I came upon this fascinating and thoughtful post a few days back. It’s lovely to read someone writing so eloquently about what seems to me so familiar though hard to explain: a desire for a different way of articulating the experiences commonly considered kinky.
There’s a lot of things included there that I’d like to talk about at some point. For now, though, I’d like to go off on a tangent and answer a (probably rhetorical) question in the original post.
The writer asks what is the “dark side” people keep talking about and possibly glorifying in connection to kink. This is something I’ve been thinking about lately, and my answer would be that, well, I wouldn’t call it a dark side as much as a shadow. I call the aspects I’m exploring my shadow or my shadow self in the same way that Easton & Hardy and (I think, but am not sure) Jung use the term. I don’t feel it’s evil or wrong or corrupt or sinful, or at least not any more than I am in the first place. The shadow consists of those qualities and parts of myself that for some reason or another I’ve separated from my conscious self. Shyness, softness, vulnerability, need for nurturance, the experience of pain and helplessness… the list goes on.
For me, reclaiming these things, this shadow of mine, is an important part of kink. I want to explore it, and maybe even need to explore it to enjoy kink in the way that I do. For me this means that the way I like to do kink is connected to the way I experience myself, and provides a way of altering that experience. I suspect that as I learn how to integrate the shadow aspects, the way I do kink may well change. Since the way I experience my shadow is dependent on what I’m willing to see about myself and experience about myself, it is most probably never comprehensive or complete. I can’t really integrate all of my shadow (or if I could, that would probably be very close to what some spiritual traditions consider enlightenment.) If I use kink as one path in self-understanding or transformation, the ways I do and experience it will most likely look somewhat different as I travel further on that path.
So… there’s still the question of why do we keep coming back to this dichotomy of dark and light or, for me, the light of reason and the shadows of the unconscious. Don’t have an answer to that one yet, ‘cept I suspect for me it’s pretty much connected to the paradigm of modern humanity, the division of reason and desire, body and mind.
I guess the reason I keep thinking and talking and writing about kink is to try to connect the body-knowledge/desire and the cognitive aspects of self, precisely because the strict division of body and mind feels subtly wrong even as I use it to conceptualize the integration. Really, the sense of self I’m talking about is not only a cognitive experience but also a way of being present in my body, a way of experiencing myself in the world. It’s something that cannot really be verbalized, and still I feel the attempt of doing so is worthwhile for me. The struggle of getting mere words to express something inexpressible helps me expand the limits of merely verbal thought.
Disclaimer: Though I’m writing here again about what kink as a personal identity and experience means to me, I do think kink is also a very hot, exciting sexual activity that is (for me) very much about connection with my partner. Come to think of it, I should probably write at some point about kink-as-fun too, instead of only kink-as-spiritual-exploration all the time…
I think your shadow-self idea is very interesting. I’ve gone through a similar separation of my sexual self from the rest of me, and reintegration is still in its infancy. I’ll have to read up on my psychology. I’ve been needing to read some Jung for a while now.
Thanks for dropping by! Sometimes it feels hard to find the time (or the brain cells) to think and write about this stuff, never mind reading even a fraction of all the interesting literature there is… Jung’s pretty high up on my to-read list too :]