PS048 - Am I Kinky? Erotic Experimenting and Experience

Aug 20

Written By

Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d992f

Is wearing lingerie kinky? What about eating truffles? Does the answer change if you are an exhibitionist or food fetishist? Join Lee Harrington as he explores spicy sexuality by explaining the sandwich method of trying out new play, reflects on individual journeys in the community, and has fun spreading it on a bit sexy. Be forewarned, you may get hungry for food or your own erotic authenticity.

Announcer:
BDSM and Non-Standard Relationships, Power Exchange and Polyamory, Sacred Sexuality and Fetishes, as well as Simply Fun Kink.

You're listening to the Erotic Awakening Podcast Network.

Welcome to the Passion And Soul Podcast, an exploration of personal and interpersonal desire, faith, and connection.

Your host, international sexuality and spirituality author and educator, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com, will take you on a sultry and intellectual journey through the soul of intimate experience.

Take a moment and breathe deep and get ready for an adventure.

This podcast is a chance to glimpse into the ever-increasing diverse world of alternative life.

The Passion And Soul Podcast is intended for mature audiences.

If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.

Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to the Passion And Soul Podcast, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com.

Last week, I had the opportunity to bebop around the Greater Seattle Metro Area, where I had the opportunity to teach at Paradise Unbound, where I did a class on sacred kink at the Seattle Sex Positive Community Center, where I got to teach introductory rope bondage to a whole bunch of brand new adventurers, which is a great space, actually.

There are women's-owned sex positive sex shop in the Seattle area that has a really wide array of all kinds of vanilla, kinky, who cares how we label it, sexuality toys.

And I had a great time hanging out with their owners, as well.

Part of those adventures for me led to some really deep and rich conversations.

Conversations about self-love.

Conversations about how we as sexuality educators move through the world.

Conversations about figuring out the next steps of our lives, of processing how it's come before.

Conversations around how we ground and shield and find our own self-identity amidst all of our sexual explorations.

And what really struck me about some of these journeys was this idea that each of us is struggling with how to label our sexuality and how to process it when we discuss it amongst a group setting.

Maybe not all of us, but there was a reoccurring theme that happened there that continued on this morning, hanging out with a couple of people that I know.

Now, you know what?

I think that's a good conversation to start with this podcast.

Is this notion of, is it kinky?

Is it spicy sex or is it everyday sex?

How do we, how do we process these things?

Somebody really dear to me likes lingerie.

After her divorce, she decided that, that even though he wasn't big on that kind of stuff, she was and they were divorced.

So she went out and got sexy matching lingerie sets.

She retired all of her underpants that didn't match with other things because for her, it was this idea of, you know what, even if no one else sees it, I've got something beautiful right up next to my skin.

She got involved with the BDSM and kink community, not knowing if she was especially kinky per se, though she'd explored in some of those ways, but she also liked the idea that she could wear lingerie and sexy high heels out in a semi-public venue and have people say that she was sexy and hot and that she could flirt with people and that that would be fun.

I met somebody else who was a food fetishist.

He's into feederism, that idea of not necessarily force feeding, but feeding a woman to be able to have her grow in size.

He loves big, beautiful, curvaceous, sexy women.

And whether it's for weight gain or not, that idea of slowly having them lick chocolate sauce off of his fingers.

And so when he found out about the kink community, he went, oh, okay, that's cool, whatever.

And then he found out that there was a population within the kink community of curvaceous, sexy women.

And so he brought food to the parties and got to feed them truffles, got to spoon out little bits of ice cream and have them lick it off the spoon.

How can that not be sexy, you know?

At least in their worldview, at least in his worldview, that that was hot.

He found out, though, that by being more dominant, he could order women to eat.

That by learning how to spank, he'd have women who were sexy and curvaceous wriggle up against him, push their bodies against his slowly hardening cock.

And that in doing so, he got to connect with women that he wouldn't get to do otherwise.

And though his primary kink is still, to a degree, food fetishism, he got into some other stuff too.

But if he had stayed, quote, just a food fetishist, would he have been kinky?

If he didn't like dressing up in black, if he didn't like spanking and flogging, didn't like rope bondage, wasn't into sadism or masochism, wasn't into anything on that BDSM spectrum, bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism, or slavery and mastery, if he wasn't interested in any of those things, could he still be part of the kink community?

Was there a place for him?

I wrote with Mollena Williams a book called Playing Well With Others, Your Guide to Discovering, Exploring, and Navigating the BDSM Kink and Leather Communities.

And as we were writing that, I really had to sit with this idea of what is this kinky umbrella?

What is this overarching concept that we're looking at here when we look at the word kink or kinky within a kink or kinky community context?

