“What are your limits?” is one of the first questions you’ll hear if you’re new to kinky dating or the BDSM scene—for good reason. Limits are a fundamental part of BDSM and are more nuanced than they may seem. In this post, I’ll explain what they are and how to set them, with personal stories that show how complicated they can be in practice.
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Every time a new BDSM movie comes out, we’re equal parts excited and trepidatious given how unsatisfying many of them are. Unfortunately, the latest film in this category is another disappointment. I Want Your Sex, directed by queer cinema icon Gregg Araki and cowritten by him and Slutever author Karley Sciortino, is a “dom-com” about a provocative female artist who will do anything to turn a profit, including using her doofy male assistant in her domineering sexploits. (This post contains spoilers.)
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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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