Kink is not intimate, sex is, that’s the part that makes it seem intimate, if you do kink without the sex, then it’s just using someone as a prop for some kind of weird entertainment.
When someone confuses being abused with intimacy, that’s a sign of trauma, if you feel like being hurt by your partner brings you closer to them, that’s a trauma bond, and it is very addictive (speaking as someone who went through an abusive relationship)
That’s why they get all defensive about it when you bring up how it’s harmful, they are defending their vice, using sex or your partner for a vice is not intimacy, in fact it’s the opposite of intimacy, it’s objectifying to your partner and to yourself if they are into it specifically for the kink too
(if they are into it just because you like it then that’s different, if it doesn’t turn them on at all, they aren’t objectifying you, they are just trying to please you in a way that goes against the natural instinct of love, which is to not hurt your loved ones, so if you want to push your kink onto them and convince them to hurt you then you might just end up traumatizing both of you instead)
From: someone whose first experience with sex was being trained to be a domme by their ex
Kink is more like a (maladaptive) substitute for intimacy, which is part of why it's so popular (as another person noted, sex and intimacy have been more or less divorced in modern sexuality). People can't become aroused (not just sexually, like nervous system arousal) during "vanilla" sex because they aren't able to be present (due to trauma, pornsickness, intimacy disorders) so they bypass that by triggering "fight or flight (or freeze or fawn)" response (which, btw, is not the same kind of arousal — hence the downstream antisocial effects) with BDSM.
It doesn't make sense. They tell us as little girls boys being mean to you means he likes you. Then say as an adult its your fault for being abused, but they want to abuse you and its only okay when they're abusing you themselves. Having kinks is one thing, but when they're rooted in abuse and misogyny or taking advantage of someone else's trauma and something they'd never let be done to themselves is where I draw the line. I've done fetish work before as a domme, and these men are just as depraved. CNC and BDSM is just a red flag to me. Why do you want to be brutalized or brutalize someone else, who hurt you? Some of them have had trauma and though I emphasize I am just not into beating up men or letting them beat me up. These dudes need counseling instead of projecting their depraved shit on women. Or the classic partner who pushes to do anal not knowing anything about it and refuses to try pegging or any of your fetishes that aren't degrading or painful.. They're entitled, selfish sex pests who need to be permanently locked in a chastity device for everyone's own safety.
I get where you're coming from and I'm not trying to be that way, but sex isn't automatically intimate either. Probably more often than not, the sex people are having has little to no intimacy involved. Sex does not equal intimacy, sex CAN (and should, if you ask me) be a byproduct of intimacy, but unhealthy sex with no intimacy is depressingly common. Not trying to just be negative or miss the point of your post though, I hear you.
You’re right, I wasn’t trying to say that sex is always intimate, just that the sexual aspect of kink can make it seem intimate, that if it feels intimate to someone it’s probably because of the sex and not the kink part, or because of trauma bonding
Thats because its over for this cooked society full of psychopaths and bums, but sex at its core is about intimacy and love