Everyone Is A Little Bit Kinky
What I read: Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life by Justin Lehmiller, PhD. Published (reprint edition) July 14, 2020.
I read this book before but decided to read it again because the first time was so informative. I wanted to revisit some of the great insights and data it contains.
In May 2019, I was lucky enough to be in Chicago and that allowed me to attend the Multiplicity of the Erotic Conference (MOTE). MOTE is a new incarnation of the former Conference on Alternative Sexualities hosted for many years as a collaboration between Projects Advancing Sexual Diversity (PASD) and The Community Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS). I sat on the Board of Directors for CARAS in the past and was for a while its Chair. It’s an organization near and dear to my heart. They do important work.
If you’re a therapist, social worker, or health care provider who wants to become more culturally competent in alternative sexualities, let me also recommend the great work of The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance (TASHRA). They offer trainings to providers, many of which can be applied as Continuing Education Units (CEUs) to maintain professional licensure.
The current iteration of the MOTE annual event is a scientific conference that offers a unique opportunity for cutting edge researchers and healthcare professionals with special interests in the edges of sexual expression to gather to present, discuss, and connect.
One of the presentations I was grateful to attend at the 2019 conference was the closing keynote address delivered by Dr. Justin Lehmiller, an esteemed Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute and author of the book that spawned this post. I’m so happy I didn’t miss it. It was remarkable.
Dr. Lehmiller’s writings and blog are legendary in the world in which psychology and sexuality intersect. Lehmiller has a knack for presenting complex and nuanced information about the psychological workings of human sexuality in verbiage and style immediately understandable. Check out his blog for proof.
The specific reason I ended up re-reading Lehmiller’s book is I recently found myself in a random conversation with someone at a coffee shop and the topic of sexuality came up. At some point during the chat I uttered “Well, everyone is a little bit kinky” and the woman was slightly taken aback. I tried to recall some of the data presented in the book and couldn’t. So, it was time to read it again.
I’ve said some version of the “Well, everyone is a little bit kinky” statement ever since I had the honor of having lunch in the 1980s with the esteemed Dr. Robert Stoller. Stoller is sadly no longer with us, but he was for a long time a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA Medical School and a researcher at the UCLA Gender Identity Clinic. His work, much of it based on detailed ethnographic studies, was legendary.
At one point during the lunch Stoller said something to the effect “If you consider as the norm sex between a man and woman for the purpose of procreation, then any sex not for that purpose is in some way alternative (aka kinky).” I’m paraphrasing since I didn’t take notes, but I think that’s pretty close to what he said. He then went on to describe his many interviews with countless research subjects over the years and he said that in his estimation he never met a single person who didn’t engage in some form of kinky sexual behavior.
Stoller’s contention that everyone is a little bit kinky stuck with me and it’s served as a guiding light for my own thoughts and writings on the topic. Rather than put forth the notion that only a tiny subset of people is kinky, I instead have attempted to foster an awareness and acceptance of alternative sexualities as a commonly shared spectrum of experience for all of humanity. Sure, there are kink communities and networks of people who more strongly identify with and commune among avowed kinksters, but the underlying sexuality variations are something most of us experience at least to some extent.
Back to Lehmiller’s book. There are tons of great data throughout the book. The data gathered and analyzed for the book served as the foundation for Lehmiller's keynote at MOTE 2019 titled 'Which Sexual Fantasies Are Common, and Which Ones Are Truly Rare?: Insights From the Largest Survey of Sexual Fantasies in the United States.' The keynote was spectacular and made even this seasoned sexuality writer take notice of some fascinating research never before so adroitly compiled and presented.
Lehmiller surveyed 4175 adults in the United States across the entire range of genders, ages, sexual orientations, races, and relationship styles. There was a concerted effort to survey a wide cross section of people and I think that’s what struck me as most powerful about the study. They were from all walks of life. Participants completed a 369-question survey inquiring about their fantasies, personalities, sexual histories, and demographics. Yes, 369 is a lot, but it yielded a wealth of solid data.
Among the questions participants were asked was to describe their "favorite" sexual fantasy of all time and sum up that fantasy in a single word of their choice. Some of the more prevalent one-word answers were threesome, dominance, bondage, gangbang, submission, orgy, and BDSM. Right there in the answers to one question I believe the truth that we’re all just a little bit kinky shows itself as rather evident. As I recall, among Lehmiller’s slides during the presentation was a word cloud that hammered home the prevalence of many of these fantasies.
Once Lehmiller compiled all the survey results he undertook a qualitative analysis that yielded seven major themes. The themes were the overarching categories into which the totality of the survey results could be placed. Qualitatively arriving at themes like this allows us to understand the underlying data more easily.
