This podcast has explicitly adult themes and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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J: Well, this isn’t what we meant for this episode to be about. We were just talking about, um...pain in particular. Which is not the only aspect of kink, honestly. I love the idea that two people that are both like fairly kinky, both similar demographics similar like shared upbringing, not completely, but you know general sociocultural norms. We both like pain, but in very different ways.

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I: I like giving pain most of the time to be quite honest. I’m more of the let’s fuck somebody up kind of thing.

J: This is cause you’re a domme and I’m not.

I: I have my dominant moments, but I would say that I’m a sadist.

J: Which..I….listen. I would say that is a better and more nuanced word and accurate to the situation. The jolt of fear, because this is not the first time you’ve ever told me this, but the jolt of fear that runs down my spine when you’re like:

J mimicking I: My style is like chaos and sadism!

J: And I’m over here like: Where are the step by step processes? And the rules? And also..a hug. I would like a hug.

I: Yeah, that’s fair. And like, when people think chaos they think I’m going to be throwing whips around me and be all like “wooohooohooo! I’m this crazy domme!” It’s like…..no. I want glitter! I want duck costumes!

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J: This is Kinky Queeries, a podcast where you send in questions and we work out the kinks, or in this case we work in the kinks.

I: ~ laughs ~

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I: We may need to rerecord that

J: No, I think you laughing makes it better. Obviously, this is our first episode so we don’t have any questions from the audience, you, listening at home.

I: We created our own!

J: We created our own question, which is “When did you know that you were kinky?” Um…I’m James, hi! Human sexuality is not my profession, but it is my passion. I joke that I like talking about sex more that I like having it. Listen, I like having sex, I do, but I really really like talking about it. Which is why this podcast exists. My pronouns are he/him and I identify as queer.

I: Heck yeah! And I’m Iris. That’s how we transition that, right?

J: No, no, that’s perfect. I love the support, the unwavering confidence. Yeah, that is what we deserve in this moment. Thank you Iris.

I: Oh, okay. Heck yeah! I’m Iris. I use they/them pronouns. I work in the reproductive, sexual health, and gender health world ever since undergrad. So that’s been about seven years at this point. I have a masters in public health in sex, gender, and sexuality as well as health communicaiton. So I found my niche in focusing on reproductive and seuxal health and being able to communicate about…umm…current research that is going on in the world as well as just making things more in laymens terms because things are overly complicated for, like understandable reasons, but like we need accessible understanding for these topics. I work in the academic research world currently. I am a polyamorous weirdo and I am part of the BDSM community.

J: Damn, that’s like a really thorough intro. We’ve been friends for over a decade now, which is wild to contemplate. Between the two of us we have a combined twenty years of adult activity experience. You’ve done so much fantastic research Iris. I literally, could not be more grateful, this is so cool. I opened our little, hey this is what we’re going to do today, and just saw a mountain of research. I just want to explore it. Do we want to start here? Or the personal narratives? Where do we want to start?

I: I feel like starting with the general topic of the development of kink or bdsm or fetishes is important, but maybe we should start with definitions?

J: Yeah, hell yeah. Let’s kick that off.

I: Kink is often considered, like, an unconventional preference or activity. I dont want to necessarily make that an unconventional sexual preference or activity because not every person who participates in kink is a sexual human being or wants to participate in sex or they associate that particular preference or activity with sex.

J: I second that. I really am a huge, I’m a sexual person, but I really am a huge fan of non-sexual kink. I think it’s really powerful and can do a lot of really interesting things.

I: Mhm, I completely agree. It’s important to have that kind of definition going into these types of conversations because I might refer to something as sexual, but it doesn’t acutaly mean that it has to be sexual. When we talk about rope, that is not inherently a sexual activity. It’s really fucsing on, for some individuals, benign bound and not being able to escape. That is the important aspect that hey are feeling there. For some individuals it is know that whoever is tying them up or binding them is in control of them and they are helpless. For some individuals it is the feeling of tightness around their physical bodies. Like there are so many, and I’m sure that James can add to it, but there are so many different aspects that someone could be looking for that is not inherently sexual. Can those things be added with a nice flavor of sex to it? Of course, but it doesn’t have to be.

J: Yeah, I was just going to chime in on the rope specifically. One of the few things that I am capable fo being a dominant for is rope. I love just the physical texture of rope. The actual sensation of having a cotton blend or a synthetic blend running through my fingers while I’m doing knot work. That alone, there is something meditative about it. So a lot of kink can be, like Iris was saying, about the sensations themselves. And sometimes those sensations can lead to arousal, and sometimes they don’t and they’re just like, nice. You know? TLDR, kink can be defined as a particular interest that is non-normative. Like, if we were to sum up what kink is in one sentence, how would we do that?

