Tucson. I don’t even know if I’m capable of regular romantic sex anymore, and yet, I don’t think my desire for men will ever fade. I’m just curious as to what you think and do you know of any others in similar situations. I really enjoy reading the advice you have for others.

Hi kink freak,

I love a good brag, and that’s a well-deserved brag. What do I think? I think you sound like a perfectly normal person who likes extreme sex. That’s great. I hope you enjoy being you.

If you’re seeking help for something, I don’t know what it is. If your “situation” is that you don’t enjoy “romantic sex” anymore, that’s not a bad situation. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just wired a little differently. There’s nothing sick or unacceptable about exclusively liking more adventurous, kinky play. I think a lot of people do.

I want you — and everyone reading this — to really digest this truth: there’s nothing pathological or ill about liking kink and BDSM.

I want to counter the assumptions many people have about kinky people, including people with some medical and psychological credibility (doctors, therapists). There’s no need to pathologize your desires just because they’re unconventional. Gay men get pathologized enough by the world — we don’t need to do it to ourselves. People everywhere really want to pathologize kink and extreme sex like the “fight club” parties you describe. Resist that urge. To medicalize it is to quantify it, and I don’t think desires can be quantified into a laundry list of triggers and traumas. I think desire comes from random childhood experiences and stimuli. Some of those may be traumatic, but it’d be inaccurate to say all kink comes from trauma or vice versa.

According to Psychology Today, anywhere from 2 to 62 percent of people are into BDSM — a bizarre statistic to try to obtain since so many people polled will not be honest. But suffice it to say that more people are kinky than you think, and I do not believe all those people are traumatized. If anything, I think kink is good and healthy, and many others do too. Kink is a pastime, not a pathology.

I, too, feel barred from “regular romantic sex” most of the time. Many guys do. It’s not that we’re physically incapable of the sweeter, intimate stuff — we just don’t like it. I can still get through a vanilla hookup, but why should I have to? Why should I force myself to do something I find only bearable? I’d rather get fucked by ten strangers who treat me like shit in a basement that reeks of sweat and semen. That’s my idea of fun.

You’re not barred from love or romance, but you might be barred from a version of love and romance that is palatable to heterosexual people or to dominant hetero narratives of love. But we’re gay men. We don’t give a fuck what they think, and we certainly don’t have to adhere to those narratives. The rules of the dominant heterosexual society don’t apply to us. Those of us in fringe sexual communities have almost never seen our loves or sex lives presented in media, normalized, or accepted by the mainstream, and we likely never will. But I’m fine with that. You should be too. I don’t have to see a love story on the big screen about a man who destroys another man’s butthole, because I live that story every time I get punch fisted.

As long as you set the rules of engagement and obey the established rules of consent, you’re free to do what you like — and brag about it. It sounds to me like you need to find a kinky scene in Tucson — a leather bar, a gay men’s fetish group, something — or get out of Tucson.

Love, Beastly