Strawberry Raven

The reason is basically that I have trauma that I don't want to get into in detail here, but that gave me scars that are only now healing. I was very repressed for most of my life, and had a lot of very harmful self-hate about how my trauma affected me, despite the fact it wasn't in my control.

It's so important to explain that the effects of trauma aren't always pretty or palatable. And where kink is concerned, trauma can fuck with people's sexuality, like causing hypersexuality or giving them weird kinks. And that's very common. And kink can be a healthy way of processing, and an important way for survivors to heal. It can be a corrective emotional experience, because they're in control. And that is important.

But that side of trauma isn't widely known or talked about because of social attitudes toward both sexuality and trauma. There is so much ableism and victim-blaming and misinformation and stigma around that; some of it even coming from people who should know better, and who should know that even ''ugly'' scars need to be treated with understanding and kindness. Some of the same people supporting sex work and saying that kink belongs at pride end up - without realizing it - falling into pitfalls of right-wing views of sexuality and ''normalcy'' (versus ''degeneracy''). There is such a strong gut-reaction against it that can be so hard for people to break down. It's often taken as a given without ever stopping and taking a step back and thinking about it. It is a very liberal ''this far and no further'' mentality toward sexual liberation, as well as a ''this far and no further'' mentality toward kinks themselves.

There is a lot that can be said about this topic, like the importance of expressive therapy whether created or shared, and the misinformation of kink being conflated with retraumatization. But I think there are two key points I want to make:

1.) Kink from trauma is not meaningfully or even functionally different from something like reclamation of slurs, or a trans person fetishizing their own transness (which is fine by the way). What matters is to respect an individual's feelings on it. And also if you're opposed to the extremely basic concept of playing around with power dynamics, you're valuing palatability and optics over people's actual safety and their consent. Also, parenthetically, I don't think trauma is required in order to have hard kinks. It's common, but it doesn't bestow the ability to maintain a separation of reality from fantasy.

2.) Disgust-based morality is not concerned with harm, and is always going to be an untenable ethical framework. And discomfort with kinks does not confer harm. You know what confers harm? Harming people. When I see people equating kinks with real-world harm (e.g. ''cnc is abuse'' or ''abdl is pedophilia'' or whatever, I don't care how weird it is!!!), I want to scream. I was harmed. They aren't the same!!! They aren't anywhere close to the same level as each other. At all! The ability to separate fantasy from reality is so important. People need to learn the difference between discomfort and harm. It's the difference between feeling weirded out or disgusted versus abuse. Harm is what makes something wrong. Things can be disgusting because they're immoral; not vice versa. Please don't equate make-believe with trauma. Trauma is real. It isn't a hypothetical idea, it's experienced. And it causes life-long scars. Kink does not carry harm. When I see people being anti-kink in general, even for weirder kinks or hard kinks, and especially when I see people treating them as being on the same level as abuse, it hurts. It's trivializing of what trauma is and the effect it has on survivors and what it means. And people treating having these kinks as being as bad as abuse is an oblivious mentality. I'm a survivor w/ traumagenic kinks, which are not survivors' fault, are common - even healthy ways to heal - and are allowed. How do you think I feel when I see people saying that having these kinks is as wrong and immoral and as harmful as what was done to me? If a kink is the same as the real thing to you, or anywhere even close to being on the same level for you, then you are more concerned with optics than people being hurt or people being safe or people's consent, and I won't feel safe around you. You need to understand harm. The gulf between kink and harm is an unbridgeable chasm a continent's distance apart from each other. I don't know how to express this point more. To not understand the severity of harm and to think that kayfabe and imaginary scenarios and fiction and fantasy and playing pretend are anywhere close to that severity is a total lack of perspective. People moralizing kink make me feel unsafe around them, because more than only telegraphing that they don't understand or care about consent, they are telegraphing that they don't understand the severity of what was done to me, and that they don't understand how it's something that is separate from kink. That makes me feel unsafe. People need to understand that difference, and that separation. It telegraphs that they don't understand harm.

And here I am having repressed my own sexuality and having lived with so much self-hate because I bought into common attitudes about sexuality and kinks. And my bruises were much more sensitive because of it. My trauma effected me, and I have weird kinks about it, and I buried that part of myself under shame because that kind of scar isn't ''pretty''.

But then - in the past few years - I finally started learning about this kind of trauma beyond what the prevalent atmosphere of public opinion from internet strangers has to say, and I started reading up on what mental health professionals and trauma experts have to say and what medical studies and the wealth of medical knowledge on this kind of trauma show about these effects and the mental health issues involved, and I gained an awareness and understanding of the common misinformation surrounding the topic. It was a process of unlearning preconceptions and self-hate, and it was a process of learning that my kinks are normal and healthy, especially given my trauma. It was like learning that I'm trans again. It was a process of understanding myself in a new way that social attitudes had been an obstacle to.