sexual communication

Review: BeMoreKinky BDSM app for couples

Kate Sloan
idk why this one made me laugh so hard but it did, and now it’s the lead image in my review, lmao

What is the BeMoreKinky app?

Available for both iOS and Android, the BeMoreKinky app is designed by and for kinky couples. It’s meant to be a hub for sexual communication between you and your partner, via features like BDSM quizzes, scene planners, end-to-end encrypted chat, guided intimacy exercises, a habit tracker, and a punishment wheel.

You can use it solo to gain self-knowledge about your kinks and desires, but it works best when used with a partner. You can invite them via a special link or code, and you’ll be able to interact through the app, see each other’s list of kink activities you’re open to, and more.

Things I like about the BeMoreKinky app:

  • Conversation-starter: As someone who wrote an introductory book on kink that was meant to kickstart a dialogue between partners, I’ve heard from many readers about the value of an external kinky conversation-starter, especially early on in one’s sexual self-discovery. It can be hard to bring up the things you’re into, and playing with this app together is a low-stress way to raise these topics. You could narrate aloud while one of you does a quiz on your bondage preferences, for example, or discuss your favorite titles/honorifics as you fill out your profiles together – and then just see where the conversation takes you.
  • Lots of kink inspiration: Human sexuality is so vast that there’s always more to discover, and this app is crammed full of kinks, fetishes, and activities for you to peruse and discuss. If you feel like your sex life is in a rut, but you don’t know quite how to shake things up, this app could definitely inspire you in that regard. For instance, lately I’ve been pondering what femdom-y honorific I might like to be called by a new person I’m seeing, and it was interesting to scroll through BeMoreKinky’s list of suitable titles (mistress, goddess, empress, etc.) to see what struck me.
  • MojoUpgrade-style activity matching: Anyone else remember MojoUpgrade, the classic internet quiz that shows you only the activities that both you and your partner said you’d be up for? It’s a great communication tool, and one of the core features of BeMoreKinky is something similar – once you and your partner have both rated several kink activities (which admittedly can be a decent-sized time investment), the app shows you all the activities your partner rated highly, as well as the ones you both said you like. This is a helpful starting point for planning scenes together, particularly with newer partners whose sexuality you’re less familiar with and less comfortable directly asking about.
  • “In the mood” status indicator: In the app’s “profile” tab, there’s a slider where you can indicate to your partner whether you’re “in the mood” or not. This didn’t send me any kind of notification when my wife activated hers – I had to seek it out myself by looking at the “partner” tab – but still a potentially useful functionality for people who struggle with sexual communication.
  • Encrypted chat: The built-in chat feature is end-to-end encrypted, so you can rest assured that your kinky convos are safe and secure. Sure, the same may be true for whatever app(s) you currently use to text with your partner in everyday life, but some people may prefer having a separate digital space for sexy chats, especially if you’re doing some kind of roleplay that benefits from that type of digital compartmentalization. (Sexy tech-support agent roleplay, anyone?!)
  • Tracks habits & rewards: Lots of kinksters enjoy dynamics where one partner monitors the other’s progress in achieving certain goals, whether those are directly kinky (e.g. “shine Mistress’s leather boots once a month,” “edge yourself 3 times before coming”) or more quotidian in nature (e.g. “read a book per week,” “go for a walk every day”). BeMoreKinky has a feature that allows you to assign and track the completion of habitual tasks like these. There are other apps that can do this, sure, but how many of them are built right into the interface you’re already using for kink negotiation and sexy chat? It’s cool to be able to do it all in one place. This feature was admittedly somewhat buggy when I tested it out, but hopefully it’ll get ironed out in future releases.
  • Polyamory features (in beta): There’s a huge degree of overlap between the kink community and the consensual non-monogamy community, so I was glad to see that BeMoreKinky has a “multi-partner mode” in beta currently. You can switch between multiple partners (up to 5!) without any of them being able to see each other’s quiz answers. While this doesn’t cover every possible non-monogamy configuration, it nonetheless makes this app much more polyamory-friendly than most of the comparable apps/sites I’ve seen.
  • Sleek design: It’s a good-lookin’ app, I must say!

