Nature vs Nurture

Dan:                       One of the most sought after topics here on the erotic awakening podcast is the idea is his kink nature or is it nurture? And I’m smart enough to know that I don’t even understand the question, but I am lucky to know smart people today on the podcast we have Kya, who after she said she’d be willing to talk about it, she kept pushing this off so she could do more research, which just proves that you’re better prepared for this conversation than I am. I think. Kya, thank you for being on the podcast.So let me start off. Is it just that simple as the question that simple is kinked something that we’re born, we’re born kinky. The reason that one person’s Kinky is it’s their natural, is the chromosomes are DNA or any of that jazz or is it something environmental, or what?

Lady Kya:             So I wanted to start out by saying it’s a bad question and I have an analogy to explain why I would say it’s a bad question. So a lot of people think of nature versus nurture as or right? So it’s one or the other. And while it’s true that some things are somewhat a little bit more nature or a little bit more nurture, if you compare it to baking a cake. So if I were to give you a homemade piece of chocolate cake, is the best cake you’ve ever tasted and you asked me was it the ingredients or was it how I cook the cake? That question doesn’t make any sense, right? Because you have to have good ingredients and good cooking conditions, right? I can put the best ingredients in there and if I burn the cake it’s not going to be very good.

Lady Kya:             And I can use the best cooking methods possible. And if I use sawdust instead of flour, it’s not going to be very tasty. So one of the things that if you study behavioral genetics, you’re coming to see is that everything has to have both. And there’s a lot of examples where. So for instance, there’s a gene that has to do with risk of developing like antisocial disorders and all sorts of mental health issues. And if you have one kind of version of this gene and you have an abusive childhood, you are at higher risk of developing those issues, but if you have that same version of the gene and you don’t have an abusive childhood, you have a lower risk. Right. So there’s a lot of ways in which genes interact with the environment and so we can talk about risk factors, but it’s not, it doesn’t make sense in terms of behavior and genetics and environment to talk about either.

Dan:                       Now, when you say risk factors, you don’t mean risk in the negative sense but just more likely to happen versus less likely. Is that so?

Lady Kya:              Exactly.

Dan:                       One of the things that I looked at when I first decided that I was a Dom and that I was going to be a bdsm top, I looked into my past and I said to myself, is there something about the way I was raised that leads me to not minding hurting people? Now I’m not a true sadist, but I don’t mind topping a bdsm scene even when it causes pain, as you well know. So, but I can’t put my finger on anything that’s any different from the way I was raised versus one of my brothers. And as far as I know, my brothers are not into kink and not in the bdsm. So what’s your analysis of that doctor?

Lady Kya:             I think I might respond to that with kink is actually way more common than a lot of people think. So some studies that I can say it here. So Grid, Telly and Bivona in 2008, did a study of women’s fantasies. About 40 percent of women have rape fantasies,  there are so many horny sluts too looking for hot sex with locals so you can easily get lots of sex if you want it. Twenty-nine percent on tying someone up or being tied up, appealing 27 percent find spanking appealing. (In another) sample of people found 68 percent of how to kinky fantasy. And there’s another study by (Royal) in 2014 that found that about 55 percent of people fantasize about dominating or being dominated, 46 percent tying someone up or being tied up 32 percent spanking or whipping. So it’s actually a really common human practice and it goes all the way back  – there is a painting on a tomb of from the fifth century BC and basically shows a girl bent over giving a blow job and being spanked by two men. Lots of humans think this stuff is hot.

Dan:                       You mentioned 60 percent of people have kink fantasies like what you can find at http://sexcelebrity.net/category/deepfakekpop-porn/, but that’s kind of flexible because when I consider kinky and what the next person might consider Kinky, you know, might be worlds apart, right? Tugging your hair might be kinky to one person where that’s morning coffee for me.