I: It would be a non-normative preference or activity is how I would define it which is different than BDSM or fetish.

J: I actually would love to do an episode that delineating between kink, bdsm, and fetish as, like, linguistically. I think defining kink by defining BDSM as well as fetish to seperate it from those two can be really helpful. As well as separating it from a hobby. While it can be argued that it falls under the umbrella of being a hobby, it’s obviously different than someone who crochets.

I: I mean, crochet and rope has so many similarities.

J: Okay, okay, we could kink up crocheting, but you know that’s not what I meant.

I: So yeah, fetish. So fetish is a desire that is linked to an object, a body part, and potentially an activity. So it is very similar to kink, but it is much more specific a lot of the time.

J: Would we argue, and correct me if I’m wrong, would we argue that fetish is particularly a sexual concept. Can you be asexual about a fetish, or is that a better term to use kink for if we’re going to split hairs about the two of them? My vote is that it is given the the definition of it and the history of that word in particular. But I am curious about your thoughts on it.

I: Um, I think it tends to be more on the sexual side. I can’t think off the top of my head of something that is fetishized…in a non-sexual way? Or at least in the concepts that we’re talking about. I can’t think of fetishization in a non-sexual way.

J: That makes sense. Yeah. So a good differentiator is that almost in the idea that kink is a subcategory under the term hobby fetish could almost be a subcategory under the term kink. If that makes sense.

I: Yeah, and then like BDSM is just like this overarching umbrella term that encapsulates….No it’s tangential. Yeah, so BDSM is tangential to kink and fetish, but often there's a lot of overlap in subcategories that connect it all. And so it's a fairly connected community, but these definitions are really important. Oh, hell yeah, yeah. I know what BDSM stands for.

J: I don't got to Google, I don't got to Google. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me let me do my what is it? Burnt out, gifted, submissive brat with a present moment. Let me have this.

I: Oh my god, I love her.

J: So let me have my burnt-out gifted and talented, submissive brat with a prase king moment. BDSM stands for bondage, discipline, dominant, submissive sadism, masochism. And I've had that memorized for like 15 years. Now that we’ve roughly defined somewhere in there what being kinky is TLDR Kink is a non-normative interest or hobby that may or may not lead to sexual outcomes.

I: Yes.

J: Cool. You know, I know something. As I was saying, I've had the definition of BDSM memorized for really longer than I should have because this has been a part of my personality for a very long time. So let's answer the question of our podcast. When did you know you were kinky? Not really when I knew I was kinky, but kind of like looking back, like in hindsight, my first like a memory that I'm like, Oh, if I had known what kinky was, I would have been able to identify this basically every game I played as a child. Elaborate, overly complex for ten games like the set up took like two hours minimum. And honestly, sometimes that was more fun than the game itself, which tells you a lot about me as a person. But every single plotline of those games involved some disturbing amount of like kidnaping and characters getting tied up and put in uncomfortable situations and like, quote, torture unquote or like, Oh no, there's no bathroom in this space. What are we going to do like?

I: ~ laughs ~

J: And I, as an adult person, I'm like…Who just left this eight year old unsupervised? Like was no one concerned?

I: Honestly, I think that would be something that a child would have taken from media. That would be my initial assumption being like, Oh, someone let you watch way too many Marvel movies.

J: ~laughs ~ Fair, yeah. But yeah, there was definitely an element of like, there was a lot of opportunity for like either the character I was playing or the character that was like kind of a representation of myself to like, avoid these situations or like I as the author or like the game master of these situations, I could not have these happen. There was definitely an element of no, no, no. I do want this to happen. So I would say in hindsight again, at the time, I was like, This is just what kids do, right? Like, I am a child. This is fun. Is everyone not doing this? Is this? I had no, no, no idea that this was weird. No clue. So it's a yeah, that's my first kind of not I'm not going to say red flag, because it's not a red flag, but my first kind of flag on the play at the idea that something kinky was happening in this human person.

I: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of situations that I can reflect back on and being like that seems like it falls into the kink sphere someplace place like, I don't know if you did this when growing up. When I was little, I whenever a candle was lit and it was like…Oooh!!! I want to dip my fingers in it because it felt really good. Yeah, I mean, I've got one burning right behind me. It's like….it seems like fun! I know it's a bad idea because we have better body safe candles, but just the sensation of dipping your fingers into wax as someone who is quite small like that is not a safe thing to do. That is something that, like parental units and like guardian people are like, “Do not do that!” And it's like, Wow, this is hot when my fingers get near it. But it was still worth it for the sensation.

