If you’ve ever been spanked, flogged, or tied up, you’ve likely felt your worries and responsibilities slip away, even if only for a brief time. Or perhaps you’ve experienced a deeper sense of catharsis that stays with you long after the scene ends. There’s no question that BDSM can be healing and therapeutic for many, but it’s not therapy.
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Many of the things BDSM players enjoy, like impact, CNC, and rope bondage, involve more risk than vanilla sex. In some cases, that’s even part of the appeal. It’s also why the BDSM community spends so much time emphasizing consent and safety. The thinking goes that as long as the people involved are consenting risk-aware adults, they can do what they want—a philosophy reflected in frameworks like SSC and RACK. We disagree and think it’s time to talk plainly about BDSM activities that are simply too dangerous to do. As cases ripped from the headlines show, consent alone isn’t enough. In this post, we’ll discuss a few kinks that should always be off limits, others that require education to do properly, and red flags everyone should watch out for.
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Passionate romance, deep intimacy, erogenous zones, eye contact. This is not a list of ingredients in PG-13 sex scenes. These have all been claimed as “kinks” by people discussing sex online, along with bondage, pet play, D/s, and anything else that typically falls under the BDSM umbrella. If everything and everyone is kinky, what does the word even mean? Is it beneficial for the definitions of kink and BDSM to keep expanding? We’ll explore these questions and more in this post, starting with where these words came from and how we got here.
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Have you ever wondered if your kinks are too weird or dark? Now, thanks to the largest kink survey in the known universe, we have the data to prove they aren’t. Aella, a rationalist, sex worker, and “survey artist,” has spent years running and refining a survey of nearly 300 kinky dimensions. As of today, the Big Kink Survey (BKS) has over a million respondents and offers an unprecedented look into our collective kinky psyche. Though it offers a treasure trove of data, its greatest insight isn’t about what people are into, but rather how surprisingly common all our kinks are. Here are five key takeaways from the BKS.
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“A timid man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive.” That’s the anodyne description of the new BDSM movie Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton. Reviewers are describing it in even more lighthearted terms, calling it a rom-com (or dom-com), which, based on the trailer, is a fair assumption. But in reality, the movie is a much darker and less funny portrayal of an unhealthy BDSM dynamic that lacks proper negotiation and is largely getting a pass because it focuses on gay men instead of a heterosexual couple. Let’s dive into the details. (This post contains spoilers.)
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