Reading a debate about whether kink can be non-sexual…

Seeing people’s descriptions of the feelings people get from kink activities that they don’t consider sexual feelings, despite how much the kink activity is societally associated with sex

and seeing the arguments over whether you can validly call something “kink” if it’s not sexual for you, and whether it’s the societal connotation with sex that makes it qualify as kink

and feeling all those thoughts mixing together with the thoughts in that other post I made the other day, about “what even is the definition of sex”

And then remembering how

… I didn’t even experience orgasms until I was 25, and most of the “arousal” I experienced before then wasn’t even centered in the genitals

And even though it was mostly a feeling in my chest, when it even got beyond purely mental… I still thought of it as sexual arousal.

Because I experienced it in response to seeing fictional depictions of sex. And I would seek out those sorts of depictions in the same way I now seek out porn, because I liked how it made me feel.

…though, at the time, my taste in that sort of material was also removed from “actual sex” in a similar way.

For instance. I had the hots for Spock (Star Trek TOS) but I didn’t want to see him naked with humanoid genitals. At most, I wanted to see him doing the Vulcan hand-touching-intimacy thing with someone… and see him react to it with sounds and facial expressions as if it was sex… and watch this while imagining that this is the entirety of how Vulcans have sex.

And the realization that this might be within the definition of “sexual arousal”

(feeling a good sensation that doesn’t involve the genitals, in response to something that has a lot of societally constructed sexual connotations, but that nevertheless also doesn’t involve any genitals)

Makes me wonder where the boundaries are

And if I were a Diogenes-level definition troll, I might be tempted to use that information for evil

(e.g. go call someone out for being into “zoophilic vore” because they’re eating chicken. “behold, a kink!”)

(because that whole paragraph about feeling a good sensation– minus the societally constructed sexual connotations part– could also describe the exact feeling of “meat taste good”)

(and the reason that anybody even considers zoophilia and vore to be taboo, is because they’re “sexual.” Not because of consent issues– we don’t care about whether chickens consent when we’re killing and eating them normally! It’s being sexual that makes the difference)

(and when you start to fuzz the edges of what sexual even means then you kind of start destroying a lot of the whole human concept of what things should be taboo)

(and since some of the sexual taboos are actually important, this is honestly genuinely dangerous and I really should not)

(…we maybe stan Diogenes a little more than we should?)

(Because… yeah, okay, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to point out that a definition is not 100% reliable… especially when it’s a definition that nobody should really even care that much about.)

(But, when you start pointing out that definitions are literally never 100% reliable…. even though every aspect of governing a society relies on using definitions because that’s how laws work… then… what are you advocating, exactly?)

(case-by-case basis, I guess. “I know it when I see it” decision making. Which, effectively, is how all decisions by humans are made anyway. It’s the only way that even works.)

(But the more attention is drawn to that, the more people feel like they can disregard any of the actual laws on the books, in favor of their gut feeling.)

(which…. has potential to be both very good and very bad, depending.)

(Idk.)

(why do all my ultra specific rants eventually expand into globally-large-scope rants. Asterisks branch out too damn much, brain. Stop thinking in asterisks so much.)