Monthly Faves: Strangers, Bimbos, & Ghostbusters

Kate Sloan

It was an offbeat month in my sex life, full of strange kink insights and trippy adventures… Here are some highlights!

Sex toys

• The biggest news in my toy drawer this month was that my precious Eroscillator Top Deluxe BROKE while I was in Portland! After 3 years of loyal service, I guess it decided I had dropped it one too many times (sorry, pal), because two different segments of the body of the toy fell right off. I tried in vain to piece it back together, and then eventually gave up and ordered a new one. It really is that good; I considered whether I could live without it and determined that I could not.

• I got an email from Dame, a sex toy company from whom I didn’t own anything, offering me a toy of my choice. The Kip clitoral vibrator was an obvious selection for me; it’s vaguely Tango-esque and BRIGHT YELLOW! I will probably review it in full at some point, but for now, just know: this adorable little vibe is rumblier and stronger than its small stature would indicate, and it has a lot of features I’m always yelling at sex toy companies to implement, like an up AND a down button, and a travel lock. Well-played, Dame.

• To continue to give Dame kudos: their new aloe-based lube, Alu, is pretty damn good. The ingredients list is impressive (no glycerin, parabens, or propylene glycol) and you can even order a $4 silicone sleeve called Grip that goes around the bottle to prevent you from dropping/throwing it when your hands are lubey. So smart.

Fantasy fodder

• My partner and I have wanted to do a “strangers at a bar” roleplay for a long time and this month we finally got around to it. On one of our free days in Portland, I took a book to a cocktail bar near our hotel, ordered a daiquiri, and sat alone reading – one of my favorite solo date activities. Sir came in a few minutes later, sat a stone’s throw away, and started chatting me up after a little while. One thing led to another and we ended up back in “my” hotel room… This was a super fun roleplay that I would highly recommend, and apparently my vagina agreed, because (uncharacteristically for me) I had an orgasm during PIV – whoa!

• During one of our many late-night phone calls, my Sir asked me what I’d been fantasizing about lately, and I mentioned enjoying the thought of someone going down on me because it’s their job – like a sex worker or an unconventional masseuse. Because my Sir is a genius, they quickly conjured a roleplay in which they, my daddy, had hired a male escort to give me head for my birthday, which he would do while Sir gave him moment-by-moment instructions. This scene pinged so many of my kinks – and also made me laugh a lot, when Sir said the escort was “setting up his supplies” and I couldn’t imagine what “supplies” someone would need for plain old puttin’ a mouth on a vulva!

• I’ve been thinking a lot lately about mental blankness. It helps that I’ve been reading a lot of Sleepingirl‘s hypnosis stories, but more generally, I’ve been pondering the ways intoxication, trance, and subspace can each help me float away inside my own brain during scenes when that’s what I want. For someone like me who’s constantly anxious and overanalytical, sometimes nothing is sweeter or more necessary than just shutting down the ol’ brain and receiving pleasure in absentia. Sir and I did a scene exploring these themes recently through hypnosis and “bimboification”; it was really fun, in a way, to feel my faculties draining away from me.

• Speaking of Sleepingirl: I commissioned her to write me a short story about a sub getting through the airport security line with the help of their hypno-savvy dom. It’s so cute and emblematic of how romantic hypnosis can be.

Sexcetera

• This year I got to attend the XOXO festival for the first time, and it was phenomenal! Some highlights for me: going to a social meetup of language nerds and playing a loud word game led by Gretchen McCulloch, hearing Harry “Hbomberguy” Brewis talk about raising money for Mermaids by live-streaming himself playing Donkey Kong, seeing Amelia and Emily Nagoski talk about the perils of burnout, the entire live podcast lineup, and meeting some readers of my blog (hi)!

• I participated in the Smutathon on Saturday, sex writers’ attempt to write for 12 hours straight to raise money for the National Network of Abortion Funds. My final word count for the day was 13,336 – that’s 11 blog posts (many of which will go up here over the next couple months), 3 newsletters, and 4 poems. The fundraiser has pulled in almost $3K so far – we’d still love to get that up to $5K!

