I’ve generally been around people who are between neutral and positive about the gays my whole life — the overt, malicious homophobia I’ve been exposed to (as opposed to the more mundane people assuming everyone is straight) has been very second hand. But my impression is maybe the logic of hardcore homophobes runs something like this: “I’m a man and I don’t find men attractive or want sex with them. The only way I could imagine ever wanting sex with men is if I was horny to the point of being out of control, to the point where I didn’t care who I have sex with. Therefor, gay people are basically straight people whose libido is completely out of control.”

Thank goodness we have the “sexual orientation” narrative to counter that, you know? People are different.

I’m pretty sure many, maybe most, people see kink that way. It’s a thing you do to “spice up your sex life” or to combat being sexually bored. It’s libido out of control. And I understand sometimes people who go off the deep end with porn start with relatively vanilla porn and then do need it to ratchet up to more extreme, exaggerated fantasies to get the same amount of satisfaction. So I’ve heard.

But people who identify as kinky or Leather, people on the scene, that’s not how it is for us. We don’t start with vanilla sex and later escalate to kink. We’re wired to like, or actively prefer, kink. You ask kinksters about how they got here and the “I was always this way” narrative is all over the place.

I got tied down, enthusiastically, in an erotic context, before I had PIV sex the first time. This is not unusual.

It wasn’t something I was doing because I’d gotten bored of sex — I’d only just started having sex! It was something I did because i found the concept intrinsically appealing, on its own terms and not as a substitute for something else. It’s something I want to do with brand new partners. It’s something I want to do when I’m enjoying vanilla sex a great deal, and when I feel at my most healthy and grounded and in touch with my wisest self. It’s something I want to do, period.

We’re not vanilla people whose libidos got out of control, or sex addicts who found ourselves needing more and more extreme sex to get the same results. We’re just wired differently.

People are different.

And kinky sex, like gay sex, is not just “regular sex but more so.” It’s not fifth base. It’s got its own base system, which starts low stakes and innocuous and not fully in the “get a room” zone, just like straight vanilla sex does.