15 ms·

Half a million kinksters can't be wrong

225 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

sillysaurusx 3y ago
Aella being open about her own experiences has been a huge inspiration. She gets a lot of hate, but somehow she lets it roll off her. For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society. It was wonderful discovering that there are a whole community of people who live happy lives without this. Aella’s surveys help people make grounded and informed decisions about baseline behaviors. Most people don’t want to talk about their true feelings, and when they do, they usually dress it up to make it socially acceptable. Polling large numbers of people is at least one antidote.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  I'm happy that people are happy. Choices also have consequences. Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Quite the opposite! Much work had to be done to force both husbands and wives into monogamy over the course of thousands of years. If anything, our evolutionary instincts are the other way around. Submitted for your consideration: https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1708600990658711685 https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1708600990658711685
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      I read both posts. I'm not buying the conspiracy theory that monogamy is a psychological operation to lure men into a sense of duty and to accept responsibilities. However, if it is true, then the writer builds a strong case against polygamy or polyamory. The writer indicates that rulers of ancient civilizations struggled with apathetic hedonistic polygamous or polyamarous men.
      - temporarara 3y ago
        Indeed, making men willing to work hard to provide for their family has been pretty awesome psyop. I really can't see any downsides if civilized society is the ultimate goal. I can just imagine how it feels when the ruler has a big harem and you don't really have a realistic chance for creating a family, but I don't think it makes you work harder once you realize it.
  - krapp 3y ago
    >Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process If anything, it's a relic of the Abrahamic faiths and their influence over Western cultures. Many other cultures have practiced polygamy since antiquity.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
      How would you explain the many animals that have monogamous relations? Is it from roosting around too many churches?
      - orangepurple 3y ago
        The government needed to give them a sense of duty and responsibility to save them from apathy (see the comment linking to the twitter thread and read the first 2 posts)
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        There was a wonderful passage in American Gods about this phenomenon: ----- "Remember," she [Easter] said to Wednesday [Odin], as they walked, "I'm rich. I'm doing just peachy. Why should I help you?" "You're one of us," he said. "You're as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of us. It's pretty clear whose side you should be on." They reached a sidewalk coffeehouse, went inside. There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced on them, smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders. Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesday's square gray hand. "I'm telling you," she said, "I'm doing fine. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my name, old wolf." "And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their love?" he said, dryly. "Don't be an asshole." Suddenly she sounded very tired. She sipped her mochaccino. "Serious question, m'dear. Certainly I would agree that millions upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs. But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss?" This to their waitress. She said "You need another espresso?" "No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I are disagreeing over what the word 'Easter' means. Would you happen to know?" The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. Then she said, "I don't know about any of that Christian stuff. I'm a pagan." The woman behind the counter said, "I think it's like Latin or something for 'Christ has risen' maybe." "Really?" said Wednesday. "Yeah, sure," said the woman. "Easter. Just like the sun rises in the east, you know." "The risen son. Of course -- a most logical supposition." The woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their waitress. "I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?" "Worship?" "That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?" Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, "The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know." "Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?" "She's the goddess within us all," said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. "She doesn't need a name." "Ah," said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, "so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon, while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the sea-foam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?" "You're making fun of me," she said. "We don't do any of that stuff you were saying." She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. "Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma'am?" Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered. They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer. "There," said Wednesday, "is one who 'does not have the faith and will not have the fun.' Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see -- I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favor here -- this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets." Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing. "We could try it," continued Wednesday. "But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don't tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all." Tears stood out in her eyes. "I know that," she said, quietly. "I'm not a fool." ----- Just as in the book's depiction, your parent comment has managed to confuse a practice that a culture older than Christianity imposed on it with one that Christianity imposed on the older culture.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    // relic of the evolutionary selection process. I am guessing at what you mean here... Is forming a couple that is oriented to raising kids no longer an evolutionary advantage?
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  I won’t claim without data that polyamorous couples do worse on divorce rates, but most people’s mental story of polyamory is a couple decided they want to be polyamorous, and then one feels insecure and the other one leaves them for the third. Polyamory doesn’t spark disapproval so much as skepticism.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    I thought this would be the default case too, but it's surprisingly nuanced. One red flag is anyone wanting to open a monogamous relationship that isn't more-or-less rock solid. Polyamory isn't something to try if you're uncertain about your current monogamous partner. The ideal case is for someone to go into the dating pool as openly polyamorous. But this will take a couple more generations, I think. Most people don't have the opportunity, because the idea that we need to choose a single partner has been hammered into us from the moment we were born. So I'm sympathetic to people who want to put in the work of exploring whether polyamory is possible within the bounds of an existing relationship. The most important thing is communication. There will be misunderstandings, but at no point should someone feel like something is being hidden from the other. That's different than respecting each person's individual relationships – one is underhanded, the other is a social contract. This isn't directly related to your point, but https://www.unicorns-r-us.com/ https://www.unicorns-r-us.com/ was an interesting read.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      It seems inevitable though. You can’t simultaneously be invested in a relationship and indifferent to its nature. This article points out a ton of issues and largely suggests just awkwardly independently dating other people as safer. Like “if you agree that everyone’s free then everyone’s free”. But… no that sounds dumb to me. I would not bet on such myriad bonds holding up in times of difficulty. Surely it can happen. But I just don’t buy it as a sensible strategy
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        It's like that scene from Arrested Development. https://youtu.be/7NnW7AA9STg?si=r32PdL56dR7NVQL4&t=39 https://youtu.be/7NnW7AA9STg?si=r32PdL56dR7NVQL4&t=39
- latchkey 3y ago
