What Does BDSM Stand For?

A man holds a Wild Secrets Tempo BDSM paddle up against his lover's skin.
BDSM refers to a range of different practices, and you can do some or all of them. It’s entirely up to you.

BDSM has entered the group chat.

It appears in dating app bios, slips into conversations about sexual preferences and moved beyond the dungeon trope it was once associated with. Being dominant, submissive or a little curious about restraints no longer feels like something that exclusively belongs behind a mysterious door.

BDSM can mean ropes and restraints, but it can also mean being told what to do. It might involve pain, but doesn’t have to. It might be sexual, sensual, psychological, or somewhere in between. For some people, BDSM is an occasional addition to sex to spice things up. For others it forms a much bigger part of their sexuality, relationships or identity.

As a sexologist, one of the things I find most interesting about BDSM is that people often feel they need to know if they’re into BDSM before they explore it. To me, that’s like asking if you’re into Italian food when you’ve never tried it.

A better starting point is, what parts of BDSM intrigue you?

Because at the heart of BDSM its about consensually exploring sensation, roles, boundaries and power. And there are a lot of ways to do that.

What does BDSM stand for?

BDSM is an umbrella term combining several overlapping practices:

  • Bondage and discipline
  • Dominance and submission
  • Sadism and masochism

Bondage involves consensually restricting someone’s movement, whether that’s with cuffs, rope or something else. Discipline can involve agreed rules, rituals or consequences between partners.

Dominance and submission explore a consensual power exchange. One person might enjoy taking control, while another enjoys handing some of that control over. But you don’t necessarily have to pick a team. If you enjoy both, you might consider yourself to be a switch. For some switches, preferences can shift depending on your partner, mood or the fantasy being explored.

Sadism and masochism involve giving or receiving sensations that may be painful or intense within an agreed and desired context.

These categories, aren’t always clear cut and separate, but often overlap one another.

Someone might adore being tied up but have no interest in pain, whilst another might enjoy being dominant without ever wanting to discipline. Another person may find themselves ore drawn to the psychological aspect of anticipation, instructions, rules or simply having a partner say, do as you’re told.

Think of BDSM as a very large menu that invites you to be intrigued by one thing without always needing to order it.

There is no one way to be kinky

A man laughs as he lies restrained on the bed. Two women with bondage gear perch on the bed over his body, gazing at each other.
BDSM and kink can mean different things to different people, and that’s sort of the point. What matters is you and your partner(s) agree on what you want to experience together.

It is easy to associate kink with a particular aesthetic or activity, but BDSM can range from elaborate scenes involving equipment such as blindfolds and floggers, to subtle shifts in the way two people interact such as tone of voice and body language.

The element of power and surrender are probably already present in more sexual experience than you realise.

We initiate, follow, tease, ask and take the lead.

BDSM gives a framework to deliberately play with those feelings, and if we want to, turn the heat up.

In my work as a sexologist, this is one of the ways I like to think about BDSM: it gives a scope to play within. You don’t need to stress about if you are kinky enough for it. What you can do is ask yourself, what would happen if we played with this dynamic a little more?

Read more: How to ask for kinky sex by David Hollingworth.

Why power can feel so good?

There is something intimate about consciously giving another person control, and equally exciting to be trusted enough to take it. This is often referred to as power exchange.

A submissive person might choose to hand over control within agreed boundaries which may sound like “You can take control tonight and make the decisions, but I don’t want to be restrained.” Whilst the dominant person accepts that control remaining responsible for respecting the others’ boundaries.

This choice part matters.

Personally, I’ve always found the psychology behind power dynamics fun and interesting. For some, giving up control creates a feeling of freedom or allows them to enter a deeply absorbed headspace sometimes referred to as subspace.

For others, taking control is where the attraction lies. They might find pleasure in leading, creating anticipation and directing their partner’s experience.

For example, even something as simple as the following can start to develop a power dynamic:

  • “Stay there until I tell you to move.”
  • “Look at me when I’m inside you.”
  • “Tonight, I’m choosing what happens next.”

Read more: What is BDSM power exchange play? by Roshan Lewis.

BDSM has its own language

A man in a suit and tie reclines on a couch, a woman's cuffed hands resting on his clothed chest.
Soft dom, sub space, switch, primal, prey. As an umbrella term, BDSM contains a lot of small, niche communities all with their own language to describe what they love. The good news is you don’t have to learn them all unless you want to.

The longer you start immersing yourself in this world, the more you’ll encounter a whole new vocabulary.

