WHAT KINK REVEALS ABOUT THE POWER WE PRETEND DOESN’T EXIST
Erotic surrender, emotional vulnerability, and the complicated ways power shapes our intimate relationships.
Someone might willingly kneel in front of a partner, surrender control, and participate in an erotic experience that would feel deeply uncomfortable outside the context of their relationship. Beforehand, they may have discussed the experience in considerable detail, exploring what makes it desirable, where the boundaries exist, and how they will recognize when something needs to change. Yet later that evening, the same person might struggle to tell their partner that a seemingly ordinary comment left them feeling dismissed or unimportant. There is no inherent contradiction in enjoying consensual submission while expecting equality and consideration in everyday life. What makes this contrast psychologically interesting is the difference between vulnerability that has been deliberately invited and vulnerability that emerges unexpectedly within an ongoing relationship.
Erotic surrender can involve an intentional exploration of control, trust, anticipation, and emotional exposure. Depending on the individuals involved, the experience may offer opportunities to explore aspects of desire that are difficult to articulate or express in other circumstances. Everyday emotional vulnerability, however, rarely unfolds within such clearly established parameters. People cannot always anticipate when they will feel rejected, when a partner’s response will activate an insecurity, or when an ordinary disagreement will challenge their sense of relational security. The distinction raises questions about why certain forms of vulnerability can feel pleasurable, liberating, or reassuring within an erotic context while other forms of vulnerability, particularly those involving emotional dependence or the possibility of rejection, can feel considerably more threatening.
BDSM offers an especially interesting framework for examining these questions because power is often explicitly acknowledged as part of the experience. Participants may explore dominance, submission, restraint, service, humiliation, or other dynamics in which authority and vulnerability become elements of erotic expression. The meanings attached to these experiences vary significantly. For one person, surrender may involve relief from responsibility; for another, it may create an opportunity to experience focused attention, anticipation, or trust. Someone occupying a dominant role may find meaning in responsibility, creativity, control, or the experience of being entrusted with another person’s vulnerability. None of these motivations should be assumed to apply universally, nor should an individual’s erotic preferences be treated as evidence of a particular personality trait or psychological difficulty.
What makes these experiences relevant to relationships beyond BDSM is not the suggestion that everyone should engage in power exchange. Rather, it is the recognition that power already exists within intimate relationships, including those whose participants consider themselves entirely equal. Power influences whose preferences receive attention, whose emotional responses shape decisions, who feels comfortable declining intimacy, and who anticipates consequences when expressing disagreement. It can emerge through financial resources, emotional dependence, social expectations, differences in desire, or patterns that develop gradually over years of shared life. Unlike intentionally negotiated erotic power, these everyday dynamics may remain largely unexamined because they have become familiar enough to appear natural.
The distinction worth exploring, therefore, is not between relationships that contain power and those that do not. It is between power that can be recognized, questioned, and intentionally negotiated, and power that becomes embedded in relational expectations without anyone explicitly acknowledging its influence. Understanding that difference invites a more complex examination of consent, autonomy, erotic desire, and emotional vulnerability than the familiar suggestion that partners simply need to communicate more effectively.
WHEN SURRENDER BECOMES AN EXPRESSION OF AUTONOMY
One of the most persistent misunderstandings about consensual BDSM is the assumption that surrendering control necessarily represents a loss of autonomy. This interpretation confuses the outward appearance of an experience with the circumstances that give it meaning. Someone who chooses to relinquish control within an erotic encounter is not necessarily expressing a desire to be controlled in other areas of life. They may instead be exercising autonomy through the deliberate selection of an experience in which authority is temporarily or conditionally transferred. The psychological distinction between choosing to surrender and being deprived of choice is substantial, even when the observable behavior appears similar.
The meanings people attach to surrender are also far more varied than popular explanations often suggest. For some, submission may involve freedom from the continuous demands of decision-making, while others experience it as an opportunity to explore vulnerability, anticipation, or erotic attention. A person who occupies a dominant role may derive pleasure from directing an experience, but may also value the responsibility involved in attending carefully to another person’s responses. These possibilities should not be mistaken for universal motivations or used to interpret someone’s erotic interests without their participation. The significance of a particular dynamic is shaped by the people involved, their intentions, the circumstances of the experience, and the meanings they develop together.
