Why is it important to explore your kinks and fetishes? Well, historically, fetishes have been seen as a mental disorder, deemed taboo and pathological. However, as long as all parties involved are consenting adults, then practicing kink and enjoying your fetish can be a powerfully positive addition to your sex life, and BDSM practitioners have even been found to have a good mental health and “higher subjective well-being.”
Often the distress actually comes from the shame that society imposes on us.
So if you have a kink you want to explore, or a fetish you want to fulfil (shame free), you’re in the right place. So, let’s look deeper into some kinks and fetishes, and propose some sex toys and sex tech that may help to enhance your kinky sex.
If we were to list out every different kink and fetishes that exists out there in the world, we might be here all day. However, many of them fall under (but are not limited to) four main themes:
Sex Toys For Your Fetish Fulfilment
A kink is defined “non-conventional sexual practices” which—as sex educator Ruby Rare explains in an episode of the podcast In Touch—these conventions are often “defined by society”. Kink sex is anything “outside of vanilla sex”.
A fetish, on the other hand, is more to do with the sexual gratification linked to an activity, object, or fantasy. While kinks can add a spice of life to your sexual play, fetishes offer a term to describe a strong liking that may (or may not) be required for sexual fulfilment. While the two often overlap, the main difference is typically that a fetish is seen as a need, while a kink is more of a preference.
Why do people have fetishes?
According to Social Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, there are four main theories:
- Brain-overlap: One of the most common fetishes is podophilia, the foot fetish. Some believe that there are overlapping regions in your brain, one of which connects the feet to the genitals.
- Pavlovian: When your in a high state of arousal, you may become conditioned to other typically non-sexual things; learning by association. For example, in the 60s, men who were shown naked women wearing only boots, eventually became aroused by just the boots.
- Gross-out: Another theory suggests that during arousal, your “digest impulse weakens” says Lehmiller. This means that things you’d usually find disgusting are open to interpretations of arousal.
- Pain-pleasure: Finally, our pleasure and pain systems are tightly interconnected. Findings show that similar endorphins are released, and in the right contexts i.e. during an erotic interaction, painful infliction can be felt as extremely pleasurable.
Bondage (the B in BDSM) is a hugely popular practice. It can be seen as a soft entry into kink by more mainstream circles—with handcuffs as a common novelty toy.
Whether you want to let go of control, or take it, it is a simple vehicle for playing with power, which can be hugely arousing.
The beauty of this kink is, while many people might be into the feeling of being restrained or restraining someone else, every person will have their own preference for the type bondage.
For example, you might be into restraining someone with your body, or hands, such as pinning them down, or holding them in a headlock, or arm restraints. We’ve mentioned handcuffs, but there are also alternative restraints such as silk ties, and bondage tape.
