Scarleteen

... Instead, they’re worried that they won’t be prepared when they do meet someone and will end up disappointing their partner as a result. I mentioned this to Cynthia, who said she’d tell her past self, “Every experienced kinky person started out just as clueless as I did. There’s no way to rush the process, you just have to sit with the temporary discomfort of being a newbie as you learn and make mistakes, embrace the sometimes cringey feeling of not knowing exactly who you are or what you like, and remember that getting to know this part of you can be fascinating and fun with the right people.” In other words, the same lifelong learning process that’s involved with being sexual with people as a whole is also going to be part of sex framed as kinky.

The fear of our users have of doing kink “wrong” always makes me a little sad. Kink as a concept and a practice arose as a way of rejecting the idea that sex had to be a certain way, not as a way to implement a new set of rules. A big part of kink is seeing sex as a form of play, not a rigid script someone has to follow to do it right.

What does treating sex as play look like? It involves exploring pleasure and embracing creativity in a context where a lot of people still feel pressure to conform to a certain set of expectations. It includes letting yourself be weird and curious, and giving any sexual partners the space to do the same.