The definition that she and I decided upon for kink was the great big world of sexual adventure, including but not limited to voyeurism, exhibitionism, fetishism, fantasy role playing, cross-dressing, power exchange, swinging, leather identity, erotic restraint, consensual non-monogamy, naughty sex, and BDSM between consenting adults.

In short, the realm of sexuality perceived to be outside the mainstream.

Now, if we work with that definition that is that broad, something like eroticizing food is absolutely within that kink definition because it is outside the mainstream.

But if we look at lingerie, it gets a little bit trickier because our culture states that a beautiful woman wearing sexy lingerie, well, of course, that's hot, everybody knows that's hot.

Why wouldn't it be hot?

We all have a story that that's hot within our culture that says beautiful lace bras are sexy, that says wearing stiletto heels is sexy.

We have it be acceptable within our culture for people to be tits guys or ass guys.

That idea of large breasted women being a sexual fetish is normal.

But then we start talking about the idea of somebody sexualizing somebody's foot or their leg.

Okay, that gets a little trickier within the context of our standard culture, how we view these things.

Now in parts of China, and if we look historically at China, the idea of the small foot being erotic in its emblem, in its form, with that concept of the small foot being what is sexy.

Oh, well, okay, we switch into a different culture, and what is normal for erotic concepts of what is norm, and therefore, what is kinky, or take it to a next level, what is unusual, strange, or hard to understand, well, then it's slightly different because of a cultural context.

People who are attracted to big muscle-bound guys.

Okay, well, that's within a cultural context.

Quote, that makes sense, right?

But if we're attracted to men with big round bellies and fur all over their body, if we're interested in bears, wait, we don't necessarily have a cultural context for that, and it could be seen as kinky to be into bears, to be into bare-bodied men.

So that notion of what is kinky when it comes to our fetishism or the things that we are into, I think is a little bit of a question that needs to be addressed within our cultural context.

There are, however, people who attend BDSM and kinky sex events that don't even, quote, participate at all, that don't engage, that don't necessarily play, that are not going and doing spanking scenes, flogging scenes, enjoying temporary body piercing, doing things with electricity or large numbers of people sensually rubbing their hands all over each other.

Maybe they're not engaged in those things, but they are supporters.

There's an individual in the greater Seattle metro area who, for the last 15, 20 years, has gone and supported the kink community by doing dungeon monitoring.

And what that means is the idea that there are kinky play spaces that people gather to express their sexuality and have a non-judgmental space to be able to scream and yell and cry and gauge in those types of things.

With a dungeon monitor being the person who keeps everyone safe, who knows the venue rules and can make sure those things are upheld.

And if you see somebody who's having a tough time or needs to have some equipment moved or maybe can bring somebody a glass of water, does all of those things as well.

And they've been doing those things for a really long time, but they don't play in public.

They don't even play that often when it comes to those kinds of activities.

So the question there sits, are they kinky within a definition of how we offered it before?

Because if they're not engaging in those things, are they kinky?

If someone is at home and fantasizing, are they kinky?

And so the thing that I really sit with with all of that is not this judgment of you are kinky, you are not kinky, and stating who is and who isn't.

It's looking at are you happy?

And do you have communities and structures that will support this happiness?

Because if what you're really into is feeding someone a truffle, and you're in a space where your home community and area says, you know what, we don't understand why you're here, but if you're here and you're happy and you want to bring truffles and feed them to beautiful women, that's cool.

But we are also creating a consensual fantasy space.

So can you show up wearing a pair of PVC pants at least?

That'd be awesome.

And everyone creates together this consensual space of fantasy by combining what people are into and an aesthetic that turns people on.

And I've seen people who go, you know what, I don't want to go to that fetish ball or that fetish club because they require that people dress in a certain way.

By having everybody dress in a certain way, you know when you walk into the space the fantasy realm you are engaging in.

I love themed parties for this reason that I got to go to a toga event that was Caligula's hedonistic adventure.

And there were people who were up on the auction blocks as slaves to the Roman Empire, that there were individuals who were there in full regalia.

There was a woman who was stripped completely naked and people were bartering over her to see who they were going to take home that night because she was nothing but a slave.

And it was kind of hot because everybody showed up with the theme in mind.

You didn't have people in t-shirts and shorts.

You didn't have anybody who was there dressed in 17-inch stiletto-heeled platform boots wearing Lady Gaga costumes.

You had everybody there to some degree in that hedonistic Roman, Greco-Roman experience with everybody then engaging and having fun with that form of role playing.

We all created a space for each other.

For whatever we were into, we created it together.

I love this idea also because if what you're into is not dressing up in PVC outfits, you have the capacity to say, you know what, I want to have a play party where we ignore all of the fashion stuff.

I don't care about that at all.

This party is all about spanking and about canes and hitting my partner with fun things and getting the endorphins going.

