The Origins of Kink: Bendy, Twisty Surrender
This post is a rewrite of something I wrote a few years ago on FetLife, and a topic upon which I’ve been reflecting as I enter a new stage in my professional and private life.
As a former-academic, I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of words; and as I continue to delve into the philosophical implications of kink and consent , I’ve found myself thinking deeply about etymology of the term “kink” itself.
Etymologically speaking (according to etymonline.com):
kink (n.)
1670s, "knot-like contraction or short twist in a rope, thread, hair, etc., originally a nautical term, from Dutch kink "twist in a rope" (also found in French and Swedish), which is probably related to Old Norse kikna "to bend backwards, sink at the knees" as if under a burden" (see kick (v.)). Figurative sense of "odd notion, mental twist, whim" first recorded in American English, 1803, in writings of Thomas Jefferson; specifically "a sexual perversion, fetish, paraphilia" is by 1973 (by 1965 as "sexually abnormal person").
I particularly love how at its Old Norse roots, “kink” implies a “sinking at the knees” — as if a certain act of surrender has been baked in or hard-wired into the concept of kink itself. Bending. Sinking. Twisting. At first I thought of those things in terms of submission: yielding to a power of some kind, kneeling before something or someone. But when you really think about it, a “sinking at the knees” is more of a surrender than a submission. Consensually “forcing” someone to their knees in a take-down scene or something like that is one thing. But I think, on some level, every one of us who practices our kink — whether it’s sporadically, on a regular basis, or 24/7 — has made a choice to surrender ourselves to it in one way or another, and have accepted what that surrender brings.
In this sense, “surrender” can refer to the kind of sacrifices we’ve made to be what we are. How many potentially beautiful relationships have we had to let go of because that partner couldn’t accept our kinks (and/or possibly our polyamory or nonmonogamy)? We endure the inevitable disappointments and jealousies when a partner needs to spend time with another partner, or when some life event gets in the way of our only time/day/weekend to play. We make certain to contextually hide certain aspects of our kink and polyamorous lives to protect ourselves, our partners, our family members, and careers.
To live in a particular, personal authenticity is a paradox of abiding certain pretenses to make our lifestyles possible, while simultaneously letting go of others. We twist and bend to be who we are; we bend and twist to be able to create the spaces in which we can be the most authentic … the most “ourselves.” Yet we are the most “ourselves” when we let ourselves go.
But eventually, there are moments when the paradox becomes a bit too much to maintain, and we find the efforts we’re putting in to protect ourselves (and sometimes our partners) are actually doing us (and them) more harm than good. How much of your life can you hide from that vanilla someone who’s becoming a “close friend” or family member before you feel the strain and discomfort of hiding things from them. Or perhaps we’re being drawn into kinks that our partner(s) don’t necessarily share with us; or we need to lean into, or pull back, from our dynamics at times when our partner(s) need the exact opposite. Those conversations become exercises in vulnerability and risk, but eventually require a surrender in and of themselves that moves beyond the “sacrifices” we make to be who we are.
Surrender implies a certain giving over, or letting go; and particularly to kink, it is a letting go of the self. Arriving at our kink-related spaces (i.e. Domspace, subspace, littlespace, etc.) is an ecstatic state, one in which all pretense of the ego melts away. You know it when you’re in it; but if you’re thinking, I’m in Domspace right now, you’re not. It’s a state of ecstasy. The only way to reach it is a letting go of the self. No matter where we are on the D/s spectrum, in those moments, we surrender the self simply to “be” in that moment.
“Bending at the knee” also implies a giving-way. And if we think about the moments in our lives when our knees give way, they tend to be momentous: great joy, great sorrow, great relief, great disappointment. Some of those moments aren’t happy. But not all ecstasy is pleasurable. The ecstatic moment can come through physical or emotional pain. We are, in the words of Judith Butler, “undone.1” Our kink becomes one means to that undoing and relinquishing of the self, but within the protected confines of intimacy with our partners. Even “light” scenes give us moments to briefly let go of ourselves.
Ecstasy is available to anyone who is willing to surrender themselves to it; the paths through which that happens are as varied as the individuals who embark upon them. But I like to think that those of us on the kink spectrum have a slight advantage when it comes to achieving it: we have learned to embrace the bends and twists that lead us to our sacred spaces, where we can let go of ourselves.
I believe that Judith Butler’s quote deserves to be included in its entirety:
“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another.” (From Undoing Gender)
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