being a deviant with ocd
2025-09-04
when your brain is tightly structured around concepts of ethics and morality, it feels impossible to be kinky. i'm violently beating someone, which is Wrong, so i'm a Bad Person. i'm getting off to her being unconscious, which is Harmful, so i'm a Bad Person. i'm fucking someone roleplaying as an animal, which is Disgusting, so i'm a Bad Person. it all kinda comes down to wanting to believe that i'm a piece of shit.
it turns out that attacking the thoughts one by one is about as effective as bailing water out of your holey boat with a spoon, and even attacking swathes of them gives you a bucket without patching the leak. sure, i'm not a bad person for engaging in light physical sadism, but emotional sadism is a step too far. sure, it's okay to have a somno kink, but intox play makes you a rapist. sure, some roleplay is justifiable...nooo, now i feel guilty again....is it okay? am i sure? can you reassure me? can you check to make sure it's okay? and i bail water out faster, desperately trying to check and check and recheck that i am, in fact, not going to suffer a thousand punishments for participating in consensual kink. because that's the word i cling to. it's okay because it was consensual. it's okay because everyone gave freely given, revocable, informed, enthusiastic, and specific consent. it's okay. i've patched the leak, right?
the patch comes blasting off when it doesn't work like that.
freely given - no action is completely without consequence. i can maintain my best possible practices of treating my partners well, choosing partners with as equal footing to me as i can, and modeling that i am a safe person to say "no" to, so that i can trust their consent is freely given. but there is always risk. what if we're long term partners and it's been weeks since we fucked, and yeah, you're never obligated to have sex, but maybe you'll do it to feel close to your lover. what if you have a massive crush on me and i ask you to play, not knowing, and i don't realize the power i have over you, that you'll say yes to me more than you'd say yes to most other people. how do you negotiate out of that?
revocable - i've done plenty of other things that i consented to and could not revoke - i've had my wisdom teeth pulled, and no matter how much i wished it would stop mid-procedure, i couldn't...just stop. i've gone on a rollercoaster and panicked hard, but they aren't about to stop the ride just for me. it's a great thing to be able to revoke consent, but in many circumstances, you have to agree to be locked into something for the duration of the act due to the nature of the act, and that doesn't necessarily mean it's not consensual.
informed - a simple word to encompass a vast spectrum. nobody knows everything. it's practically impossible to know every possible outcome of the things you do with other people, and honestly, in the real world, people are going to continue doing risky things without fully understanding all aspects of the risk. when we're talking about some high-risk kinks, i think it's important to have a solid grasp on what you're doing, researching stuff and not necessarily winging it, but there are plenty of ways you can hurt yourself with fuzzy metal handcuffs from spencer's without actually having a Consent Violation on your hands. knowingly lying and exploiting someone's lack of knowledge is cruel, but simply not being an expert when you start playing around is the default state. it's not a strange, risky exception. it's the norm.
enthustiastic - if a couple is struggling with a dead bedroom, it's sometimes recommended to schedule sex. in the accelerator/brakes dual control model of sexuality, it's thought that many people literally won't experience "wanting" sex until they're put into sexy contexts. this doesn't mean forcing yourself to have sex, but there are so many people who need to be gently nudged towards sex, by themselves or by trusted partners, in order to kickstart their sexual desire at all. the idea of enthusiastic consent is overly simplistic; it's necessary in cases when you're explaining to, like, a teenager that someone saying "okay, i guess, fine" is in fact being coerced and not wanting to have sex with you. we've already done 101, though. people are more complicated than "fuck no/fuck yes." it can be fun and hot and yes, consensual, to do things you don't like.
specific - i do not hammer out details before my scenes with my long-term partners. if they want to try something new and crazy, sure, we talk. if we're doing something where the bottom can't clearly communicate mid-scene, we'll talk more. but i know them and they know me; i like being surprised by things, and i know that they know me well enough to avoid anything i'd hard-limit on and generally respect my taste. i do not do Fifty Shades checklists. they aren't hot. they aren't fun.
the lightbulb moment for me came multiple times, and i have to keep reminding myself of it to keep the light on. the point is fun, and the rules are to structure the fun. the point is not the rules. i had been planning my scenes beginning with the rules. some of the rules were my own creation - my own limits, my own anxieties. some of the rules were imposed by others - the venue we were playing in, the imagined tastes of the onlookers, some random things i'd read online and incorporated into my worldview. i started with the boundary walls, and i tried to think of what i'd build inside them. sometimes that can inspire creativity, right?
but when you're constantly thinking about "no" and all the things you can't do, it's like trying to stop thinking of flying elephants when someone tells you to think about anything but flying elephants. you are literally thinking inside a box. what did i want to do? what was fun, and sexy, and interesting, and cool? then, on that list, what did i want that was achievable within the parameters i have, and what else can i modify to fit within the parameters?
the kink scene is full of people with weird brains. sometimes it's just weird because you get off to latex, but often it's weird because of some neurodivergency. and latex too. sure. lots of neurodivergent people thrive on strict rule sets because they're clear and easy to follow with little room for differing interpretations. other neurodivergent people take strict rule sets and can't live by anything but them, unable to work with nuance and how different situations call for different interpretations of the rules, or even new rule sets entirely.
it's great that we have these frameworks of consent. the FRIES model is valuable as a starting point. however, ending the conversation around ethical play with a black-and-white view of "X followed the Only consent model, so it's Okay. Y didn't follow the Only consent model, so it's Wrong," is overly reductive for a community that literally is based on not fitting into society's boxes. there will be so many communities that define "ethical" and "consensual" in so many different ways, and who the fuck are you - who the fuck am I! - to say which way is objectively right or wrong?
this is how we patch the hole. "i practice my kink perfectly" is not a valid patch. someone will always disagree with how i play. that someone might run into me. their opinion might influence my thoughts, actions, and play, or it might not. i am a malleable and learning person. i want to be a good person. the path to goodness isn't guided by my brain scrambling in a panic to follow every moral compass i come across, though. a healthy dose of nuance and reason in each circumstance, with each scene, with each opinion i encounter is the only way we're going to get this boat seaworthy again.