I could probably write a separate post about each of the themes they’re so fascinating. Yet another reason I recommend people read the book. But here’s my attempt to encapsulate the themes, the things just about the entire landscape of humanity thinks about. (While the survey subjects resided in the United States, my guess is we’d find similar trends elsewhere. But that is admittedly my guess.)
Here are the seven major fantasy themes:
Multi-partner sex, threesomes, orgies, and gangbangs.
Power, control, and rough sex; BDSM, for example.
Novelty, adventure, and variety. These are sexual activities that one has never done before or would like to attempt in some new way, such as different settings or public sex.
Taboo or forbidden sex, voyeurism and exhibitionism were among these.
Passion, romance, and intimacy; this was common across genders, orientations, and ages with most saying they rarely or never fantasize about completely emotionless sex, which I found heartening.
Non-monogamy and partner sharing; this is a separate category from group sex and included open relationships, polyamory, swinging, and cuckolding.
Erotic flexibility and gender-bending; these push the boundaries of sexual orientation or gender roles. Cross-dressing, changing genders, and sex outside of one's usual sexual orientation were among the fantasies.
These seven high-level fantasy categories represented about 96% of the participants' favorite fantasies and appear to be the fundamental building blocks of all fantasy content. Again, I think this gives data fodder to my belief that everyone is a little bit kinky.
The high-level themes weren't mutually exclusive either. Most participants selected more than one theme, but the predominance of them is indicative of how widespread these fantasies are. For example, 47% selected multiple partners, 46% selected BDSM, and 30% selected being in a non-monogamous relationship.
So, why is it important to acknowledge how common it is that these fantasies are banging around in so many of our heads?
One of the great internal struggles some people endure is coming to grips with their sexuality. The cultural narrative that these fantasies are bad, often heavily influenced by those in power in certain religions, means something quite natural and common can be a point of mental stress for essentially the entirety of humanity. People often wrestle with coming to terms with their sexual fantasies because they believe they're rare and not shared by many others. The less common we believe our fantasies might be the more likely we are to build up some shame and trepidations around them.
Through studies like Lehmiller’s, laying bare the reality that these wide-ranging sexual fantasies are rather common (in other words, quite normal), hopefully people will embrace those fantasies for what they are, a healthy manifestation of their sexuality.
No fantasy is wrong, and no fantasy explored with another person is wrong if it’s consensual and results in no actual harm to any of the participants.
By expanding what is seen as normal among sexual fantasies, perhaps sexual shame and stigma can be reduced while improving sexual communication between partners. As Diane Gleim, LMFT, CST, CST-S, says in her article No One Is Immune to Sexual Shame,
Like fish swimming in the water, we are swimming in sexual shame, to the point where most of the time we are utterly oblivious to it. No one is immune from sexual shame, not even medical and mental health professionals. Sometimes a person’s sexual shame is so ingrained and feels so much a part of their deepest self that they simply cannot imagine themselves without their shame.
Sexual shame is so ubiquitous that when someone or something does not evoke sexual shame and is actually “sex-positive,” it can be a shock to the system and cause reactivity like discomfort, anxiety or fear, judgment, anger, threats, and sometimes even violence. All of us have seen this before. It's a difficult topic for many.
As for psychotherapeutic professionals who sometimes ignorantly assume many of these fantasies are unhealthy and pathological, perhaps the realization that they're so prevalent will guide professionals to not label them problematic unless they violate consent or cause harm or distress.
In her article, Gleim points out psychotherapy’s sometimes dark past when it comes to sexual fantasies and activities.
Unfortunately, my profession has contributed to our culture’s sexual shame. We have our own shameful history of getting it wrong when it comes to understanding and working with sexual issues. “Treatments” have included shock treatments, castrations, torture, medications, lobotomies, and most recently reparative and conversion therapy.
Dated theories and treatments focused on so-called abnormality and malfunction are based on traditional relationships, assumptions, roles, and beliefs. There has been an inability to see the influence of morality and shame on how we analyze (pathologize?) what sexual behavior is done, how much it is done, with whom it is done, and where it is done.
If this post, Lehmiller’s book, Gleim’s article, and other such writings do but one thing, and that's to expose the world to the true diversity of our sexualities and the fantasies that fuel them, then they will be a part of something good.
Solid research such as presented by Lehmiller backs up the reality of erotic diversity. It also further helps destigmatize the kinky and sexually adventurous among us, leading to a happier and healthier personal and collective erotic landscape.
As for Dr. Lehmiller's book, it's incredibly accessible. I suggest my readers get it. I think you'll find it quite interesting. As its subtitle suggests, I think it just might improve your sex life.