J: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I: But I can also think of like, I went frog hunting a lot as a little kid, and I talked about that with my siblings all the time.

J: Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. Like, you got in the mud and picked up frogs?

I: Yeah. Oh, we had ponds. So when I was little and I would go frog hunting like me and my siblings, me more than my siblings, we would act like the animals we were interacting with. So me, like yelling ribbit and hopping down through the park around the pond was a fairly normal behavior. And like mimicking the actions of the family cat that we got eventually. I feel like that was very much a premonition of some of my pet play and furry tendencies that I have now.

J: I would be really curious and this kind of ties into your research as well. The line between because, like you said, there's like a sphere of that that is just like, Oh yeah, kids just do that. But like, when does it become a premonition? Like you're saying, like, what do you think that line is?

I: I mean, let's be honest, Disney is not helping with Zootopia.

J: ~ laughs~

I: So we've talked a little bit about like some of our early childhood experiences, which we are both connecting to, like kind of how we act now with our kinks. And so I wanted to bring up like this concept that I found in some recent research and by recent, I mean, 2018. But there's this model called the five-stage model of kink identity development, where it starts off with early encounters. And so this is usually before the age of ten, and it's when someone is experiencing attraction draw or fascination with kink or fetish in some way, but don't fully understand it. It specifically defines it as without sexual arousal, so I want to bring that back up. But that is like in a non-sexual situation within this stage of development.

J: But I think it's so interesting, too, where it's like an like an extra fascination to it because the examples that are cited here, this idea that it's like being captured and playing cops and robbers or like superheroes in peril or like what you're saying, where it's just like kids pretending to be a cartoon animal that they see.

I: Like being the frog down the street?

J: Yeah, yeah.

I: ~ laughs~

J: There's a range of. And I would say, yeah, that emphasis on like attraction or fascination, definitely in like a non-sexual context and without any language for it. But like those early encounters, I don't think it's too easy to distinguish from like just regular kids doing regular kid stuff aside from maybe frequency and intensity.

I: And like for kids, that's fairly normal. So it's not really something that is identified, but from like external individuals, but internally it could potentially be identified by that person. What happens in the second stage, which is stated as between the ages of five and 14, is the exploration of the self. And so it's when somebody is exploring the interest themselves, and usually that exploration is fantasy. So looking at media, thinking about the sensations, potentially exploring a material against their body like that is where it's a little bit more of like the personal self-exploration is allowed to occur or does occur, not allowed to occur.

J: That totally makes sense in the idea of just especially taking those early encounters and realizing like connecting those dots a little bit as well.

I: And so then the next stage is called evaluation, which is between the ages of 11 and 14, and it's part of the identity process. So it's really thinking about and evaluating the interests that developed over time that they experimented with and how that falls within their identity to some extent. And this can just be like, let's say, the frog example that I was mentioning earlier. I liked pretending to be a frog. It was fantastic. And that, well, I like the idea of frogs. Then I explored it myself. I pretended to be a frog. And then I evaluated that as like, cool. I like frogs. I like pretending to be frogs. That's great. Now is this part of my identity? To some extent, I'm not a frog. I recognize that now, but it was something that I probably considered at one point or not. And that's similar to any of the other things that I explored or engaged with. Like back, like back to wax play. I fucking love wax play. That is something that is very much part of my identity and part of my sexuality. And I definitely remember when I was like in that adolescent stage of like being like, Fuck yeah, I love dipping my fingers and wax when there's a candle around. And when I have the ability to do that, and I didn't really think anything of it being weird other than being told by my parents, like, “Fucking stop doing that!”

J: Which I imagine that was more of like safety hazard than like, you know, Oh, this child is interested in something non normative.

I: Oh yeah. But details like it was fun. Yeah, I'm sure they had very good reasons.

J: An alternate take on your like frog example for myself in terms of just like being interested in in bondage in particular. Let's go with that example, like the early encounters of like all of the pretend games involving some form of capture and restraint, small spaces, all that fun shenanigans, that exploration of the self. I was going to say when I finally found the language, thankfully to the internet, I was like, I say middle school and like fanfic.net was still kind of good at that time, which is not a good place to learn all these things, but it is a good place to find terms that you don't know what they are and then go to Wikipedia. So that kind of age of like it does specify like 11 to 14 for the evaluation in particular, but like that concept of like bondage and restraint, that's something. Once I found the language for it where I'm just like, “Oh, there's this, this is an actual thing.” And, you know, I kept it to myself, but I'm like, Yeah, no, this is something that I like, and now it's something that like is part of my identity. Unlike the frog situation for you. Like, I definitely do identify as someone that is into rope and into bondage.