And most likely, we're going to get naked within half an hour being at the party, so I don't care what we all wear.

Just show up and have fun.

That can be your party and you can invite people to it.

There's a play party that I go to down in the Southwest that their system is that everybody must participate.

On some level, everyone must participate.

Now, one of my friends wanted to come to this party, but he didn't have any play partners that were going to be there.

He didn't have anyone that he was going to engage with, and he didn't want people to be frustrated that he wasn't participating.

So what he did is that he brought his art paper and his colored pencils and his charcoals and he set up in a corner and he did portraits of people playing.

That's how he engaged with everyone in the room.

That's how he became part of this kinky culture in that moment, is that he brought something to the table that others weren't doing, that other people could go, oh, this is adding to this experience.

So the question that I think of when people think, oh, I'm going to engage in the kinky community, is what are you going to bring to the experience?

And that's not to say you can't go to the first party and say, I don't know what to do, I don't know what I'm doing, because you know what?

That's actually bringing something to the experience.

If you show up to a party and go to the social area and say, hey, I'm new, would anybody be game to talk to me about what's going on?

You're actually giving somebody who maybe is only a year or more into the scene than you are, you are giving that person an opportunity to reflect on their journey, to share what's going on and to connect with another human being that is participating.

You are participating in that moment by asking questions respectfully with love, with compassion, with connection by saying, Hey, you know what?

I've had some fantasies over the years about doing some of these things, but I don't know all the rules here.

I don't know how people operate here at this party.

Can you tell me more?

How can I engage with y'all?

How can I be part of this journey?

In Seattle, I, as I said, got to teach a class at Wild at Heart that was on Rope for Sex.

My sweetie dressed up in sexy lingerie and a see-through robe over-the-top glittery stiletto heels.

And we sat up at the front of the room with a big circle of people around us.

Some, a handful, were people that I knew.

And I told some ahead of time, by the way, this is a 101 class.

Like, no, really, it's a 101 class.

Because instead of saying rope bondage for a lot of it, I said erotic restraint.

Instead of saying kinky stuff, I said people who like a little bit of spiciness in their sexuality.

I asked different people what they were into with these ideas, and people covered a wide gamut of interest.

But I chose to keep it at a more introductory level, because at the end of the day, it's easier to ramp up into more edgy things than it is to be able to back down from somebody who's been scared, somebody who's been turned off, and therefore to say, hey, this is how you tie a one-column tie.

Wrap, wrap, wrap, turn 90 degrees, tuck the short end underneath everything, overhand knot, overhand knot, and if you're not sure if it was a square knot, try it as an extra one on top.

All right, we just walked through it step by step, kept it playful, kept it fun, and it was fantastic to see people who had never done any of this stuff before look over at a partner and have their eyes light up, giggle, this one couple who, they'd been dating for a while, I don't know their full life history, but she was trying to explain to him, hey, that's a little bit tight, and he was getting really nervous.

He was backing off on doing his tying because he was scared he was going to hurt her.

And I said, oh, that's awesome.

As I was going around to different people, I checked in with them and I said, oh, that's great that you are having an opportunity to communicate what your desires are to your partner.

And she said, yeah, absolutely.

And I said to him, how are you feeling about that?

Oh, well, it's scary because I don't want to hurt her.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You don't want to hurt your partner.

Well, how can we create a system between you two that you're able to share information, but not feel like everything that you do is something that's going wrong?

How about we share the things that are hot too?

How about we share the things that we're having fun with?

Oh, I love it when you pull on me like that.

Oh, that feels really good.

I love the silkiness of that.

I love the first two wraps you did on this, but when we cinched down, it got a little bit too tight, and I loved it before.

That sandwich method of saying, here's what was good, here's what you could improve upon, and here's what I love and adore.

Get the brain to wrap around that input, wrap it around with some delicious things that we already know we love.

That idea happens when we're exploring new activities of any sort with kinky sex.

That idea of, oh, well, I know the two of us or five of us, however you operate, I know the two of us love erotic petting and to have fingers run through our hair, fingers running down the body, but we're going to try something new of hair pulling.

Well, maybe it's running our fingers through the hair, soft kisses on the cheek and down the neck, and then supporting the back of the neck while pulling with even traction along the scalp and pulling the head back.

And then afterwards, letting it go or using that hair to pull them back into you for another longing kiss.

Wow, that can be pretty fun, right?

That idea that we are including something we know we love, something new and adventurous, something we know we love.

Eventually, it can become an open-faced sandwich, right?

Kissing, making out, having that soft sensual touch, and into hair pulling a little bit of fierceness and not necessarily going back into that sensuality.

After a lot of that, it might, in some cases, even turn into just enjoying the middle pieces.