  > I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together. They are an odd awesome couple that are extremely well matched. [They don't have kids.] I even worked for Kink[dot]com (NSFW) for 4 years and I've thrown hundreds of sex parties with hundreds of people going bonkers all night long (and often into the next day). I've tried it myself in a few relationships and I'm happy that people experiment with it. But, I strongly doubt it'll ever be mainstream. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it'll always remain a fringe fantasy for the majority of the population. Especially outside of the bubble of certain very small parts of the world.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Polyamory seems to be a tremendous amount of work that also requires a high degree of emotional maturity. You are balancing multiple intimate, emotional relationships with other people. I doubt that most people with the fantasy are interested in maintaining the reality for a very long time.
    - _trampeltier 3y ago
      I think so too. I'm "just" in a open relationship and just this already does need so much more trust to my partner, than in a normal relationship.
    - bigDinosaur 3y ago
      Critics frequently express the notion the polyamory is precisely the opposite of emotional maturity i.e. willing or being able to commit to a single other person (which inherently does mean a certain sort of sacrifice, not having a cake and eating it too style).
      - yipbub 3y ago
        What do the critics have to say about why they think people should be motivated to commit to a single other person in the long term?
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  For the simple fact you can bring an STD home to your partner, it's not going to work in practice. "Honey, remember that mistress I was banging last month?" "Yes... darling" "She has HIV, you probably have it now too..." "Ok darling...no problems"
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Protection with non primary partners and STD testing (I'm a fan of monthly, YMMV). Some people take further steps (PrEP) depending on your activities and risk appetite. HIV transmission rates in hetero sexual activities is very low (<1% per unprotected sexual exposure) [1]. Infidelity rates in "monogamous" partnerships are already substantial (~10-25% depending on study) [2], poly only changes the honesty and logistics. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1254031 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1254031 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity#Incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity#Incidence
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      You’re comparing a monogamous relationship where there is a 10%-25% chance that one of you will have at least 1 extra partner, to a situation where at least one of you is regularly seeking out new partners. All else being equal the risk of contracting an STD is going to go way up. And there are other STDs to worry about than just HIV. Numerous drug resistant bacterial infections are on the rise. If the increased risk doesn’t bother you, that’s cool, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I’m not pretending the risk doesn’t exist. The data demonstrates the risk is low when safe sex is practiced. Practice safe sex and get tested often if you have multiple partners regularly.
        sarchertech 3y ago
        I’m not talking about pretending the risk doesn’t exist. I’m talking about pretending the increase in risk doesn’t exist with > poly only changes the honesty and logistics
- stompervitto 3y ago
  I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system[1]. 8000 years ago, 17 women successfully reproduced for every man who did[2]. In cultures with polygamy, this can be an advantage in warfare as there is a large body of excess young men to use as cannon fodder. But you could hardly argue that this compatible with the stable sorts of cultures most of the users of this site are more comfortable in. Giving men from the bottom 95% band of attractiveness access to reproduction via monogamy seems necessary to unlock the amount of productive labor needed for a technological society. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology) [2] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    > I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system. I haven't seen any convincing arguments that it does in humans. If women and men are equally polyamorous, that actually means more sex available broadly speaking, and when you aren't dating to reproduce or settle down forever, your standards can be looser as well. Now, I don't believe polyamory will ever be dominant, or even mainstream, I just despise the "loser need sex for cohesion" argument.
    - est31 3y ago
      The harems are already here. The most attractive individuals among both men and women get a lot of attention from people attracted to them, and thus have their harems and can sleep around a lot (if they want to). Say the "successful on Tinder" group of 5%-er men who go to the gym nonstop, and have won the genetic lottery. There is also the "influencer" group of women with countless thirsty men in their DMs. Not every woman manages to become an influencer, but many are extremely beautiful. Are people in these harems happier being delulu than in some monogamic relationship? I'm not really sure. Industrialized society has managed to deliver lots of high quality products by replacing the human component with machines... relationships are something entirely between humans however, so they are hard to improve with industrialized processes. Until robotic girlfriends/boyfriends arrive of course :).
- lostgame 3y ago
  I am truly happy to see this as well. As a woman who’s been extremely successfully poly for almost a decade, I feel like I fight against the grain whenever I am able to explain how well it works for myself and the other women I’m with…with various relationship styles in there. It’s sad how skeptical and dismissive folks are, and how unwilling they are to see how it can work for some, but not all. The lessons of radical honesty and communication skills that come from practicing polyamory can improve monogamous relationships as well. I feel it’s just too challenging for some.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. How many children do you have? (i.e. are you passing on your lifestyle to the next generation?)
  - klyrs 3y ago
    > (i.e. are you passing on your lifestyle to the next generation?) Memetic reproduction need not coincide with biological reproduction. Of the non-monogamists I know, almost all of them come from monogamous pairings.
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      > Memetic reproduction need not coincide with biological reproduction. For a couple generations, maybe. But if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts, eventually adaptations conferring resistance to the meme will become common. Like how sickle cell is more prominent in places where malaria is common, because it confers resistance.
      - klyrs 3y ago
        > if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts This phrase is doing so much work, the rest of your comment was able to retire in the Bahamas. Sounds a lot like the argument that gay people don't exist because they don't reproduce.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        Georgelemental 3y ago
        Sexual behavior was traditionally constrained by the requirements of survival—you needed a certain number of children to help till the fields and avoid starvation, so people subordinated personal desires to necessity. Today the risk of death is removed, so people do what they want—and "what they want" is therefore subject to greater selective pressure.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm as "indoctrination" severely downplays the collective learning of uncountable generations. There is a common view of cultural norms as at worst tyrannical or at best random and arbitrary, rather than the sophisticated and curated product of billions of human lives. Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions. Base human psychology and sociology must bow to their intellect and are theirs to shape as they choose. > For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, > Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, > Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; > Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. > For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, > Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    Your argument was stronger before your quote of scripture, or whatever it was.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      I don't want to plagiarize, but I can't think of a better descriptor of the cultural zeitgeist than "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (St Paul)
      - defrost 3y ago
        > Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions. It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation. Promoting what might made right as "the norm" severely downplays the alternative collective learning of uncountable generations.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  // Aella’s surveys help people make grounded and informed decisions about baseline behaviors Separate from this topic, I find that understanding of what's "mainstream" is completely irrelevant to informing my own decision making. It is mainstream to have a gambling addiction, be overweight, be heavily in debt, etc. The fact that something is "normal" doesn't tell you it's good.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    I don't think its surprising that people aren't deciding what turns them on based on population statistics. I'm no expert, but the consensus of what I've read and heard is that by and large people aren't deciding what turns them on, period. They may choose to constrain their behavior or not act on certain desires based on what society finds acceptable, but that does not really change their sexuality. However, if you feel alone, ashamed, afraid to reach out to others, etc, having a sense for how common certain kinks are can be extremely useful information. The objective of these statistics isn't to tell you what sexual behaviors are good or bad based on popularity... the very definition of a kink is that it is uncommon.
- User23 3y ago
  Polyamory is mainstream already and has been for some time. People just lie about it. Observably speaking the winner takes all high value men ploughing their way through the hookup marketplace while middling men settle for some combination of either sharing a woman, settling for a discarded older less fertile women, or picking single mothers with limited options at best dynamic is already operationally equivalent to old polygamous societies.
- rayiner 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rswail 3y ago
    Sorry, what? Why would you be sending a bunch of poly people anywhere? They exist as part of our culture and civilization. Is this some form of "the natural order of humankind is monogamous nuclear families"?
    - rayiner 3y ago
      Because I’m curious whether this is a pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive social construct. It’s a purely utilitarian question: could a bunch of polyamorous people successfully survive in their own third world village? Would they raise healthy kids that would be able to create civilizational progress? I don’t know the answer to that, hence the experiment.
      - mturmon 3y ago
        I’m personally curious if our cultural obsession with JS devs is pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive. The logical way to test this would be to send a bunch of JS devs to a Bangladeshi village and see if they survive. In other words, you can’t really test a lot of social constructs in isolation.
        rayiner 3y ago
        JS dev is a specialized trade that fills a social function within a larger society that needs many different kinds of jobs. Does polyamory serve such a specialized social function? Does society need any poly people at all? Like, if the world is ending and we need to send a 500 people to Mars to preserve humanity. What fraction of poly people do we need to bring to ensure the success of the mission?
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > I’d love to run an experiment where we send a bunch of poly people to a remote location and see if they can create civilization. Lmao. This has been tried and failed with every sex cult. The Children of God are the best (worst) example, having started during the free love era. It actually does hold itself together well enough, until the old guard gets bored and looks to the kids as their new source of sexual gratification.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  I would not want to live in a society where there is a large cohort of unmarried single men. Selfishness only works when other people can also be selfish.
- shrubble 3y ago
  Society to survive over the long term, requires reproduction. Based on your knowledge, what is the reproduction rate of poly's?
- paganel 3y ago
  > For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream Extremely bleak. The /redscarepod people, for all their minuses, are more than correct on this. I don't see any way out of this for the West, at least not in the short term.
- charlie0 3y ago
  I'm not poly, but if I had to guess, the resurgence of that is the pendulum swinging back the other way against how atomized social media has made us. Many people, myself included, don't many or any friends. Poly is one way of closing that gap for those who are open minded and searching for deep familial like bonds. The coming advent of genetic engineering will make poly more interesting as it be possible for more than 2 people to be biological parents. In fact, we see this already in popular sci fi like The Expanse.
- dahart 3y ago
  > The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society. I used to think this and remember my friends and I starting to have this idea that marriage is a social construct in high school and college as we tried on our philosopher hats. A little later I read an interesting book called Sperm Wars [1] that largely tried to line up the results of scientific papers and behavioral surveys with attitudes and narratives about sex. They had what was a compelling argument for me that the cultural ideas behind monogamy are a social rationalization for what we’d be largely doing anyway. In other words, they argued that from as far as they could tell, we tend to have serially monogamous pairings, and the culture and religion views on marriage are just after-the-fact explanations for it, not the primary cause of it. There are, of course, lots of other species on our planet that also tend toward serial monogamy, and don’t have the same social constructs that humans do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Of course, worth mentioning that arguing in favor of de-stigmatizing polyamory does not imply stigmatizing monogamy. If people are naturally monogamous, and therefore produce social structures that reflect monogamy, then it means there should be no fear whatsoever in de-stigmatizing polyamory.
  - postmodest 3y ago
    I feel like it's just much more likely that a love triangle will end up with unbalanced weights than a love pair. Kind of by definition. And in a world where the relationship is procreative, the multi-decade long shared task demands stability.
    - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
      It -can- be unbalanced. I've seen women and men with a 'hierarchy' of partners, and they all know it (these were typically D/s relationships as well, so it was at least consentual [0]) I've also seen cases where people just like to have a routine to go through. My partner and I are no longer practicing poly, but even when it started they were, aside from special occasions, just a one night a week thing. It worked out well because it was a night I worked late, so we couldn't do anything anyway. But there were times it was a little unbalanced one way or another, really though as long as you can communicate, it can get worked out. As far as procreation/etc, Aside from Mormon and other polygamous cultures/religions, it doesn't NOT work out. Or, I've seen scenarios where a polyamorous relationship allowed couples to have children where they could not otherwise. I think harem builders create lots of animosity tho. [0] well, parts were. Others were abusive.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  As far as I'm concerned this whole "culture war" is just short termism vs long termism. You can be childfree, polyamorous, body positive, whatever, and enjoy your youth. In older age, your 50s and 60s onwards say, your health, your partner, your family become the basis of your life. It's the ultimate "fuck around and find out".
  - kwere 3y ago
    "Nanny state will take care of all negative externalities, thats what i vote for"
zem 3y ago
this is brilliant: 8<-------------------------- The entire process was a series of tiny, painstaking tradeoffs. Each time I decided to make a question into a scale, this boosted the total time it took to complete the survey by a few seconds. And I had to care about those few seconds. In the end, the average time it took users to complete the survey was 40 minutes. This is really long for a survey! You really have to get people to care about it in order to finish. So: How do I get them to care? I decided to give users a score at the end — How freaky are you compared to others?
growingkittens 3y ago
> But this meant I needed to define fetish categories, and there is no good research on this anywhere. I had to invent them. This is a problem I see in many different domains. There will be lots of research papers, lots of small-scale categorization, but nothing that truly categorizes the whole subject.
