Tristan Taormino: The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge

“So many of the people who write me at ‘Savage Love’ are curious about kink—some days it accounts for half the mail—but they don’t know where to start. I’m going to be recommending this collection of essays. This is more than just a guide to kink, it’s more than a sex manual. Editor Tristan Taormino has brought the players, thinkers, and rock stars of the kink scene and together they have created a book that not only lets people know where to start, but why to start, and what they’ll get out of it. Vanillas, novices, old hands, old guard—everyone can learn from this collection.”

“Tristan Taormino has gifted us with a magnificent collection of essays from kinkdom’s finest educators: consider it required reading for every kinkster who lives life on the hot side.”

“Tristan Taormino has created a perfect compendium of kink that covers the nuts and bolts of spanking, bondage, role playing, rough sex, and much more, as well as the philosophies, motivations, and deeply personal experiences of an array of BDSM players. If ‘Brutal Affection’ sounds like an oxymoron to you, read on. Keep a copy in your bedroom—and your toy bag!”

“Finally, a smart, comprehensive, and brave book on kinky sex for this generation. Tristan Taormino’s The Ultimate Guide to Kink is the first really good new book on the subject in years. BDSM and kink aficionados are lifelong learners, endlessly fascinated with their own sexual and personal growth. I expect this to be the BDSM bible for the next decade.”

This book is for everyone who dares to expand their erotic horizons beyond the ordinary. For all those who like to give and receive intense sensations. For the people who eroticize power and cultivate consciousness in sex and relationships. For anyone who loves to dance on the line between pleasure and pain. For folks who nurture naked creativity and make fantasies come to life. This book is about kink.

Kink is an intimate experience, an exchange of power between people that can be physical, erotic, sexual, psychological, spiritual, or, most often, some combination. I use the word kink as an all-encompassing term to describe the people, practices, and communities that move beyond traditional ideas about sex to explore the edges of eroticism. Kink is meant to include BDSM, sadomasochism, kinky sex, dominance and submission, role play, sex games, fantasy, fetish, and other alternative erotic expressions.

Whatever you call it, the popularity of kink has soared in the last 25 years. The Internet has changed the landscape dramatically, and it’s no surprise that kinky folk were early adopters of electronic bulletin boards and Listservs. Today, we have access to information, resources, and other like-minded people as never before. What used to be a covert world with its own symbols, traditions, and underground gatherings, where people were afraid to use their real names, has become a visible, accessible subculture. When someone expresses an interest in kink, I always give the same advice: find your local community. Want to know where the kinksters are in your neighborhood? Google BDSM and your town, city, or county, and you’ll come up with social events, workshops, support groups, conferences, and, for lucky folks, play parties, dungeons, and clubs.

There are hundreds of gatherings of kinksters throughout North America—whether it’s a local organization’s annual conference, a camping event for pervy people, or a BDSM retreat—and the majority of them have a strong educational component. On any given weekend, you can learn how to: safely set someone on fire, be a good Daddy, plan the perfect gang bang, do bondage without rope, or channel your inner shaman. As a group, people into kink devote a lot of time, resources, and energy to learning.

I first heard the phrase lifelong learners when a friend of mine who works at a public radio station told me that marketers use it to refer to NPR listeners. [1] 1 Some elements of this introduction, including the concept of kinky people as lifelong learners, are adapted from my 2009 keynote talk for Winter Wickedness in Columbus, Ohio. My thanks to Barak and Brat Sheba of Adventures in Sexuality for inviting me to give that talk. Lifelong learners are people who are self-motivated to continually seek out new knowledge and skills, through informal and formal education, to constantly develop and improve themselves. [2] 2 The roots of the phrase are in the concept of lifelong learning, defined in a statement by the European Lifelong Learning Initiative and the American Council on Education: “Lifelong learning is the development of human potential through a continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills, and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and to apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment in all roles, circumstances, and environments.” Norman Longworth and Keith W. Davies, Lifelong Learning: New Vision, New Implications, New Roles for People, Organizations, Nations and Communities in the 21st Century (London: Kogan Page, 1996), 22. The concept really resonates with me, as it aptly describes so many of the people I meet at sex and kink events—we are lifelong learners. That’s what’s so ironic about the conservative backlash against BDSMers. With increased visibility comes increased bigotry, and conservatives continue to rally against kinky events by local groups to get them shut down. What the anti-kink fanatics don’t understand about us is that we’re geeks. Sex nerds. SM intellectuals. We pay money to spend a weekend going to classes .

Of course, we do manage to get our noses out of the books to have fun, too. In the process of having a good time and getting off, we also strive to create alternative utopian worlds, even if only for a weekend. The kink community is built on the radical notion that people can express their erotic needs and desires and have them met. We believe that dreams do come true, and not at Disneyland, but in our bedrooms. Kink events are not just about getting together to have fabulous erotic experiences. We learn skills that we can translate into every part of our life: how to claim our desires, negotiate for what we want and need, set boundaries, communicate limits, acknowledge power dynamics, celebrate sexuality, and accept each other’s differences.

I envisioned this book as a compilation of the work of some of the best educators in North America, and every piece was written specifically for it. You don’t have to attend dozens of regional or national events to hear these experts speak—they are gathered here, in one place, taking on topics about which they are truly passionate. Their expertise in these subjects is tremendous, yet some of them have never had their writing about kink published for a wide audience. As you turn the pages, I want you to feel as if you’re at one of these gatherings, spending time with the teachers as they share their wisdom, experience, thoughts, opinions, and personal anecdotes. Unlike books about BDSM only, the chapters in this book explore different areas of kink with a specific focus on sex. After all, sex is a big part of what motivates and manifests our kink, but, until recently, it was often left out of the equation in our educational offerings.