Maybe it's going to just turn into a meat and cheese platter where it's lots of hair pulling and a lot of ferociousness.

But maybe today we're not going to be doing the sensual petting because we've been working on our sandwiches for a while and we know that we're really enjoying in general both pastrami and Jarlsberg cheese.

So why don't we just enjoy today some pastrami and Jarlsberg cheese?

That's okay.

If you are someone who is really experienced in these things and you have somebody new that you're exploring with, I find that at least I sometimes forget that the thing I'm doing is a meat and cheese platter.

I forget that when people are starting out, sometimes having, you know, that whole wheat bread and the ground mustard all layered up with a whole bunch of lettuce and sprouts and tomatoes really makes for a cohesive sandwich using what they already know and sneaking in the new meats and new cheeses that they've agreed to but don't have a familiarity with.

Or maybe keeping it really simple, the bread, the cheese, the meat, the other piece of bread that we know the breads that they already like, which means having a conversation with our partners about what do you think is hot and fun, or what do you already do?

Let's dance together in your world before I introduce these new meats and cheeses.

Now, if you're a vegetarian, feel free to replace this with a chipotle bean burger.

Mmm, chipotle bean burger.

Nom, nom, nom.

Anyway, sorry, that was a vegetarian side distraction.

So, think about it ahead of time of asking your partner who's newer to this stuff what they're into, and that also counts with asking people who you're new with playing with in general.

If your partner is used to eating Jarlsberg and you are used to eating a really stinky blue cheese, you might both be enjoying cheese, but you're not eating the same cheese, and those cheeses might not go so good together.

Or you might think, oh, well, okay, if we have this blue cheese turned into a dressing and I put it on the salad on the side, okay, we can totally rock this meal out, and maybe I'm stretching the metaphor a little bit, but the concept applies that anytime you're playing with somebody new, whether they are new to these things or not, having this negotiation and having these connections and communications around what kind of sandwich do we want, how do we layer these things in, how do we sneak in something new, and you know what?

If the Jarlsberg worked and the pastrami didn't, you now have an opportunity to make really tasty grilled cheeses.

And maybe you even add in back some of that stone ground mustard, and you have a really decadent gourmet grilled cheese sandwich that doesn't involve the pastrami today, and that's okay.

If your sex life requires pastrami, then you get to sit down with yourself and look at your erotic, authentic experience and go, you know what?

No, I really do need that pastrami.

Am I going to get it met by doing auto-erotic play?

Am I going to get it by playing with somebody else?

Am I going to get it because my partner is going to do service for me and maybe they don't enjoy pastrami, but they're willing to slice it up and serve it to me?

Maybe that's okay.

Or maybe we'll have a meat and cheese platter with some pieces of black bean chipotle burger on it, all cubed up, and they're going to eat the burger, the black bean burger, and I'm going to eat the pastrami, and we're both going to really enjoy the Jarlsberg.

It's all going to be really tasty.

And if you're really hungry right now because I've been talking about meat and cheese platters, I kind of apologize, but I think it might because I'm a little hungry too.

So sorry about that if you're on your commute and don't have access to food right now.

For some of us, the things we call kinky aren't actually kinky.

People who are age-based role players, who enjoy curling up and watching Wreck-It Ralph while eating some popcorn and curled up with their favorite teddy bear, people from the outside might go, wow, those are grown adults doing those things.

That's really kinky.

And for other people, it's just comforting.

It has nothing to do with their sexuality.

Which also tells me that just because somebody's eating pastrami doesn't mean that they actually have any interest in a sandwich or any details on what that pastrami means to them.

Really look at what you're doing, why you're doing it, and really explore for you whether you think it's kinky, whether your community thinks it's kinky, and whether you even care if it's kinky.

Okay, fine.

For other people, spanking is er, ger.

That's really fun.

And for other people, it's just a Thursday night at home.

It's just what is.

And when I talk about a kink community, there are people who are enjoying those sandwiches of theirs at home.

And you don't need a community to be authentically kinky.

You don't need to identify as kinky to enjoy the things you're doing.

Be you.

Have fun.

For people who enjoyed this podcast or are interested in more, feel free to go over to my website at passionandsoul.com.

If you're interested in what I'm doing and where I'm coming up to travel to soon, I'm going to be teaching classes in Alaska, and I'm planning a whole last-minute surprise your state tour down for the South.

So if you are in New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, hopefully we're going to be coming to an area near you soon, trying to make some magic happen.

Feel free to check us out over at iTunes by typing in Lee Harrington into the search engine or Passion And Soul, and you'll find me over there.

And you could also subscribe to my RSS feed or download the MP3s by going to my show notes.

This has been the Passion And Soul Podcast, and thank you so much for joining me.

Until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically yourself, and embrace your dreams.

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