jncfhnb 3y ago
I feel like she points out a lot of reasonable constraints. I don’t think she really overcomes many of them. You just won’t get a reliable survey on such things. But that’s ok. A sample of Vore fforumers is probably just as interesting as Vore festishists. I don’t think it needs to generalize at all.
- InSteady 3y ago
  There is basically never a perfect survey, but there is a lot of value in taking pains to not bias your sample (it allows you to tentitiviely draw certain types of conclusions that you otherwise absolutely cannot). Biased sampling happens constantly, it's a matter of degrees and often opinion whether a study should be considered able to draw a certain conclusion. IDK, it sounds like the author has taken quite a few steps beyond what your average social scientist does.. the vast majority of social science (and a fair bit from other categories) is insanely biased because its participants are 100% students at a specific college or region. Yet this is treated as perfectly acceptable because it's part of the norms of academic research.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Like I said she acknowledges them but I don’t feel she really addresses them sufficiently to make different claims. It’s just not possible in a group this niche. Frankly I don’t believe that fetishes are anything but learned associations so it’s kind of silly to imagine the findings will generalize. She gets close to this idea in her survey design but I feel like she doesn’t acknowledge this overall. Like, cake sitting. Dumb as hell. But sure I can see how it would lead people to shame or sensory triggers that they have learned on a second order to be arousing. And that after this they’ve become dependent on that specific thing even. But it’s definitely not an intrinsic association.
deleted 3y ago
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monkeycantype 3y ago
not a response of the article - just a contribution to the conversation here: anyone into kink should be able to understand there is a complex relationship between constraint and freedom. Yes monogamy is as a constraint, but that constraint creates a space of freedom, in which people can reveal themselves honestly while minimizing any sense that anything revealed good or bad will be judged relative to alternative partners. Not everybody needs that, not everybody needs monogamy to create that dynamic, but it would be mistake to think that monogamy doesn't offer anything for thoughtful liberated people in exchange for the constraints it requires
- klyrs 3y ago
  I tend to agree, monogamy is a kink.
irrational 3y ago
> There were nearly 900 fetishes That is way higher than I would have expected. By at least an order of magnitude. Has she published a list?
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Pretty sure that list is uncountable. Somewhere there is someone whose fetish is peeled grapes.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > Somewhere there someone whose fetish is peeled grapes. I mean, why else would they perform surgery on one? The robot obviously has a thing for it.
  - inhumantsar 3y ago
    Rule 34 has enough evidence behind it to be considered a natural law at this point
    - ccvannorman 3y ago
      My personal fetish is the degree of undecidability of fetish lists. Ooh baby!
- calciphus 3y ago
  As always, there is a relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/468/ https://xkcd.com/468/
- zoogeny 3y ago
  I found this post on her substack: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3 https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity...
LoganDark 3y ago
Are kinks really that rare? Like, don't most people have something that turns them on, in some way? Or does this article only refer to a very specific definition of "kink" past a certain degree of "freakiness"? If someone is turned on by cuddling or emotional bonding, are those kinks? I personally consider cuddling a kink. So does hugging, or holding hands, or whatever. Is this not a popular sentiment? Are kinks only things like vore..?
- InSteady 3y ago
  Kink (regarding sexual preferences) is formally defined in various dictionaries as including a component of being uncommon, unconventional, etc. Holding hands, cuddling, and emotional bonding (along with kissing and various kinds of caressing) are probably among the most common sexual preferences on earth, so for kink to retain its semantic meaning they kind of have to be excluded. What you describe are sexual preferences, and perfectly valid ones! Just not kinks. That said, when people are casually or intimately discuss their sexual preferences, sometimes "kink" will be used as a substitute for the more cumbersome and clinical sounding "sexual preferences", so as long as contextual cues are good you are generally fine to give your preferences (when you are comfortable doing so). Kink is a fairly wide spectrum, because it turns out all kinds of random stuff turns people on when you are looking at large groups. Honestly, the kind of work the author/researcher is doing could go a long ways towards actually settling on some kind of formal delineation that isn't completely arbitrary (but still somewhat arbitrary of course). I gather vore is fairly unusual as far as kinks go, with things like spanking, foot fetish, leather, latex, etc, being more common but still not seriously appealing to the majority of people.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    The clinical sounding thing doesn't actually sound quite right to me. "Kink" for me includes things that cause arousal for other reasons that aren't necessarily that. For example I have kinks that have absolutely nothing to do with penetration or even being in the context of any sort of sexual activity. They're just things I like in that way.
gizmo686 3y ago
Minor point as the main body of the article doesn't attempt to answer it, but: > Why are there way more women interested in submission than men interested in dominance? In my anecdotal experience, there are more everyone interested in submission than dominance. And the gap between male subs and female doms is even greater.
eszed 3y ago
I just took the survey, answering with complete and total honesty, and > Your kink equivalent is Mother Theresa (2nd percentile) LOL! I mean, I know I'm vanilla (a rich, complex, and expensive spice, I'll have you to know), but if Mother Theresa represents the 2nd percentile, who's the standard-bearer for 1st? My serious point is that I strongly suspect that people towards (ahem) my end of the spectrum are likely to be under-represented among the takers of the survey. The people most likely to take a survey about kink are the people most into, well, kink. I don't know how any survey design, no matter how good it is in a vacuum, can square that circle. (I say that with all possible respect for Aella and her work. I've followed her blog for ages - her essay about growing up within, and trying to shed, a fundamentalist upbringing is one of the best things I've ever read - and sexology research is fascinating. I just don't know how you can draw robust conclusions from survey data, given the social pro- and in-hibibitions most people have inherited.)
- Jedd 3y ago
  If you read Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position, you'll discover that Theresa was quite the sadist. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58664511-the-missionary-position https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58664511-the-missionary-...
  - 93po 3y ago
    Claims of her sadism are wildly overstated and misrepresented
    - hn_go_brrrrr 3y ago
      I can't tell if this is a Mark Twain joke or if you've just declined to provide any support for your argument.
      - 93po 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism
piroslav 3y ago
sample data based on clinical porn addicts isn't good representation of spciety, and thats one of the reasons why I ignore any """""research""""" she does.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
I mean the survey tried to be "equal" across the board, but as a gay man it wasn't really... There were plenty of questions specifically directed at "enjoy doing this to a woman" but no "enjoy doing this to a man" equivalent. Ie "Assume you're answering for scenarios that involve your preferred gender;" doesn't really work when one of the answers involves "into a vagina". Perhaps it would've been better to generically phrase it as "into your partner's vagina/anus" or something. Plus I find it interesting that most of the "kinksters" I know (from the furry/pup/gay community) will often loudly & proudly claim to be into something when it's really only something they may have tried once before, or only do on occasion. I think there's definitely a lot of posturing involved. score is 67.09 aka "The Joker" (90th percentile). Hmmm, I suppose most people do find cat boys/furry stuff weird, then...