Research has challenged longstanding assumptions that consensual BDSM necessarily reflects psychological dysfunction. Wismeijer and van Assen (2013), for example, examined psychological characteristics among BDSM practitioners and a comparison group, finding results inconsistent with the expectation that practitioners would demonstrate broadly poorer psychological functioning. Although the study’s cross-sectional design and recruitment methods limit what can be concluded about the broader population, its findings help challenge the presumption that unconventional erotic interests require a pathological explanation. Contemporary sexological practice benefits from this distinction because an individual’s sexual interests should be evaluated in relation to consent, distress, functioning, and personal meaning rather than judged primarily by whether they conform to conventional expectations.
What makes chosen surrender especially interesting is that autonomy and vulnerability are not necessarily opposites. A person may exercise considerable agency in deciding when, how, and with whom to become vulnerable. However, this does not mean that consent eliminates every power imbalance or that the ability to withdraw consent automatically makes an experience equitable. Emotional attachment, differences in experience, physical circumstances, and concerns about disappointing another person can influence how freely someone participates. A sophisticated understanding of erotic autonomy therefore requires attention not only to whether an agreement exists, but also to the conditions under which that agreement is made and maintained.
THE POWER THAT HIDES INSIDE ORDINARY RELATIONSHIPS
Outside explicitly negotiated erotic experiences, power often becomes difficult to identify because it is embedded in familiar relational patterns. People may describe their relationships as equal because neither person formally occupies a position of authority, yet equality in principle does not guarantee equal influence in practice. Differences in income, emotional dependence, social support, conflict tolerance, or access to resources can affect whose preferences ultimately shape shared decisions. These differences do not automatically establish exploitation or unhealthy relationships, but they influence the circumstances in which choices are made and deserve thoughtful examination.
Consider a relationship in which one person is comfortable expressing disappointment while the other finds conflict profoundly unsettling. Over time, the person who dislikes conflict may begin accommodating preferences they do not share, not because they have been explicitly instructed to do so, but because disagreement consistently produces emotional consequences they would rather avoid. The other partner may genuinely believe that decisions are being made collaboratively because no direct demand has been issued.
Nevertheless, the repeated pattern can produce an imbalance in which one person’s emotional reactions exert considerable influence over the other’s behavior.
Sexual intimacy provides another example of how power may operate without being recognized. A person may understand that their partner has the right to decline sexual activity while nevertheless responding to rejection with prolonged withdrawal, resentment, or repeated requests for reassurance. Experiencing disappointment is not inherently coercive, and people are entitled to acknowledge difficult feelings. However, when the consequences of refusal become predictable and burdensome, the other person may begin consenting primarily to avoid those consequences. The distinction between freely expressed desire and participation motivated by anticipated emotional fallout becomes clinically significant, particularly when individuals describe feeling obligated to manage their partner’s reactions.
These dynamics demonstrate why the absence of overt control should not be confused with the absence of power. Influence can be exercised through expectations, emotional patterns, and the unequal distribution of responsibility for maintaining relational stability. A useful question is not simply whether someone is permitted to say no, but whether the relationship can tolerate that refusal without making the person who declined responsible for restoring the other’s emotional equilibrium. This question applies to sexuality, household responsibilities, financial decisions, family obligations, and countless other areas in which partners’ interests may diverge.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EROTIC VULNERABILITY AND EMOTIONAL EXPOSURE
Although erotic vulnerability and emotional vulnerability can overlap, they are not interchangeable experiences. An individual may feel comfortable exploring restraint, submission, or consensual humiliation while struggling to express loneliness, jealousy, insecurity, or a desire for reassurance. This difference does not necessarily reveal a contradiction in their personality. Instead, it suggests that vulnerability takes on different psychological meanings depending on its context, predictability, and perceived consequences.
A negotiated erotic experience may provide a recognizable structure within which vulnerability can be explored. Participants may understand what is being invited, which boundaries apply, and how they can communicate if their experience changes. This structure does not guarantee safety or eliminate emotional uncertainty, but it can make aspects of the experience more predictable.
By contrast, expressing emotional dependence in an ongoing relationship may expose someone to uncertainty that cannot be resolved through an agreed-upon procedure. Asking a partner whether they still find us desirable, whether they feel emotionally invested, or whether they have begun questioning the relationship introduces the possibility of receiving an answer we cannot control.