Things I don’t like about the BeMoreKinky app:

  • Buggy: I unfortunately encountered a lot of bugs while trying to use this app – chat messages would randomly vanish, new habits didn’t appear until I’d closed/restarted the app, sometimes the app would randomly switch to a different tab without me selecting that, etc. My wife is a software developer so I sympathize with the struggles involved in making an app like this, but these types of issues are particularly frustrating when you’re trying to get into a sexy/kinky mood and would rather focus on flirting than troubleshooting!
  • A.I. integration: There is A.I.-generated stuff all over this app – some of it disclosed, some seemingly not – and it’s characteristically mediocre. Granted, I’m biased ‘n’ bitter, as a human being who writes about kink professionally and has been (shoddily) replaced with A.I. by some of my past clients – but I still find it sad to see A.I. being used for things like kink scene planning. Half the fun of kink is communicating about it – the negotiation, the flirtation, the mutual discovery – and if you use an A.I. tool to do that stuff, you’re denying yourself and your partner the opportunity to get to know yourselves and each other better, and all the delicious intimacy and vulnerability involved in that process. Naturally, I’m also against the usage of A.I. for art/writing/etc. because it takes away work/pay from skilled human creators who could’ve done a better job.
  • Poorly written quizzes: Probably related to the above point, I found many of the quizzes in this app to be confusingly written, repetitive, at least partially inaccurate, and ultimately not all that illuminating. For example, a quiz titled “Are you a giver or receiver?” mostly asked about dominance and submission – a separate concept from giving vs. receiving, as most kink educators could tell you – while a different quiz on impact play essentially just told me that I’m into impact play, which I already knew, rather than offering any insight on how I might explore that further or what specifically draws me to impact.
  • Overwhelming/excessive at times: This app is packed full of so many features that I think it could easily scare off some nervous newbies. I know from working in sex shops that BDSM beginners often feel overwhelmed as-is, because they’ve already battled through layers of shame and stigma just to be able to admit they might be kinky. The sheer number of features in this app could make them feel out of their depth, instead of encouraging them to dip a toe into kinky waters. It also annoyed me that the app only saves the activities you rate if you rate an entire category of activities (e.g. the “strict femdom” category contains 40 activities), so if you have to stop midway through, none of the activities you’ve rated to that point will be saved. This makes the app even more intimidating, because you can’t “microdose” it by just rating a few activities here and there when you have time – you have to commit to going through a long list of them before they’ll save.
  • Not good for trans people: Upon downloading the app, my wife filled out her basic profile, including indicating that she only wanted to be referred to with feminine terms. Shortly thereafter, we tested out the A.I. scene planning feature, and it immediately misgendered her(!!) and made erroneous assumptions about our sexual anatomy. As-is, I would recommend that trans and nonbinary people avoid this app for the time being. I hope better guardrails are put into place in the future, because (needless to say) this type of unnecessary technological misstep could ruin someone’s scene/night.

Final thoughts

I think the BeMoreKinky app is an admirable effort to make kink more accessible to the masses – not everyone is as comfortable yapping about their deepest sexual desires as I am(!), and sometimes an external resource, like an app or a book, can be immensely useful in jumpstarting these conversations.

That being said, I worry about the perils of bringing A.I. into the bedroom with us. Even setting aside more extreme or existential concerns like A.I.-induced psychosis and environmental impact, outsourcing your scene-planning to a robot robs you of the opportunity to practice thinking (and kinking) for yourself. It distances you from your partner in an intimate arena that can otherwise feel soul-affirmingly connective. It introduces the possibility of boner-killing awkward errors, like misgendering your sweetheart or yourself due to a coding oversight. And in this case, it does all this without adding much value that couldn’t be equally gleaned by just having the guts to talk to your partner about sex.

I feel similarly about BeMoreKinky as I did about the Fifty Shades series, which is to say: I’m concerned about damage it may do and misconceptions it may propagate, but at the same time, I’m happy for the people it may help to discover themselves and their sexualities, and I deeply hope that the good ultimately outweighs the bad. Sometimes we have to make such trade-offs in our continuing efforts to, uh, be more kinky.

 

This post was sponsored, meaning I was paid to write a fair and honest review of the app. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Ways to Ask a New Partner About Your Favorite Kink(s)

Kate Sloan
Or you could do what I do and just flag your kinks/sexuality on your leather jacket… (Photo by mb)

The best advice I ever got was from my late grandmother, who used to say to me: “You don’t ask, you don’t get.”

The more time that has passed, the more useful and true I have found this to be. How could I have known, without pitching them, that the Magic Wand company would happily commission me to make a podcast miniseries about their product? How could I have known that the “Twitter admirer” I later married indeed wanted to make out with me on our first date, if I hadn’t asked her? How could I have found beautiful apartments to live in, rad new publications to write for, or new friends in improv classes, if I hadn’t had the guts to reach out and ask for what I wanted?