A Dominant, often shortened to Dom or Domme, is someone who takes control and uses power in the agreed dynamic. A submissive, or a sub, consensually gives up some control within a safe dynamic. At times, these words may also be used interchangeable with the terms top and bottom. It’s also worth noting that top and bottoms have a distinct meaning in queer sexual cultures, where they can describe sexual preferences rather than a BDSM power dynamic.

A scene is an agreed period of BDSM play and should be something discussed between periods to explore limits, boundaries and safe words. These elements will confirm what can be done, what isn’t to be done and options for clear communication during play. This could look like:

“We both want to try impact play using a soft flogger. We’ll start gently and use the traffic light system to check in. You’re comfortable with your hands being restrained but don’t want any marks left. Are there any areas you’d like me to avoid?”

And then there’s aftercare. This is the physical and emotional care that a partner offers each other once the scene is complete. This could be as something simple as making a cup of tea and cuddling, or simply having some quiet time to process.

When you first hear all this language, it can seem like there’s an awful lot to remember just to have sex. But I’ve found it gives us the language for conversations about pleasure and play that many of us never really learned how to have.

Some BDSM questions I’d recommend asking yourself and partner are:

  • What do you want to experience in the scene?
  • What spikes your curiousity?
  • What is completely off the table?
  • What would help you feel comfortable?
  • Is there anything that is completely off limits, or anything you’d only feel comfortable exploring slowly?
  • How will we know if things feel too intense?

And really, none of these questions belong exclusively to BDSM and are pretty useful for sex in general.

Read more: Femdom – stepping into my inner dominant by Amy Edith.

Consent is at the heart of BDSM

The most important concept to understand before exploring BDSM is consent.

You may come across the term SSC meaning safe, sane and consensual or RACK, meaning risk-aware consensual kink. Both offer frameworks for thinking about how people approach kink thoughtfully, particularly when activities involve physical or emotional intensity.

Safe words are another frequently practice within BDSM. Some people choose completely unrelated word which could be as simple as ‘pineapple’, whilst others opt for a traffic light system:

  • Green – keep going.
  • Yellow – slow down or check in.
  • Red – stop.

What matters is that consent remains ongoing throughout the experience, and isn’t a one stop shop.

You or your partner could be wildly enthusiastic about a fantasy when talking about it over dinner, such as being blindfolded during sex and then discover that in reality, being unable to see makes you anxious rather than excited. If it doesn’t quite hit the way you imagined. That’s allowed.

Read more: Desires, Fears and Boundaries by Morgan Penn.

Curious about BDSM but don’t know where to start?

 

A woman wears a sexy black collar with rose gold hardware. A long, sensual flogger is attached to the front of the collar like a tie. Or a leash.
Just love the black leather and metal BDSM aesthetic? Start there, but go a bit deeper and ask what you want to happen when you’re inhabiting that world.

Start with a fantasy, and more specifically, start with what actually turns you on.

Instead of asking yourself, Am I into BDSM?, think about some of your favourite fantasies or previous experiences that have stayed with you.

  • Did you partner take the lead and told you to sit with your hands behind your back and wait for their next instruction?
  • Maybe you enjoyed feeling in control when your partner asked permission to orgasm
  • Could it be that hearing the words “that’s my good girl” and “you’re doing so well” made the experience so much more arousing?
  • Did the sensation of an impact toy across you bum feel better when you had a blindfold on and couldn’t anticipate when it would land?

Turn curiosity into a conversation

We can become so focused on what turns us on that we forget to ask why. And the why can tell us much more. For example, it might not be the pain of the impact toy meeting your skin, but the anticipation running through your body and not knowing what is next that excited you.

One you both have identified those feelings, talk about them with your partner. Compare curiosities, find the overlap and research anything that you’re interested in trying. Sometimes BDSM is as simple as saying, Tonight, I want to take control.

What BDSM can teach us

The more I’ve learned about BDSM, the less I’ve come to see it as a separate category of sex. Instead, it holds up a magnifying glass to things that already exist within desire such as trust, vulnerability, and connection.

It asks us to think about what we want before it happens and to embrace that. And one of my favourites, it shows us that boundaries and sexual tension aren’t enemies. Knowing where the edges are can give us more freedom to play within them.

Instead of worrying about whether your desires are normal, kinky, vanilla, or too much, start to be curious about your desires.

BDSM may have entered the group chat but maybe the better conversation starts when we ask, What do I actually want?

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