There was a time when having a kink was a front-page newsworthy item in a daily rag publication. They were usually exposure items of judges being canned or dressed as babies. Throw in a dominatrix wearing black leather and with scraped backed hair and an axe wound application of red lipstick, and you can fill in the sordid gaps yourself.

Now of course it’s fashionable to dabble domestically in the kinky side of life where stories of judges and bankers are of no interest. Certain magazines with a female target audience can be found well thumbed (pre-covid) in your hairdressers and dentists waiting areas.  Even your granny can readily find top tips for buying a sex toy these days amongst Country Life and Readers Digest.

It would not be beyond reasonable expectation to think that those of us who have alternative lifestyles would be more readily accepted or even found interesting.  Alas, this is not the case, and unless the wives of Essex, New Jersey, LA or the Kardashines are doing it, our type of lifestyle is still seen as witchcraft.

I know I am talking to the converted here when I say there are so many positives to having kink in your life, be it a casual release or a lifestyle.  D/s type (too many to list) relationships come with a list of positive behaviours in a relationship. ‘Be a better version of yourself’ is a common one which would not be out of place in a self-help or religious mantra. So why is kink still seen as something worthy of being secured in stocks and having vegetables thrown at you?  Yes, I initially thought that line was clever, but you get my inference I am sure.

Kink for me started in the 1980’s and when I wrote about it in a piece back in 2017 I embraced the feelings the MTV video I watched gave me. It gave a sense of security and freedom I wanted to share, however, there are somethings best kept close the chest!  It was only many years later when I found my sub and love of my life that we decided to explore the wider world, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!  Or something like that.  It was a great adventure though, and still it. From those early days, right up until now there are things to discover in kink about ourselves and other people.  Our community site goes a long way to bridging that gap between glossy articles in waiting rooms and interacting with people who have a few twists, turns and knots in their lives.  Would I like our type of lifestyle to be more widely accepted I often ask myself? Parts of me say yes, and another part says that making it so acceptable could take the edge off of it. Smoking was never as much of a thrill after I got caught as a teenager and then an ashtray was laid out at Christmas every year without a word being spoken. A real party pooper I can tell you!

Kink is very personal and quite rightly. One should not have to justify why we do what we do, and in a perfect world people should not care. However, we live in a world of ‘Influencers’ that make everything from a lip gloss to the sound of a fart marketable. What chance would our private activities have when they would only be used to promote something with no positive behavioural worth?  For me my kink, our kink, stays in a place that adds value to us and our close friends, and certainly not for examination or collection of coffee rings on the covers of CosMarieHelloEllePolitan magazine.