Non-Sexual Kink and Abuse of Intimacy
May 5, 2021
This is a little free-thought and not fully developed and I'm stumbling along trying to describe myself as I type so bear with me.
Was thinking about abuse and manipulation through vectors of non-sexual kinks. Discussion on it is difficult and foggy because it's been bogged down by the muddying of the incorrect concept that 'Sex' is the problem so when sex is removed, people no longer know how to categorize it. Worse is when they try to reach further to try to bring sex back into it in order to justify the concept that the problem connected to sex specifically. And in doing so, it's erased so much of the important discussion to be had around all the other vectors of sexual abuse and has effectively removed the tools we need to discern warning signs of any manner of hurt.
In order to properly convey what I want, I need to start with a question "what is intimacy?" due to the fact that the word might not have the same weight for everyone, as it does me. For the purpose of understanding what I mean I'm going to describe what intimacy means in the context I'm using it and what to consider when I use the word Intimacy. The dictionary definition of intimacy, which describes it as closeness, familiarity, and can be used as a euphemism for sex, but I'm explicitly not using it as a euphemism for sex. For my purposes when I say Intimacy I am referring to a concept of a strong and deep bond with another person that is vulnerable. Those strong powerful threads you create with other people, deep friendships and good family, an emotional connection and understanding that is not inherently sexual in any way.
Think about what you consider an intimate friendship or family bond. For the most part, they are people that you consider personally tied to you in some way, people you seek for emotional comfort, that you might even expect a certain amount of emotional support and comfort from, depending on the type of relationship you've formed. They're people that you have a certain amount of trust with. And in any healthy intimate relationship where you expect a certain amount of emotional support or supply, that support and supply is negotiated or discussed in the event there is any misgivings. It is in unhealthy intimate relationships where this expectation is not negotiated or one-sided and often attempts at negotiation or application of boundaries are denied. This is where harm can occur.
For example, if you are expected to be the primary vector of emotional support, supply, or validation of a parent? A friend? Anyone that might have some perceived amount of closeness from you that you do not have yourself? And it was not a position you agreed to or possibly agreed to while unaware of what was expected. That's intimacy abuse (whether intentional or unintentional). This is important to define because we've so often put sex and intimacy hand-in-hand, which is why intimacy abuse can feel like sexual abuse; we've had no other way to describe it. Or rather, there's not been enough discussion on the subject to have a way to describe it. And we've done ourselves a huge disservice in the realm of identifying and categorizing abuse because of that conflation. (Especially when you consider sex can exist without being intimate and there's nothing wrong with that.) When you factor in Intimacy as it's own vector in forms of abuse, it can bring into clarity the ways one can be abused and it might even make you realize some of those uncomfortable situations you couldn't define, had been intimacy abuse all along.
Getting back to the topic that made me think about all this, the problem with abuse with non-sexual kinks isn't that one person feels sexual and you personally don't, sometimes they don't even feel sexual at all. The problem is that they've formed a one-sided intimate bond with you, that you did not ask for. Where the other person is sapping emotional needs, attention, and exchange from you, and you had no negotiation in those boundaries and what is expected of you. Whether or not they personally masturbated to it is not the problem, the abuse of that intimate connection and your unconseneted participation in that intimacy, is the problem.
Related to this, forming intimate connections first is what leads to sexual abuse, later. They create an intimate bond that the victim is unaware of, because it weakens them, makes them feel responsible without realizing what is happening, and makes them malleable to use in other ways, later on. This hyper-focus on Sex Good or Sex Bad has made it easier for abusers to create intimate bonds and hurt others before they are noticed. Everyone looks at the trap that was sprung last and see's that as the only cause that they miss the poison that was used to weaken them.
After you give all that consideration it becomes much easier to define where the line is when it comes to non-sexual Kink - the line is the that threshold of intimacy that you have to determine if you are comfortable or not comfortable with. It may also help you to define those weird moments with family, friends, and others that made you feel oddly vulnerable and expectant to the others, in ways you likely couldn't articulate but knew were violations of something personal.
Intimacy abuse can be as deeply cutting and long-lasting as any other kind of abuse, and should not be ignored.
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