Thread by @AlexandraErin

Tangential to previous thread, but sometimes I think one reason why elaborate forms of sexual play are so engrossing is because adulthood doesn't offer many other opportunities for play, period.

Like, we can all play games, we can play around, but there has to be context to just *play*, and kink gives it.

It can be imaginative play, play-acting. You can make up rules. You can even sit at a little table and play with dolls and stuffed animals.

If you provide a context.

People wring their hands over kids getting engrossed in video games instead of play, but I am way more worried about the vanishing of playtime from schools (and childcare that is increasingly curricular in nature).

My mother ran a licensed daycare for darn near two decades and she studied education theory and studied curriculums and then still had a schedule full of loosely structured or free play.

Teachers at our school all wanted their kids in her program because... well, we (her own children) made for pretty good advertising.

It was a small school.

And I feel like nowadays, darn near two decades on, "well, the kids are pretty smart" wouldn't cut it, you'd need something that can be certified.

Which means more curriculum, less play.

There was a conversation at the bar in WisCon a few years back about being an adult and realizing you had just lost the capacity for play. Too much restraint, the wrong kind of creative muscles, no social license, I don't know.

Multiple people voicing a shared internal milestone

No one tells you that you're too old to play, you just get to a point where you're busy and you have put away childish things and you don't even think about it... and then, at some point you do, and feel like something has been lost.

Not completely, not permanently. Some day you have a kid or your sibling or cousin or neighbor does, and the kid hands you a toy telephone and says it's for you. Or they have astronauts and tell you you're the green one. Or they are a lion and they're gonna get you.

Context shift.

A small child hands you a toy telephone and says it's for you. Suddenly you're in a different frame. You aren't just humoring them, you're playing with them.

That suggests to me that it's not entirely truly a loss, it isn't a lack of capacity, it's a lack of... for lack of a better word... permission.

People who don't play lose their sense of license to play.

Kink can provide the license. An invitation from a child who wants you to join their game can provide the license. A silly costume environment can provide the license. A LEGO building activity can provide the license. A sufficiently freeform game can provide the license.

I think it's important that kids have time and space to play.

I think it's important adults can find the license to play. (And have the time and space.)

It's important for people to play.