• My Sir and I guested on the Off the Cuffs podcast together this month! It was really fun to sit down with two of my favorite people, drink cocktails, and chat about kink. We covered erotic hypnosis, sleepy sex, long-distance relationships, coming out as kinky, and more. Matt also guested on Question Box; we competed to see who could answer the most personal questions. You know what they say: the couple that podcasts together, stays together… or something…

• Sextistics: This month I had in-person sex 13 times and phone sex 21 times, totalling 34 sessions.

Fashion & beauty

• XOXO gave out adorable pronoun pins to its attendees and I’m so into mine. If we’re gonna normalize sharing our pronouns by default, which we absolutely should, we might as well do it in style.

• I ordered 3 new lipsticks from Sugarpill and they’re all great, though Bliss is disappointingly almost my exact natural lip color (plus glitter), so I doubt I’ll wear that one as much as the other two. My favorite of the bunch is Hijinx, a berry shade overlaid with blue glittery iridescence. Incredible.

• I have a mega-crush on model Alexa Chung (I mean, upon seeing her, who doesn’t, frankly), and lucky for me, she has a YouTube channel now where she does makeup looks, hair tutorials, and more. It’s very good and she is very pretty.

Media

• You owe it to yourself to check out this episode of Punch Up the Jam about the Ghostbusters theme. I was present at the live recording and have honestly never laughed that hard during a live podcast before. You’ll learn a lot about this iconic song and you might also wonder what the hell Ray Parker, Jr. was thinking at times.

• I kept hearing good things about Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino, so I tore through it, and it was great. I’ve been thirsting for more essays from introspective women ever since devouring Esmé Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias, and this hit the spot. It touches on reality TV, “late-capitalist fetishwear,” the beauty myth, Southern hiphop, drugs as a gateway to the divine, and more.

• Current song obsession: “Favorite Show” by Great Grandpa. I keep waking up with this tune lodged in my head lately, so I’ve been groovin’ to it a lot.

Little things

Sleeping together over the phone. Our incredible guests on Question Box. Laughing with Max in his sunny back yard. Getting a window seat on planes. The Multnomah Whiskey Library and their fancy bartenders. Going to the rose garden while really high (um, would recommend). The photobooth machine at the Ace Hotel. When you can tell who’s the dom and who’s the sub in a photo. Hanging out with Epiphora and her wonderful cats. Wandering through Powell’s for hours. Matt bringing me coffee in the morning. “I just want everyone to know that I’m very gay.” Serendipitously sitting next to actors I admire at the theatre. Client projects that fascinate me. Sir sending me ramen when I was sick (and then, later, watching this video of a pastry chef attempting to make gourmet instant ramen from scratch). Seeing Lane Moore and DeAnne Smith do Tinder Live at Comedy Bar, from front-row center. Attending the Bi Arts Festival with a queer femme friend. Going to see movies by myself. Shopping with friends. Solo cocktails-and-reading dates at the Library Bar.

Should You Be Able to Rate & Review Sexual Partners?

Kate Sloan
I wrote this in high school but lots of it still rings true…

In 2013, a new app called Lulu was released which allowed female users to anonymously rate and review their male acquaintances, including friends, exes, and past hookups. The men were rated on a 10-point scale, for criteria like humor, manners, ambition, and willingness to commit.

There was immediately a media panic about it, with outlets referring to Lulu as “Sex Yelp” and speculating on what it portended about human relationships in the 21st century. Dating-app giant Badoo later acquired Lulu and shut down the ratings component of the app, but the question remained: is rating and reviewing sexual partners useful? And perhaps even more pressingly: is it ethical?

I’m sorry about the cissexism. We were young and shitty.

I thought about this again years later when a friend and I devised a rating scheme for penises we had known, featuring criteria like “hygiene,” “soft skin,” “taste of cum,” “testicular perkiness,” and so on. It seemed harmless to me at the time, a hilarious joke perpetrated while tipsy, but upon reviewing it in the light of day, I realized how objectifying it was. What I’d originally conceptualized as a tool for discussing sexploits with friends (“The dick I sucked last night was an 86 out of 100, can you believe?!”) now seemed like a process as cruel and dismissive as swiping through Hot or Not or scoring selfie-submitters on the “Am I Ugly?” subreddit. How could I call myself sex-positive and body-positive if I was literally assigning numerical scores to people’s anatomy? I couldn’t.

