Is kinky ever too kinky?

April 17, 2009

Is kinky ever too kinky?

Every week i get an email article written by Jack Rinella (His website is here), discussing a BDSM issue. Often they're not all that relevant to me, but i still enjoy reading them, but this week the question discussed was one i have asked myself in the past, so i thought it would be worth returning to this topic to see how my thoughts have evolved on it. Basically the question is: is all kinky play considered 'OK' so long as the participants involved know and accept the risks, or are there certain activities which are not 'OK' and should not be accepted by those in the BDSM lifestyle?

Basically, i think there are 2 issues here: firstly that when people get into BDSM they have a longgggggg list of things that are too much for them, things they think are too risky or too intense or too extreme or whatever. But as they start playing and trying things out they quickly find that they want to push their boundaries more and more, so that things which seemed new and exciting at the beginning soon become mundane and ordinary, and there's always that search for the next thrill, the next type of play, the next level of intensity. And some people never stop in that quest, so that after a while the types of play they seek to engage in to get that same thrill of excitement and fear of the unknown and risky are way extreme, very dangerous and probably illegal. i haven't actually had that issue, though in the beginning i worried that i might - me and Sir are happy with our range of activities we engage in and because it's quite a wide range, and Sir is careful to mix things up and not repeat the same type of play too frequently, it still seems new and exciting and thrilling. That's not to say that He doesn't introduce new types of activities sometimes, because He does, and part of my training is always to become competent with different types of play, but there are some things that Sir will never take part in because He deems the risks to be too great (things like breathplay, for example), so we both have limits on what we will try.

The other part to this question comes from the fact that as the BDSM community is so diverse, it becomes necessary to adopt an attitude of acceptance in order to get along within it. We are always told to accept each other's kinks and fetishes, to not discriminate against others because of their sexual orientation or BDSM role, to allow for others to have different interpretations of labels and what they mean, to respect the fact that everyone follows the lifestyle in a different way, with different rules and rituals and protocols. But sometimes i think this can lead to us being too accepting, too ready to say "it's not my kink, but your kink is OK', to turn a blind eye to things which are recklessly dangerous and outright illegal/immoral, just because we're surrounded by this "everyone must accept everyone else's lifestyle" point of view. Sometimes i think there need to be clearer boundaries drawn, with lists of things which are not tolerated by the main BDSM community, so that we distance ourselves from the too extreme end of the spectrum, just as we distance ourselves from the predators who pose as Doms/Masters in order to carry out their crimes.

Just my view, but i'd be interested to hear other people's...... (and i deliberately didn't go into specifics about what the too extreme types of play are, because i don't think this is the place for it. But i'm sure people have a good idea of the things i mean.)