I: I haven't tried frog play as an adult. I might try that just to see, like, find a big ass lily pad. Go nuts.

J: But like to get those like sticky hand things and just like get ten of them and put them like all over your hands. You can like…

I: Oh no, this is duck play all over again….

I and J: ~laughs~

I: And like, I know that I'm like saying ages with this, I'm just reciting some of the information from the particular study. I don't personally think that the ages are necessarily accurate because you don't necessarily have to evaluate between the ages of 11 to 14. You can evaluate it later in your teenage years or even when you're an adult and being like, Wow, this is actually something that I want to explore more I want to be, have more is an aspect of my life or my sexuality or as part of play or fun. And I think that's important, like just because you didn't do a bunch of rope bondage stuff between the ages of 11 and 14, and you recognize that that doesn't mean that that evaluation stage didn't happen later on when you're like, I don't know, watching a movie and you see somebody get tied up and down and you're like, “Oh, that looks really fun.”

J: I think what's important, too, is that like if you don't have the language to do evaluation, if you don't have any frame of reference whatsoever, you can't evaluate something you don't know. So I think that's largely true motive. The study since it was done in 2018, I'm curious how much that age range is based on, like current demographics that have access to the internet, like demographics where the internet was not accessible at an early age would probably have a different timeline. Also, the link to this study will be in the description of this episode.

I: I'm going to keep going through the list before I get to comment, so commenting a lot on evaluation, but I think the next steps are really important to talk about as well. The fourth step of this five stage model is called Finding Others, and that is the process of realizing that there are other people who enjoy similar things as you, and that could be on fanfic.net that could have been on Tumblr. That could have been because you, like, wandered into a gay bar and you saw somebody wearing like a pup hood. This isn't something that I personally experienced. This is something that, like somebody else that I knew experience when this person was a teenager, they had a friend who also enjoyed playing with wax. Sorry that wax is coming up so much this episode.

J: Oh, it's a good thing. Don't apologize for it. It's a good one.

I: And they like both together collaboratively were talking about playing with wax in the sensations and then eventually move on to the next stage, which we'll talkback, which is stage five, Exploration with Others. They got to play with wax, with one another, and it wasn't sexual or anything but dipping your fingers into the wax together.

J: It's a meaningful component for a lot of people. I don't know if it necessarily has to be a qualification, but exploration with others. Yeah, I think a lot of these things are facilitated easier with a partner or partners, but I think it's definitely possible to do to get to that evaluation stage whenever you get it and that find other stage. Know, that it's not just, you're not alone with this. But I don't think you necessarily need to explore it with others if you don't want to.

I: Well, I wouldn't even say finding others is necessarily you're not alone with that. It can also be like finding porn of it. Like, that's not figuring out that you're alone. That's just being like, Fuck, yeah, I found content. But like, because there's so little research around kink and BDSM, some how…how they manifest and develop within an individual and their personal tastes is hard to really comment on. So we have this five stage model and it's kind of coming up with the concept of kink can be is innately part of childhood and then adopted later in life. But I don't think that it is necessarily accurate. I think that this particular five stage model can…this development can happen at any point in time. And so an example that I want to give is one of the kinks that I participate in is erotic hypnosis. I had never really thought about hypnosis as a thing. Other than like villains doing it in cartoons until about the age of 24. And I didn't think of it as erotic. I didn't think of it as like part of Kink or BDSM, and I just didn't have that knowledge at that time.But when I met one of my current partners, she introduced me to it and I started realizing that it is something that I really enjoy the mind manipulation…In my early encounters of hypnosis as a thing, yeah, there were childhood related. But the explorer..exploration with self and with others did not happen until the age of 24, when I was definitely cognitively an adult. This process can change for just about anyone.

J: I think that this model is an excellent….an excellent representation of like, where does it come from internally as opposed to what you're talking about. And I think what a lot of people think of when they think of the concept of kink is something that, like a partner, introduces them to or something that, like someone else brings in, like an external source. And I think that's an equally valid experience in the kink, like the idea of like, you know, a couple who had been vanilla for a very long time and then one of them introducing something kinkier and that becomes part of their identity at a later stage in life. I think that's just as valid and I think an equally deserving model to be understood.

