Spooky Scary Kinky Sex

Since we’re on the cusp of Halloween, I thought I’d write a bit about what frightens me in the world of sex and the sexual imagination.

Spoiler alert: it’s not the kinky people.

DEAD BABY BUNNIES

When I tell most vanilla folks I write about kink, they almost inevitably go straight to the scariest places they can imagine. They ask me, “What about rape? How about bestiality? And pedophilia? Why don’t you write about necrophilia?” Set these people thinking about non-conformist sexuality and they feel compelled to talk about acts that involve non-consenting partners.

These are the same folk who assume that anyone into BDSM either has a death wish or wants to permanently harm their partners. They jump to the conclusion that while adult babies and furries may CLAIM they find joy in becoming infants or in imagining themselves as anthropomorphic animals, what they REALLY want to do is have sex with children or pets. No matter how much I explain that the joy comes from transformation and from shuffling off the discontents of civilization to find a place for joyous play, they refuse to believe me. In their erotic universe, every sexual non-conformist is really a monster pretending to be a human being.

I call this prurient fascination with necro, pedo and zoo the “Dead Baby Bunny” phenomenon. It freaks me out, honestly. Ask these folks to think about what lies beyond the straight and narrow path and, in their imaginations, it’s a slippery slope to horror and degradation. Their erotic imaginations are pretty nasty places, if you ask me. It’s ultimately really anti-pleasure, and that’s a sad and frightening thing.

FREAK FUCKERS

The flip side of the Dead Baby Bunny types are those whose primary turn-on is trying to be as extreme and scary as possible. They look for message boards for kinks like cannibal play (a consensual roleplay that mimics but does not involve actual eating of human flesh) and start talking up a storm about how extreme they are. They pretend that they want to do it “for real” but never seem to show up for a play party. Their Fetlife profiles boast of how far out they’re willing to go, but most of them, according to Sir Guy Masterleigh, are just empty blowhards.

Another phenomenon is the “freak fucker,” a term I heard from supersized fat activist Heather Boyle Nymeyer. “These guys say, ‘ I’ve fucked an old lady, I’ve fucked an amputee, now I want to do a really fat woman.’ ” Freak fuckers are distinct from those who truly have a deep visceral attraction to fat or a lifelong devotion to amputees. The FAs and Amputee Devotees I have interviewed have an emotional, psychological and even spiritual attraction to the objects of their desire. Their kink has many dimensions. They see the objects of their desire as better than ordinary folk. But freak fuckers treat their partners, some of whom are emotionally and socially vulnerable, as less than human, as just a notch on their freak trophy belt. It’s really not much different from the predatory behavior of someone like Harvey Weinstein. Now there’s the REAL monster.