There are some cases where rating sexual partners seems fine, or even prudent. Sometimes clients offer public feedback about sex workers they’ve seen (check out USASexGuide for more on that), which can inform prospective johns’ decisions and drive clientele to service providers. There are also always backchannels where women and other marginalized people exchange notes on their dates and hookups with others in their community, warning friends away from abusers and boundary-crossers. These discussions are crucial for keeping people safe who would otherwise have trouble staying safe, because of the unfortunate ways our dating culture and sex work laws are set up. I don’t begrudge anyone for sharing info about “bad dates” and reading other people’s info of the same sort; sometimes these behaviors are the only recourse you have.

But rating people’s bodies and sexual skills is a different thing entirely. Sex is deeply personal, and sometimes embarrassing, and a lot of people have a lot of hangups about it; the same things can be said about our fallible human bodies. It seems unjustifiably cruel to rate people on these criteria in a venue as public as an app or a website, unless they’ve specifically solicited that feedback, like people do on “rate me” forums. (I often wonder if these people are suffering from low self-esteem, or discovering a sublimated objectification/humiliation kink, or both.) In a culture as sex-negative and body-critical as ours, you hardly need say anything at all to fuel someone’s deepest fears and insecurities. Even the most seemingly innocuous criticism can set off a spiral of self-hatred in those of us who are susceptible to this sort of thing, which is most of us.

So I can no longer justify rating and objectifying people (or penises) in the ways I used to. Eradicating sexual shame and encouraging self-love are two of my key goals, professionally and personally, and critiquing bodies and sexualities runs counter to these objectives. This is true not only for other people but for myself: the more you cast a critical eye on how other people look and what they’re doing in bed, the more you’ll tend to judge yourself in those areas as well, perhaps without even meaning to. These mental habits are dangerous, and insidious, and must be actively fought against to be extinguished.

Tell your best friend about last night’s mediocre hookup over drinks, if you like; write in your journal about genitalia that confounded you, if you must. But sharing these judgments online doesn’t really serve anyone, in my view, and it may even contribute to society-wide shame cycles. If you want to create a better world for humans who have sex, one of the best ways to start is to view everyone’s body and sexuality with the same compassion you’d hope they would extend to you.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all words and opinions are my own.

25 Things to Do in the Fall

Kate Sloan

Yeah, I’ll say it: fall is the second-best season, after spring. (Don’t @ me.)

Now that it’s officially ~the cozy season~, I’m thinking about all my favorite ways to celebrate the dropping temperatures, shortening days, and yellowing leaves. Here are 25 fall-appropriate things to consider doing in the next few months…

Heat things up with temperature play. On the hottest summer days this year, my partner rubbed a giant ice cube all over my body as part of a surprisingly intense kink scene – but now that things are cooling down, we’ll likely get back into a perennial fave, wax play. All you need to get started is candles made specifically for wax play (they burn at a safer temperature than regular candles), a tarp or water-resistant sheet to keep wax off your bed, and a butter knife or credit card to scrape off the dried bits at the end of the scene. Doing wax play on a cold night, with the windows open and good music playing, is one of my favorite kinky sensory joys.

Invest in some new cozy clothes. You know that in a few months, you’re probably gonna be bored to death of your boots and coat and sweaters and jeans (at least, that’s how it goes for me), so might as well take advantage of the freshness of the season and give your wardrobe a boost. I am deeply enamored with Old Navy flannels, vintage cashmeres, and basic black leggings; these things basically get me through until the snow thaws!

Make your “to-read” list for the season. We’re getting into the best months for cuddling up in bed with a book, or bringing one with you on a solo date to a beer hall or Indian restaurant or wherever your heart desires, really. Once you know what you want to read, you can get to work sleuthing out those titles at local bookstores or libraries (or, if you’re like me, just unearth them from your own ever-growing collection). If you’re stuck for ideas, here are all the books I’ve read in 2019.

Go on a cozy coffee date. With a beau. With a friend. With your mom. By yourself. Whatever. The point is, go spend some quality time with somebody you love, over hot bevs, in a lively and bustling establishment. It’s a seasonal must-do.

