Gay Men and the Emotional Benefits of Kink Play
As a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist for over 30 years (32 in 2024), as well as a gay men’s life/career/relationship coach, and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, I’ve always enjoyed providing content in support of gay men’s well-being that is generally not found in many, or any, other locations, including my gay men’s therapy colleagues who are newer to the field. Today, I’d like to share about a topic that fits this, and that is a discussion of the benefits of kink (sex) play for gay men.
As we all know, gay men in general, and their sexuality in particular, meet with heterosexism and homophobia in a mainstream society, to greater and lesser degrees, depending on when and where we’re looking. Progressive cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, and others in Europe or in the United States (San Francisco, Los Angeles/West Hollywood, Palm Springs, Wilton Manors, etc.) are more safe and enjoyable for gay men and their relationships, while many other locations in the world are oppressive to the point of murdering their own gay male citizens (among others), such as in the Middle East and in African nations. But anywhere gay men face oppression, they deserve to have their rights and their dignity affirmed, including their right to an adult, consensual sexuality – even a sexuality that we broadly label “kink” practices, which are not limited to gay men (certainly not), but are generally considered more “secret” than “vanilla” sex.
Kink can involve power dynamics (Dom/sub), fetishes (for various kinds of equipment, fabrics, materials, costumes, or body parts that are especially eroticized), or other ways of emotional and physical stimulation between two or more people designed to celebrate the erotic.
In this discussion, I’d like to offer some highlighted ways that specifically gay men’s kink play can serve as an emotional enhancement and support to mental health. Despite sex-negative voices labeling kink play “sick,” “exploitive,” etc, for straight people as well as everyone else, the educated person (especially credentialed physicians, mental health professionals, certified sex therapists, sex educators, advocates) knows that while non-consensual or abusive practices can happen in “any room of the house” (not “just” the bedroom), kink sexual play gets stigmatized out of proportion to other interpersonal issues.
Most of the criticisms of kink sexual play come from sex-negative voices who obtusely apply their own views wrapped in religious moralism or social “expectations” on others, who have a right to their own private autonomy. When investigated further, many sex-negative voices are hypocrites who are indulging themselves quite robustly, truth be known, but they position themselves to “appear” sanctimonious for social status, political gain, or cynical strategies to earn money (i.e., televangelists and Right-wing politicians).
The harms that come from sex-negative judgmentalism, moralism, and attempts to undermine, thwart, control, humiliate, and exploit kink players are numerous. Despite this, kinkers gonna kink – straight, gay, all orientations, and all genders, if they so choose to express their sexuality in these ways. Advocates (like me) for sexual and gender minorities assert that people have a right to privacy in their sexual expression with other consenting (key word) adults. It is from this perspective (and my many years of academic and clinical experience supporting mental health and human sexuality) that I invite this exploration to consider the benefits of kink play. In no particular order:
- Reclaiming our Bodies – Kink play asserts that not only do we have a right to adult human sexuality, but we have a right to assert dominion over our own bodies, if it’s not harming someone else. When we approach all sexual acts, we are reclaiming our bodies in their name of our own personal rights, even if that means “snatching” them away from those who would try to control us. Kink play (specifically) asserts the idea that our bodies are ours to explore sensation with; that part of living (such as breathing, eating, drinking, peeing, pooping, sleeping, and protection from the elements) is sexual expression and play. It is up to us, each of us, to own our own bodies and then decide what we choose to do with them, especially in the context of interpersonal sexual acts.
- Affect Regulation as a Top/Dom – One of the benefits of kink play, especially in the “traditional” Dom/sub dynamic, is to explore roles. For most people, they will identify primarily as a Dominant partner, or a submissive partner, although many identify as “switch” or “versatile” as well. When we explore the Dominant role, we are experimenting with the idea of what it’s like to assert (consensual) control over another. It is an opportunity for Affect Regulation, which is kind of another term for “keeping yourself together.”
