Kink is about sexual interestsâthatâs how the media portrays itâbut at its core, the process of exploring kink is about discovering who you are and what you want, of searching for and reaching for ways of getting more âlifeâ out of your life, of moving past traditional social boundaries, and realizing aspects of yourself in creative, playful, and meaningful ways.
We hope their personal stories will inspire those of you who are curious, those who are just entering the kink world, and those who are more experienced but want to learn from others. We also hope these stories captivate you, tantalize you, and embolden you, and help you realize how very similar and very unique we all are. With so many stories from so many women, Women and Kink compellingly demonstrates that we all have choices in how we create our own realities and relationships.
Background
The following is written by the senior researcher on this project, Jennifer Rehor, and is for all the other sex-geeks out there!
In 2008, I was enrolled in San Francisco State Universityâs Human Sexuality Studies program. As a part of the graduate program, students must complete a research-based thesis project. We were encouraged to pick a topic in the first semester in order to begin the research process promptly. I started with a project that I was not passionate about, but that could be completed in my two-year timeline. The following summer, I attended a conference by Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS) and I was so inspired by the work of these researchers! That is when I realized that my research must include some form of âalternative sexualitiesâ and that my time in school would be pointless if I did not accomplish something wonderful, something captivating to my heart and my mind.
My academic advisor encouraged me to spend the summer reviewing the literature in the field as it pertains to kink. I gathered articles on all sorts of interesting topics: sadism, masochism, fetishism, dominance, submission, BDSM, kink, and many others. What caught my attention was a gap in the literature, specifically about women.
Essentially, all of the quantitative articles at the time were based almost entirely on male participants. I could find only a couple of articles that analyzed kink behaviors of women. Much of the seminal work about kink took place prior to the internet and, understandably, study participants were difficult to find, even more so female participants. Due to this lack of female respondents, there was an assumption in the academic literature that very few women actually enjoy kink for their own sensual, erotic, and sexual pleasure.
Through my own personal experiences, I knew that these behaviors were not a male-only phenomenon. At that time, I had been participating in women-only weekend-long kink events annually for the previous six years. As a matter of fact, I had seen more women in a swimming pool at these weekend kink events than had been included in the pool of women in all these quantitative studies, COMBINED.
So, I wondered, if these assumptions about women and kink were true, how could we account for women-only kink events or organizations?
At that moment, I realized, âI know what my research must be about.â
That epiphany sparked a journey that taught me, energized me, pushed me, and allowed me to grow. In 2010, I launched a survey and collected knowledge from 1,361 women, young and old, happy and sad, from here and from there, and cherished their lives and loves. My endeavor delayed graduation by one full academic year, but having a thesis project that impassioned me was worth the wait. By 2011, I completed, defended, and published my thesis, The Occurrence of Unconventional Sexual Behaviors of Women (Rehor, 2011). While writing my thesis, I kept the survey open for a couple more months and gathered an additional 219 participants.
Essentially, the purpose of my thesis was twofold. Firstly, I wanted to officially debunk the myths that kink is a male-only phenomenon and that women participate only for one of only two reasons: either for financial gain or at the request of their male partner (Breslow et al., 1985; Spengler, as cited by Moser & Levitt, 1987: 332). (In academia, even if we know a phenomenon to be true, we need to document it in a research paper and add it to the body of literature.) Secondly, I wanted to contribute to the knowledge about kink behaviors in an exploratory way.
After completing my degree, I re-analyzed the data to include the additional 219 participants and submitted a journal article about my research, titled âSensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the âKinkâ Community,â to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, where it was published two years later (Rehor, 2015). The focus of this article is the specific activities of women who participate in kink, which lays a solid foundation for understanding this remarkable phenomenon.
By this time, I had embarked upon a career path to becoming a Psychotherapist. My goals shifted as I went back to school for a second masterâs degree, completed the requirements for becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist, and attended the additional training to become a coupleâs therapist and an American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) certified sex therapist.
I had reached the milestones I set out for myself personally and professionally, and I was happy.
One day, I was telling a dear friend about my research and explained that, besides the data points Iâd already published, I had thousands of quotations from the women in my survey. I had allowed and encouraged the participants to elaborate on their answers, to clarify their ideas, or to just write what they wanted. And they did. These women wrote a lot, more than I had time to organize and understand, about how they connect in play, in romance, in love, in sex, in friendship, and in community.
My friend smiled and said, âItâs like you have a treasure chest in your closet, waiting to be discovered and shared!â I have informationâimportant informationâfrom my survey that was not included in my thesis or my published article, information that was not readily quantifiable, easily counted, or categorized. I have candid stories that women told about themselves, their lives, and their loves.
In the back of my mind, something kept tickling me. âThey told you their stories. They told you their stories because those stories are important. You have to share their stories!â
I realized I wasnât finished. I still had an unopened treasure chest. It was time for the treasure to come out of the closet.
World Sexual Health DayâSan Diego 2017âis where I met Julia. We chatted a bit at the event, then walked across the street to a local munch (social event), where we learned more about each otherâs goals and aspirations. We are both sex therapists and we have the same passion for understanding and working with kink. I told her of my hidden treasure chest and my dream of sharing it. To my surprise, she offered to help me write the book. Her enthusiasm, open-mindedness, candidness, and curiosity sold me on the idea of co-authoring this book.
A few months later, an e-mail from a colleague was posted on a professional listserv, inviting Sexologists to meet with a publisher, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, at the AASECT conference that Julia and I were already planning to attend. We developed and presented our proposal and, to our delight, it was approved.
We opened my treasure chest together.
The real work began.
Julia and I began sifting through the storiesâeach uniqueâto find commonality and difference, to organize and categorize the thousands of narratives into a compendium that could reach out to the whole world.
We are proud, overjoyed, and humbled to present these stories of women and kink.