Discover your new autumn soundtrack. There always comes a point in September or October when my favorite summer jams just don’t quite cut it anymore. I want to shift into music that feels autumnal, less optimistic and more wary than summery tunes, but still warm and familiar and lovely. Some faves of mine: Fleet Foxes, Pinegrove, Tobias Jesso Jr., Paul Cook & the Chronicles, Alvvays, Jeremy Larson, Violents, and Sufjan Stevens.

Try a dark lipstick. Even if you’re “not a lipstick person” and you have to borrow your femme friend’s bullet of Viva Glam III. I swear, putting on a black or purple or deep berry shade can transform your face and make you think about your self-presentation differently for a while.

Devour a new-to-you podcast. Maybe it’s because I miss going “back to school,” but there is something about fall that makes me want to dive headlong into intellectual pursuits and stuff my brain with new knowledge! My two newest faves are You’re Wrong About and Punch Up the Jam – both total aural comfort food, for vastly different reasons.

Cuddle a lot. I mean. Do I even have to explain this one? If you don’t currently have an intimate partner with whom to partake of snugglin’, there’s always friends, pets, and random well-meaning folks from Tinder.

Spend some time in a library. Libraries are some of my very favorite places on earth. They’re so quiet and calm and packed with emotional resonance. They also provide vital services and resources to many, many people, so supporting them is always a worthy use of your time. (I’m sad I no longer live within walking distance of the gorgeous Bloor/Gladstone library here in Toronto, though now I’m closer to the Lillian H. Smith branch, which is also very pretty.)

Devise your Halloween costume. It’s a little early, yes, but if you wait too long, you’ll be reduced to grabbing an ill-fitting sexy uniform off the rack at some godawful party store on October 30th! Give some thought to which celebrities, fictional characters, or concepts you might want to represent in your spooky ensemble this year.

Take cute selfies against a foliage backdrop. This season is very pretty and you may as well wring some Instagram content out of it.

Shop for new writing supplies. Academic vibes are in the air, and so, like I do every September, I’m aching for new notebooks, pencils, pens, and highlighters! I love Poppin‘s color-coordinated desk supply sets, Blackwing‘s elegant pencils, and the incredible pen selection at JetPens.

Learn to make a new meal. I cook at home more often in the colder months because, frankly, I can’t be arsed to leave my apartment as often. Check Epicurious and the Bon Appetit YouTube channel for ideas. Sweet potato risotto is one of my autumn faves; this year I’m also hoping to learn to cook more things that incorporate smoked tofu (yummm).

Wear leather and flannel. They are simply some of the most suitable materials for this weather. I always feel very bisexual when I wear them together.

Update your social media bios. You’ve probably grown and changed at least a little since the last time you did this, so it’s time for some tweaks. Hype your latest project, hone the titles you call yourself, and put your pronouns in there if you haven’t already. (While you’re at it, why not update your FetLife fetishes list, too?!)

Try a new hot beverage. Listen, I’m not going to tell you that you have to drink a pumpkin spice latte at least once this season, but… I’m not not going to tell you that, either. If you drink alcohol, I’d also highly recommend finding a place near you that serves some kind of hot toddy, mulled wine, or other warm boozy beverage – they make cold nights feel so much cozier!

Reach back out to people you’ve been missing. I find it’s trickier to stay social when temperatures drop, because – again – I don’t like leaving my house when it’s cold, and neither do a lot of people! So this is a great time to start being more intentional about your social connections. Set up some catch-up phone calls, throw together a fancy potluck, send your great-aunt a loving email, etc.

Do a digital deep-clean. Does your downloads folder really need to have that much stuff in it? Does your home screen need that many apps cluttering it up? Is everything in your bookmarks bar really necessary? Look at your digital landscape with critical eyes and axe the unimportant, to make way for the new.

Upgrade your home’s coziness quotient. Okay, nobody told me just how much it would change the entire vibe of my room to buy velvet cushions for my couch. It’s also important to have a blanket around (bonus points if it was knit by someone who loves you), some extra pillows for your bed (for all that reading and lounging you’re going to do), and maybe a small space heater or something else that’ll keep you comfortable this winter.

