The Beginning of Unkinked

Have you ever felt like you were living a double life?

I went through a potent chapter where I was hard at work as a psychology researcher at the same time I was playing hard as a blossoming kinkster.

Turns out, there’s a whole world of classes, conferences, discussion groups, parties and meetups dedicated to exploring the infinite ways sexuality and sensation can be experienced. Craving freedom after having recently left an abusive relationship and having an inkling of what this world had in store from my training as a sex educator, I dove in.

The following years were full of massive growth. I got to experience healthy polyamorous relationships, transformative trauma healing; freedom to explore my gender and identity.

I also published several papers, won awards for my teaching and traveled to present my research at conferences. In both worlds I collaborated with and learned from like-minded, passionate people and built partnerships based on the values and experiences I wanted in life.

But it was incomplete. I was fractured.

Kink freedom didn't give me comfort in owning my powerful, embodied creature self in my professional pursuits. And I felt even less comfortable owning my discerning researcher mind or capacity for critique and questioning in kink spaces. More often it was an environment that discouraged criticism, shut down dialogue– kink was meant to be entertainment, divorced from reality.

My professional life was structured, rigorous and at times even dull and archaic, but it also offered freedom in its own ways. I gained authority for my work, questioned and collaborated and shaped my field of study.

It was really only on the surface that my kink life gave me freedom. The more I was there the more I saw it had a shadowy side too.

The tired old abuse dynamics I was so familiar with from much of my life were accepted part and parcel in the very communities I had sought out safety in.

In fantasy there is no room for the seriousness of reality, and so the reality of abuse was made invisible; eerily “normal.”

Something that happened elsewhere, but not here, not without "consent," of course.

The psyche can’t survive living a double life like this forever.

When we deny our feelings and what we know to be true, we betray ourselves.

I really did want to believe in a bubble of enlightened, safe sexuality. And so it was easy, for a time, to ignore all the ways my sharp mind had been made unwelcome.

I felt more and more conflicted until a perfect storm of life stressors ruptured the walls my mind had built up. I was confronted by everything I had been denying, and broke down in grief.

I grieved the loss of the illusion of safety. I grieved the feeling of betrayal, from my community and from myself.

It may feel strange to know that I don’t regret these experiences. They are landmarks on a journey I continue to travel today, and have offered uniquely helpful perspectives and tools.

Experiencing the painful rupturing of barriers between the fantasy of kink and the reality of a world of vanilla suffering opened me to the possibility of what BDSM could be used for.

It showed me how BDSM could be reclaimed into a framework to teach and learn about trauma on a personal and collective level.

We live in a cultural and embodied reality that has conditioned us to "get off" on pain: familiar pain, safe pain, protective pain.

The human body, and all its systems, get hijacked by trauma to believe in power as dominance, subjugation, and the fear that comes from conforming to this binary. We are programmed to take pleasure in how well we can make ourselves fit.

That's what BDSM makes a game. Playing pretend to swallow what hurts.

But to be human is greater than that.

The truth of the power of a human body has been stolen from you, by a culture of dominance and cult of BDSM.

You are a living organism built to enjoy power the way nature enjoys power:

collectively. creatively. freely.

Unkinked represents the body of resources I wish I had when just beginning to navigate healing and reclaiming power and sexuality. It can be lonely, at first, to leave behind what you thought you knew. I’ve come to realize just how much support is needed in recognizing what is real and creating a joyful life, a true one, from that foundation of realness.

And if we are to be effective change-makers in our lives and in the world, accepting the whole picture of what’s real is a necessary first step.

Here’s a taste of what’s real: being powerful is not about invulnerability, dominance, or control. True power is found in connection, freedom, and conscious choice. This power spins the stars and blooms flowers, it beats the blood through hearts and lights fires, and it’s inside us, waiting to be felt.