The distinction becomes particularly meaningful when examining shame. A person may feel little embarrassment discussing an unconventional erotic preference with a trusted partner while experiencing intense discomfort admitting that they want more affection, attention, or reassurance. Sexual shame is not limited to concerns about particular activities or fantasies. It can also emerge around the experience of wanting, especially when wanting something creates the possibility of rejection. Individuals may become skilled at articulating what they enjoy sexually while remaining uncertain about how to express the emotional significance of those experiences.
From a clinical perspective, it is important not to assume that a person’s kink preference explains their emotional vulnerabilities. Enjoying submission does not establish that someone has difficulty asserting themselves, just as enjoying dominance does not establish a need to control everyday relationships. Instead, exploring the distinction between erotic and emotional vulnerability can help illuminate how individuals experience autonomy, exposure, and relational security across different contexts. The most productive inquiry concerns what a particular experience means to the person rather than what an observer assumes it must reveal.
CONSENT IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN AN AGREEMENT
Consent is central to ethical sexual interaction, but the presence of an explicit agreement does not resolve every question about autonomy, influence, or responsibility. People make decisions within social and relational contexts that shape what they feel comfortable expressing. A person may agree to an experience because they genuinely desire it while simultaneously wanting to appear adventurous, please a partner, or preserve a valued relationship. These motivations can coexist without automatically invalidating consent, although they may complicate the individual’s experience of choice.
The distinction between agreement and freedom to agree becomes especially important when one person fears the consequences of refusal. Someone may understand that they are technically allowed to decline an experience but anticipate disappointment, rejection, or conflict if they do so. In such circumstances, evaluating consent requires more than identifying whether an affirmative response occurred. It also requires attention to whether hesitation was respected, whether alternatives were genuinely available, and whether changing one’s mind could occur without retaliation or pressure.
Research on consent within BDSM communities illustrates both the value and limitations of explicit negotiation. Bauer’s work on queer BDSM intimacies examines how consent practices operate within broader relationships of power, identity, and social context rather than functioning as simple agreements between entirely independent individuals. This perspective is particularly useful because it resists two opposing oversimplifications: that BDSM is inherently coercive because it may involve enacted inequality, and that BDSM is automatically ethical whenever participants describe an experience as consensual. Neither conclusion adequately accounts for the complexity of human relationships.
Consent must also remain responsive to changing circumstances. Someone may sincerely agree to an experience and later discover that it carries an emotional meaning they did not anticipate. Such a discovery does not automatically establish that the original consent was invalid or that another person acted irresponsibly. It may, however, require further conversation, reflection, or reconsideration of future participation. Ethical responsibility extends beyond demonstrating that an agreement existed; it includes responding appropriately when new information becomes available about another person’s experience.
EXPLORE KINK WITH GREATER CLARITY
Thoughtful kink exploration involves more than choosing activities. It also requires conversations about desire, power, boundaries, consent, emotional safety, and what each person needs to participate freely. The Kink/BDSM Exploration Bundle provides guided worksheets to help individuals and partners approach these conversations with greater curiosity and intention.
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WHEN DESIRE AND POWER BECOME ENTANGLED
Power is particularly significant in sexual relationships because desire involves both personal autonomy and the vulnerability of wanting something from another person. The ability to initiate intimacy, decline an invitation, express a fantasy, or remain sexually unavailable can influence how partners experience their desirability and relational security. These experiences are shaped not only by individual libido but also by expectations about who should pursue, who should respond, and whose desires are treated as priorities.
Consider a relationship in which one partner consistently initiates sexual intimacy while the other rarely does. The initiating partner may begin to experience the arrangement as evidence that they are less desired, even when their partner remains affectionate and sexually interested. Meanwhile, the partner who rarely initiates may experience pressure to demonstrate desire in a particular way, especially if their interest develops more responsively than spontaneously. Neither person necessarily intends to exercise power over the other, yet the pattern can influence how freely each experiences their own sexuality.
Basson’s (2000) model of female sexual response helped broaden clinical discussions by emphasizing that sexual desire does not always emerge spontaneously before arousal or intimate engagement. Although the model was developed in relation to women’s sexual experiences and should not be treated as universal, it contributed to a more contextual understanding of desire. The relevance here is that differences in how desire emerges can become entangled with relational expectations, particularly when spontaneous initiation is interpreted as the primary evidence of attraction.