I: Mm hmm. Part of it also is like, how much is this model affected by social stigma? We talked a little bit about social stigma, but like some research is saying that it's detrimental to someone's mental health around their kinks and fetishes and can cause anxiety, depression, in an individual as well. And I think it's really important to point that out that at least during the time that we both grew up, grew up, that kink, fetish, BDSM was very much a no no. We don't talk about that. That is very much hush hush. And right now, like we have media where it's very much more representative. We had individuals talk…singing about kinky BDSM on the fucking radio where that was not much of the music that I listened to. The music videos are very much inherently sexual and using whips and using leather that it's part of fashion at this point that people wear harnesses over their clothing, and that is a fashion statement within the queer community.

J: What you were saying about music, too, I remember when Rihanna's S&M came on the radio, like when I heard that the first time I had already like identified, I had gone through the whole, like, you know, evaluation stage. I knew what I was and then I heard it on the radio and I'm like, “Nobody can know that I like this song, but I like it a lot!” Like it was, it was wild to like, be on that precipice of nobody talks about this. Like, don't even acknowledge it to like 50 Shades of Gray being something in the public knowledge, which is I hate that book, but that's not the point. The point is it's in the public knowledge. But even with it being in the public knowledge that social stigma is still there, I remember…my mom never going to listen to this podcast so I can tell this story.

I: ~ laughs~

J: So she, (A) can never find out about this podcast. And (B) she won't find out about this podcast. It's fine. Probably like freshman or sophomore year of college. When this happened, I was home for the summer or something, and my mom was reading 50 Shades of Gray.

I: I almost just did a spit take, I'm so sorry.

J: No, that's that's a spit take worthy thing. My mom was reading 50 shades of gray. I have not read that book. For the record, I just know I don't like it because it is a really inaccurate and potentially dangerous representation of BDSM culture. We'll do a whole other episode on video seven media later, but I know I don't like this book. She's reading it, and I'm just sitting there quietly seething because I'm like, She's my mom. She can't know that I'm kinky is this is not a conversation I want to have with her. You know, my mom likes to talk about whatever she's up to. So she's talking about this book and she's like, “I just don't get it. Why would anyone be into that? Like, that's just that's just so terrible.” And I'm sitting here like. ~ deep sigh ~ “Well, it's not really an accurate representation of those things.” I don't I'm not going to tell you why I know that. But the stigma of, you know, even though 50 Shades of Gray is in the pop culture now, people still look at it and are like, Oh, eww, gross, why does that exist? And hearing that when you are a kinky person is still really detrimental. You know?

I: The development of kink for individuals is just like something that's not really studied very well and like kink, BDSM, fetish in general is just like, not something that's very much studied. A lot of the research that currently exists, it's like “we found all these gay people. Cool. This percentage of them participate in something called BDSM?” And that's just like in an unfortunate part of like the research community around sexuality. That has changed a lot over the past 20, some odd years. But for a very long time, because we lost a lot of research because of government intervention, it's like research in general all over the globe. It's just like, let's hide kink, BDSM, fetish, trans people, queer people, anything that like, we have an understanding of these topics. Let's fucking lose it.

J: Not to tie up loose ends, but I actually would argue that it's kind of a good antithesis for what our podcast is. A lot of queer history and a lot of kinky history is: Hide it. Don't look at it. Be afraid of it. Demonize it. And I think what I would like this podcast to be in, let me know how you feel, is to be a space of both learning and fun to make kink feel approachable and to make it feel a little less scary. To know that like, yeah, it can be really serious and really meaningful. And there are moments where like, it can be dangerous, but it doesn't have to be. And obviously, you should be safe about it all the time. But like it, I want to create a space here that makes kink approachable and something to be celebrated.

I: Yeah, I agree with that. I think because we've had previous discussions talking about like, let's bring in the literature, the research that exists, the ideas around different concepts as well as personal experiences and tie the two together. I think that's really important. But also like there's so many different podcasts, there's so much literature and experiences and community organizations that currently exist that this isn't the only form of information to be available, which is wonderful and fantastic and is a great way for individuals to be able to participate in the community or learn about themselves, where previously that was more difficult to be a part of and to find that do that self exploration.

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J: Honestly, I'm just glad this was so fun because I really enjoyed this, and that was sort of the point, and I hope, I hope those listening at home enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much for listening as we talk about some of our favorite things. So if you have it kinky question, send us your queries at kinkyqueeries@gmail.com and also follow us on Twitter at KinkyQueeries. That's k i n k y q u e e r i e s. We'll have our next episode ready for your eager ears in about two weeks. That'll be February 8th, 2022, and will hopefully see you soon. Or I guess, will you'll hear us soon? You'll hear from us soon! There we go. That was not as clever.

I: You'll hear our lovely, angelic voices that are a little bit full of deviance soon.

J: Oh, very good. Very good.

I: Thank you!

J: I’m going to stop the recording now.

I: End!

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