225 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

Aella being open about her own experiences has been a huge inspiration. She gets a lot of hate, but somehow she lets it roll off her. For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society. It was wonderful discovering that there are a whole community of people who live happy lives without this. Aella’s surveys help people make grounded and informed decisions about baseline behaviors. Most people don’t want to talk about their true feelings, and when they do, they usually dress it up to make it socially acceptable. Polling large numbers of people is at least one antidote.

orangepurple 3y ago
I'm happy that people are happy. Choices also have consequences. Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Quite the opposite! Much work had to be done to force both husbands and wives into monogamy over the course of thousands of years. If anything, our evolutionary instincts are the other way around. Submitted for your consideration: https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1708600990658711685 https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1708600990658711685
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    I read both posts. I'm not buying the conspiracy theory that monogamy is a psychological operation to lure men into a sense of duty and to accept responsibilities. However, if it is true, then the writer builds a strong case against polygamy or polyamory. The writer indicates that rulers of ancient civilizations struggled with apathetic hedonistic polygamous or polyamarous men.
    - temporarara 3y ago
      Indeed, making men willing to work hard to provide for their family has been pretty awesome psyop. I really can't see any downsides if civilized society is the ultimate goal. I can just imagine how it feels when the ruler has a big harem and you don't really have a realistic chance for creating a family, but I don't think it makes you work harder once you realize it.
- krapp 3y ago
  >Choosing one partner for life is likely a relic of the evolutionary selection process If anything, it's a relic of the Abrahamic faiths and their influence over Western cultures. Many other cultures have practiced polygamy since antiquity.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    How would you explain the many animals that have monogamous relations? Is it from roosting around too many churches?
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      The government needed to give them a sense of duty and responsibility to save them from apathy (see the comment linking to the twitter thread and read the first 2 posts)
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      There was a wonderful passage in American Gods about this phenomenon: ----- "Remember," she [Easter] said to Wednesday [Odin], as they walked, "I'm rich. I'm doing just peachy. Why should I help you?" "You're one of us," he said. "You're as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of us. It's pretty clear whose side you should be on." They reached a sidewalk coffeehouse, went inside. There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced on them, smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders. Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesday's square gray hand. "I'm telling you," she said, "I'm doing fine. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my name, old wolf." "And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their love?" he said, dryly. "Don't be an asshole." Suddenly she sounded very tired. She sipped her mochaccino. "Serious question, m'dear. Certainly I would agree that millions upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs. But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss?" This to their waitress. She said "You need another espresso?" "No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I are disagreeing over what the word 'Easter' means. Would you happen to know?" The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. Then she said, "I don't know about any of that Christian stuff. I'm a pagan." The woman behind the counter said, "I think it's like Latin or something for 'Christ has risen' maybe." "Really?" said Wednesday. "Yeah, sure," said the woman. "Easter. Just like the sun rises in the east, you know." "The risen son. Of course -- a most logical supposition." The woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their waitress. "I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?" "Worship?" "That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?" Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, "The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know." "Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?" "She's the goddess within us all," said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. "She doesn't need a name." "Ah," said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, "so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon, while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the sea-foam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?" "You're making fun of me," she said. "We don't do any of that stuff you were saying." She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. "Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma'am?" Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered. They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer. "There," said Wednesday, "is one who 'does not have the faith and will not have the fun.' Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see -- I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favor here -- this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets." Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing. "We could try it," continued Wednesday. "But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don't tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all." Tears stood out in her eyes. "I know that," she said, quietly. "I'm not a fool." ----- Just as in the book's depiction, your parent comment has managed to confuse a practice that a culture older than Christianity imposed on it with one that Christianity imposed on the older culture.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  // relic of the evolutionary selection process. I am guessing at what you mean here... Is forming a couple that is oriented to raising kids no longer an evolutionary advantage?
jncfhnb 3y ago
I won’t claim without data that polyamorous couples do worse on divorce rates, but most people’s mental story of polyamory is a couple decided they want to be polyamorous, and then one feels insecure and the other one leaves them for the third. Polyamory doesn’t spark disapproval so much as skepticism.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  I thought this would be the default case too, but it's surprisingly nuanced. One red flag is anyone wanting to open a monogamous relationship that isn't more-or-less rock solid. Polyamory isn't something to try if you're uncertain about your current monogamous partner. The ideal case is for someone to go into the dating pool as openly polyamorous. But this will take a couple more generations, I think. Most people don't have the opportunity, because the idea that we need to choose a single partner has been hammered into us from the moment we were born. So I'm sympathetic to people who want to put in the work of exploring whether polyamory is possible within the bounds of an existing relationship. The most important thing is communication. There will be misunderstandings, but at no point should someone feel like something is being hidden from the other. That's different than respecting each person's individual relationships – one is underhanded, the other is a social contract. This isn't directly related to your point, but https://www.unicorns-r-us.com/ https://www.unicorns-r-us.com/ was an interesting read.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    It seems inevitable though. You can’t simultaneously be invested in a relationship and indifferent to its nature. This article points out a ton of issues and largely suggests just awkwardly independently dating other people as safer. Like “if you agree that everyone’s free then everyone’s free”. But… no that sounds dumb to me. I would not bet on such myriad bonds holding up in times of difficulty. Surely it can happen. But I just don’t buy it as a sensible strategy
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      It's like that scene from Arrested Development. https://youtu.be/7NnW7AA9STg?si=r32PdL56dR7NVQL4&t=39 https://youtu.be/7NnW7AA9STg?si=r32PdL56dR7NVQL4&t=39
