Do a plethora of labels help or confuse the sexually inquisitive? Sarah Tink dips a toe into the growing lexicon of kink.
I may be misquoting the riotously direct sex educator Emily Nagoski in the Netflix miniseries Principles of Pleasure, but the essence of what she said was this; if you want to fuck someone’s armpit, or want someone to fuck yours, and if everybody’s ok about it, that’s fine. Awkward angles, squelchy, niche and oddly bonding, it sums up everything that’s great about kink for me and underlines the core concept that what turns one person on is ick territory or downright terrifying for another.
I watched the programme with my lover and a few weeks later we had an unplanned and deeply erotic moment where, in an unconscious echo of Nagoski’s invitation, he vigorously licked my right armpit, scouring my sweaty skin with his unshaven chin but soothing it with his tongue as he went. He gave himself a nosebleed in the process, which we only discovered when I found blood on my shoulder and we tried to find the source, which was kinky in itself too.
I’m incredibly curious sexually; intellectually, emotionally, through detailed, intertwined and spontaneous fantasy and, when life allows (and that means everything from mood, physical fitness and menstrual state to time, logistics and finances) pretty open to actively exploring too. As I take tentative steps, occasional parkour leaps and full pelt runs into and around the amazingly diverse world of sex, I’ve discovered more and more of the language used within it.
Enter the FetLife Kinktionary, ‘more like guidelines and a lot less like definitions’, an ever expanding and evolving, user-moderated list of terms and descriptions intended to educate the sexual adventurer, signposting and illuminating the possibilities of experience, preference and identity that exist, whether you get off on denim play, identify as bondage switch, are grayromantic or find a peculiar kind of peace as a relationship anarchist.
Initially, and especially as someone interested in etymology and the framing power of language, the idea of a Kinktionary is hugely exciting to me. A friendly handbook for kink, hurray! But the range it covers is almost overwhelming, and it makes me wonder what others get from such a trove. It doesn’t strike me a ‘kink for dummies’ guide, which is actually heightened by its contributor democracy, and rather that an existing openness of mind and body, or even a bent for kink, is a necessary starting place.
The lovely (and to me most appealing) thing about kink is that intimacy is at its heart and in this way the Kinktionary offers itself up as a ready tool to assist, whether it’s in aid of a greater understanding of the self, deeper connection with a partner(s), or simply an ability to articulate desires to have enjoyable and fulfilling sexual encounters that don’t end in doubt, guilt, shame or worse unwanted injury. Perhaps the trick for the uninitiated is to look up a few terms at a time and see what resonates.
I say all this from my own particular stepping stone on the bridge from vanilla to technicolour, recognising that the journey isn’t linear and it’s quite nice to have the odd holiday back in Convention-ville. Some well versed and kink fluent FetLife members will be screaming internally that I haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about and they’re probably right, but my level of interaction with, and enactment of, the Kinktionary is my choice and I’m already equipped with more language than I had before.
Given half a chance I’m naturally quite a playful person and at the root rely on a feeling approach to sex rather than pre-prescribed routines, roles or practises, but the more I venture the more I gain and I’m beginning to believe the more we all open up to, and about, sex the better. Whether we turn to a full blown Kinktionary, engage in a cheeky sex card game or settle down with programmes like Principles of Pleasure and Cara Delevingne’s Planet Sex, information is power – and pleasure.
