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kink curious? Mistress Damiana Chi, PhD, on why you're (likely) kinky
kink curious? Mistress Damiana Chi, PhD, shares kink rules of the road
Mistress Damiana Chi, PhD, is mistress of The Chi Temple, which has been called the most beautiful dungeon in LA, and founder of The Evolutionary Dominatrix™ Academy, a psychologically based, comprehensive program in the art of Conscious Female Domination. In addition to being a legendary professional dominatrix of 20+ years, she has a doctorate and a masters degree in psychology, is a certified sexologist specializing in kink-centered counseling and life coaching, creator of the Conscious Kink Community and host of “Lightworkers Who Play in the Dark” podcast. Who better to explain the lay of kink land for the kink curious? Here, she shares 25 rules of the kink road. Some of them may surprise you.
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1/ You’re probably already kinky.
The reason why I feel like everyone's kinky but some people just don’t know is because sexuality is about doing things that are exciting and sexual and those things are usually naughty. The more forbidden or shocking or kinky something is, the bigger the potential turn-on.
2/ Kink begins in the imagination.
Once the erotic component goes into your imagination and your mind, that starts the kink element of it. Kink is about playing in the area of erotic power exchange. At the very basic level, when someone thinks about what turns them on, usually the fantasy in their head has to do with being either dominant or submissive, even on a subtle level. In missionary sex, for example, the person on the bottom is submissive — they’re doing the receiving. The person on top is doing the action part — they’re doing to the other person. Vanilla sex is just intercourse, but when you get into the imagination, then you’re talking kinky. So, let’s say the woman is on top, she’s riding the man and in her mind she’s fucking him where he’s tied up and helpless. In her fantasy, he’s helpless to stop her and maybe it matches his fantasy that he’s being dominated by her, he’s being taken by her.
3/ You’re probably one of three kink archetypes.
In kink there’s a dominant and there’s a submissive. If most of your fantasies are submissive then you would generally identify as submissive. If your fantasies are generally dominant, you would identify as dominant. But sometimes someone has fantasies of being both dominant and submissive. If you enjoy playing both of those roles, you’d be called a switch. At the beginner level, these are the three archetypes.
4/ You already have kinky fantasies.
By just asking the question, “What turns you on?” you’re going to find out what type of kinky fantasies you have. If you say, “I don’t have kinky fantasies,” and I say, “What’s the scenario that’s playing in your head that turns you on?” and it’s being taken, well that is a kinky fantasy. Being taken means you have a fantasy about being submissive.
5/ You don’t need toys to be kinky.
When people say, “Oh, I'm not kinky because I don't want to use toys, I don't want to use a strap-on, I don't want to use handcuffs,” it doesn’t matter. You can be kinky just doing simple role play with your partner.
6/ You do need a well-chosen partner.
You have to find a partner who you feel safe with, a partner who is open-minded and accepting of your kinky desires or fantasies. Take the example of a man who has a foot fetish. If he says to his girlfriend, “Hey, I have a foot fetish, would you mind letting me lick your feet?” And if she’s like, “Oh gross, that’s disgusting,” that’s going to shame him and make him feel awful and weird and perverted in all the worst ways.
7/ It starts with a conversation.
You have to suss out if your partner is open and accepting about your kinky desires in the first place. Let’s say the kinky guy with the foot fetish finds a woman, and they’re dating, the conversation would have to start somewhere like, “So, have you ever played in a kinkier way?” He has to feel around to see how open-minded she is. If she’s like, “Oh yeah, I'm very adventurous, I love playing kinky,” then he can move on to can he lick her feet. So have those conversations first. They open up the conversation and create intimacy and closeness and trust. All that trust-building is important as a foundation before any play can begin.
8/ You might play in fantasy, for now.
It’s totally okay to explore kink exclusively in fantasy first.
9/ Kink doesn’t necessarily involve pain.
The element of pain that’s in BDSM and in kink is not necessarily physical. Pain can be looked at in terms of suffering or resistance or pain or humiliation — depending on your perspective about the fantasy. Going back to the foot fetish example, one person who has a foot fetish might like to be humiliated. Meaning, “I like sniffing your stinky feet because it’s so humiliating.” Humiliation, which is mental or psychological pain, is a huge turn-on for a lot of people. Whereas for someone else a foot fetish isn’t painful, it’s just a turn on because you like the way it looks visually or you like the idea of it, like a woman’s foot is a turn-on for you. So fetish can go outside of the pain element.