For example, when we are in acute grief due to the loss of a loved one, we might use Affect Regulation (which is kind of a fancy term for “emotional control” or composure) to be able to make funeral arrangements or greet guests at a funeral. We might use Affect Regulation in public to contain our anger when someone else on the road causes a traffic accident that hurts us, or our car.
So, Affect Regulation when you’re a Dom means that you’re asserting control over your sub partner, inflicting a form of playful sadism, but you’re doing so judiciously, in a way to stimulate your sub partner, but you’re holding back just enough, with what mental health professionals sometimes call the Observing Ego, that you’re not actually “hurting” your partner in a negative way, even if you’re exploring impact play such as using a leather flogger on the bare behind of your partner. You might also tie or restrain your sub partner with rope or leather straps or handcuffs in erotic bondage, but not in such a way that you might be dangerously restricting air or circulation.
But, we might be exploring indulging what Carl Jung called our “shadow” side – being aggressive, controlling, and even a bit sadistic, but in a consensual sexual context; this is a good thing!
There can be implications for “real life” for this. When we practice Affect Regulation of our Dominant, aggressive, or leadership traits in the context of kink play, we might also be practicing Affect Regulation that we can apply when we are disciplining our children, when we are guiding and supervising the professional workplace performance of a subordinate employee, when we are teaching students, or when we are in any situation that requires leading or directing others, or asserting our point of view toward a goal, such as in running a business, social justice advocacy or creativity, such as directing a play.
We might be drawing on a form of the “sadism” side when are engaged in competition in sports, or representing a company selling products or services “against” the competition, or when we are participating in activism “against” a political enemy. Jung basically implied that when we acknowledge and manage our Shadow Self, we are enhancing our mental health and functioning. Comics are great pop-culture lessons in this, when a benevolent superhero has an equal-and-opposite malevolent personality, such as Superman exposed to Red Kryptonite, or “Reverse Flash” in The Flash comics, or the villain “Two-Face” from Batman, or the original depictions of duality, the two-faced Janus in mythology or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in literature, or the “evil twin” trope used in daytime TV soap operas or sitcoms.
Exploring the duality of Light and Dark in all of us can help us to know ourselves on a deeper level and get the benefit of that self-awareness and self-knowledge, and kink play (in addition to being a part of sexuality with our primary partner, or others) can be great, ultimately safe way to explore this.
- Affect Regulation as a Bottom/sub – Similarly, when we explore a submissive or “sub” role, we are practicing Affect Regulation to be accommodating, servile, passive, selfless, and even masochistic (receiving “pain” in a paradox to receive pleasure). When we subjugate ourselves to a purpose (in kink play, the fun of “serving” our Dom or Master), we are exploring the fun of stimulation, much like extreme sports like hang-gliding or sky diving or even riding a roller coaster, inducing the thrill of the theory of physics with elements like velocity, gravity, or centrifugal force.
When we pursue, and adopt, forces being applied to us (strapping in tight to the roller coaster seat), or submitting to the erotic whims of our Dom, we practicing regulating what it’s like to relinquish control.
The implications for “real life” for this might be those who derive satisfaction from “living a life of service,” such as domestic staff, people in the military, people in civil service, national royal families, volunteer or service corps (such as the Peace Corps), teaching, or even the helping professions like social work, mental health, medicine, or nursing.
Kink play can also offer a “balancing”, a yin-yang, in our personal lives that contrasts with our primary public role. For example, a busy executive with many direct reports in the workplace who feels the demands of nearly constant “leadership” might feel refreshed to indulge in his (or her) submissive side in recreational, personal, or sexual life. Similarly, someone who is of service to others in their work as a matter of routine might enjoy exploring their Dominant side when they’re off the clock.
- Refining Understanding of Consent – Kink play offers us the opportunity to be attuned to others in more nuanced ways. There can be complex discussions of “consensual non-consent,” meaning they are inviting a total Domination by another, but in the context of a kink play scene or setting that has been prepared beforehand, such as defining a role play of being kidnapped or otherwise subdued by another. When we discuss kink play parameters, limits, and “safe words,” we are honoring the duality that others have a right to give, or withhold, consent to us, and we have a right to give or withhold consent to others.
