Kink For Dummies:
Illuminating the chaos and wonder of kink so that novices and the curious can create intimacy and sex on their own terms.
In a time when our personal, political, and working lives are ever more surveilled and constrained, kink intimacy and practices offer a tantalizing counterpoint -- a place of anarchic mystery and furious passion.
Is literally anything a mystery anymore? Kink For Dummies says Hell Yes!
In Kink For Dummies, veteran sex activists and Jaime M. Grant and Jack Harrison-Quintana take up your unanswered questions about this uncontainable, irrepressible way of relating. Having played in kinky dungeons and hung at kink munches for 20-35 years respectively, Harrison-Quintana and Grant offer lessons from their rich store of experiences and their vibrant community of kinky friends and lovers. Throughout the book, these stories bring all the theories and complexities of kink desire to life.
Part 1: Kink Basics
Opening chapters present definitions of kink and consent while rolling out a fantastic roster of common kinks. Noting that no list is definitive in the ever-expanding universe of kink play, the inventiveness and ecstatic genius of kink practices is on full view in these early chapters.
They also take readers on a self-assessment journey. What do you want? What are you hiding? What do you wish you had the courage to ask for? These chapters will help you uncover and articulate your kinky wants and needs.
Part 2: Building Agreements and Skills for Kink Success
All relationships require good communication skills. Kink intensifies the need for these skills, because you are often playing in spaces of heightened emotional and physical vulnerability. This section offers concrete steps for building sexy, consent-driven kink agreements and protocols so you can play to your lusting heart’s content. These chapters also help you consider and grow your capacity for relating intimately while you are experiencing altered psychic states.
Part 3: Dealing with Common Challenges
There are ups and downs on this journey -- ecstatic connections and emotional landmines. How do you navigate them? Here, find guiding questions, helpful practices, and stories from people thriving in their complex kinky lives; there’s even a dedicated chapter by and for trauma survivors who love kink. How will you cope with jealousy? Breaches of trust? Unreliable players? How will you live with complexity, nuance, and ever-changing needs in a single kinky scene, or over time, among your kink beloveds?
Part 4: Living Kink, Loving Kink
How do you share your kinky dreams and create community? What’s a good way to start putting yourself out there? And should you “come out”? What does coming out even mean in the context of kink? And how will you deal with body changes as you age? How do kinksters who manage illness and disability sustain their kinks as various capacities diminish or disappear? Part 4 provides a lot of concrete tips and tools for navigating crucial physical, social, emotional, and material realities so you can live the long, satisfying kinky life you want.
Part 5: Appreciating Kink in Context
Not only are you not alone in your kink, but your kinky desires have a place in ancient and current history. Part 5 of the book presents a quick look at important kinksters of old, as well as current trailblazers. It also offers insight on core elements of a thriving kinky life.
FAQ
Who should read Kink for Dummies?
Anyone whose scrolling finger stopped at the book thumbnail. People of any gender, sexuality, religious tradition, race, nationality, ability, or relationship status – can learn about and explore kink as an intimate relational practice.
For aspiring, lusty fantasists and sexual adventurers, kink may seem beyond your abilities or outside of your acceptable world of socializing. But kink offers an enlivening and principled way of relating that has endured in every culture and political context imaginable. For many intrepid kinksters, it simply takes time to turn down the volume on the needs, demands, and judgment of others to figure out how you actually feel – and how you want to live, love, and pursue intimate connection.
Kink is so intense and messy! It’s too much.
“Vanilla” sexuality has its own intensities and messes. Individuals and couples who come to Jaime for coaching are often suffering big non-kinky messes. Some have made promises they are not keeping, or can’t keep, and they are experiencing intense pain. Some are with a partner who has come out as kinky, or is having an affair, and this is wreaking havoc in their lives.
What’s really too much is carrying a lie about who you are or how you want to be intimate -- even among the people who love you the most. It’s too much to spend months or years or decades burying your desires and going through the motions to please your lover, partner, parents, friends, church, colleagues – whomever you have put in place to deny yourself and the ways you want to connect, love, and/or create intimacy.
Hiding and lying is intense and exhausting.
There are too many labels in kink -- all the jargon is confusing.
Don’t bother with them then. Labels are for boxes. Life is for people. Build the life that make sense for you.
Are you shy? Be shy.
Do you want to be hurt and then comforted in a scene while others watch? Embrace that kink you’ve told no one about.
Would you prefer to have a primary partnership that isn’t kinky, and create fleeting kink sexual connections around the edges of your life? Do that.
Do you want to mentally and sexually dominate your partner and have this be an entirely private practice, just between you two? Do that.
Don’t worry about whether you fit into anyone else’s ideas or categories about kink – worry about you. Have you lost yourself in your relationships? What do you actually want?
Tell me something fun about the book.
The book is full of quick and practical inventories like the one in the previous question. You can just dip your toe in and start to consider what kind of life you want to make for yourself, or you can go all in and reflect deeply on your past intimacies, current situation, and unmet needs. You can start to gather a picture of yourself so you can plot a vibrant path forward.
Tell me something hard about the book.
It can be hard to get honest about your intimate and relationship needs. Especially if you are afraid that they don’t fit into the worlds and relationships you’ve already built. It can be scary to come clean with the people you love about whatever it is you are hiding. It can feel selfish to prioritize your own desires (spoiler alert: it’s not selfish). If you’ve been denying yourself for a long time, Kink For Dummies is likely to introduce you to parts of yourself that you’ve suppressed. But the good news is – the book also provides a lot of concrete ideas for finding your way, getting support, and growing.
What can this book do for me?
Like all Dummies books, Kink For Dummies covers a lot of ground, offers many ways for you to dig into your interest in this topic, and provides useful ideas and resources to support your exploration. We hope the book will give you permission to know what you already know about why kink is compelling for you. We hope it helps you uncover and embrace the unique ways that you want to connect, love, have sex, and make family – whatever they are.