10/ Resistance can be a huge turn-on.
A very common fantasy with a foot fetish is that the guy wants to be a slave to the woman who’s his mistress, his dominatrix, and he wants to be humiliated, like, “You’re a slave and you belong at my feet, so you lie on the ground like a foot rug and I’m going to treat you like a foot rug.” That kind of pain is mental pain because he’s being forced to become this object that’s being used, and that’s a huge turn-on for him because it’s pushing resistance. In his mind, he doesn’t want to do that, but she’s making him.
11/ Kink is about exploring taboos.
The reason why kink is so hot is because you’re doing things that are very taboo. So on a very basic level, something taboo would be like a woman bending over and there’s a nip slip and the guy’s like, “Oh my gosh, I just saw her nipple,” and that’s a turn on because that’s taboo, like you’re not supposed to see her nipple in public. So when the guy is being made to be a rug, it’s taboo because he’s not supposed to be a foot rug, he’s supposed to be an upright man. And it’s a turn-on because it’s in that realm of “not supposed to happen.”
12/ Emotional pain can be arousing.
Emotional pain would be something like a cuckolding fantasy. Say there’s a husband and wife, and the woman has made her husband into a cuck, meaning he has to accept the fact that she’s going to go fuck other men. So maybe she’s at home getting ready for a date and she’s putting on her makeup and putting on a sexy dress and he says to her, “Oh you look so gorgeous.” And she says, “I know and I’m going to go out with this guy and he’s going to look at my sexy body and I’m going to let him touch me.” And he’s completely crushed, but it turns him on. He’s so jealous, but it turns him on. And she’s like, “Yeah, and then we’re going to go back to a hotel and then I’m going to fuck him. And you can imagine that I’m going to let this guy have me every which way.” And he’s like, “Oh my god,” and it’s just destroying him, he’s dying, because he loves her. That’s the turn on. He’s getting hard just thinking about it. He has to love her and have deep feelings for her in order for this to work.
13/ Safe words help with role play.
For someone who’s just starting out, you’ve got to establish safe words, both to feel safe and to help with role play. Let’s say a woman says to her partner, “I really want to play out my kinky fantasy of being taken by a stranger, are you willing to play the role of the mysterious man in a horse stable?” Let’s say they start and he does something that doesn’t align with her fantasies, maybe he’s pinning her wrists down too hard, so a safe word like red means stop — stop the role play, we’re jumping out of this role play now and we’re going to talk, partner to partner.
14/ Signals work better than words.
In BDSM, we generally use the signal lights, meaning green, yellow and red. Red means stop. Yellow means slow down. Green means yes. Let’s say the guy in the fantasy is pinning her down and he’s being a little tentative. If she says “Green,” then he knows, “Oh, she wants me to pin her down even harder.” Whereas if she said, “Harder, harder,” that would mess up the role play. So safe words assist the role play by not interrupting the scene.
15/ Kink works like a 3-act play.
The pre-scene negotiation is where you establish safe words and after care and things like that. Play is where you get into your fantasies — you talk about it, and the next step would be to try things out in a physical way. After care is where you and your partner talk about how it felt for you. Let’s go back to the example of the stranger who takes her in the stable. He’s the dominant. Usually, the dominant is the one who creates the safe container and who keeps the container held while providing after care. So, when the scene is over, he might say to her, “How was that for you baby? Was that good for you?” And she might say, “Oh my gosh it was wonderful. Maybe you can go even rougher next time and pin me down even harder.” Sometimes she might need a lot of cuddling. Before he was playing a stranger; now he’s back to being her partner.
16/ Think of it as method acting.
During role play, there’s a shift in the psyches — both partners have to shift into almost a different dimension. It’s like you’re in a play, and you want to suspend belief and go into that imagination, that story, and you don’t want to break out of the roles. So afterwards, you have to spend time easing out of the scene and coming back to yourselves as who you are in the day-to-day world.
17/ Fetish clothing enhances role play.
Part of playing in kink is the fetish element of it, so fetish clothing is part of that. Leather, latex, lingerie — these are fetish items of clothing because these are things you don’t normally see people wear out on the street. So when you wear these secret outfits in your role play, it takes it to another dimension. When you see your partner dressed in this really erotic way, it adds excitement. Start with lingerie. Go out and buy some thigh-high leather boots and some long opera gloves and a military cap, and with a crop in your hand, bam, you’re a dominatrix.
18/ Kink can be healing.