Watch scary movies. I am a wimp, so I only like to do this one of two ways: either cuddled up with someone who I would trust to keep me safe if a zombie broke in, or by myself and extremely stoned (that way, the blood and bones and guts are mostly just funny to me, not scary). Honestly, most of my favorite horror movies aren’t horror movies at all but episodes of American Horror Story, one of the most perfect shows ever created. (I think Asylum, Hotel, and Cult are the best seasons.)

Go on a long walk. Gotta get that fresh air into your lungs before it becomes so cold that it hurts to breathe! Stick some good music or podcasts in your ears, put on some sunscreen, and go explore.

Try out a new scent. The ladies of the Dry Down wrote a stunning piece 2 years ago about what they then deemed the best scents for fall, and the ones they picked are still some of my favorites, especially Noel au Balcon and Winter Nights. If you’re not a perfume person, you could try out a new incense for your home, a new bubble bath, or an essential oil blend. I love how all my fragrances intermingle on favorite scarves by the end of the winter.

Decide on some new projects. There’s still time left in the year for you to get some shit done! What do you hope to achieve before the sun sets on 2019? And how can you get started on that path right now? Make some plans, scribble some to-do lists, set some goals. An excitable heart will help you get through the chilly months.

Have a party. Maybe it’s a “farewell to summer” party; maybe it’s a “pumpkin spice” party; maybe it’s a listening party for the new Tegan and Sara album (hi, we should be friends). Gather your favorite people close and find something to celebrate. Any time is a good time for this, so why not do it now?

Watch a sunrise. Right around now, sunrises start happening later in the morning, so you can actually catch one without getting up at an inhumane hour. If you can find a roof to watch it from, with a hot drink and a cute person, so much the better.

 

What are your favorite things to do in fall?

How to Make a Long-Distance Goodbye Easier

Kate Sloan

You know how they say “sadness is the price we pay for love”? I’ve never felt that more strongly than in a long-distance relationship.

Saying goodbye to a local partner is NBD; you know you’ll be seeing them next Tuesday anyway, and that if an emotional emergency before then necessitated their presence, you could just swing by their place. But goodbyes with long-distance partners can be heavy: you’ll soon be once again unable to touch and kiss this person you love to touch and kiss, and you may not even know when that gap will be closed again. There’s no way around it: it sucks.

This melancholy interaction may be inevitable, but there are things you can do to avoid falling into a pit of despair every time. I say this as a woman who, nine months ago, broke down in tears on the floor while clutching my partner’s leg because I so desperately didn’t want them to leave: things need not always be this dramatic! Here are some habits I’ve picked up that have made these long-distance farewells easier to handle…

Stay in the moment. It’s very easy, the day that one of you’ll be headed back home, to spend all day long fretting and crying about how sad it is that you have to part ways. But that’s a trap, and it robs you of the thing you’ll miss most once they go: quality time with your beloved. Try to stay focused on your partner right up until you have to start dealing with travel logistics – it’ll be easier to let them go if you know you made every moment count.

Sort out your travel well in advance. Nothing kills the good vibes at the end of a long-distance date faster than freaking out about last-minute travel mishaps. Plan your route to the airport, bus station, etc. during a calm moment so you won’t have to do it during a sad, scary one. Check in for your flight on your phone so you don’t have to rush. Make sure you know where your passport is. The more of this stuff you get out of the way earlier, the longer you can enjoy your sweetheart’s company for.

Reminisce on the highlights of your date. My partner and I do this as part of a ritualized “debrief” at the end of each of our dates. We go back and forth listing our favorite things we did together on that visit, both sexual and non-sexual. It lets us process those experiences together while lifting our moods and getting us excited about things we want to do again sometime. This is one way we try to leave our dates on a happy note.

Plan your next date. This isn’t always possible, because travel is a fickle mistress (not to mention expensive), but if you can figure out when you might next see each other, it helps. Life might well throw a wrench into your plans, but at least it’ll give you something to look forward to in the meantime.

Exchange tokens of affection. Temporarily losing your physical connection with your partner is really hard; exchanging physical gifts of some kind can help mitigate that feeling of lack and loss. You could lend them a T-shirt that smells like you, or leave them a bruise on their ass as a badge of honor; they could give you a stuffed animal to cuddle, or write “Remember I love you” on your arm. There are a lot of ways to leave a little piece of yourself with someone so they feel like you’re still there even when you go.

