Clash of the Titans: Kinky versus Vanilla

At what point does passion-red lacey lingerie become kinky? Is it just inherent in the item? Or, maybe when it’s crotchless and worn with stilettos? How about when it’s crotchless and worn with stilettos by a man? Maybe none of those things is kinky to you. We all have a different idea of what “kinky”…

Moving Beyond Maslow’s View of D/s and M/s Relationships

Most religions and moral systems see one of the great human problems as selfishness. A common and unifying philosophy is that personal development is a transcendence from the self to a larger purpose. Around the middle of last century, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others aimed to liberate and enlarge the self. This was the…

YKINMKBYKIOK – Your Kink is Not My Kink, But Your Kink is OK

YKINMKBYKIOK is such a mouthful of an initialism that it’s commonly shortened to YKIOK (or sometimes YKINMK). It represents “your kink is not my kink, but your kink is OK”. It isn’t a foreign concept outside of kink circles. You’ll have heard it as “horses for courses”, “whatever floats your boat”, “different strokes for different…

Looking Deeper into Why BDSM May Benefit Our Mental Health

A significant piece of academic research, published in 2013 by Wismeijer and van Assen, suggests that individuals involved in BDSM subcultures or self-identified as “kinkster” may be prone to have better mental health than the average population. Psychologists and researchers from the Netherlands carried out a qualitative study with a total of 1300 questionaires sent…

Quiz – Discover your Personal Erotic Myth

 A Personal Erotic Myth (PEM) contains the fantasy imagery, story-lines, dialogue, props, settings attire,  personas and actions, that drive a person that has a PEM to orgasm, or other deep erotic states. It is often expressed in fetish, kink and D/s-BDSM oriented sex. Some people are quite aware of their PEM. Some may have multiple PEM’s…

Is It True That Power Corrupts?

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord John Dalberg-Acton A question those of us in D/s relationships would be right to ask ourselves more often than others is: Does power corrupt? “Power corrupts” is a common enough saying, and usually it is pointing to behaviour that violates norms or values. In politics…

How to Dehumanise and Objectify the Dominant

So, my subby dating-app-using friend, is that torso pic and list of things you want done to you not getting the results you were hoping for? Clearly your bait is irresistible, so why aren’t the alpha fish biting? Let’s take a look at a few of the common reasons. YOU SAY YOU’RE A SUB BUT…

Finding a Path to Happiness in Kink

I bought a Kindle for my brother for Christmas and I’ve been collecting some ebooks up for him. He has a particular genre of book he likes to read. You might know what I mean if I mention authors like Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Rhonda Byrne and Stephen Covey. At the risk of grossly over-generalising,…

Zen and the Art of Dominance

In Zen Buddhism, there is the concept of ‘Nyo Ze’. It doesn’t translate well to English from the original Japanese, but a close match would be ‘like this, suchness.’ One great 13th Century Zen master – Dogen – said that in order to become a person of suchness, you have to first realize that you…