I think this advice applies across the board in life, but of course, as a sex-&-relationships nerd, I’m most inclined to implement it in those areas. It’s especially useful to ask for what you want in bed when you’ve just started talking to someone new – whether you met them through mutual friends, over social media, or on the best dating app for LGBTQ in USA – because it can help you quickly filter out people you’re not compatible with, thereby being able to move onto more suitable prospects sooner. No sense in dragging out a doomed connection, if you ask me!

I know asking for what you want is hard as fuck, though, so here are 5 of my favorite tried-and-true methods of raising a beloved kink with a new person:

“Have you ever tried ___?”

I like this because it’s simple, effective, and direct, without being like, “Do you want to ___ with me right now?!” which runs the risk of scaring people off, even if they might otherwise warm up to what you’re asking. When you inquire about someone’s experience level with a particular kink or dynamic, you might learn that they’re horrified by the very idea, or you might instead learn that they’ve tried it several times and have very specific thoughts on how they’d like to do it next. Again, you never know until you ask!

“Have you seen [insert media property here]? What did you think of that scene where ___?”

One of the many joys of consuming great media (and sometimes even subpar media): it can be an easy gateway into conversations we want to have about sex and relationships. Whether you’re ascertaining a new beau’s stance on spanking by citing Secretary, sleuthing out a partner’s feelings on lifestyle D/s by invoking Fifty Shades of Grey, or assessing someone’s views on polyamory through the lens of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, media references are a fabulously low-pressure way to dig into the conversations you want to be having.

“What do you think some people find hot about ___?”

This one is best utilized when talking to a sex nerd, someone who seems inclined to puzzle through the mysteries of the human sexual psyche with you. You can parlay a theoretical conversation about kink motivations into a more direct and personal conversation about your own kink motivations – if they don’t recoil at the very thought of the kink you’re pondering, which unfortunately can happen sometimes. This is also a good way to gauge someone’s general sex-positivity and empathy toward those with different sexualities from them.

“Would you ever wanna ___ with me?”

A bigger (and scarier) swing than a lot of these more indirect approaches, for sure, but sometimes the moment calls for that! I like this particular phrasing because it’s less urgently pressurey than “Do you wanna ___ [right now/tomorrow/next weekend]?” and it’s bolder and clearer than a vague “How do you feel about ___?” This phrasing also leaves the door open for them to raise any concerns or caveats they may have: “You know, I’d love to, but only if we [keep the lights off/pre-negotiate our aftercare needs/have experimental jazz blaring in the background]!”

“Can I show you a hot porn clip where ___? Then, if you want, you can show me a video you like!”

You’re definitely gonna wanna ‘read the room’ on this one, since some people would be aghast at the mere mention of watching porn with a partner, let alone kinky porn… but if your sweetheart seems open-minded, a co-curated smut screening can be a good way to open up to each other about your desires, without having to use your words. (Although, ideally, you would then use your words when negotiating the specifics of what you want to do together.) And naturally, porn is meant to arouse, so it functions as great foreplay for whatever comes next!

 

What are your favorite methods of bringing up kinks with new people you’re seeing?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Good in Bed”?

Kate Sloan

Sexual self-doubt is an epidemic. As if we haven’t already had sex-related shame heaped onto us since birth, a lot of sexual discourse online lumps people into a binary of “good at sex” versus “bad at sex.” Many of us are not given clear benchmarks of what these terms even mean, which makes it even more difficult to put the worry out of one’s mind: Am I a terrible lay?

 

Technique vs. approach

If worries about being bad in bed weren’t so prevalent, my industry – sex writing – would not exist as we know it. Articles abound, online and in print, that claim they’ll teach you “techniques” that will make you into some kind of sex god. Stroke the clit in a circular motion, tap the frenulum to a steady rhythm, finger-blast the G-spot hard, press a vibrator into the perineum. This type of advice is largely well-intentioned, but I think it misses the point: Being good in bed is more about your approach than your technique.

There are exceptions, of course. Sex professionals, for instance, tend to have better technique than many laypeople (pun not intended) – so I’d expect that the beauties at the Discreet Elite VIP escort agency have better blowjob skills than your average cocksucker, and pro dom(me)s are more skilled at flogging than your average kinkster. Often these people are being sought out for their skills specifically (among other things), so it makes sense that they’d have to hone their technique.

