YKINMK

[schmevil]

Your Kink Is Not My Kink, is, for those of you who haven't seen the acronym before, the guiding principle of kinkmeme coexistence. It's how feeder kink can be in the same meme as underage, noncon, bestiality, and tickling. YKINMK is invoked in cases of kink shaming. So you don't like foot fetish? Refrain from kink shaming and scroll on by -- YKINMK and that's ok.

Question: have people truly bought into it, or is YKINMK just the price of doing business? Or put differently, does YKINMK conceal mutual disgust and tension, thereby making it possible for people with dissimilar tastes to get along? Or does YKINMK represent now common actual fannish* attitudes to each others' kinks?


*At least as far as kinkmemes go.


BTW, I don't really want to get into the SPN Blindfold thing right now. I'll just end up throwing things. Please don't.

Comments

[melannen]

I have gotten the impression that the vast majority of people who use YKINMK(ATOK) or variants are sincere, if not entirely honest. Like, there are people who are honestly OK with any kink, just not turned on by some of them, and at peace with all of that. And there are people who have spent so much time in that sort of community that they honestly can get turned on by at least aspects of pretty much anything, as long as it's well done, and it's really viscerally felt.

And there are also people who agree in principle and will fight to the death for your right to any kink you want, but are still kind of grossed out by some of them, and okay, *may* judge you a little for it, but would never say that, at least to your face, and hey, even if it is disgusting and incomprehensible, they do still firmly believe you have a right to a space to express it. (people in this category often do move into the first two, after awhile, by desensitization if nothing else.)

...but in any group as large as a kinkmeme, there will also be people who really don't believe your kink is okay, and just keep quiet about that fact (most of the time) in order to participate in the community. And there will be people who don't believe your kink is okay, but claim they do, because they think they have to for social acceptance, and probably secretly think everyone else are hypocrites too, and get resentful about it.

Also, even a lot of people who think they're in the first category will eventually realize they have hard limits, and hit them. You can usually detect this because people start saying "I believe all kinks are valid, but this isn't about kink any more." (Also, once this happens, all the people in the last two categories jump on the bandwagon and usually start out-shouting the originators.)

I have varying sympathy for when this happens: sometimes it's pretty obvious they just never thought through what "every kink" means; sometimes I can honestly see why they're hurt by something while still thinking it's a valid kink that deserves a space; sometimes (especially when it comes to obvious trolling with something that wasn't actually the OP's kink) I agree that there are things more important than expressing kink freely.

I mean, I am pretty broad-minded I think when it comes to kink, but if (theoretical extreme case, trigger warning) somebody in a fandom I was in post a kinkmeme prompt, with no prior negotiation, that consisted of "I want to see melannen getting gangraped by rabid dogs and then lobotomized with an icepick" I would probably feel justified in telling the mods that I felt uncomfortable participating if the prompt was left up, even if I didn't think the poster wanted that to happen to me in RL (and even if I might have occasionally fantasized about that exact scenario in the privacy of my id.) It would no longer be about kink, it would be about feeling like somebody was using the excuse of kink in order to give play to not-kink-related varieties of ugly shit. And I think most of the times when people hit the limits of "YKINOK" are less extreme variants on this scenario.

The border between "the world is fucked up, sometimes you have to sublimate that into kink in order to help process it" and "the world is fucked up, and you are making it worse" is fuzzy. One can honestly, sincerely, thoroughly believe that all kinks are okay, while at the same time believing there are certain categories of things that shouldn't count as kink.

[valtyr]

I guess in most cases, I assume people have good reasons for the things they do, and I understand we don't have a lot of control over the things that get us going. And kneejerk assumptions can be wrong. Like, uh. SPN kinkmeme has stuff like... small children being gangbanged and loving it, or women being fucked by dogs. And I'll admit my eyebrows shot up, but I have no way of saying that the people reading them are getting off on children being abused (yeah, I'd judge that) or that they're identifying with the child in an extreme version of rape/ravishment fantasy. In a situation where women's sexuality can often get very screwed up and distorted just through living in the society, I don't want to get my judgey face on about how they work through and explore those things.

(I'd also say, though, there seems to be something of a fandom culture of kink-extremism in SPN. Not that I'm saying people who have those kinks should be ashamed of them, but I do think there's an element where it should be acknowledged that they're potentially very disturbing to people who don't have those kinks, and aren't really things to try and one-up each other with. But that's getting into things impossible to police or regulate, so.)