Hi Gwen,

I have likewise been interested in the nature versus nurture issue. Whenever I receive email about my stories, one of the questions I always ask in my reply is how the sender became interested in bondage. The almost universal reply (only one exception) is that they have been interested ever since they can remember. The interest was just always there, part of the background. There was no single event or series of events that seems to have sparked the interest, it was just there. This is true in my own case as well. This would tend to indicate nature over nurture. Is it genetic? Hard to tell. It's not the sort of question most people ask their parents, so building a case for inheritance might be difficult, but my informal poll, although entirely anecdotal and unscientific, is heavily weighted in that direction. What about your own interest--nature or nurture? Does anyone else have an opinion as to how his or her own interest developed? I would especially like to hear from people who make an argument on the nurture side.