But I think, for the average person, it’s better to have a good approach to sex (which, naturally, a lot of sex professionals also have!). By that I mean: Do you pay attention to partners’ verbal and non-verbal cues in figuring out what’s working or not working during sex? Do you ask questions or invite feedback as needed, if you’re having trouble making someone feel good? Do you co-create an environment where you both(/all) feel safe to communicate openly and honestly? Do you have good psychological tools for handling difficult feelings that may come up when someone gives you constructive sexual feedback, and can you implement those tools when you need to?

I think these things matter much more than physical technique, especially since everyone likes different things in bed. Why try to navigate new territory with an old map? I think it makes more sense to learn the skills that will enable you to create new “maps” on the fly when you need to.

 

A or B?

Okay, if there’s one sexual skill you really need (aside from ascertaining consent, duh), I think this is it. Some sex educators call it the “optometrist” approach, because – like an optometrist during an eye exam – you’re going to ask your partner, “Does this work better for you, or this?”

Try it with anything; just remember to phrase it as an “either/or” question, because those are often easiest for people to answer in the heat of the moment. “Do you want it harder or softer?” “Faster or slower?” “Deeper or shallower?”

While actual verbal feedback can be super helpful, especially with a newer partner, you can also use this technique silently in your own mind to try stuff out and discover what works best. Try licking softer, and then harder, and see which gets a bigger reaction. Thrust a little deeper, then a little shallower, and stick with whichever one seems most appreciated. This might sound simple and self-explanatory, but it’s amazing how many people get so wrapped up in their own nervousness (or pleasure) during sex that they forget to pay full attention to their partner, thereby missing crucial cues that could help them get better at fucking that particular person.

 

Compassion is king

Sex is a very, very personal thing for many of us. One’s sexuality can feel core to one’s identity – so judgments on one’s sexuality can feel like judgments on one’s very existence. Those judgments, and the feelings of shame they provoke, can stay with you for months. For years. For a lifetime, in some cases.

With that in mind, I think it’s really important to foreground compassion in all of the sex we have. That doesn’t mean you have to let people steamroll your boundaries, but it does mean you should tread carefully so as not to step on any emotional landmines. Never make critical comments about someone’s body during sex, unless they’ve explicitly asked you to do so. Never laugh maliciously at a partner during sex; strive to only laugh with them, about things you both find funny or silly. If you have to criticize someone’s technique, focus moreso on “Here’s what I prefer” than on “You’re doing it wrong,” because – as ever – they’re not actually doing it wrong, they’re just not doing it the way you like it (yet).

I strongly believe that part of being good in bed is knowing how to create a safe environment for pleasure. No one can fully lean into their pleasure in your presence if they feel it’s unsafe to do so. One way to establish that safety, and to build that trust over time, is to make compassion the baseline ethic with which you approach sex. And I don’t just mean for romantic partners, either – even casual or short-lived hookups deserve the dignity of your respect and compassion. And I’d hope it would go without saying, but incase it doesn’t: You deserve partners who treat you that way too, and it’s completely fine to keep looking until you find one.

 

I’ve only been sexually active for 16 years or so; I’m sure my views on this will change even more as I grow older, and they’ve already undergone many transformations. But at this moment in time, these are the main things that I think make someone “good in bed.” Approach is everything, in my view, because a good approach helps you find the right technique(s) for the person you’re sleeping with, and helps you make them comfortable enough that they can enjoy your technique(s). How does that old saying go? “Give a man a fuck, and you satisfy him for a day. Teach a man to fuck, and he’ll satisfy his partners for a lifetime.” Something like that.

What do you think makes someone good in bed? Sound off in the comments; I wanna know!

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

4 Ways to Tell Your Partner About Your Kink

Kate Sloan

I’ve answered hundreds, if not thousands, of questions about kink in my career as a sex writer and educator – and one of the most common ones, without a doubt, is: “How do I tell my partner about my kinks?”

It’s an understandable thing to wonder. The seemingly obvious answer is “Just tell them,” but if it were that easy, people wouldn’t be asking the question in the first place. What they really mean when they ask this is: How do I conjure the courage to tell my partner about my kinks, given that I know they might react badly?

