Innateness

The idea that sadomasochistic tendencies are an “innate” condition is often attributed to Lipshutz (1979). However, it is present at the very dawn of research into kink, and is proposed by the subjects, not the researchers. In Kraft-Ebbing's correspondence with a heterosexual male masochist (Case 57), the anonymous subject lays out the case in his own words (p. 99, emphasis in the original):

“Masochism, according to my experience, is under all circumstances congenital, and never acquired by the individual. I know positively that I was never spanked; that my masochistic ideas were manifested from my earliest youth, and that, as long as I have been capable of thinking, I have had such thoughts. If the origin of them had been the result of a particular event, especially of a beating, I should certainly not have forgotten it. It is characteristic that the ideas were present before there was any libido. At that time the ideas were absolutely sexless.”

Sentiments like this seem to be a commonplace among kinky people themselves, as they are among homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals. There is a long history of sexual deviants, like Case 57, arguing that they have “always been that way.” As Freud acknowledges (1969 [1905]), this could be interpreted as meaning that sexuality is a genetic trait, or that it is acquired and fixed from “accidents” in the early learning process, or acquired from more specific events that the individual has later forgotten or repressed. Kinsey and Martin (1953, p. 645) restate this argument:

“Even some of the most extremely variant types of human sexual behavior may need no more explanation than is provided by our understanding of the process of learning and conditioning. Behavior which may appear bizarre, perverse, or unthinkably unacceptable to some persons, and even to most persons, may have significance for other individuals because of the way in which they have been conditioned. Flagellation, masochism, transvestism, and the wide variety of fetishes appear to be products of conditioning, fortified sometimes by some other aspect of an individual's personality and by inherent or acquired physiologic capacities.....”

I discuss the possibility of a genetic predisposition to kink elsewhere; currently there is no evidence for it. What is distinctive about the other possible claims for “innate” kink is that they present kink as effectively idiopathic, even though it is a learned behavior. If kink is produced by, for instance, a particular type of parenting, disclipline, or social structure@, then it would be feasible for society to intervene in this process (intentionally or unintentionally), raising or lowering the number of kinky people over time. The idea of innateness implies that kink is produced by unexceptional “accidents” in the learning process. This would be comparable to how food preferences and dislikes are probably learned. Such haphazard events would be much harder to predict, prevent, or promote than a specific causal factor. And since they would not be easily susceptible to any attempt at management, kink would be likely to re-occur under a range of political and cultural contexts.

From this point of view, “innate” kink is something of a null hypothesis. There is no direct evidence for it; the indirect evidence is the failure of other etiologies to provide a full explanation for the observations.