Definitions are, by their nature, restrictive. I can't define something without it being in some way restrictive.

And, arguments about descriptivism aside, definitions of words aren't generally open to opinion, and accuracy aids communication.

Kinky something always defined by its deviance from societal norms?

I tilt there, though I use "kink" as "adventurous/french vanilla" as well, and hence, on the societal norms (maybe at their very edges, but still, there).

Hell, mostly I use "kink" to mock friends' when they're trying to apologize for choosing something that they think is dangerous or edgy, while trying to point out that it's up to them to define what is kink and what is not.

So maybe kink has lost any real meaning to me. Maybe that's why I'm saying that the kink is in your head.

If someone tells me something that's shocking me, I'd go with "OK... if that what makes you happy!" (as long as they're not hurting anyone else, all consensual, yada yada).

Maybe because I'm trying so hard not to be judgmental towards others, it comes this way. Oops.

Because I think there has to be a "norm" to compare against to define "kinky." Which is not to say that the norms can't change, which would then change the definition of "kinky."

It's a pretty common SF trope that IN THE FUTURE, heterosexual PiV sex will become kinky and exotic (usually with some handwavy explanation about overpopulation but mostly it's an excuse to write your characters as being kinky and exotic while only writing about the kind of sex the writer is personally familiar with).

[eta: or else it's an excuse to write about bondage while keeping your characters vanilla.]

But is something really kinky when it's a joke on the Golden Girls?

Exactly what I was thinking.

Isn't kinky defined as "outside the sexual norm, but not into the realm of dangerous or crazy"? And since we cannot define the sexual norm except personally, because that way lies madness and indignation, kinky is totally subjective.

Me, as I'm thinking about it now, I seem to define "kinky" entirely in terms of what other people think, because I don't think anything I do is kinky. Perverse, maybe. (I knew a guy who thought putting whipped cream on his girlfriend was so kinky he couldn't stop whispering and giggling about it. I tried to be supportive.) For me, the area of the sexual norm is so broad that it doesn't hit a boundary until it crosses the border into potentially dangerous and bangs up against noncon pain. It does cross the boundary; lots of people do things on a regular basis - thus "normal" - that I consider potentially dangerous. I don't consider those things kinky. Just dangerous.

Kinky seems to be, in the mainstream at least, something that people giggle over and blush and hesitate to talk about openly. It's the breaking of a little, not-real-important taboo. Like having sex outside. For me, I don't seem to have internalized the concept of anything being taboo. ("Forbidden" by whom? Even when I was a kid, when somoene "forbade" me to do something, I'd just look at them funny. I probably wouldn't do it, but because I decided it was a bad idea, not because it was "wrong".) Lacking that sense of the forbidden, nothing really seems kinky, either.

But I do think my own wiring has a kink in it, and not just as it relates to the baseline.

I think I'm a little warped, essentially. I know where I'm bent and I know when I should stop following the curve, so I don't worry about me. I do worry about other bent people sometimes, because sex itself is such a taboo, they might not ever have the chance to learn where their particular bent leads and what to do about it, until it's too late and they've gotten hurt or hurt someone else because they didn't know where the boundaries were.

Hey, can someone tell me what "Lovely Lady Humps" are?

Isn't kinky defined as "outside the sexual norm, but not into the realm of dangerous or crazy"?

Heh. "Crazy" is so subjective, though. (Again, crucifixion. Attaching electrodes to one's gonads. ASS HOOKS.)

I'm with you on dangerous, although even that, I think, is more of a thing where the individual decides how much danger he/she is willing to risk. Where they recognize that its level of potential danger, and do it anyway.

But I wish that people would bear in mind that in most cases, I don't give a fuck about "the norm".

Neither do most of us, I suspect, but it helps the discussion if we're all on the same page linguistically. It's very confusing if you and I are using the same word to mean different things.

"Crazy" is so subjective, though.

My point exactly, although I'm typing this while on a conference call from hell, so I may not be at my clearest...

Kinky, crazy, and even dangerous are all subjective ideas. I consider skydiving dangerous, skydivers probably don't. Skydivers probably consider fucking while in freefall kinky, I really don't.

I'm with you on dangerous, although even that, I think, is more of a thing where the individual decides how much danger he/she is willing to risk. Where they recognize that its level of potential danger, and do it anyway.

Eh. Dangerous is relative. Every time I have sex I risk dislocations and other injuries. (And on that note, it can be so easy to have fun with people's perceptions and preconceptions. A lot of people think disabled types shouldn't have sex.)

I feel as if I said everything I have to say on this subject.

But I do intend to being up the "can something can be called kinky if it was a joke on Golden Girls?" as a subject to one of my sociology classes. I think that the answer is yes. Media has Janus face: esp. in satire, the same thing can be a joke or an excat representation of reality, depends who is watching. I didn't watch "All in the Family", but I think Archie Bunker is an example to that. A joke is a liminal place, and it's up to the watcher to decide if it's "true" or "false", or if it's funny or not. That's why "it's funny coz it's true" actually brought a new category, which I love to see how it's progressing.

And Steph, earlier, when I said "if you feel the need to handcuff...", I meant that since I basically agree with you but don't give the agreement the same social value you or others give to it, I find it pointless to agree.

Let me know if there's anything more you wish I'd clarify.