Help! I’m Kinky? A mini-series of intros into The Lifestyle – Volume 1 : Now What? – A Foreword

First of all, welcome home! A little bit of a foreword : 

I’ve identified as kinky since basically forever now. I’m certainly not the one-true-voice-of-kink but I do hope to offer a little useful insight based on my many many years here. I signed up on Fetlife probably the day I was legally allowed to have a profile (Fetlife is a kink social networking site that I’ll talk more about later) and in my decade-or-so time there I’ve been an off-and-on participant in a forum group called Novices and Newbies where new members come to ask their questions about all things kink and someone who hopefully knows what they’re talking about gives them answers. At least once a day, every single day, there will be a “Help! I’m new! What the fuck I’m freaking out! Tell me how to do everything!” post. So if you’re feeling apprehensive, please take a moment to breathe and know that literally millions of people have had the same feeling. At least one a day, every day. But definitely more. Some of the most common questions are “How did I get here? Why am I like this? Is there anyone else in the whole world who feels like I feel? Is it normal? How do I live with this new knowledge? What do I do next?” Unfortunately the answer to all of that is often “we can’t tell you how to live your life, we’re all different.” which I know, feels like a huge non-answer, but that’s the truth.

Kink comes to all of us differently. Some of us have just always known, some of us can and do go quite a long time in our lives before having a big “Ah HA!” moment or an “awakening”, some of us have been living our truths without knowing there was actually a name for it and some of us do something completely different. There’s no right or wrong experience for how you get here. Some people think our deviant sexual desires come from nature, others from nurture, and some don’t care for the why at all (I land in this group, never being interested in waxing poetic about what caused me to like something that’s not hurting anybody. You might as well ask me why I like the taste of chocolate or the smell of rain – who knows? Who cares!? Brains are weird. Let people like stuff!)

Kink is also experienced by all of us differently and – regardless of its root causes in our lives – is informed by our lived experiences differently. Being kinky doesn’t mean we’ll all like the same things. It doesn’t mean that among the things we like, we’ll like them equally or for the same reasons. It doesn’t mean we’ll want to engage with them in the same settings or for the same results. In short : kink is personal. As you delve further into “The Lifestyle” – as some people call it – you’ll undoubtedly come across the acronym YKNMKB/ATOK (which translates to Your Kink’s Not My Kink But/And That’s OK) which, as long as we’re not applying it to things like bigotry and prejudice masked as “just a fetish” or otherwise things that are harming somebody, is a pretty good rule of thumb. You don’t want to “yuck other people’s yums.” In addition to being kind and not shaming people for things you don’t like or understand yourself, there’s also “One True Way”ism to watch out for. No matter your kink or your role or your label or whatever – outside of consent and basic safety – there’s no right or wrong way to be or do. There will of course be people who believe there is, and will try to tell you things like “REAL Doms don’t do xyz” or “TRUE submissives will always abc” – it’s up to you if you want to buy into some kind of rules a stranger is making up or if you want to just go your own way and do what feels right to you. I personally suggest the latter though, it’s more fun that way.

Kink exists in different magnitudes for all of us. Some of us take it quite seriously, feeling that we live our kinks 24/7, as an integral piece of who we are. For others, it’s just a little fun in the bedroom once in a while. Some people meld their identities into one big ball that they make work in all facets of their life, and others compartmentalize their various roles. There’s plenty of in-between or even further outside those parameters. However it fits into your life is what’s right for you, regardless of how someone else is doing it. It might mean that you don’t partner well with someone who does kink differently than you, but that’s not unlike anything else in the “vanilla” (not-kink) world that determines who our friends or family or partners are, the things that make us “click” and the things that are “deal breakers.”

The final big piece of the puzzle that should be introduced right this second in your newfound journey is consent. The necessity for consent is non-negotiable and this is the one part of kink where there is a definite right and wrong way to do it. Consent is at the base, at the heart, at the foundation of kink. Without consent, what we’re doing is often abuse. Consent is going to underscore everything that comes after this, you cannot advance from this point without understanding it and believing in it and employing it in your practice.

Hopefully this helped ease those overwhelming “I must be all alone in the world” feelings that a lot of folks experience when they realize something about them is not-quite-mainstream. I know I said “everybody’s different” quite a few times, but despite that, we’re also similar in a lot of ways as well. We may not be in the majority, but we’re not alone either, and there is a certain kind of shared commonality that we can have by all being different. If I’m not like most people and you’re not like most people, then we have something in common (even if that’s the only thing) The feeling that comes next is frequently a frenzy of want-to-know-and-do-ALL THE THINGS so in the posts that follow this one I’ll be going over some basics in kinks, roles, labels, and how to start implementing them into your life. Sit tight (if you’re into that sort of thing!)