Lady Kya:             So the interesting thing is – and I also want to back up a little bit and mentioned that Kink is not very well studied relatively speaking. So as a comparison, there’s a protein called Akt. It is not particularly like as proteins go. It’s not like front page news or anything. If you put in Akt as a search term into one of the most common databases of research articles, Pub med, you get 62,000 results. If you put in the term Bdsm, you get 39. So I want to caveat that I’m, especially if we’re looking at something like kink can abuse, there’s not a lot of studies and so the conclusions are a little bit weak at this point. What we do have, it seems to indicate that people who have been abused are more likely to be interested in bdsm or kink, but the results are mixed. It’s not super conclusive. One study found, so this was Richter’s et al, 2008 had no relationship between past history of abuse and Bdsm. And of course, all these studies, you also have people who are into sm who were not abused and people who are not in the sm who were abused, right? So you don’t have ever a one to one correlation.

Lady Kya:             But regardless, the other side to that too is that bdsm is pretty healthy. So there’s a lot of things that being abused puts you at risk for. So depression and other sorts of mental illnesses and just poor socioeconomic outcomes and all sorts of things that people don’t want in their lives. But bdsm tends to be, when it’s been looked at, tends to correlate with things like increased subjective well being. That was in the whitest major a study in 2013. They found that people who practice bdsm had a higher subjective well being, then controlled people, um, and, and the study is where they have found bdsm to be associated with anything negative. It was strongly associated with shame. So if you feel kinky and you’re ashamed about it, the shame might lead to some negative mental health outcomes. But if you feel Kinky, you’re being risk aware, consensual kink, and you are cool with what you are, then that’s actually good for you. So it have been, if it is related to abuse or not, straight on my perspective on that is, If it’s good for you, you’re not harming anyone, and then it really doesn’t matter whether it had something to do with past abuse or not. It’s a good thing in your life.

Dan:                       I will say from my perspective of experiential knowledge, just from being around the kink community for awhile, is that some kinksters are from an abusive background. And sometimes they end up as dominant and sometimes they end up as submissives and often and sometimes kinksters do not have abusive backgrounds and sometimes they ended up as dominance and submissive as well. And just from an experiential perspective, you could actually argue either way one way or the other, but I love what you’re saying about just own it and allow it to be a healthy extension of who you are. And the more that you find shame in it, the more likely it is to be, as you said, detrimental.

Lady Kya:             My guess is that it is something like personality and that it’s a complex mix of nature and nurture that it’s very much both. So there’s some things, right? So there’s a, a syndrome called Angel Men Syndrome, which is very clearly caused by a loss of a gene called ube three a. and it has all sorts of, you know, it’s a mental retardation and I’m generally, people are very happy and that’s very much a heavy nature, right? Ptsd is something that’s very much a heavy nurture, right? Um, yeah, there’s genes that can make you more or less susceptible to it, but you have to go through some kind of trauma in order to have ptsd. Um, I think this would be something like being outgoing, right? Or being someone who likes new experiences, both of which are actually things that are somewhat associated, weakly associated with being kinky. So it probably has a lot to do with your genes and a lot to do with your experiences and your background.

Dan:                       So this might be, and this is probably going to extend beyond your research and if so, and if you have no opinion, that’s fine, but I on a, what do you think about people that use the kink experience as a form of therapy for past abuse? Even going to the point of having a top, uh, doing some kind of a cathartic type of scene.

Lady Kya:             So I’ll preface it by saying, don’t by any means think that kink can be a replacement for professional treatment. Right? So if you have a mental illness, you should definitely seek professional treatment. Um, that said it’s something to do with kink. So sort of as a side thing to add onto professional treatment, especially if you are with a kink aware therapist and you’ve maybe talked to them to make sure it’s not like a self harm sort of thing. Um, then my experience has been at both for myself and talking to other people that it can be very helpful and very healing.

Dan:                       Okay. What do you think that, what have we not talked about in your research has come up that is surprising or interesting that we haven’t gotten to yet?

