Kinky People who Don’t Identify as Kinky

Just because one of your partners says she is vanilla or straight, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy adventurous sex.

It’s much easier to date in kinky communities or meet women on fetish dating sites if you’re looking for kinky sex, but one of my lovers brought to my attention that while this is probably good common sense, it shouldn’t be a hard-and-fast rule because a lot of kinky people don’t identify as kinky.

A lot of folks are sexually adventurous or have bona fide fetishes or special sexual interests, but they just don’t call themselves kinky.

They consider kinky a political identity or an orientation of sorts.

Just as many women who believe in equality for women don’t call themselves feminists, many folks don’t call themselves kinky because they see it as a political identification or statement, not as a simple adjective.

From this perspective, being kinky isn’t a personal matter about their own tastes and sexual proclivities, but a larger statement about sex that they don’t want to make socially or politically.

They don’t feel there is anything particularly kinky about their normal kinks.

As my lover pointed out, people who don’t find their normal desires particularly kinky won’t necessarily identify as kinky.

Role playing, rough sex, dressing up, spanking, light bondage, watching others, threesomes, polyamory. People who view their tastes as routine and don’t compare them to old fashioned norms might not consider themselves kinky.

They aren’t into extreme BDSM, so they don’t use words like fetish or kink.

Lots of people are into a lot of things, but they’re not extremists. They might feel that words like sadomasochism or bondage or fetish designate someone with the same tastes, but much more extreme.

They aren’t dependent on their fetish for sexual satisfaction.

In psychology speak, the word “fetish” used to mean replacing sexual satisfaction from sex with a necessary object, without which one could not be aroused.

So people who enjoy various adventures sexually but don’t need a specific taste to get off might refrain from calling their tastes a fetish.

They are kink flexible, not kink fixed.

A lot of people enjoy exploring various adventures with an open mind. They don’t want to limit themselves to a specific taste or act, because they enjoy the variety or are simply open to new experiences when the options arise. They don’t necessarily want to seek out those acts or fetishes, so they don’t call themselves kinky.

They aren’t looking for specific sex acts—they like kink to unfold with the chemistry of each unique relationship.

Many kink-flexible people feel that the unique chemistry of a relationship is what inspires experimentation. The turn on is not in the act or object or outfit, but in what transpires between two people.

These folks have little interest in looking for a partner for a particular purpose like swinging or rope bondage. The chemistry with a person is what might make exploring a kink or fetish enjoyable to them.