WHAT IS KINK? An essay in thread form.
This thread is about kink and sexuality. It is primarily text with a bit of imagery, but there are some who may be offended by the subject matter itself. So out of respect for the Mastodon community, I’ll be putting the rest of this thread behind Content Warnings.
#kink #kinky #kinkster #kinktalk #BDSM #BDSMCommunity #BDSMTalk #BDSMPractice #sex #SexTalk #sexuality #sensuality #pervert #KinkyMastodon
What is kink?
This seems like such a simple question, and for many it would be. The term is interchangable with BDSM and weird sex, and as such no need to complicate matters. But I’ve been doing this for a long time and I have ideas. So I want to talk about it. Complicate it with narrative bullshit and express what I hope is a deeper understanding of why some people DO kink.
But to sum up with a quick tl;dr: Kink is not what we do, it’s how we feel.
Let’s start with the DOING, so as to clarify what kink is NOT.
Is bondage kink? How about spanking? Or Domination and submission? Or anything else kinksters do when getting it on.
NO!
Now, any of these may be YOUR kinks, but they are also descriptive practices and therefore not useful as a canonical definition of kink. We need go deeper with an exploration of human sexual motivations to get there.
This means untangling kink based on sexual universals, not mere practices.
To begin, I have to tell you a bit about my story.
A long time ago I was mentored into kink by a lesbian who had before been my then girlfriend’s Mistress. That is, I started dating this great gal, and she turned out to be a kinky submissive. But I was clueless and super vanilla. I don’t know what the ex-Mistress saw in me to convince her I was worth the trouble to train. Except for a sweet spot she had in her heart for my girlfriend. But it was she who taught me the how in kink.
Because the Mistress was a lesbian, she I never had sex. It was strictly lessons based on practice and discussion, with the hope I’d learn enough to really satisfy my partner and the Mistress’ friend. I think this was actually helpful in the training, as she focused on actual skills and not making my eyes roll back. The girlfriend did a good enough job there.
But in the beginning I had a lot of issues with kink. I worried I might hurt my partner or be abusive or even violate her.
I have an audio recording of me speaking about how I met my girlfriend at a cafe, how connected about books, and slowly began to date. How I felt when she revealed her so-called perverse desires. And my early issues with kink and the kink community. I mean, I was repressed and uptight and thrown into an entirely new circumstance I’d never even considered. It was a shock. And I had a lot of working on myself to get to the point of acceptance.
What did the Mistress teach?
There was so much to learn. It wasn’t just the practices, which do require training and practice. As I said, kink is risky. Binding someone with rope requires careful practice. You don’t want to cut off circulation or pinch a nerve, and sometimes people can’t handle being bound. That means you need a fast exit, which often involves cutting expensive rope to immediately free your partner. Because people are more important than things. Right!?! Right!
For impact play, she taught that each implement must be learned separately. That is, one learns how to use a flogger, or a strap, or a cane, or whatever, as a separate exercise. The reason is simple: these are weapons and they all handle differently.
The lessons to learn are: good aim, you want to hit the actual target; consistent force, you want each strike to be similar in intensity; pay attention to your partner! You want to know if you’re pushing too far or going too fast.
Then, there were the rules.
- Protocols of safety, some of which I’ve discussed.
- The phases of a kink releationship: negotiation and limits, limited play and exploration, getting comfortable, and then perhaps moving on to something more serious such as a limited dynamic or power exchange.
- Posture training. She was big on that, which came from her love of Yoga. She believed spinal alignment was crucial to sexual energy flow. Which is a whole discussion on its own.
- Kink training, which she refered to as the bread and butter of kink. And here her focus was on her partner. What does this person desire? What arouses her partner? What turns her partner off? And I don’t mean what’s discussed in negotiation, I mean paying attention during session to see what the partner actually does. How they respond in the moment.
And this brings up attentiveness to detail and self-control.
She believed one of the primary reasons she was attractive to submissive partners was her self-control in the moment.
Now she was an older but still attractive woman. But she never believed her physical appearance had much to do with her success as a Domme. What she thought mattered most of all was her partner’s beliefthat she was trustworthy and capable and always in control OF HERSELF.
She did NOT mean controlling her partner here.
She wouldn’t act out of anger. If there was a problem, she might end the session, provide aftercare, and then later have a conversation. Punishments were proportionate and measured but real. Her partner would be trained in this and knew what to expect. In that kaleidoscope of life, where so much is confusion, she provided consistency and reliability without drama.
If you can be that way, measured, responsible, with self-control in the moment, kinksters will flock to you.
She was incredibly observant of people. She loved throwing parties and bringing people together. In this way she was like a community maeven. People came to her for advice and support. She was a responsible community leader.
What she taught:
- Both Dom(me)s and subs seek out each other to fulfill their own emotional and sexual needs.
- Dominance and Submission are not gender or sex defined.
- Respect people and connect with those you like, not just those you want to fuck.
She understood the psychology of kink. What kink is, at its core. And this is central point of my thread here.
Kink is not about orgasms, that’s vanilla sex. The Church and society wants you to get off as quickly as possible so you’ll go back to work. Western sex is very Protestant in this way. Do your thing, get off, and if you’re lucky maybe she’ll get pregnant and you can stop doing the nasty… for a time, at least.
Because sex is outside of us (with God) and not a part of us.
She obviously rejected that view. Sexual desire is fundamental to our humanity. Kink embraces it.
Kink is all about desire, anticipation, and delaying and denying orgasmic payoff to focus on amplifying arousal, so when the orgasm finally does cum it will be overpowering. But the thing is, once the orgasm has come and gone, kink is done too. At least for the moment. Now it’s time for aftercare.
So what’s the lesson here? You can’t want or desire something you already have gotten.
Say you want a new pair of boots. It’s not a general desire, like ‘my shoes are tattered, I need new ones’. No, there’s a specific pair of handmade Cydwoq thigh highs, and it’s specifically those you want. Nothing else.
Every day you walk by the shoe store and pine after those thigh highs in the window. One day, you go in and ask to try on a pair. Sliding them on, they fit perfectly. When you see yourself in the mirror, they’re clearly made just for you. You want them even more.
Every day you stop by the store after work and the anticipation and desire builds. You imagine dressing up for a date with them on. Or social function, say at a nearby art museum where an opening is taking place. Owning these boots becomes an obsession. At night, lying in bed before sleep, those boots are all you can think about.
That’s DESIRE. It’s irrational. It controls us and our lives in ways we’d like to believe isn’t possible.
But these are popular boots. You notice the stock is running low. Your opportunity to buy a pair in your size is nearing its end. You’re tight for money this month and was hoping you might buy them next pay cycle. But that ain’t happening. So you go in the store, put down your credit card, and walk away clutching those boots.
So you take them home and now they’re in your shoe closet. YAY!
Anais Rim