How do sexual kinks/fetishes develop?
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Edit: In hindsight this is how they persist on a species/population level rather than how they develop/originate within an individual. But ya runaway selection, worth the read
Scrolled a bit and saw a lot of recurring answers, but not what I’m about to say. It’s known as runaway selection. I’ll explain it here, feel free to look it up in case I miss something/get something slightly off, but basically it’s a hypothesis for why so many birds of paradise (among other species/animals found in nature) have such elaborate features and mating preferences. And I think it can be extended to kinks and fetishes, which are just really weird mating behaviours and preferences in humans. The hereditary ones anyway.
Let’s say hypothetically, you have a population of a certain species of bird living within a defined geographical area. This population could have hundreds of thousands, or even millions of individuals. And let’s say a small fraction (x%) of the males have some visually distinctive feature that the majority of these birds don’t have, due to random genetic mutation. It could be a patch of a certain colour somewhere on the body, a crest on the head, a tuft on the breast, an unusually long tail, anything like that. Now let’s also suppose that a small fraction (y%) of the females in this population have a preference for this trait in the males; they find these males rather attractive, while the “normal” females don’t care for (or are even put off by) this trait.
If one of these x males and y females mate together, what happens? The genes for this trait get passed on to the male offspring, and the genes for the preference for this trait get passed on to the female offspring. This creates a positive feedback cycle, where the presence of the x trait and y preference continually increase over generations of mating cycles within the population, hence the name “runaway” selection.
Naturally, there are controlling factors at play. A bright colourful patch might make you more attractive to potential mates, but if it’s TOO flashy it can also make you more visible to predators. Similarly, a long tail might make you attractive, but if it’s TOO long it slows you down when flying, making it harder to hunt and eacape predation. Eventually, an equilibrium is reached in the population between the positive feedback cycle that is pushing in favor of x trait, and the controlling factors in the environment that push against it.
I know this has been 4 long paragraphs about pretty birds, but the key is the positive feedback cycle between a trait and a preference for said trait, assuming of course the trait and preference are both genetic/hereditary. So, maybe if you’re a sadist and your partner is a masochist, your kids will be the same. Or if you like eating shit and your partner likes shitting in your mouth, your kids will be a bunch of shit faced fucks. Whatever fucked up kinda shit you’re into, there’s someone out there that is into it. Find them, and together you can release more disgusting sick fucks like yourself into the world.
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