BlogOrigins
Why People Have Kinks: Origins and Causes
Where kinks and fetishes come from: learning, the brain, pain and pleasure, and whether an interest can begin in adulthood, from the research.
3 articlesUpdated 27 Sep 2026RSS
Origins articles
Origins5 min read
Can you develop a fetish later in life? What the evidence allows
Can you develop a fetish later in life? What onset studies, conditioning experiments and acquired-preference cases say about when interests form.
Origins7 min read
Why some people enjoy pain, and what the body does when they do
Why do people enjoy pain? Context can flip moderate pain to pleasant, and BDSM scenes raise cortisol and endocannabinoids in the partner receiving.
Origins7 min read
Why do people have kinks? Where the evidence runs out
Why do people have kinks? What conditioning, excitation transfer and the trauma story each explain, and the point where the evidence stops.