I am not kidding when I say that I find incredibly esoteric and specialized porn to be one of the most life-affirming things in the world. Even… no, especially the stuff that doesn’t do anything for me. Every giantess crush site, every furry vore gallery, every Shintaro Kago shit-and-dissection-fest, every body-inflation discussion group, every set of specialized apron-fetish films, every dendrophile fan club, every time I learn a new word like “boytaur” or “OT3″ or “docking” or “unbirth”… all these things bring me a genuine and unironic joy. These things, these kinks, these flights of imagination, are the impassioned obsessions of real people, everyday people. At least one of your coworkers, at least one of your family members. And that’s not creepy, that’s wonderful. Every one of those weird kinks is a shout of human individuality in a world that wants to reduce us down to buying patterns and demographic trends.
Our culture expects women’s – and men’s – bodies to be a certain way. People are very invested in the idea that Men Look Like This and Women Look Like That and Never the Twain Shall Meet. Well, guess what? Nature doesn’t give a fuck about your sexual binary. Nature puts us together in a million different ways – actually, about seven billion, give or take a few hundred thousand – and a lot of us are going to walk that imaginary line. There are going to be short, hairless men with high voices and tall women with deep voices and people who are intersexed in a bunch of different ways, and here’s the great thing – it’s all okay. Every single one of us. There’s not a thing wrong with any of us.
Most people find it difficult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them sexually will be the most treasured delight of someone, somewhere. One need not like or perform a particular sex act in order to recognize that someone else will, and that this difference does not indicate a lack of good taste, mental health, or intelligence in either party. Most people mistake their sexual preferences for a universal system that will or should work for everyone.
Gayle Rubin, “Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”
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