A Line in the Sand

As I've stopped lurking and started writing, both here and on Reddit, I've continuously run into a discussion of the words need and want. In particular, I'm talking about social needs, not biological ones. There is no doubt that we all need food, water, and shelter to survive, so any such debate there would simply be foolish. What I'm talking about are the compulsions that plague each and every one of us to one degree or another.

This discussion is particularly interesting to me as a social theorist and because I keep hoping that I'll learn something I can apply to my own life from it. Full disclosure here, I'm a fatty. I like food... far too much for my own good. I eat far more than I need to, hell often far more than I want to.  I'm often guilty of claiming to need something that I just want. But that's not quite the sense of need I'm talking about here. I'm examining that grey area between hyperbolic exaggerations and the foundations of life. So I keep looking for that proverbial line in the sand where that need becomes want and where that want becomes learned habit.

I can't help but hearken back to the work of Thoreau (or maybe it was J.S. Mill... I'm not sure), who writes about the distinction between higher order needs and lower order desires. In the modern world though, I'm not sure these distinctions are quite so clearly cut as they were way back when. And I believe that the kink community is a perfect microcosm of this.

As I browse the forums, I constantly see both of these words bandied about with a high degree of interchangeability. Perhaps I'm guilty of it too... which is why I feel compelled to revisit it again. Is the slave who needs to be whipped truly any different from the sub who wants be flogged? In this case, I'm not sure the meanings are any different.

Then I consider my own life experience. In my original thread on need vs. want, I briefly mentioned my belief that I "need to be needed". When I'm left to my own devices, I tend to be disorganized and fairly lazy, I procrastinate because it makes life more interesting when there are challenges. When I took on the role of being laerie's dom though, I could no longer afford such luxuries - my life had to be in order if I was expecting hers to be - and the quality of my life improved greatly. All of a sudden things started falling into place, even outside of the kink world. My job is going better, my research is on track, and our relationship has never been better.

I also wrote extensively about laerie's need for a dominant presence in her life. When that presence is missing, she unconsciously seeks it out. She's drawn to dominance, much like a moth to a flame... she can't help herself. When she doesn't get it, she tends to be anarchic and destructive, which leaves her emotionally wrung out and exhausted. Without guidance, her life is simply a shadow of what it could be. Not only does she feel right when she submits, but she is more strong and successful to boot.

Thinking about this drew me back to a conversation I've had many times over with laerie. Three of her friends are transexual and they complement our cadre of lesbians, bisexuals and what not that make up the veritable cornucopia of identities our friends maintain. We often discuss the nuances of the LGBT community and debate whether the T truly should be lumped in with the LGB. Ostensibly, LGB issues are about sexual preference while T concerns gender identity.

The core of this though, harkens back to nature vs. nurture. It is generally understood that transexuals are born in the wrong bodies. One article I recently read detailed a five year old girl asking her parents "why did you change me? I was supposed to be a boy." LGB preferences though, are still debated (rightly or wrongly) over whether it's a preference or just the way they are. Though laerie's bisexual, which is far more acceptable for a female than being gay these days, she struggles to answer this questions for herself. Looking back at her past, she wonders if certain experiences shaped her interest in other women or if she would've had that curiosity regardless.

The same question can be asked of my dominance and laerie's submission. Do we need to fulfill these roles? Were we born to do so? Or is just something we like to do? Given how much our lives changed when we fully embraced this dynamic, and how painful it is to slip out of these roles even for a short time, I tend to err on the side of calling this aspect of our relationship a need. Again, while it's not as important as food, water, and shelter, there simply isn't another rhetorical category to place it under.

As for the rest of it, I believe that our identities operate on continuums that are far too often mistaken for binaries. Instead of categorizing individuals as gay/straight, male/female, dom/sub, masochist/sadist, we should do our best to look at how each of us manifests various traits of these spectrums, and countless others. Otherwise, it is far too easy for people to fall through the cracks and not find their niche. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply erase all those lines we've spent years arbitrarily drawing in the sand and focus on the spirit of these discussions of need vs want that perpetuate our society, particularly around issues of sexuality, instead of being caught up in the rhetoric.