Your kink bores me.

[mrissa]

Is there anything that can be coopted by le bourgeois faster than a game of épater le bourgeois? If there is, I'm not sure I've seen it. I am really, really sick of people trying to shock me. Do you know why? Because mostly other people's sexual tastes are just not that interesting. And the more convinced the people are that they are the most rebellious transgressive thing in the world, the more likely I am to be thoroughly bored by the account of it. It's not that I don't want to hear it because I'm too squicked, too freaked out, not edgy enough. It's just that what you like in bed, for vast, sweeping values of "you," is not at all my concern. Not my business. Don't have the energy to bother.

Is this because I am the coolest, hippest, most jaded kid on my block? Not at all. I am not particularly hip. I am not particularly unhip, either, and I hate it when people try to be hip by proclaiming their unhipness. "I am so far out of the mainstream! I march to my own drummer! I define my own drummer as the opposite of other people's drummers!" No. Cut it out; move along with your own life. I don't think I'm particularly outstanding here. I just...don't...care.

Here are the circumstances under which your specific sexual tastes matter to me:
1) I have agreed to have a sexual relationship with you. This leaves out the vast, vast majority of humanity: thank you, move along.
OR 2) You intend to do something that will do lasting damage to someone, particularly someone I care about (possibly including yourself, depending on who you are).
OR 3) There is an interesting story that requires knowledge of them. I mean story, not series of facts or events: not just, "You won't believe what the goalie did with the Roomba," but, "You won't believe what the goalie did with the Roomba. The queen died of grief." Interest points are especially awarded for storytelling skills, geekiness (science/engineering jokes/discoveries particularly), and hilarity. I judge what's hilarious for myself, so if you tell me a story and it's just not that funny, well, find yourself another audience; insisting that I need to loosen up is probably beside the point. I could be loosened up enough to be a gelatinous Mris-puddle on the floor, and you could still be boring me.

Extra points will be removed for persisting after I tell you I don't care (no matter how funny the story ends up when you finish telling it), for instructing me to broaden my horizons (why don't you broaden yours to include the concept of people who don't care?), and especially for informing me that your interest is "the ultimate taboo" and/or "more rebellious/transgressive than being gay." I would imagine there are a few exceptions, but for the most part gay people are not gay in order to be shocking. They are gay because they're genuinely interested in members of the same sex. Also, there is no ultimate taboo. One person's shocked nausea is another person's pleasant evening and a third person's bored yawn.

In many cases that third person would be me.

If you're talking about your sex life in your lj, I am perfectly capable of skimming or skipping those bits, or of reading them if you've met criterion #3 above. (Or, if applicable, of not friending you, or of de-friending you, or of asking to leave that filter.) It's like being at a party: not every conversation between interesting people will be of interest. That's fine. But I want relative strangers to stop accosting me with this kind of information. I want to go on the record here: I. Don't. Care.

Comments

Ultimate Taboos

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

Since no one else has mentioned this tangent, I thought I would. I seem to remember from my Anthropology 101 class (way back when) that there are sexual taboos common to most societies, which I suppose could be seen as "ultimate taboos." I'm rusty on this, but they were more couched in terms of "avoiding these practices seem hardwired into the human animal." They generally tended to be things that were bad for long term survival of the human species, such as close incest (bad for genes); sexual interest in waste products (unhealthy); sexual interest in the dead (very unhealthy). Interest by adults in young children was probably discouraged, though the age of menarche in most societies was generally when a girl became a woman.

(I have left out homosexuality from this post, because I've also heard the theory that it serves as a natural way of reducing birth rate, and in any case does not seem to be as universal a taboo as the others.) I'm getting into deep waters I have not charted well, though, but I should dig out my Anth textbook sometime.

Mack

Re: Ultimate Taboos

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Most people who attempt to regale others with tales of their kink don't want to be arrested, is my assessment of this one, and something like necrophilia can easily go that way.

Re: Ultimate Taboos

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I've never run into the "regaling with tales of kink" problem. I don't know; it's weird to me that it's happened to you. Sex goes through everybody's brain and is important, but there's a lot more stuff happening in society and with us...

Re: Ultimate Taboos

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are male. I think that's part of the reason why it's happened to me and not you: in this culture, mostly women don't accost men to tell them what they really like in bed. Also, women are arrested for exposing their genitals to strangers less often, and I don't think the two are unrelated tendencies.

Not that everyone who goes for tales of Wild Sexx0rs is the verbal equivalent of someone who whips it out on the subway. But some are.

Re: Ultimate Taboos

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I'd buy that for an explanation, since I can't imagine a woman accosting me and belaboring the conversation enough to bring her sexual fantasies into it. (I mean, not except in my own private fantasies... But I digress. See how easily the floodgates are opened?)

You may be onto something about the psychology involved. I hadn't thought it from this angle before.