In 2017 i was having a crisis. To be more accurate, from birth until around age 30 i was having a crisis, but in 2017 i was having a more crisisy crisis. The big season finale of The Crisis. i’d progressed rapidly through the various feeling-suppressing options that street pharmacists had to offer at an alarming speed (including some very alarming use of speed, funnily enough) and arrived, in a move that probably shocked no one, at heroin addiction.
But, i was trying to sort it out, in the messy, chaotic, but best of my ability way i tried to sort out all my own problems without much skill or direction but a lot of positive vibes. i had got on methadone and reduced my heroin use to a weekly “little treat”. i had started trying to socialize a bit more instead of bed rotting – in the literal sense of rotting, and the not so literal sense of bed because i had sold my bed for drugs and was sleeping on a yoga mat. And i decided to look for some volunteering to give me some purpose.
The people who knew about my addiction were my ex-wife, about 3 of my friends, my immediate family, and a woman who ran a local trans support group where i’d opened up about my struggles. Shortly after i applied to volunteer with a local LGBT charity, that list expanded to include their full organising committee thanks to an email from that last one. Instead of the fairly chill interview i’d expected, i was called in for a formal meeting with the committee to discuss my various sins and problems that should have been private.
It turned out actually pretty great. They wanted someone to do community outreach who could mix with all sorts of different people. Life experiences and hardship were, in their view, an asset. Some of the people from that committee are still my friends today, i had amazing experiences, and drama too. Lots of drama. Charity work is absolutely batshit bonkers for it. But my addiction, and then my recovery, were never an issue. And crucially – they were never a secret again.
The lesson could have been “don’t trust people who say they’re there to support you.” That’s a bad lesson and that approach has fucked me up in the past. Trust is risk, and some caution can be wise but if you need help at some point you have to let people in. The lesson i chose to learn instead was that secrets have power, and the only person who doesn’t get to use that power is the person whose secret it is. The only way to claim that power for yourself is to destroy the secret – destroy the shame attached to it, own the narrative, and let other people’s opinions of it be their problem.
i started exploring my kink identity in 2021. The idea didn’t come out of nowhere, life circumstances came to a head and forced me to confront it but i’d been fantasising about torture since i was a small child and about rape since i found out what it was – so i knew my wiring. And betraying my own “no secrets” principles, no one knew. My old NA sponsor knew the tip of the iceberg, and had helpfully told me that those thoughts were because i was spiritually sick, and the program would help, and i should try very hard to stop having them. After trying without much success i finally reached the point where i thought maybe just doing some weird sex stuff might be better than beating myself up and telling myself i was a nasty little pervert who should be ashamed. You can outsource that.
To embrace who i was and what i wanted, i knew i would have to shed the shame. i could not be acting one way in private and presenting as someone completely different in public – handing that power over to kinky partners, friends and acquaintances to tear down my illusion any time they pleased. i had to come out, and i had to make peace with admitting my kinks to myself too. So i did. i started talking about it, and the talking made it easier. It cut it down to size. Other people opened up to me once i initiated those conversations, and i felt less alone. Suddenly the darkest thoughts from the corners of my brain were floodlit and i found out they were largely quite mundane. A few were definitely weirder than most – but the right people celebrated the weird and supported me. Nothing in there was unique. Nothing in there was the most extreme or too fucked up. Just a run-of-the-mill kinky brain.
What those conversations look like vary a lot person to person. My colleagues don’t need to know what makes me cum, where my close friends might want all the goss. In most cases, what i tell people is that i’m part of the kink community – “i’m busy that day, i’m going to a play party” – and that i’m in a D/s relationship – “i’ve cut down smoking loads now that Mx limits my cigarette allowance.” Talk about play, sex, fantasies, and other intimate or heavy stuff is reserved for people who want to know about it. i don’t consider it any more “oversharing” to tell someone i’m owned than to tell someone i’m dating, or any more inappropriate to wear a collar than a wedding ring. More confronting, perhaps, of people’s expectations and perceptions of the world. But a little challenge, seeing a little difference, is good for us all.
As well as shedding my shame and self hate, being openly kinky has helped me form new friendships and deepen existing ones as i find others like me. It has allowed me to educate and correct misinformation that people pick up through sensationalist media. It has reaffirmed to me that most people are accepting of differences and curious to learn about how others live and love. It has allowed me to feel wholly and completely myself in every aspect of my life – a rare privilege that is not as out of reach to most people as fear makes them believe.
But, there is pushback – surprisingly often from within the kink community. Being kinky is not a protected characteristic by law and many see my openness as an unnecessary risk, not only to me but there is the “guilt by association” factor, especially for partners. If you know i need pain to enjoy intimacy then anyone i’m dating is confirming themselves as a Sadist, or at least up for giving it a good try. This is a conversation i had very early with my partner, and sure enough the first person They showed a photo of me to immediately replied “oh my god, the tiktokker?”. Yeah, the tiktok where i’ve talked about liking cigarettes put out on me and wanting a relationship with no freedom or privacy. Sorry Mx! But They’ve embraced that, and i take a great deal of care not to say or do things that directly implicate others without their consent. i do also let anyone kinky close in my life know the risk, so they can choose how publicly we associate. Much as i think being out is great, it’s a personal choice, some people face much larger risks than others, and it would never be for me to make that decision for them.
Those concerns, though, are very understandable. What i find more frustrating to encounter is people who say coming out is just about “telling people what you do in the bedroom”, and imply or outright say that it’s inappropriate or a violation of consent and boundaries to do so. Firstly – non-kinky people absolutely talk about what they do in the bedroom. Those conversations can be appropriate – close friends sharing tips and telling each other about a hot date – or inappropriate, like having that same conversation with a colleague or a minor. We can trust most people to share at an appropriate level for the context they’re in, being kinky doesn’t mean i have lost all tether to social expectations. Talking about who and how i love, my social life, and my identity does not need to involve talking about what i do in the bedroom. Or on the living room floor. Or in a dungeon.
Ultimately being open isn’t for everyone and may never be for everyone. And that’s ok. But i do believe if it becomes a more talked about option, a more normalised path, it would benefit us all. If instead of the default expectation – that kink is secret and private and must be hidden from our vanilla lives at all costs – people entering the world of kink weighed up the risks and benefits of disclosure for themselves and chose a balance that felt natural and comfortable, would that not relieve some pressure and raise the general understanding and acceptance of the rest of the world? If our communities were less hidden and anonymous, would they be less attractive to predators? If our loved ones knew who we were, would they still support laws that police our bodies and desires?
Being kinky and being LGBT are not the same – they are two entirely different identities and communities with, of course, some overlap but also many people who are one but not the other. Conflating them can be dangerous, and is also unhelpful and reductive because the differences are just as important as the similarities. But as someone who is both, i believe passionately that kinky people have a great deal to learn from the LGBT community and how it balances the right to privacy and protection from nonconsensual outing against the need to promote visibility to support progress. If LGBT people had never been willing to take risks and share their truth in a hostile world that criminalised, stigmatised and disowned us, nothing would have ever changed. It is easier to hate people that exist only as stereotypes in your mind than it is to hate the people you know and love. Some will be determined to do it anyway, the path to social acceptance isn’t easy, but i think for the kid i used to be – terrified in church wondering if God was reading my mind and in heaven would tell my parents i was a pervert – that it is a path worth taking.
kirizal talks kink 