The Pernicious Math of Kink

Let’s do a little math, shall we?

Assume that 20% of the general population are serious kinksters.

Assume that 10% of them admit it to themselves.

Assume that 10% of them are kinky in a way that involves reaching out to others.

Assume that 1% of them are “cool.” (Meaning that you click with them).

So, when we lived in Los Angeles, these assumptions would lead one to believe that there are:

Of the 12,000,000 people in the Greater Los Angeles area 2,400,000 kinksters of which 240,000 are admitted kinksters of which 2,400 are public kinksters of which 240 are cool kinksters. This means that in Los Angeles, there was a way we could get a group together who were aware of sexuality, our blog, and we could feel like we had a nice social circle that wasn’t utterly encapsulated. But, even more, there were enough kinksters in general that you could have multiple groups of them in the city. Call it a “critical mass,” where you have enough people to get thriving kinky ecosystem. Los Angeles had enough for multiple critical masses, and you could have all of the different circles functioning and even thriving. This showed up in lots of ways.

In LA, we personally knew of five functioning dungeons (in the Valley, MdR, North Hollywood, West Hollywood, and Orange County) and each one had its own characteristic “scene” that we could compare and contrast. It takes a decent number of people to support a dungeon. You have to have a sizeable paying membership, of which only a fraction will actively use it and remain members longer than a few months, plus a few professionals that use the space for their businesses. After all, these places have to pay rent, and keep a lot of expensive equipment on hand, not to mention these place tend to require heavy supervision. But Los Angeles easily supported a sizeable network of facilities.

Further, you could go to a smaller site for finding “special friends,” where you had to know someone to get on, and there was a huge emphasis on the quality of member, and find a decent number of people who were signed on in our area. We actually dated two couples who lived in less than a five mile radius from that site. At any given time, there would be at least 40 accounts (usually for couples) online in the Los Angeles area, and every person on that site was hand-verified as real.

But now, let’s shift that math to Rochester, NY. The Greater Rochester area has just a hair over 1,000,000 residents. This yields 200,000 kinksters, 20,000 honest ones, 200 public pervs, and a sparkling 2 worth knowing. (And, it is entirely possible that those two are the proprietors of this blog). If that math were not grim enough, we could also reflect on the fact that, although New York is a blue state, the western counties are decidedly red. The more conservative culture, throws the above percentages into even darker territory. But now, let’s remember the concept of “critical mass” from above.

With the tiny PervPop(tm) of Rochester, there is only one dungeon (that we are aware of) – operated by Rochester Kink Society. This means you can’t be like a Los Angelino, and decide that Lair de Sade is too snooty, Threshold is too crazy, but Dragon’s Gate is just right. The leather-assed Indestructosubs are right alongside the delicate flowers, and the drama queens mingle with ultra-casual. And if you don’t like it, you are left with Hobson’s choice. But the effects of a small kink network get even more pernicious than that. When you don’t have enough people to support a choice, that mean that everyone has to share something that is never quite enough. It’s like the sex blog community – acknowledgment and acclaim are in brutally short supply, and any time something is doled out, it is fought over. In other words, drama ensues. Small social networks themselves cause drama.

Going back to the dating website I mentioned above, I found roughly five active members within a 100 mile radius of Rochester. So, like anyone else from the area, I canceled our membership. If there’s not enough enough people there to be worth meeting (and, keep in mind, in any given group, I only expect 1% of the people I see to be worth meeting for the possibility of going to our bedroom) then why bother? And, if there is never enough to get it started, there will never be enough to make it grow.

To add to this effect, the small, marginal nature of the kink community and the more conservative culture have created a virtual “closet” for the D/s and poly communities. Whereas in LA, we never advertised the peculiarities of our relationship, we never felt the need to hide them, either. Here, we have to actively keep the nature of our life a secret. There is the strange discomfort of having to lie about what we did on a weekend. Everyone here knows that on weekends I like to “keep a low profile.” That’s my usual cover. No matter what, I have an inescapable sense that if people knew what we did, it would damage my career. And yet, strangely, if people thought I was cheating on my wife, that would be less of a problem than knowing we have an open marriage. These psychological contortions are damaging. Andrew Sullivan has written heavily about how psychologically destructive the closet truly is (and he knows better than most, having lived through a time when his homosexuality HAD to be in the closet, and the act of telling someone was a long, sit-down moment) and it something every human being should read.

To this end, I have elected to pin my hopes on Canada. Some of it is the less conservative culture, but even more of it is the fact that two of Canada’s biggest metropolises, Toronto and Montreal, are just over the border at opposite ends of Lake Ontario. The math is just better – and better math leads to much better lives.