latchkey 3y ago
> I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together. They are an odd awesome couple that are extremely well matched. [They don't have kids.] I even worked for Kink[dot]com (NSFW) for 4 years and I've thrown hundreds of sex parties with hundreds of people going bonkers all night long (and often into the next day). I've tried it myself in a few relationships and I'm happy that people experiment with it. But, I strongly doubt it'll ever be mainstream. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it'll always remain a fringe fantasy for the majority of the population. Especially outside of the bubble of certain very small parts of the world.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Polyamory seems to be a tremendous amount of work that also requires a high degree of emotional maturity. You are balancing multiple intimate, emotional relationships with other people. I doubt that most people with the fantasy are interested in maintaining the reality for a very long time.
  - _trampeltier 3y ago
    I think so too. I'm "just" in a open relationship and just this already does need so much more trust to my partner, than in a normal relationship.
  - bigDinosaur 3y ago
    Critics frequently express the notion the polyamory is precisely the opposite of emotional maturity i.e. willing or being able to commit to a single other person (which inherently does mean a certain sort of sacrifice, not having a cake and eating it too style).
    - yipbub 3y ago
      What do the critics have to say about why they think people should be motivated to commit to a single other person in the long term?
ChatGTP 3y ago
For the simple fact you can bring an STD home to your partner, it's not going to work in practice. "Honey, remember that mistress I was banging last month?" "Yes... darling" "She has HIV, you probably have it now too..." "Ok darling...no problems"
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Protection with non primary partners and STD testing (I'm a fan of monthly, YMMV). Some people take further steps (PrEP) depending on your activities and risk appetite. HIV transmission rates in hetero sexual activities is very low (<1% per unprotected sexual exposure) [1]. Infidelity rates in "monogamous" partnerships are already substantial (~10-25% depending on study) [2], poly only changes the honesty and logistics. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1254031 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1254031 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity#Incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity#Incidence
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    You’re comparing a monogamous relationship where there is a 10%-25% chance that one of you will have at least 1 extra partner, to a situation where at least one of you is regularly seeking out new partners. All else being equal the risk of contracting an STD is going to go way up. And there are other STDs to worry about than just HIV. Numerous drug resistant bacterial infections are on the rise. If the increased risk doesn’t bother you, that’s cool, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      I’m not pretending the risk doesn’t exist. The data demonstrates the risk is low when safe sex is practiced. Practice safe sex and get tested often if you have multiple partners regularly.
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        I’m not talking about pretending the risk doesn’t exist. I’m talking about pretending the increase in risk doesn’t exist with > poly only changes the honesty and logistics
stompervitto 3y ago
I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system[1]. 8000 years ago, 17 women successfully reproduced for every man who did[2]. In cultures with polygamy, this can be an advantage in warfare as there is a large body of excess young men to use as cannon fodder. But you could hardly argue that this compatible with the stable sorts of cultures most of the users of this site are more comfortable in. Giving men from the bottom 95% band of attractiveness access to reproduction via monogamy seems necessary to unlock the amount of productive labor needed for a technological society. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology) [2] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  > I haven't seen any convincing arguments that polyamory does not reduce to a harem system. I haven't seen any convincing arguments that it does in humans. If women and men are equally polyamorous, that actually means more sex available broadly speaking, and when you aren't dating to reproduce or settle down forever, your standards can be looser as well. Now, I don't believe polyamory will ever be dominant, or even mainstream, I just despise the "loser need sex for cohesion" argument.
  - est31 3y ago
    The harems are already here. The most attractive individuals among both men and women get a lot of attention from people attracted to them, and thus have their harems and can sleep around a lot (if they want to). Say the "successful on Tinder" group of 5%-er men who go to the gym nonstop, and have won the genetic lottery. There is also the "influencer" group of women with countless thirsty men in their DMs. Not every woman manages to become an influencer, but many are extremely beautiful. Are people in these harems happier being delulu than in some monogamic relationship? I'm not really sure. Industrialized society has managed to deliver lots of high quality products by replacing the human component with machines... relationships are something entirely between humans however, so they are hard to improve with industrialized processes. Until robotic girlfriends/boyfriends arrive of course :).
lostgame 3y ago
I am truly happy to see this as well. As a woman who’s been extremely successfully poly for almost a decade, I feel like I fight against the grain whenever I am able to explain how well it works for myself and the other women I’m with…with various relationship styles in there. It’s sad how skeptical and dismissive folks are, and how unwilling they are to see how it can work for some, but not all. The lessons of radical honesty and communication skills that come from practicing polyamory can improve monogamous relationships as well. I feel it’s just too challenging for some.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Georgelemental 3y ago
> For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream. How many children do you have? (i.e. are you passing on your lifestyle to the next generation?)
- klyrs 3y ago
  > (i.e. are you passing on your lifestyle to the next generation?) Memetic reproduction need not coincide with biological reproduction. Of the non-monogamists I know, almost all of them come from monogamous pairings.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    > Memetic reproduction need not coincide with biological reproduction. For a couple generations, maybe. But if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts, eventually adaptations conferring resistance to the meme will become common. Like how sickle cell is more prominent in places where malaria is common, because it confers resistance.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      > if the meme is extremely detrimental to the evolutionary fitness of its hosts This phrase is doing so much work, the rest of your comment was able to retire in the Bahamas. Sounds a lot like the argument that gay people don't exist because they don't reproduce.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Georgelemental 3y ago
        Sexual behavior was traditionally constrained by the requirements of survival—you needed a certain number of children to help till the fields and avoid starvation, so people subordinated personal desires to necessity. Today the risk of death is removed, so people do what they want—and "what they want" is therefore subject to greater selective pressure.
paulddraper 3y ago
Dismissing a multi-millenia multi-cultural fundamental norm as "indoctrination" severely downplays the collective learning of uncountable generations. There is a common view of cultural norms as at worst tyrannical or at best random and arbitrary, rather than the sophisticated and curated product of billions of human lives. Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions. Base human psychology and sociology must bow to their intellect and are theirs to shape as they choose. > For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, > Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, > Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; > Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. > For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, > Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