The recent emphasis lately on addressing the ills of non-consensual sexual situations, such as “date rape” on college campuses, sexual harassment in the workplace, or the rights of women, especially, overall/globally (such as the #MeToo movement) have brought issues and dilemmas about the concept of personal consent, especially sexually, to the fore, with the social zeitgeist that the harms of non-consensual sexual battery have gone on for far too long, and to great individual and collective harm to the human spirit and society.
We tend to think of the harms of people violating others’ consent as being only about women and underage people (children), but as a men’s specialist psychotherapist, especially gay men’s specialist, I’ve worked with a number of male sexual assault victims, and there are still a lot of people who think that doesn’t “really” exist, which is perhaps the most invalidating and misandrist aspect of that, and of all sexual assaults or violations of consent, which is the critics’ view that there is “no such thing” as adult male victims of sexual assault. There are, by perpetrators of all genders.
And then we have the old homophobic view that a little boy or young male (adolescent) who has been sexually abused or sexually assaulted, raped, by an older (even if by a little bit) male perpetrator will “make” them gay, which is the Republicans’ in America and other conservative bigots’ view worldwide, and this is just not true. Sexual abuse or assault by a male perpetrator does not make a boy gay any more than abuse by a female perpetrator makes a boy straight. Sexual orientation and survivor/victim status are independent variables, but sometimes perpetrators target nascent gay boys, gay boys who are not yet sexually mature as adolescents/adults, and prey on their “secrecy” or their vulnerability to attack them, which is just part of the sadistic nature of the perpetrator.
Recent research by trans woman attorney Kristen Browde of Instagram fame has been keeping statistics for about 18 months on people arrested for sex crimes against children, and the vast majority have been Republicans, clergy, teachers, or youth care workers, with only about 1/16th of one percent being trans perpetrators, and absolutely zero drag queens. So, part of the discussion about grave violations of consent, especially regarding children’s legal consent, statutory rape, is that the real proportion of perpetrators goes under-reported, and a hateful bigotry against trans women and drag queens is erroneously emphasized, to devastating results, all for political manipulation by Republicans and bigot religious conservatives in the name of “parental control” or “parents’ rights.” It’s a problem, because violations of consent are a bad social problem that needs to be addressed much better, but not really much is being done to prevent or reduce the prevalence, or to intervene and enforce where it’s needed. Fight the real enemy.
But all of that is a separate, psychosocial, political issue, that has nothing to do with the discussion of consent and even the more complex “consensual non-consent” in adult kink play sexual expression. Back to that.
In adult kink play sexual expression, consent becomes a very conscious commodity, and creates a setting where the nuances of consent to do something, or not to do something, can be explored. Kink play is a form of interpersonal sharing, profoundly sensitive communication, and opportunity for intimacy with someone else, usually a trusted romantic partner, such as a spouse or life partner, but can be with a stranger in a fraternal way, in dyads of two, or in groups of three or more, in a group sex scene.
- Exposure Therapy for Trauma Variation – Another benefit of kink play that really needs its own separate discussion is about how kink play and playing with domination and submission dynamics can actually be a therapeutic, healing experience for survivors of sexual assault or abuse. It is a “revisiting” of dominance and submission dynamics, where the non-consensual, negative, violent, exploitive, non-nurturing experiences from the victim/survivor get revisited to transform domination and submission dynamics into something positive, interpersonal, playful, exhilarating, refreshing, satisfying, and fun instead. This kind of discussion has been met with a lot of skepticism from my more conservative colleagues, but there are other colleagues who are truly expert in this, but there has been careful, legitimate clinical research on this, and the data has been positive. It’s like the old saying about having alcohol after a big night out, and having a “wee bit of the hair of the dog that bit ya.” It’s kind of a paradox experience; a paradox is like “cruel only to be kind.”
