Yesterday, Jezebel posted an article about a woman whose post on Fetlife (a social networking site for the BDSM world) about an experience of sexual assault resulted in the usual slut-shaming and victim-blaming. It’s worth checking out, and if you’re on Fetlife, take a look at the original post. The Jez piece ends: Dayna’s experience […]

In some of the (mostly online) discussions I’ve seen around BDSM & kink, there’s a sticking point that seems to come up over and over. What does it mean when people say that they get turned on by “pushing boundaries”? I think this is worth unpacking because there are at least two different meanings to […]

I recently found myself in yet another conversation with a longtime kinky player who made a disparaging comment about vanilla sex. If you’re not familiar with the term, it pretty much means anything sexual that isn’t BDSM, and it’s often used dismissively, as if sex that doesn’t include leather, whips, or pain is boring. Although […]

Do you want to do research or journalism about the kink/leather/BDSM community? The Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago is an amazing resource and it has extensive collections. Of course, it’s often difficult to get there, especially when you’re a grad student or freelance writer. So I was really happy to see that there’s a […]

One of the challenges that sexologists, educators, and therapists face is the lack of credible, reliable, and well-designed research on sexuality. As much as that’s true for more common forms of sexual expression, it’s even more so for sexual practices that are less common. BDSM and open relationships are the target of a lot of […]

If you’re kinky and looking for folks to connect with, you might find Facebook to be a bit vanilla for your tastes. Plus, Facebook doesn’t give you too many options for relationship types. If you’re polyamorous, have a play partner, a life partner and a submissive, Facebook simply can’t handle that. If you want a […]

One more post for today. The new Leather Archives & Museum exhibit is gathering community input in order to develop a library of the best BDSM-related books. Clarisse Thorn (who, by the way, has a fab blog that I highly recommend) has created an online poll to make it easier to make sure that nothing […]