A person may also find pleasure in being pursued or directed within an erotic encounter while resisting control in everyday life. Wanting to feel intensely desired is not equivalent to wanting one’s autonomy diminished. Likewise, enjoying a dominant role does not necessarily mean wanting responsibility for initiating every sexual interaction. The meanings of pursuit, surrender, and control depend on context, and difficulties arise when partners assume that an erotic preference automatically establishes a broader relational obligation.
Sexological inquiry can therefore move beyond questions about how frequently partners engage in sexual activity or whether their desires match. It can examine who feels permitted to want, who experiences responsibility for initiating, how rejection is interpreted, and what emotional meanings have become attached to particular patterns. These questions reveal how power can shape sexual experiences even when neither person recognizes the relationship as involving a power dynamic.
WHEN PLAYFUL HUMILIATION BECOMES RELATIONAL CONTEMPT
The distinction between consensual erotic humiliation and contempt within an everyday relationship offers a particularly clear illustration of why context matters. Someone may enjoy carefully negotiated language or experiences involving embarrassment, degradation, or exposure within a BDSM scene. The experience may be pleasurable because its meaning, boundaries, and purpose have been established between participants. Yet that same person may experience a dismissive remark during an argument as profoundly hurtful, even when the words resemble language they have previously welcomed during erotic play.
The outward similarity of two experiences does not make them psychologically equivalent. Erotic humiliation may be intentionally invited and understood within a mutually established context, while contempt during conflict can communicate disregard for someone’s dignity or emotional experience. A person’s willingness to explore a particular erotic dynamic does not grant another person unrestricted permission to reproduce that dynamic elsewhere. Nor does participation in consensual humiliation imply that the individual lacks self-respect or welcomes disrespect in ordinary life.
Similar distinctions arise in relationships that do not involve BDSM. Someone may enjoy teasing during flirtation but feel embarrassed when a partner makes the same joke in front of friends. A person may appreciate expressions of possessiveness during consensual role-play while feeling constrained by jealousy-driven restrictions outside that context. In each example, the meaning of the behavior depends on the circumstances, the participants’ understanding, and whether the experience remains genuinely welcome.
These distinctions matter because familiarity can encourage assumptions. Partners may begin treating previous enjoyment as evidence of ongoing permission or interpret a person’s erotic interests as a general statement about how they wish to be treated. Recognizing the contextual nature of desire challenges those assumptions and reinforces the importance of understanding individuals as more complex than the roles or activities they enjoy.
WHEN NEGOTIATION BECOMES A DEFENSE AGAINST UNCERTAINTY
Explicit agreements can provide valuable clarity, particularly when people are exploring unfamiliar experiences or navigating differences in desire. However, negotiation can also become a way of attempting to eliminate the uncertainty inherent in intimacy. Individuals may believe that sufficiently detailed agreements will prevent emotional discomfort, misunderstanding, or disappointment. While careful negotiation can reduce certain risks, it cannot guarantee that every experience will unfold as expected or that participants will always understand their emotional responses in advance.
This limitation becomes especially visible when someone experiences hurt despite an agreement having been followed. One person may emphasize that the negotiated boundaries were respected, while the other struggles to explain why the experience nevertheless felt unsettling. The resulting conflict may become focused on determining whether a rule was broken rather than exploring what the experience revealed. In some cases, the emotional response reflects an expectation that was never articulated. In others, it may involve an unexpected feeling that neither person could reasonably have anticipated.
The existence of hurt does not automatically establish wrongdoing, just as compliance with an agreement does not make another person’s emotional experience irrelevant. Both realities can coexist. A relationship capable of meaningful negotiation must therefore allow people to revisit experiences without requiring every difficult feeling to become evidence of blame or every agreement to function as a permanent defense against further discussion.
There is also a subtler way in which negotiation can become emotionally protective. Partners may devote considerable energy to discussing activities, schedules, or behavioral expectations while avoiding the more vulnerable meanings beneath those subjects. Someone may prefer negotiating how frequently intimacy will occur rather than acknowledging that they feel unwanted. Another may focus on the wording of an agreement because admitting that trust has changed feels considerably more threatening. In these circumstances, the difficulty is not a lack of negotiation but the possibility that negotiation has become a substitute for emotional disclosure.
This distinction returns us to the difference between the vulnerability we deliberately structure and the vulnerability that emerges when we reveal something we cannot control. Agreements can clarify what people intend to do. They cannot ensure that another person will respond to our longing, uncertainty, or disappointment in the way we hope.