Therapists know that treatment intervention models that “revisit” a traumatic experience memory in a controlled, sensitive way can aid in healing. Prolonged Exposure Therapy is one. Somatic Experiencing is another. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) calls upon a client to remember and “relive” a traumatic memory with bilateral stimulation, such as following lights or having light taps, and mentally re-processing that memory to lessen its traumatic effects and symptoms. This is an Evidence-Based Practice psychotherapy treatment model pioneered by Dr. Francine Shapiro, who developed this after taking a walk in the woods and watching the wind blow leaves in her path, to and fro, to and fro, which at first sounds “fringe,” and it has had its critics as being non-scientific, but it has been repeatedly studied as a model of therapy and been shown to help reduce traumatic symptoms. And while it has been popularized among therapists, with a really expensive training program to become “certified”, it indeed has not been shown to be a “superior” treatment model to the other Evidence-Based Practice models like Prolonged Exposure Therapy or Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). While there is debate among therapists on which techniques to employ in practice, sometimes with very (VERY!) bitter debate among professionals, the bottom line for clients recovering from trauma is what is going to reduce symptoms and help them feel better and function better.
So, the use of kink play to “revisit” trauma and contribute to its healing is just one more tool in the arsenal of recovery from trauma. Psychodrama would be another one, and even “just” “old school” psychodynamic therapy are also known in research to be effective.
But for some survivors, their kink play is a way of reclaiming their body, reclaiming dynamics in power play, and working through a bad experience through embracing a positive one interpersonally and sexually.
- Deepening Intimacy – Another benefit of kink play is about deepening intimacy with a partner or partners, whether in a domestic/romantic relationship, or not. If you’re going to “go there” with using materials, fabrics, devices, toys, and “scenes” of situations, it requires a certain amount of mutual respect, trust, and communication. Critics, or those who don’t understand kink play (and don’t want to), and just dismiss it rather reflexively and sometimes aggressively as “ewww, weird, that’s sick/bad/wrong” are missing an important component that anything that raises the stakes or heightens emotion requires trust.
The public was “educated,” (perhaps a bit crudely) with the whole Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, books and movie. This was about BDSM or kink play in the context of a heterosexual romance, and popularized, perhaps more than before, a familiarity with kink play that was seen as fun erotic reading for many, many readers, especially straight women, earning the book its nickname of “mommy porn.”
While the book and movie certainly had their critics, it makes a good point that kink play involves a profound trust, communication, and intimacy, to be “attuned” to what stimulates your partner. Kink play requires more communication and intimacy, not less, and this is a common misunderstanding, that kink play is actually violent or harmful, or a re-living “acting out” of a previous pathlogy; it’s not. Things that are seriously violent and harmful are sex crimes, not adult kink play positive sexual expression. Crude minds in general tend to lack the sophistication of critical thinking skills to differentiate one thing from another because it’s too much work, and too cognitively taxing of the their short patience, to learn the nuances.
- Revisiting and Releasing Shame – Kink play can help anyone to revisit, and then release or overcome shame when it comes to our bodies. Many people – conservative Catholics, Mormons, or Muslims come to mind – are brought up with such shame about the human body that it needs to be “covered up” in order not to cause vague “harm” of some kind. We are taught overall the genitals are our “naughty parts” or our “dirty parts,” when the human body is the original “natural” thing. The same bare bodies that can be considered art with classical pieces like Venus de Milo or the Statue of David can be viewed as “porn” in modern photography or film.
There is a lot of complexity about the human body, religious dogma, societal expectations, societal customs and traditions, and so on. When we allow our bodies to indulge in kink play, we are revisiting our bodies and taking an opportunity to release any shame around them, and exploring the celebratory of what our bodies are, or can do, or can do to others, or can be shared. And this is true for any “body,” which includes people whose bodies are “different” or are of any shape or size or configuration.
