Kinkshaming

What is kinkshaming?

Kinkshaming is ridiculing, condemning, or humiliating someone for a consensual kink or fetish. It targets what people enjoy by mutual consent, not boundary-crossing behavior. Criticism of something without consent is therefore not kinkshaming: the line lies at consent and harm, not at “normal” or “weird.”

What kinkshaming looks like

Kinkshaming is rarely a big speech. Usually it is a small moment: a disgusted look when you carefully name something, a joke at the expense of your preference, a text going around with “get a load of what she wants.”

Take a common picture. You honestly fill in on a checklist what makes you curious, and the other person reads it and says: “Are you even normal?” That one little line does the work. Not because there is anything wrong with what you wrote down, but because it teaches you that writing things down is dangerous. The next time you write less. And after that you say nothing more.

Notice the difference from a fair boundary. If your partner says “I do not want this, and you can respect that,” that is not kinkshaming but a personal boundary. Kinkshaming is the verdict on you as a person for what attracts you, not the guarding of what someone does or does not want.

Why people kinkshame

Underneath kinkshaming lies an old script: the idea that sex splits into “normal” and “deviant,” and that deviant equals sick. That idea has a medical past. Kinks once stood in the handbooks as conditions.

That is exactly what changed in 2013. The DSM-5, the standard work of psychiatry, split the old concept of paraphilia in two. According to an analysis in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, a paraphilia is since then “a persistent, intense, atypical pattern of arousal that does not in itself count as a disorder.” Only when suffering or harm is added does one speak of a paraphilic disorder. The point of that split, the authors write, was explicitly to reduce stigma. The interest itself is no proof that something is psychologically wrong.

So anyone who kinkshames is leaning on an idea that science itself has let go of.

Why kinkshaming harms

The harm of kinkshaming is not in the kink, but in the shame built around it. That difference is the whole point.

Kinks are, after all, far more common than the stigma suggests. Research by Christian Joyal in Sexual Medicine showed that only a handful of fantasies are truly rare, and that most supposedly deviant preferences are widespread. Most people who get kinkshamed are, in other words, perfectly ordinary.

What the shame does do hits two sides. For the person it happens to, the silence grows: you hide a part of yourself, and according to therapist Elyssa Helfer it is precisely that shame that keeps people away from the help they need. For a relationship it closes a door that had just opened: one disapproving reaction and the conversation that finally started falls silent again. Not every discomfort is kinkshaming, by the way. Someone is allowed not to want something, and to say so calmly. It only becomes kinkshaming once the verdict hits not the act but the person.

What you do about it

Kinkshaming happens to you, but you are not defenseless against it. A few things help, whether you take the hit or notice you are about to pass judgment yourself.

• If you are being kinkshamed, put the line back where it belongs: at consent. “This happens by mutual consent” is a complete answer, and you do not have to explain your preference to anyone beyond that.
• Look for people who are kink-friendly and share what you are exploring there. One safe place outweighs ten verdicts.
• If you catch yourself feeling distaste at someone else’s kink, use YKINMK: you do not have to want something yourself to accept that it is allowed.
• If you notice the shame sits deep and keeps you from seeking help, take that shame seriously as the problem, not your preference.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. I see kinkshaming almost daily, only rarely called by that name. It arrives as a woman who swallows her sentence halfway and says: “Never mind, it is stupid.”

The first relief is usually small. The rest of it is large. Not that we do anything right away. Just that someone gets to say a desire out loud without an eyebrow going up. Nine times out of ten the “weird” wish turns out to be the most ordinary thing in the world, and the weird part is mostly in all the years she thought she was the only one. Judging is not part of my work. Making room is.

More on kinkshaming

On this site the antidote is explained separately: YKINMK and the longer form YKINMKBYKIOK sum up in one acronym what it comes down to, and kink-friendly describes the attitude that does not judge. What is at play around saying a preference out loud is at coming-out kink.

Beyond that, the English encyclopedia entry on kink gives the broader background; there is no separate encyclopedia entry for kinkshaming. The distinction between interest and disorder is in the analysis of the DSM-5 in JAAPL.

Where this fits on this site

If you carry a desire with you that you have never said out loud, out of fear of exactly this kind of reaction, then a conversation without judgment may be the first step. With me you do not have to justify anything. On the page about my services you can read what an appointment involves, and you are also welcome to send me a message first, with no obligation.

Sources

• DSM-5 and Paraphilic Disorders. Michael B. First, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 42(2), 191-201, 2014. Provides that the DSM-5 defines a paraphilia as an atypical pattern of arousal that is not in itself a disorder, that only suffering or harm makes it a paraphilic disorder, and that this split was meant to reduce stigma.
• Defining “Normophilic” and “Paraphilic” Sexual Fantasies in a Population-Based Sample. Christian C. Joyal, Sexual Medicine 3(4), 321-330, 2015. Provides that only a small number of fantasies in the population are truly rare, which shows most supposedly deviant preferences to be ordinary.
• Kink (sexuality). Wikipedia. Provides that what does and does not count as kink varies strongly by time and place, because it tracks shifting conformist lines. There is no separate encyclopedia entry for kinkshaming.

Related terms

• YKINMK. “Your kink is not my kink”: respecting someone’s preference without sharing it, the direct antidote to kinkshaming.
• YKINMKBYKIOK. The longer form, with “but your kink is ok” added, which makes the respect explicit.
• Kink-friendly. The attitude and the place where kinks are welcome without judgment.
• Kink. The preference itself, which kinkshaming turns against.
• Coming-out kink. What is at play around saying a preference out loud for the first time.