AFTERCARE AND THE EMOTIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF INTIMACY
Aftercare is often discussed within BDSM as a means of attending to participants’ needs following an intense experience. Its form varies considerably depending on individual preferences and the nature of the encounter. Some people appreciate physical closeness, reassurance, or conversation, while others prefer solitude, practical care, or an opportunity to reflect before reconnecting. The significance of aftercare lies less in any prescribed activity than in the recognition that an experience may continue to have emotional or physical consequences after the activity itself has ended.
This recognition has broader relevance to intimate relationships because emotional vulnerability does not necessarily disappear when a conversation or interaction concludes. A person who reveals a previously undisclosed fantasy may feel exposed long after their partner has responded positively. Someone who acknowledges jealousy, insecurity, or dissatisfaction may continue wondering whether the disclosure has altered how they are perceived. Even when the conversation is respectful, the experience of being known in a new way can require time to process.
Attending to these transitions does not mean that partners are responsible for preventing one another from experiencing difficult emotions. Nor should reassurance be used to excuse repeated boundary violations or harmful behavior. Rather, it involves recognizing that the aftermath of vulnerability can influence how safe someone feels being open in the future. A thoughtful response might involve checking in later, acknowledging the significance of a disclosure, or respecting a person’s request for space without interpreting that request as rejection.
The relevance of aftercare also extends to conflict. Partners may successfully interrupt an escalating argument yet remain uncertain about how to reconnect afterward. One person may interpret the end of the conversation as resolution, while the other continues experiencing emotional distance. Developing an understanding of what each person needs following difficult interactions can help distinguish between ending a disagreement and attending to its relational consequences.
What BDSM can illuminate here is not the need to create elaborate rituals around every emotionally significant interaction. It is the value of recognizing that vulnerability has an aftermath and that the quality of our response can influence whether another person feels able to be vulnerable again.
WHAT POWER REVEALS ABOUT THE FREEDOM TO BE KNOWN
The most consequential expressions of power in intimate relationships are not always the most visible. They may emerge through repeated patterns in which one person’s emotional reactions determine what the other feels comfortable disclosing. A partner may gradually stop expressing disappointment because doing so reliably produces conflict. Someone may avoid discussing a sexual interest because previous conversations have resulted in ridicule or defensiveness. Another person may continue participating in an arrangement they no longer want because questioning it would threaten the stability of the relationship.
These patterns reveal that relational freedom involves more than the theoretical ability to make choices. It also involves the conditions under which people can express preferences, uncertainty, and disagreement. When a relationship consistently makes honesty costly, individuals may begin adapting themselves to preserve connection. The resulting accommodation can be mistaken for compatibility, particularly when the underlying conflict remains unspoken.
This is where the study of erotic power offers an especially useful perspective. Consensual power exchange can demonstrate that vulnerability and autonomy are not necessarily incompatible, while also reminding us that the ethical significance of an experience depends on more than the roles participants occupy. Power becomes meaningful through how it is negotiated, exercised, interpreted, and reconsidered. Those same questions apply to everyday relationships, even when no one consciously identifies their interactions as involving power.
The purpose of recognizing relational power is not to eliminate every difference in influence or transform intimacy into a continuous process of formal negotiation. Relationships involve changing capacities, unequal resources, competing needs, and periods in which one person may rely more heavily on another. These differences are not inherently unethical. What matters is whether they can be acknowledged and whether the people involved retain meaningful opportunities to express themselves without being subjected to coercion, humiliation, or retaliation.
Ultimately, the most revealing question may be what happens when someone expresses a truth that disrupts the relationship’s established expectations. A partner may disclose that an erotic experience no longer appeals to them, that an agreement has become difficult to sustain, or that they have been concealing dissatisfaction to avoid conflict. Such disclosures can produce genuine disappointment and uncertainty for everyone involved. The presence of those emotions does not mean the relationship has failed. What becomes significant is whether the people involved can tolerate the discomfort of encountering another person’s autonomy.
WHAT KINK ULTIMATELY REVEALS ABOUT INTIMACY
Kink provides a compelling lens through which to examine power because it can make explicit something that ordinary relationships often leave unnamed. Within consensual erotic experiences, people may deliberately explore authority, surrender, vulnerability, and control while assigning meanings to those experiences that differ considerably from their meanings in everyday life. The distinction challenges simplistic assumptions about what sexual preferences reveal and encourages a more contextual understanding of human desire.
