This week my Fetish Friday post is about a delicate issue I can tell I experience from the age of 18 or at least 19-20. Everyone in the kinky community comes across it at some point at their life, more or less intensely, so I thought about spending a word about what to do when family, friends and society don’t accept your kink.
Well, the first ting that comes to my mind as very useful advice in this situation is: ignore them.
Unfortunately, since I have been living this in first person, I can say it’s not so easy as it would look from an external perspective. How can you ignore when to be not accepting of you is your dear mother, or your college friends, or your coworkers you have to be with everyday? So I tried to come up with a little advice based on what worked for me or at least helped me to cope better with the situation. Sadly, everyone is different so what was useful for me can not work for someone else and vice versa.
Understand they don’t accept your lifestyle simply because they don’t know it. Unknown is scary and we all have a tendency to avoid it, or worst, to label it as wrong and negative. In the medieval times they gave fire to the witches because they were unknown and scary, don’t you think? Same applies today to kinksters, queer people, and so on.
A healthy sexuality is one of the most important things you can achieve in life. But there’s a common way of thinking that keeps most people to achieve it: sex has been considered one-size-fits all not for years, but centuries. Hetero, married, missionary position. Everything that isn’t included in this standard has been considered dirty since the birth of Romulus and Remus more or less. It’s just so hard to change such estabilished beliefs and the sex positive community is fighting hard everyday to try winning this battle a little step at a time.
That said, I never hated anyone because of their ignorance (from the Latin ignoro = to not know), but also I never wanted to feel pressured to share things I didn’t want to share. I would advise to take all the time you need to talk to your relatives and friends about your sexuality and to feel free to not talk at all if you don’t wish to. I think if a person can’t understand a thing about you, sometimes it can be better that they don’t know it at all.
When it comes to closest relatives you really need to tell (your parents, for example), accept their reaction keeping in mind that they behave like that just because they don’t know your sexuality is perfectly normal and doesn’t include that you can’t be a wonderful person, a caring parent and a great worker.
I have also found great relief by connecting with the online sex positive community. They can be very welcoming and knowing that people like me actually exist makes me feel less alienated and different from everyone who lives near me.
These are just my little opinions on such an important subject: hope you find relief knowing that you’re not alone!
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