Lady Kya:             Oh, I think the one thing I just want to mention, so we talked a little bit about how coming kinky fantasies are. Uh, so also kinky practice. Um, so if you look at people who actually do kinky things, right? I’m lesbian and bisexual women were studied in New York and 40 percent of them practice some kind of kink her at all. Did a large representative study, 21 percent of people had either tied someone up or been tied up 32 percent of people had spanked or been spanked her at all, did a Belgium sample of people and found that 46 percent had done some kind of bdsm activity. So, so just to maybe put this all in perspective, right? I would say a low end estimate would be four out of 10 people have had kinky fantasies and two out of 10 people have done kinky activities. So next time someone say if you’re standing in the grocery line and there’s a long line and there’s maybe 10 people in that line of 10 adults, most likely four of them have had kinky fantasy is and two of them have done kinky stuff. So it’s pretty common.

Dan:                       So you should look closely at what they’re buying.

Lady Kya:             Well that’s one way to look at it. But so I think part of nature and nurture it comes at this from a I’m so unusual or such an outlier and what makes me so different from everyone else when really we’re not that unusual.

Dan:                       Hm. So one more question for you if you don’t mind. Sure. Um, and this is not the question, but this is a statement to start with, which is going to be in the context of a question, is, is it a acceptable to suggest that you have some personal interest in experiencing kink yourself?

Lady Kya:             Yes, definitely.

Dan:                       So do you ever find yourself in the middle of a scene and your scientific brain kicks in and says why? I’m just like the other 30 percent that feel this and the 20 percent that enjoy this and 82 percent of people enjoy my nipple

Lady Kya:             twisted. There definitely have been some times when, especially as as it’s first getting into kink and having a lot of anxiety about what is this I’m doing? Is this really okay. Where I looked at just how common some of this stuff was and went, you know, it’s not that weird. It’s okay.

Dan:                       And what is the solution for people that are getting into Kink, whether they’ve had a, whether they’ve had an abusive background or not, or a religious background or not, or a just a plain old plain normal background. It would be still natural. Very few people come into kink thing, oh, I think I’ll do kick now without some kind of hesitation, some kind of self doubt or some questioning. I might some kind of Weirdo or some kind of freak like has been portrayed in the media up until fairly recently. It’s been fairly recent that we’ve seen and even now it’s still very rare to see kinky people portrayed as normal people, but certainly it’s. It’s a little bit more prevalent than it was say 10, 20 years ago. So what would you recommend for people that are getting into beginning to follow their kink and find themselves looking in the mirror and going, what are you some kind of freak? Are you sick? Do you need mental health?

Lady Kya:             I have found it very useful to go to kink things where there are other kinky people and just meet them and talk to them. It’s I think a lot of people have an easier time judging themselves than judging others and so it’s. If I meet six people who are all into the same sorts of kinks that I am and they’re interesting, normal people who can hold a conversation and have jobs and that sort of thing, then it’s a lot harder for me to think, oh, this must be awful because I’m like, these other people do it and they’re great and it can also be let you share some of your experiences and see that these other people have some of the same feelings and thoughts and concerns that you do and you can talk to them about it. And if you are concerned that it’s a mental illness, I would strongly suggest find a kink friendly therapist and talk to them about it.

Lady Kya:             Um, so kink can be. It’s a relatively risky thing to do with are ways that you can get hurt. So you don’t want to necessarily not think about what you’re doing, but it can also be a hugely beneficial thing. It’s one of the best things I think that has come into my life. So do the work to talk to someone who’s a professional who can tell you whether give you some feedback on whether what you’re looking at doing is a form of self harm or not being a healthy growing human being, or if it’s just, this is a fantastic healthy expression of your sexuality. Go for it. Very cool.

Dan:                       Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast today. Anything else that we wanted to. I know you did a lot of research coming in here. I want to make sure that it wasn’t put the waste.

Lady Kya:             There was a great meme recently that research has spending six hours reading 35 papers so you can write one sentence containing two references.

Dan:       I’ve got 19 minutes out of your research. Thank you for being on the podcast today, I’m still not convinced about whether my dominant tendencies are appropriate, so we’ll need to do some more research.


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