Say goodbye alone and in a quiet place, if possible. I learned, after one particularly painful goodbye in a New York City subway station, that farewells in loud, public areas make me feel disconnected and unresolved. I need concentrated time with my partner right before our paths diverge. This could be as elaborate as an intimate last-hurrah date in the corner booth of a fancy restaurant, or as simple as sleuthing out a quiet alcove in the train station for one last heart-to-heart before “all aboard.” You’ll feel better if your last few minutes together feel just as connective and intimate as the high points of your date.

Reflect and process. You’ve already discussed your date with your beau; now it’s time to sit with all those feelings on your own. Journaling on my homebound plane ride is always my favorite way to do this – I’ll write about the best parts of the date, any questions or worries it left me with, and how it all felt. This process helps me transition back into my “real life.”

Be gentle with yourself. It is totally okay – normal, even – if you feel sad for a few hours or days after bidding your love adieu. Try not to beat yourself up if it takes you some time to “get back to normal” emotionally. I often find that this type of sadness comes with a bodily sluggishness that makes it harder for me to accomplish anything once it sinks in that we’re apart again, so I try not to schedule anything rigorous or anxiety-provoking within the first 12 hours of my arrival home, if not more. It’s an act of self-love to observe your own patterns in this way and set boundaries or make adjustments accordingly.

Stay in touch. Like a kink scene, a long-distance date shouldn’t end with you just disappearing – there’s gotta be aftercare! Try to be available to your partner for texting, emails, phone calls, or your other conversational medium(s) of choice – maybe even more available than usual. Both of you might still be feeling pretty mushy-hearted, and there might be more to talk about and process. Plus, of course, knowing you can still talk to someone easily can make it a lot easier to stomach their physical absence.

Notice what works and doesn’t work for you, and adjust. If you have some goodbyes that particularly suck, or some that are unusually easy, it’s worth discussing together: what factors contributed to this outcome, and how can we adapt our future approach with this new knowledge in mind? All the above tips are practices my partner and I have come to after many, many months of trying different strategies and talking about our feelings. It’s half-trial and error, half-scientific method. It can’t erase our pain entirely, but it offers us a toolbox for managing that pain.

How have you handled goodbyes in long-distance relationships? Got any tips (or warnings)?

The Case of the Disappearing Safety Pin Fetish

Kate Sloan

Being a sex journalist whose work often has a psychological bent, I’ve read many a research study in my time. Usually I’m just combing these PDFs for facts to bolster my argument, but occasionally I find one so consumingly weird or interesting that I read the whole thing, agog – like that time I live-tweeted reading Dr. Chua Chee Ann’s groundbreaking study in which he “discovered” the anterior fornix.

I had one such experience recently when, combing through theories of fetish formation as research for a client project, I stumbled across a case study from 1954 detailing the wild woes of a man with an unusual fetish. Buckle up; let’s get into it…

The study opens by introducing us to our protagonist, a 38-year-old man who suffers from both epilepsy and a lifelong fetish for safety pins – specifically, “bright shiny” safety pins. I say “suffers” here not because fetishes are inherently bad (they’re not) but because his interferes with his relationship, as we’ll see later. In spite of this, he admits that looking at safety pins gives him what he calls a “thought satisfaction” that is “the greatest experience of his life – ‘better than sexual intercourse.'”

If you’re wondering where his epilepsy comes into all of this, here it is. The man, the study goes on to say, started to notice “blank periods” of memory when he looked at safety pins starting at around age 8, but because he would always retreat to the privacy of a bathroom before indulging in this carnal habit, no one ever actually observed him blanking out until his wife did when he was 23. On subsequent viewings, it became clear that looking at safety pins reliably brought on some kind of epileptic episode for this man: he would look at the pin for a minute, go glassy-eyed, make humming and sucking noises with his lips, and sometimes walk backwards “while his right hand plucked at his left sleeve.” For all this time, he would be unresponsive. Sometimes this type of episode also induced “postictal confusion” severe enough that he would dress himself in his wife’s clothing afterward, the study mentions offhandedly. (Was he into crossdressing too, or was he just disoriented?! The world may never know.)