I have gay male friends and colleagues with Cerebral Palsy, or with bodies that might use prosthetic limbs as a result of injury. Kink play can sometimes be an opportunity for people whose bodies are unfortunately shamed or criticized by bigoted others to celebrate who they are and what they can do. It can be awkward if a body difference is fetishized, such as those who are especially attracted to people with amputated limbs, or people who are especially tall, or short, or hairy, or smooth, or large, or whatever, but when Consent is involved, a fetish might not be a bad thing in a crass objectification, but an aesthetic appreciation that others find arousing. We can’t really control what our bodies are attracted to sexually, such as with fetishes, but we do need to preserve consent and goodwill in all situations, following the “Six Principles of Sexual Health,” discussed by my colleagues Doug Braun-Harvey and Michael Vigorito in their book, Treating Out of Control Sexual Behavior, and I adapted this in a previous blog article and podcast episode on how these six principles are applied more specifically to gay men.
- Building Community – We often refer to the “fetish community” or “kink community.” There are local clubs in many cities, worldwide, and for gay men there are major convention-style events like Mid-Atlantic Leather in Washington DC in January, International Mr. Leather in Chicago each year at Memorial Day Weekend, or Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco in September, or Darklands or Easter Berlin or Folsom Europe in Berlin. Brazil has others, and most cities have some kind of gay male gathering of leather or rubber or other kink fetishists, and there are other events that involve more straight people or with different kinks like furries. These are primarily social events; these are groups of sometimes very geographically distant friends who share a common interest. I hear of many events like the “leather social” in London or Manchester or European cities (less so in the United States, but there are some here).
These groups, like any other affinity group people might form, are a chance to build a sense of community around a common interest. When gay men in general, and kink players in particular, can be stigmatized, building a community of like-minded friends can be very affirming to one’s sense-of-self. In this age of a lot of political and social polarization, any entity that promotes building a sense of community is a much-needed resource!
- Exploring Power Exchange – Like mentioned earlier about affect regulation among Doms and subs, kink can be an opportunity for exploring power exchange between two (or more) people in a thrilling way. We all have elements of dominance and submission in our daily lives; when we follow the rules of the road, and we either take or defer the “right of way” in traffic, we are embodying a Dom or sub role. In the privacy and intimacy of kink play, we explore what it means to take and to give interpersonal power in ways that might help us understand how to regulate this in our daily lives in all interpersonal relationships.
- Enhancing Creativity and Self-Empowerment – Kink play is an opportunity to be the Adult Kid, to be playful in creative ways, much like how a child might play dress-up with a trunk of miscellaneous old clothes and costume pieces. We can take time to follow and indulge our imaginations in ways that everyday life, like at work, often doesn’t allow for (unless we work in an especially creative field, like being a staff writer on a TV show, but even that is more commercially constrained in a technique and related pressures, as I’ve learned from my clients in LA who do that). What would we do, if we could select different fabrics or tools or instruments of kink play? What would be fun for us to do to another, or to have done to us? Often, the true benefits of exploring this can only be from “learn by doing;” I’ve heard many examples from clients about trying things they didn’t think perhaps they were going to like in anticipation, but when they actually tried them, they felt a fun sense of discovery in the experience.
Kink play also provides the opportunity for self-empowerment. If we were raised with ideas that our bodies were “bad,” or our desires were “wrong” for being gay desires, kink play provides an opportunity to extend the subjective experience of our bodies, in a way that can delight us in the novelty, like trying a new food that turns out to be one of our new favorites.
There are probably more emotional benefits of kink play than we’ve looked at here, and there are some risks that are worth mentioning. The old adage about kink play was that the best kind was Safe, Sane, and Consensual. But it all starts with asking ourselves, “what if?” What If we allowed ourselves to experiment with some things we’ve heard about, and sought out ways to share this?
If you would like support for this kind of exploration, or you need help letting go of old hurts and inhibitions that have troubled you from the past, consider therapy or coaching. With the combination of my long (30 years) experience working with gay men (and gay male relationships), and special certifications in things like psychiatric social work, Consensual Non-Monogamy and Polyamorous Families (a year-long program with the Sexual Health Alliance), and being an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, there are a lot of resources that I can bring that might help you. To get started, email me at Ken@GayTherapyLA.com, or call/text 310-339-5778, for more information on my Telehealth sessions from my office in West Hollywood. I’d be happy to help.
