Editor’s note: This question about a discussing kink comes from the inbox of Cate Osborn, frequent Playboy contributor and Playboy Club creator. We highly recommend you follow Cate on Instagram for more of her wisdom.
Q: Recently I’ve started getting into kink, and my friends- who I generally consider to be open-minded/liberal/sex-positive, have been less than supportive. They keep telling me that kink is problematic and/or misogynist or weird or gross or all of the above. Do you have advice about how to talk to them about this?
Cate Osborn: Recently I moved to Los Angeles, and one of the more convenient grocery stores to me is this fabulous, gigantic world market that features ingredients and cultural dishes from all over the world. Invariably, whenever I stop by, there is always a giggling group of (let’s be honest, white) people who point and whisper and make gagging noises when they encounter something “weird” or “gross” to their uninformed and inexperienced pallets. The store is always crowded and always filled with a melting pot of cultures and ages who are just there to get their weekly groceries and who probably aren’t thinking that deeply about the poetic metaphors of the aisles. There is also usually at least one incredibly good-looking tattooed chef tenderly fondling the shimeji and sniffing deeply over the day’s fish offerings and one slightly overwhelmed lady with a recipe pulled up on her phone looking for one extremely specialized ingredient to try some new and exciting dish she saw online.
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Kink is kind of like an unfamiliar grocery store. When you first step inside, it can be confusing, unfamiliar, even strange or weird or funny. As you learn and grow to better understand yourself, your wants, your needs your desires, you become more familiar with the store-which aisles to skip, which aisles have the *really* good snacks, and even sometimes, after years of going there, being delighted and surprised by a new offering or a really good sale.
Some people might go inside to laugh and generally condemn without trying things that they aren’t familiar with based on surface-level understanding and snap judgements. (Most) people probably don’t think that much about it- you shop at that grocery store, I shop at this one, as humans we need to eat, and how we do that is informed by myriad factors like our culture, our palette and our ability to cook. We don’t have to spend a ton of time talking about it. Some people have done extensive research, training, preparation and are there for a specific purpose. Some people just heard about baharat for the first time today on their favorite mommy cooking blog and have stopped by to give it a try. Some people, like me, have gone to a lot of grocery stores in their lives and finally found one that has *everything* that they need.
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It is easy to judge kink from the outside, particularly given the narratives that run rampant in media and increasing pressure from heavily politicized organizations promoting ‘family values’. 50 Shades of Grey is, to use your friends’ language, a deeply problematic representation of kink. Many people, regardless of age, label things they don’t like or understand as “weird” or “gross”. It is easier to be outraged and appalled than it is to apply empathy and do some reading about it-particularly in today’s political climate.
I will also acknowledge that just like regular ol’ vanilla sex, there are problematic people in the space, there are misogynistic people in the space, there are racist and homophobic and transphobic people in the space, but those people also exist on every dating app in the world. One of the most important facets of healthy kink is doing your due diligence, building trust, negotiating exactly what is going to happen before it does, and learning how to practice safely and consensually. Getting the right ingredients, making sure you’ve done the proper preparation, and, to stretch the metaphor as thin as I possibly can, decide on who’s cleaning up after dinner.
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I advise you to tell your friends that you are content and safe. It may be that your friends’ concerns stem from fears that you will be harmed- talk to them about kink’s consent-informed practices and establish some safety protocols with them if you decide to venture out to munches or dungeon nights. It may be that they have never been educated about what kink *actually* is vs. what they see on SVU. It’s not your job to educate them, but you can always offer resources or reading. I recommend “Why Are People In To That”, by Tina Horn, or the absolutely delightful“Kinky History” by the incomparable Esmee Louise James. It may be that they think getting spanked is simply super, super weird- you don’t have to talk to them about it, but if you choose to, I’ve found that explaining things from the perspective of how it affects my mind, for some reason, plays well to more conservative crowds. I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the details of how I like my impact play, I just tell them about how my mind gets so, so quiet and I can move past my ADHD and sensory overwhelm to really be *in* my body and how that has been really healthy for my mental and physical health.
I don’t want to tell you to get new friends, but if they continue to be judgemental and unkind, I’d also remind you that you don’t have to keep unsupportive and judgemental people in your life. You deserve friends who see you and support you as you are, and the time and energy you spend educating your friends to be less petty about your sex life can be used in literally an infinite amount of more productive ways.
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