- flerchin 3y ago
  Your argument was stronger before your quote of scripture, or whatever it was.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    I don't want to plagiarize, but I can't think of a better descriptor of the cultural zeitgeist than "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (St Paul)
    - defrost 3y ago
      > Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions. It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation. Promoting what might made right as "the norm" severely downplays the alternative collective learning of uncountable generations.
xyzelement 3y ago
// Aella’s surveys help people make grounded and informed decisions about baseline behaviors Separate from this topic, I find that understanding of what's "mainstream" is completely irrelevant to informing my own decision making. It is mainstream to have a gambling addiction, be overweight, be heavily in debt, etc. The fact that something is "normal" doesn't tell you it's good.
- InSteady 3y ago
  I don't think its surprising that people aren't deciding what turns them on based on population statistics. I'm no expert, but the consensus of what I've read and heard is that by and large people aren't deciding what turns them on, period. They may choose to constrain their behavior or not act on certain desires based on what society finds acceptable, but that does not really change their sexuality. However, if you feel alone, ashamed, afraid to reach out to others, etc, having a sense for how common certain kinks are can be extremely useful information. The objective of these statistics isn't to tell you what sexual behaviors are good or bad based on popularity... the very definition of a kink is that it is uncommon.
User23 3y ago
Polyamory is mainstream already and has been for some time. People just lie about it. Observably speaking the winner takes all high value men ploughing their way through the hookup marketplace while middling men settle for some combination of either sharing a woman, settling for a discarded older less fertile women, or picking single mothers with limited options at best dynamic is already operationally equivalent to old polygamous societies.
rayiner 3y ago
[flagged]
- rswail 3y ago
  Sorry, what? Why would you be sending a bunch of poly people anywhere? They exist as part of our culture and civilization. Is this some form of "the natural order of humankind is monogamous nuclear families"?
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Because I’m curious whether this is a pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive social construct. It’s a purely utilitarian question: could a bunch of polyamorous people successfully survive in their own third world village? Would they raise healthy kids that would be able to create civilizational progress? I don’t know the answer to that, hence the experiment.
    - mturmon 3y ago
      I’m personally curious if our cultural obsession with JS devs is pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive. The logical way to test this would be to send a bunch of JS devs to a Bangladeshi village and see if they survive. In other words, you can’t really test a lot of social constructs in isolation.
      - rayiner 3y ago
        JS dev is a specialized trade that fills a social function within a larger society that needs many different kinds of jobs. Does polyamory serve such a specialized social function? Does society need any poly people at all? Like, if the world is ending and we need to send a 500 people to Mars to preserve humanity. What fraction of poly people do we need to bring to ensure the success of the mission?
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > I’d love to run an experiment where we send a bunch of poly people to a remote location and see if they can create civilization. Lmao. This has been tried and failed with every sex cult. The Children of God are the best (worst) example, having started during the free love era. It actually does hold itself together well enough, until the old guard gets bored and looks to the kids as their new source of sexual gratification.
barrysteve 3y ago
I would not want to live in a society where there is a large cohort of unmarried single men. Selfishness only works when other people can also be selfish.
shrubble 3y ago
Society to survive over the long term, requires reproduction. Based on your knowledge, what is the reproduction rate of poly's?
paganel 3y ago
> For my part, I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream Extremely bleak. The /redscarepod people, for all their minuses, are more than correct on this. I don't see any way out of this for the West, at least not in the short term.
charlie0 3y ago
I'm not poly, but if I had to guess, the resurgence of that is the pendulum swinging back the other way against how atomized social media has made us. Many people, myself included, don't many or any friends. Poly is one way of closing that gap for those who are open minded and searching for deep familial like bonds. The coming advent of genetic engineering will make poly more interesting as it be possible for more than 2 people to be biological parents. In fact, we see this already in popular sci fi like The Expanse.
dahart 3y ago
> The idea that we have to choose one partner for life is so indoctrinated into the fabric of society. I used to think this and remember my friends and I starting to have this idea that marriage is a social construct in high school and college as we tried on our philosopher hats. A little later I read an interesting book called Sperm Wars [1] that largely tried to line up the results of scientific papers and behavioral surveys with attitudes and narratives about sex. They had what was a compelling argument for me that the cultural ideas behind monogamy are a social rationalization for what we’d be largely doing anyway. In other words, they argued that from as far as they could tell, we tend to have serially monogamous pairings, and the culture and religion views on marriage are just after-the-fact explanations for it, not the primary cause of it. There are, of course, lots of other species on our planet that also tend toward serial monogamy, and don’t have the same social constructs that humans do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars
- kibwen 3y ago
  Of course, worth mentioning that arguing in favor of de-stigmatizing polyamory does not imply stigmatizing monogamy. If people are naturally monogamous, and therefore produce social structures that reflect monogamy, then it means there should be no fear whatsoever in de-stigmatizing polyamory.
- postmodest 3y ago
  I feel like it's just much more likely that a love triangle will end up with unbalanced weights than a love pair. Kind of by definition. And in a world where the relationship is procreative, the multi-decade long shared task demands stability.
  - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
    It -can- be unbalanced. I've seen women and men with a 'hierarchy' of partners, and they all know it (these were typically D/s relationships as well, so it was at least consentual [0]) I've also seen cases where people just like to have a routine to go through. My partner and I are no longer practicing poly, but even when it started they were, aside from special occasions, just a one night a week thing. It worked out well because it was a night I worked late, so we couldn't do anything anyway. But there were times it was a little unbalanced one way or another, really though as long as you can communicate, it can get worked out. As far as procreation/etc, Aside from Mormon and other polygamous cultures/religions, it doesn't NOT work out. Or, I've seen scenarios where a polyamorous relationship allowed couples to have children where they could not otherwise. I think harem builders create lots of animosity tho. [0] well, parts were. Others were abusive.
throwaway22032 3y ago
As far as I'm concerned this whole "culture war" is just short termism vs long termism. You can be childfree, polyamorous, body positive, whatever, and enjoy your youth. In older age, your 50s and 60s onwards say, your health, your partner, your family become the basis of your life. It's the ultimate "fuck around and find out".
- kwere 3y ago
  "Nanny state will take care of all negative externalities, thats what i vote for"