I have a masters and a Ph.D in psychology, and during my masters and doctorate program I studied a psychological technique called psychodrama, which is role play. Let’s say a client comes to the therapist and says, “My mother mistreated me and I have this traumatic memory from when I was 10 years old,” and the therapist says, “OK, let’s go into a psychodrama scene.” The therapist plays the mother and the client plays her 10-year-old self when the incident happened, and they role play a psychodrama scene, but with a good ending — the therapist role plays what an ideal mother would do in that situation. When they come out of the scene, they ground back into their normal everyday lives and then they discuss it. You’re doing the same thing in BDSM. It's the same format, the same idea. In the after care, you’re creating that good ending that creates balance and healing in the psyche. Just like in the psychodrama example where the psychologist played a good ending instead of a traumatic ending, it creates this kind of resolution and healing in the psyche. If you do that often enough, you’re tapping into the healing aspects of kinky play.
19/ Kink has other benefits, too.
There’s so many levels of benefit to kink. On the very first level of benefit, you’re disintegrating the element of shame. Let’s go back to the guy with the foot fetish. He might have had a foot fetish fantasy all his life and maybe he’s 30 years old by the time he finally feels like he wants to open up to a partner and tell her about that. And if he has a partner who says, “That is so hot and of course I want to play that with you. I’m gonna make you worship my feet, and I’m going to tell you exactly how I want it,” he suddenly feelis like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not a horrible person. I’m not a weirdo and I’m not a pervert.” The whole element of shame he’s been carrying around starts to disintegrate. To share with people who are understanding and accepting, and who want to engage with you in the play, it’s so healing.
20/ Kink is extremely personal.
You can't just go, “I'm going to try spanking and see how I like it." It has to come from your fantasies, your imagination. That’s what people don’t understand. You have to explore how spanking fits into your fantasies, not the other way around.
21/ Explore kink in the realm of your fantasies.
Let's take spanking. You have to explore how to put spanking into your fantasy story. Like, do you want to be spanked or do you want to be the spanker? Do you want to be spanked because you’re naughty or do you want to be spanked because you want to please your dominant, and your dominant enjoys spanking? Let’s take the story about the woman who’s being taken by a stranger in the horse stable. Say he bends her over and spanks her and says, “I saw you masturbating in the stable the other day because you thought you were alone, so I'm going to spank you because you’re very naughty.” That’s how you weave spanking into your fantasy.
22/ Technique is everything.
I’ve heard many, many women say, “Oh, I don’t like spanking. I was spanked by my college boyfriend and I hated it.” And I’m like, “Well, was he trained in spanking? Did he know the right technique? Has he ever read about it or taken any classes? Well then of course you didn’t like spanking because it was done completely wrong.” I’ve had lots of submissives come to me and say they don’t like spanking but in one session they’re like, “Oh my God, I've never been spanked that way before. I love spanking by you.” When you get into the physical, when you get out of the realm of fantasies, you have to get training, you have to take classes. There’s lots of online classes nowadays where you can visually see these techniques demonstrated
23/ Bondage can enhance the fantasy.
Curious about cuffs? Explore how you can fit wrist and ankle cuffs into your fantasy. In the example in the stable, maybe there’s no cuffs, but there’s ropes. Maybe he takes that rope and ties her ankles and her wrists and she's spread eagle on the hay. Now, there’s the bondage element of kinky play.
24/ Learn the ropes first.
If you do bondage with rope, you have to be trained because there’s specific ways you do it and could cut off circulation. I’ve had one of my subs tell me he went to a professional domme who put handcuffs on him the wrong way and there was nerve damage for like a week.
25/ Fantasy takes kink to another level.
Cutting off the senses with a blindfold and gag is a very common beginner-level thing to try. Let’s say the man in the stable ties her up, she’s spread eagle, and he puts a blindfold on her and a gag. (lt doesn’t have to be a ball gag, you can use duct tape.) Let’s say he says, “I’m going to blindfold you and gag you so you can’t scream for help.” And then he starts doing things to her body, maybe with something like a Wartenberg wheel, and he says, “Now I’m going to run this instrument across your naked body and you just have to give in to it.” Do you see how the fantasy element enhances all these kink techniques and takes it to another level?
Did Mistress Damiana Chi, PhD, help you satisfy your kink-curious appetite? What more do you want to know?
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claire coghlan
claire coghlan is an award-winning editor, author, speaker, ghostwriter + writer for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Forbes, InStyle, Women's Wear Daily and more.
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