To dig even more deeply into this poor man’s sex life… He most often felt the urge to look at a safety pin during “sexual stimulation and anxiety-producing situations,” which gels with my experience of my own kinks: I think about them when I’m turned on, sure, but also when I’m stressed out and seeking comfort. Occasionally he would have an epileptic fit of the aforementioned sort if he fantasized about safety pins during sex or masturbation, suggesting, interestingly, that it was the thought of pins moreso than the reality of them that induced these episodes. (But then, aren’t our kinks always “all in our heads,” fundamentally?) In classic 1954 fashion, the study notes, “Most frequently the fits occurred soon after awakening when, with a full bladder, adult sexual outlets were sought but refused by a frigid wife.” (Dude, you’d probably act “frigid” too if your husband had a unique fetish in a world lacking proper sex education and kink-positivity. Yeesh.)

Also standard for the 1950s, the study goes on to blame the man’s “over-affectionate mother” for him being “effeminate.” In the same section, it describes his childhood habit of collecting and playing with safety pins. Apparently, on one occasion, he clearly saw a safety pin in his mother’s discarded underclothes, an event which my inner fetish detective wants to guess is the origin of his kink, but we can never know for sure.

In detailing his sex life during adulthood – which is relevant insofar as a psychological “aberration” like a fetish is often only considered a problem if it causes the patient distress or impairment in their life – the study mentions that he has “voyeuristic tendencies, with emphasis on women’s breasts,” suggesting that he has at least some sexual interests outside of safety pins. However, it goes on to say that within the last five years he has increasingly suffered from impotence, “claiming that the safety pin had replaced his need for a genital outlet.” This, we might reasonably call an impairment – though it depends on your understanding of what a healthy sex life is, doesn’t it?

In any case, the epileptic fits (if not the fetish itself) had evidently caused the man sufficient distress that he sought treatment. (He’d also experienced a few episodes of psychosis, presumably epilepsy-related, in which he believed himself to be a relative of the king or a messenger of God.) After confirming epileptic activity with brain tests in the lab, both before and after showing him safety pins, doctors surgically removed the part of his anterior temporal lobe that the tests had determined were the problem area.

16 months after surgery, the man came back into the hospital for a follow-up. Amazingly, he reported he had had no further epileptic fits and no further desire to look at safety pins. His boner issues had even resolved; he was now able to have a full and satisfying sex life with his (frigid??) wife. Further brain tests were done and confirmed that, unlike before the surgery, nothing major changed in his brain activity when he looked at a safety pin. The fetish was effectively gone.

Reading this study left me with the question: Is it good – morally, practically, or otherwise – to take away someone’s fetish if it’s causing them consternation? Obviously there are cases where reducing or removing a particular aberrant desire is arguably necessary for the greater good, like when pedophiles with a history of committing sexual assault are chemically castrated; I’m not totally sure how I feel about these measures, but many healthcare professionals and even some pedophiles themselves think this is the best option. In cases where a fetish isn’t causing harm, however – or is only causing harm insofar as it’s stigmatized and creates friction in the fetishist’s relationships and/or self-image – can we really say it’s “good” to take away the locus of someone’s passionate desire?

Like the kinky equivalent of conversion therapy, many methods have been suggested for “removing” people’s kinks from their brains. But also like conversion therapy, it seems to me that this line of thinking only comes up because we live in a world that so deeply stigmatizes some people’s perfectly acceptable desires. Who is harmed by this man having a safety pin fetish? Maybe his wife, who wanted a better and more conventional sexual connection with her husband – but perhaps then she should’ve picked a different partner, or learned how to use his fetish to arouse him during sex. Maybe he himself is harmed, in that he felt inadequate and weird because of his fetish – but arguably that’s just a function of cultural kinkphobia. Both of these people were probably just trying their best, within a time period that severely limited the ways one could think about fetishism – but this attitude often still persists today, at a time when we’re much better-equipped to handle and think about fetishes, and it’s sad.

While I’m glad that the man in this study was seemingly cured of his epileptic episodes, I wish he had been able to hang onto his fetish – without it upsetting him or troubling his relationship. Looking at safety pins, after all, was “the greatest experience of his life,” even if he no longer cared to do it after his surgery. It saddens me to think that anyone could see that type of exquisite “thought satisfaction” as anything less than healthy, wonderful joy.