zem 3y ago

this is brilliant: 8<-------------------------- The entire process was a series of tiny, painstaking tradeoffs. Each time I decided to make a question into a scale, this boosted the total time it took to complete the survey by a few seconds. And I had to care about those few seconds. In the end, the average time it took users to complete the survey was 40 minutes. This is really long for a survey! You really have to get people to care about it in order to finish. So: How do I get them to care? I decided to give users a score at the end — How freaky are you compared to others?

growingkittens 3y ago

> But this meant I needed to define fetish categories, and there is no good research on this anywhere. I had to invent them. This is a problem I see in many different domains. There will be lots of research papers, lots of small-scale categorization, but nothing that truly categorizes the whole subject.

jncfhnb 3y ago

I feel like she points out a lot of reasonable constraints. I don’t think she really overcomes many of them. You just won’t get a reliable survey on such things. But that’s ok. A sample of Vore fforumers is probably just as interesting as Vore festishists. I don’t think it needs to generalize at all.

InSteady 3y ago
There is basically never a perfect survey, but there is a lot of value in taking pains to not bias your sample (it allows you to tentitiviely draw certain types of conclusions that you otherwise absolutely cannot). Biased sampling happens constantly, it's a matter of degrees and often opinion whether a study should be considered able to draw a certain conclusion. IDK, it sounds like the author has taken quite a few steps beyond what your average social scientist does.. the vast majority of social science (and a fair bit from other categories) is insanely biased because its participants are 100% students at a specific college or region. Yet this is treated as perfectly acceptable because it's part of the norms of academic research.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Like I said she acknowledges them but I don’t feel she really addresses them sufficiently to make different claims. It’s just not possible in a group this niche. Frankly I don’t believe that fetishes are anything but learned associations so it’s kind of silly to imagine the findings will generalize. She gets close to this idea in her survey design but I feel like she doesn’t acknowledge this overall. Like, cake sitting. Dumb as hell. But sure I can see how it would lead people to shame or sensory triggers that they have learned on a second order to be arousing. And that after this they’ve become dependent on that specific thing even. But it’s definitely not an intrinsic association.

deleted 3y ago

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monkeycantype 3y ago

not a response of the article - just a contribution to the conversation here: anyone into kink should be able to understand there is a complex relationship between constraint and freedom. Yes monogamy is as a constraint, but that constraint creates a space of freedom, in which people can reveal themselves honestly while minimizing any sense that anything revealed good or bad will be judged relative to alternative partners. Not everybody needs that, not everybody needs monogamy to create that dynamic, but it would be mistake to think that monogamy doesn't offer anything for thoughtful liberated people in exchange for the constraints it requires

klyrs 3y ago
I tend to agree, monogamy is a kink.

irrational 3y ago

> There were nearly 900 fetishes That is way higher than I would have expected. By at least an order of magnitude. Has she published a list?

paulddraper 3y ago
Pretty sure that list is uncountable. Somewhere there is someone whose fetish is peeled grapes.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > Somewhere there someone whose fetish is peeled grapes. I mean, why else would they perform surgery on one? The robot obviously has a thing for it.
- inhumantsar 3y ago
  Rule 34 has enough evidence behind it to be considered a natural law at this point
  - ccvannorman 3y ago
    My personal fetish is the degree of undecidability of fetish lists. Ooh baby!
calciphus 3y ago
As always, there is a relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/468/ https://xkcd.com/468/
zoogeny 3y ago
I found this post on her substack: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3 https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity...

LoganDark 3y ago

Are kinks really that rare? Like, don't most people have something that turns them on, in some way? Or does this article only refer to a very specific definition of "kink" past a certain degree of "freakiness"? If someone is turned on by cuddling or emotional bonding, are those kinks? I personally consider cuddling a kink. So does hugging, or holding hands, or whatever. Is this not a popular sentiment? Are kinks only things like vore..?

InSteady 3y ago
Kink (regarding sexual preferences) is formally defined in various dictionaries as including a component of being uncommon, unconventional, etc. Holding hands, cuddling, and emotional bonding (along with kissing and various kinds of caressing) are probably among the most common sexual preferences on earth, so for kink to retain its semantic meaning they kind of have to be excluded. What you describe are sexual preferences, and perfectly valid ones! Just not kinks. That said, when people are casually or intimately discuss their sexual preferences, sometimes "kink" will be used as a substitute for the more cumbersome and clinical sounding "sexual preferences", so as long as contextual cues are good you are generally fine to give your preferences (when you are comfortable doing so). Kink is a fairly wide spectrum, because it turns out all kinds of random stuff turns people on when you are looking at large groups. Honestly, the kind of work the author/researcher is doing could go a long ways towards actually settling on some kind of formal delineation that isn't completely arbitrary (but still somewhat arbitrary of course). I gather vore is fairly unusual as far as kinks go, with things like spanking, foot fetish, leather, latex, etc, being more common but still not seriously appealing to the majority of people.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  The clinical sounding thing doesn't actually sound quite right to me. "Kink" for me includes things that cause arousal for other reasons that aren't necessarily that. For example I have kinks that have absolutely nothing to do with penetration or even being in the context of any sort of sexual activity. They're just things I like in that way.

gizmo686 3y ago

Minor point as the main body of the article doesn't attempt to answer it, but: > Why are there way more women interested in submission than men interested in dominance? In my anecdotal experience, there are more everyone interested in submission than dominance. And the gap between male subs and female doms is even greater.

eszed 3y ago

I just took the survey, answering with complete and total honesty, and > Your kink equivalent is Mother Theresa (2nd percentile) LOL! I mean, I know I'm vanilla (a rich, complex, and expensive spice, I'll have you to know), but if Mother Theresa represents the 2nd percentile, who's the standard-bearer for 1st? My serious point is that I strongly suspect that people towards (ahem) my end of the spectrum are likely to be under-represented among the takers of the survey. The people most likely to take a survey about kink are the people most into, well, kink. I don't know how any survey design, no matter how good it is in a vacuum, can square that circle. (I say that with all possible respect for Aella and her work. I've followed her blog for ages - her essay about growing up within, and trying to shed, a fundamentalist upbringing is one of the best things I've ever read - and sexology research is fascinating. I just don't know how you can draw robust conclusions from survey data, given the social pro- and in-hibibitions most people have inherited.)

Jedd 3y ago
If you read Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position, you'll discover that Theresa was quite the sadist. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58664511-the-missionary-position https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58664511-the-missionary-...
- 93po 3y ago
  Claims of her sadism are wildly overstated and misrepresented
  - hn_go_brrrrr 3y ago
    I can't tell if this is a Mark Twain joke or if you've just declined to provide any support for your argument.
    - 93po 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism

piroslav 3y ago

sample data based on clinical porn addicts isn't good representation of spciety, and thats one of the reasons why I ignore any """""research""""" she does.

fennecfoxy 3y ago

I mean the survey tried to be "equal" across the board, but as a gay man it wasn't really... There were plenty of questions specifically directed at "enjoy doing this to a woman" but no "enjoy doing this to a man" equivalent. Ie "Assume you're answering for scenarios that involve your preferred gender;" doesn't really work when one of the answers involves "into a vagina". Perhaps it would've been better to generically phrase it as "into your partner's vagina/anus" or something. Plus I find it interesting that most of the "kinksters" I know (from the furry/pup/gay community) will often loudly & proudly claim to be into something when it's really only something they may have tried once before, or only do on occasion. I think there's definitely a lot of posturing involved. score is 67.09 aka "The Joker" (90th percentile). Hmmm, I suppose most people do find cat boys/furry stuff weird, then...