The democratization of consent. The freedom to communicate what you want to do or what you want done to you. The art of lying back, letting go and edging closer to getting off. Do you feel that? Do you like it? Do you want more? Feel it tingle, taunt, touch and take you into another universe.
This euphoria is deeply interwoven in the acts of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism), the craft of making sex as compassionate and consensual as it is captivating. If we want to become a truly sex-positive society, we need to engage with one of the few sexual subcultures that take sex positivity seriously.
“We—especially men—have been socially conditioned to avoid pain and submission,” explains Domina Colette Pervette, a San Francisco–based dominatrix. “But the lines between pain and pleasure begin to blur in the state of heightened arousal.”
The conflation of BDSM with perversion remains the biggest misconception the practice faces. Strange, given that one must be an excellent communicator to partake in kink; if you can’t talk about it, you aren’t ready to be blindfolded, whipped, chained or cuffed. “There are no assumptions in BDSM. Everything has to be negotiated,” says Pervette.
“The first hour is all about communication,” says Argent Lloyd of his practice of shibari, the art of Japanese rope bondage. “I want to share this space with you, and you’re giving me permission to put my hands on you.” Despite the BDSM community’s history of promoting respect between partners, practitioners have often been thrown into the same bucket as predators. Until 2013, the practice of BDSM was classified as a disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders— alongside pedophilia and bestiality.
Susan Wright, founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, works to change how the mental health community understands kink. “So much of what we focus on is educating professionals. They are the gatekeepers,” she says. According to Wright, in 2008, 124 parents approached the organization because their BDSM preferences were being used against them in family court. After the NCSF successfully campaigned for clinicians to update the DSM, that number had dropped to 20 parents by 2018.
What’s most backward about kink-shaming is how much the vanilla could learn from the kinky. Lucky for us, appreciators of kink are coming out of the closet. This includes celebrity ambassadors: Adam Rippon wore a leather harness to the 2018 Academy Awards; Michael B. Jordan and Timothée Chalamet followed. This isn’t an E.L. James fantasy; this is reality. And our world needs it. “People often forget that BDSM is just another way of connecting with someone,” says Pervette. “How we as a culture accept BDSM is indicative of how open we are to the expression of sexual freedom overall.”
STYLING BY CHLOE AND CHENELLE DELGADILLO; LEFT PAGE: BRAS AND BRIEFS BY VENUS PROTOTYPE, SHOES BY JIMMY CHOO; RIGHT PAGE: HARNESSES AND THONGS BY STOCKROOM, SHOES BY MACKIN J
OPENING AND PREVIOUS SPREADS: SHIBARI BY ARGENT LLOYD, PANTIES AND TIGHTS BY AGENT PROVOCATEUR, GLOVES BY VENUS PROTOTYPE, SHOES BY MACKIN J; LEFT PAGE: PANTIES AND TIGHTS BY AGENT PROVOCATEUR, HELMET AND SHOES BY RINALDY A. YUNARDI; RIGHT PAGE: BRIEFS BY BUSTED, SHOES BY STUART WEITZMAN
