TTT: Kink Evolved to Facility Family Formation

Note: These takes are totally tacos!

Normies get a bad rap sometimes. Say what you will about them, they’ll often chug through a mediocre or even crummy marriage for 20+ years. I may look at them and think “why is that couple even still together?” but the financial security they reap and the fact that their children have a stable household that gets them into the workforce pipeline can’t be argued with. Society runs on this human machinery, it would break down without it, and there’s nothing wrong with being content with gossiping and grilling.

Society also needs high-variance weirdos. The people who try crazy shit, create ridiculous businesses, eat the new berries, and generally are very open to new experiences and are fairly high agency. I model these people as far less likely to stay in marriages for multiple decades just because they’re comfortable (or because breaking up would be too uncomfortable). They’re trying so much out-of-the-norm stuff already they’re far more likely to bounce from a relationship that doesn’t spark joy.

This, of course, is bad for family formation. Which, by extension, means the offspring of such people will be disadvantaged relative to children brought up in stable environments, and the genes for high-variance weirdos will be less common in a population.

But what if some additional trait evolved that didn’t dampen the high-variance weirdo traits while also keeping a greater percentage of them in stable relationships to facilitate child-rearing?

Enter kink. Lets posit some weird trait that either makes most sex very low-value, or that makes a specific way of having sex extremely high-value (or both!). For most people, half the population will fulfill their sexual needs. But for people with a kink, only a small percentage of the population can fulfill that need. Either someone who shares that kink, or someone willing to reciprocally indulge a kink they don’t have in exchange for being indulged in a kink they do have. Now staying with that partner is far higher value! Where the hell else are you going to find someone who wants to be slapped while biting your feet? There’s no way you’re letting this rare find slip away without a heckin’ effort! This works as powerful cement for emotional bonds, and facilitates family formation and coherence, and as a result the children of such unions are no longer relatively disadvantaged against their normie peers. Genes for high-variance weirdos that do exciting and innovative things and co-occur with kinks spread to more of the population.

Perhaps now that we have technology which makes it far easier for kinksters to find each other this advantage will partially (fully??) evaporate and the high-variance people will go back to failing to have multi-decade stable relationships strengthened by rare kinks. Maybe we’re even seeing that shift happen right now? I’m curious as to how this plays out, especially if we could compare it to kinky-folk stability one century ago.