NSFW: Do you think we are born with our preferences or do they arise from life experience?

Personally, I think it’s a combination of both. I think your genetics and whatnot give you certain predispositions, and your environment as you grow up and live shapes those dispositions.

I agree with @tedd. It is a combination of the two.

Ah well. Another example of the nature/nurture debate. I guess I think these things are more a result of cultural and familial influences than anything programmed by our genes.

Now I know that our genes give us programming for many behaviors, but in this case I think they give us many more possibilities that is meaningless to say there is any kind of programming for specific preferences with respect to sexuality. These things are made through experience, not programmed by DNA.

I think they’re based on your life experiences. You have to be adventurous to get in to some of them and if your life experience doesn’t allow you to try different things you’re not going to want to explore some of the wilder side of life.

I say experience. Nothin’ like a good one.

So those of you who are saying that it’s experience, do you mean to say that somebody won’t have these kind of preferences if they haven’t had sex yet? Or just that those things come about at some point after birth?

@Mariah The adventurous side of a personality is formed as you grow up I think. The adventurous side of a sex life forms after you have started having sex in most people. You can’t lump everyone under one rule, but I would think that’s the most common path.

Some have their preferences before they’ve had sex. They see something they like, and figure that’s what they’ll enjoy feeling. That blurry vision becomes pretty clear once you’ve had ‘experience’. Then you know for sure.

@Ayesha So do you have to see something to think that might be fun to try or is it in innate vision that hey, this seems like it would be fun?

The latter, I think.

See I’d be inclined to agree, except that I have heard about people who have had certain fascinations since childhood. It wasn’t until adulthood that they understood that those feelings were sexual.

@Mariah Fascinations with the fetishes or with sex in general?

I mean there are people who, for example, were fascinated with feet as children and grew up to realize they had a foot fetish. That’s what made me wonder if maybe this is a “from birth” thing.

@Mariah I know of some people like that. They seem to be implanted with ideas at a very young age. So I think some of the population is born with the instincts.Some are just the opposite.

I think most of these preferences are learned.

Experience..nurture.

Without any research, it’s not possible to answer this question with any certainty. But my hunch is that it’s a combination of both.

I think mostly from learned experiences, but a bit from being born with natural tendencies.