Yet the broader lesson is not that kink practitioners necessarily negotiate more effectively or that non-kink relationships should adopt BDSM structures. Negotiation skills do not automatically transfer across contexts, and explicit agreements do not eliminate the possibility of coercion, misunderstanding, or emotional harm. Instead, the comparison encourages us to recognize that power operates within all intimate relationships, including those whose participants rarely consider themselves to be negotiating it.
For a person who enjoys consensual submission, autonomy may include the freedom to choose surrender. For someone navigating a longstanding relationship, autonomy may involve the considerably less structured challenge of expressing a desire that their partner does not share. Both experiences involve the relationship between vulnerability and choice, but they may carry very different emotional risks.
What makes this distinction important is the recognition that intimacy requires more than the absence of overt control. It requires conditions in which individuals can remain psychologically present as separate people, with desires, boundaries, uncertainties, and experiences that may not always align. The freedom to be known includes the possibility of revealing something inconvenient, disappointing, or unexpected without having that disclosure automatically become a threat to one’s dignity or safety.
Perhaps the most important thing kink reveals about power is that its meaning cannot be understood apart from the circumstances in which it operates. Control can be invited or imposed. Vulnerability can be chosen or exploited. An experience that feels liberating in one context may feel profoundly diminishing in another. Understanding these differences requires curiosity about the people involved rather than assumptions based on appearances, roles, or relationship labels.
When we bring that curiosity into everyday relationships, we begin to notice the arrangements that have become so familiar they no longer seem negotiable. We may recognize that someone has been accommodating expectations they never consciously accepted, that a partner’s emotional reactions have quietly shaped what can be discussed, or that an agreement once freely chosen no longer reflects the people participating in it.
These discoveries do not always lead to easy resolutions. Sometimes they reveal meaningful differences that cannot be reconciled through better communication or more detailed agreements. Nevertheless, the willingness to examine them creates an opportunity for relationships to become more intentional, not by eliminating power, but by acknowledging how it influences the freedom to desire, refuse, change, and be understood.
The most important question may not be whether we have learned to negotiate power in our intimate lives, but whether we are willing to recognize the power we exercise when someone we love tells us something we did not want to hear.
EXPLORE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GREATER CURIOSITY
At Future Horizons Counseling, I work with individuals and partners navigating intimacy, desire, sexual expression, consensual non-monogamy, kink/BDSM, and complex relationship dynamics. My approach is sex-positive, kink-affirming, and grounded in the understanding that sexual interests and relationship structures are not inherently problems requiring correction. Therapy offers an opportunity to explore how autonomy, vulnerability, desire, and power intersect in your relationships, particularly when familiar patterns no longer reflect what you want or need.
Telehealth services are available to eligible clients in Wisconsin and Florida. Learn more about working together at:
BRING GREATER INTENTION TO YOUR KINK EXPLORATION
Recognizing power is only the beginning. Meaningful exploration also requires language for discussing desires, boundaries, roles, consent, emotional responses, and the meanings each person attaches to an experience. These conversations can be difficult to begin, especially when people are still discovering what interests them or worry that curiosity will be interpreted as a demand.
The Kink/BDSM Exploration Bundle offers a structured way to move beyond assumptions and explore these questions with greater clarity. It is designed for individuals and partners who want to better understand their interests, communicate more openly, and approach kink with curiosity, intention, and respect for everyone’s autonomy.
You do not need to have everything figured out before beginning. The purpose is not to choose a label or agree to an experience. It is to create enough space to discover what feels meaningful, what remains uncertain, and what each person would need before deciding what—if anything—they want to explore together.
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REFERENCES
Basson, R. (2000). The female sexual response: A different model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/009262300278641
Bauer, R. (2014). Queer BDSM intimacies: Critical consent and pushing boundaries. Palgrave Macmillan.
Wismeijer, A. A. J., & van Assen, M. A. L. M. (2013). Psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 10(8), 1943–1952. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsm.12192
Research note: The discussion draws on sexological and qualitative scholarship concerning BDSM, sexual desire, and consent. The illustrative relationship scenarios are conceptual examples rather than findings about BDSM practitioners as a population. The reference details should be independently checked before publication.
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