What is vanilla? (67)

What do you see as the delineation?

I'm thinking about things like Goth clothing, worn by non-kinky people and wondering where the borderline is between fashion and fetish.

RanDesu wrote: tanken wrote: I think some of us can be both 'vanilla' and kinky Could you give some example of your view please, Tanken. I'm not wishing to be rude, but I think that a statement like that does need some explaining. Given the OP.

When I was younger I had relationships with no kink at all although I fantasised about kink all the time. There were also times I enjoyed kink outside my long term relationship which was vanilla.

These days I am more open

Happiness is a warm bum

tanken wrote: RanDesu wrote: tanken wrote: I think some of us can be both 'vanilla' and kinky Could you give some example of your view please, Tanken. I'm not wishing to be rude, but I think that a statement like that does need some explaining. Given the OP. When I was younger I had relationships with no kink at all although I fantasised about kink all the time. There were also times I enjoyed kink outside my long term relationship which was vanilla. These days I am more open

So you can enjoy both kinky and non-kinky relationships. You can enjoy non-kinky relationships but think about kink even if you are not getting it.

It seems to me that you are mainly kinky but can live okay in non-kink relationships if necessary.

Dominant partner in an FLR with @paulss

Ms_Valentine wrote: tanken wrote: RanDesu wrote: tanken wrote: I think some of us can be both 'vanilla' and kinky Could you give some example of your view please, Tanken. I'm not wishing to be rude, but I think that a statement like that does need some explaining. Given the OP. When I was younger I had relationships with no kink at all although I fantasised about kink all the time. There were also times I enjoyed kink outside my long term relationship which was vanilla. These days I am more open So you can enjoy both kinky and non-kinky relationships. You can enjoy non-kinky relationships but think about kink even if you are not getting it. It seems to me that you are mainly kinky but can live okay in non-kink relationships if necessary.

I'm not really wanting 'vanilla' now though

Happiness is a warm bum

tanken wrote: Ms_Valentine wrote: tanken wrote: RanDesu wrote: tanken wrote: I think some of us can be both 'vanilla' and kinky Could you give some example of your view please, Tanken. I'm not wishing to be rude, but I think that a statement like that does need some explaining. Given the OP. When I was younger I had relationships with no kink at all although I fantasised about kink all the time. There were also times I enjoyed kink outside my long term relationship which was vanilla. These days I am more open So you can enjoy both kinky and non-kinky relationships. You can enjoy non-kinky relationships but think about kink even if you are not getting it. It seems to me that you are mainly kinky but can live okay in non-kink relationships if necessary. I'm not really wanting 'vanilla' now though

No, I am sure you're not

Dominant partner in an FLR with @paulss

There is no such line!

Humans are endowed with imaginations, with empathy, with skills for communication, with playfulness, and with curiosity. Therefore human sexuality *fundamentally* consists of more than just in-and-out, animal-style fucking. Yes, some people DO reduce it to that, but THEY are in fact the true perverts. They don't think of playful sexuality as something to be enjoyed and explored, so they restrict and limit it. But very few people do. Most people enjoy more creative approaches, and one of them - a particularly obvious one - is to play consensually with trust and power.

Yes, it's not all that much communicated about, but that doesn't mean it's not common or normal. Only because there used to be all sorts of restrictive misconceptions about sex, there arose the need to have terms for activities outside of that restrictive corset, such as "BDSM" or "kink". In fact, they are just what they are: ill-defined terms that describe a massively diverse and fluid set of human sexual interactions. To make the confusion worse, those who identified with such terms started to talk abou "vanilla" to label those who are not them. It's really a rather ridiculous situation. Are you even aware that there are *many* more people out there who enjoy all sorts of "kinky" stuff who are NOT members of IC, because they simply get on with having sex, rather than needing to feel "supported" by a "community", or who feel they can do without a kinky meat-market, because they realize that they meet people all over the place who enjoy many forms of sexual play.

What I am ranting about here is one of my pet peeves: the idea that there is a "community" of "kinky" people, who are in some way different from "vanilla" people. What bullshit! There are just people who enjoy all sorts of different human interactions, on many levels, including sexual ones. For many, it's not easy to be upfront about it, so they seek others with whom they can be open, and thus it becomes a community of sorts. But what makes it so is NOT any particular shared interest; it's simply the willingness to transcend a popular taboo on talking about sexuality that has been limited for a very long time.

I am not done, but I am running out of time right now. Feel free to rip my argument to shreds, or add to it. It's only a building block for a larger thing I'll yet have to write in another place.

Have fun,

:-:-: Ropework :-:-:

I could not have put this better myself!

- bluemagic

"When the bottom falls out of your world - Take 'Andrew's' (liver salts) and, instead ... Let the world fall out of your bottom. "