My best friend, sex educator Bex Caputo, would say: Don’t make it a big deal. If you tell them about your fetish with the same foreboding tone you’d use to tell them you got cancer, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Humans take a lot of cues from each other socially and psychologically, on both conscious and unconscious levels, and so if you disclose your kink in a way that’s fun and flirty instead of scary or self-flagellating, you’re much likelier to get a good response.

But there are a lot of different ways to do that. Let’s talk about some of them. (And please keep in mind that all of these suggestions are just ways to ease a disclosure and start a conversation – not finish it. You should always do some sort of negotiation before trying a kink that’s new to either of you, to make sure you’re on the same page about basic stuff like what’s going to happen, who’s going to do what, what your safeword[s] or safe-signal[s] will be, and what kind of aftercare you’ll each need.)

 

Fill out a Yes/No/Maybe list. This is a classic kink negotiation tool that’s especially useful at the beginnings of relationships when you don’t know each other’s tastes yet, or in established relationships when you’re in search of a sexual shake-up. Basically it’s a list where you both categorize a bunch of different kinks into 4 categories:

  1. Yes, Into = Yes, I enthusiastically want to try this thing
  2. Yes, Willing = Yes, I would be happy to try this thing if you wanted to try it, though I’m not 100% enthusiastic about it myself
  3. Maybe = I might be willing to try this thing under some circumstances; let’s discuss further
  4. No = I absolutely do not want to try this thing

Once you each complete your list, you can compare notes and see where there’s overlap and where there decidedly isn’t, and then go from there.

There are digital tools that make this process easy, like Old.MojoUpgrade.com, or you could pick up a copy of my book and go through it together, adding each kink to your list as you go.

 

“So I had this dream…” If you’re prepared to tell a little white lie to kick off a kink chat with your partner, you could always just say you had a sexy dream about [insert kink here] and then ask a question like:

  • Doesn’t that sound hot?
  • Have you ever tried that?
  • What do you think about that?
  • Would you ever want to try that?
  • Ever wondered what that would be like?
  • Does that seem like something we’d do?

This gives you a bit of plausible deniability, so that if (god forbid) they get judgey or freak out, you can say, “Well, it was just a dream.” (And then maybe decide whether you want to end the relationship and move on, ’cause… yikes.)

 

Porn, erotica, or live cam shows. If you have the type of relationship where the two of you consume sexual media together – whether as a prelude to sex or just for entertainment purposes – then this can be a good way to guide a conversation toward your particular interests.

You could, for example, suggest that the two of you each curate a playlist of 2-3 porn clips that you’ll watch together, or 1-2 erotica stories you’ll read together, alternating back and forth between theirs and yours. Maybe you set a theme, like “things we want to try,” or maybe you both just pick things you like to jerk off to when you’re alone. This is especially great because, when both partners are committed to the exercise, each of you ends up being bravely vulnerable in a way that makes it easier for the other person to do the same.

Sites featuring live webcam models, like FetishCamSites.com, can also provide a media-based jumping-off point for kink discussions. Maybe seeing a cute camgirl spank herself on-screen with a paddle could get your partner curious about paddles, for instance…

 

Sex shop visit. Now, don’t get me wrong: I would not recommend buying a flogger/enema/Neon Wand/whatever for a partner who has never expressed any interest in owning or using one. It’s presumptuous, financially risky (depending on how pricey the item is and whether its retailer has a good returns policy), and can make your sweetie feel pressured to say yes even if they don’t want to.

But, visiting a sex shop together can prompt some productive conversations about sex and kink. It’s easy to make up an excuse to do this, like needing to pick up some condoms or lube, or just walking past a sex shop and saying, “Hey, wanna check this place out?”

If your fetish is equipment-based – e.g. chastity, whipping, pegging – then you can locate that equipment in the store (you may need to check their stock ahead of time if it’s a specialty piece) and then ask your partner one of the questions I recommended in the “So I had this dream…” suggestion above. If your fetish isn’t related to any particular paraphernalia, you could instead pick up a kink book that you know mentions it (perhaps mine!), flip to that page, and ask the same sorts of questions.

 

Of course, there are more ways to communicate a fetish to a partner than just the ones listed here. What methods have worked best for you? How would you want a partner to tell you about their fetish?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Protocol Diaries: I’ll Have What They’re Having

Kate Sloan

Wouldn’t it be great if you could order your ideal sexual experience off a menu? Well, in certain sex work contexts you can… but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about here.

For a couple months or so, my partner and I have been using two shared notes in our Notes app to basically do exactly that. It’s a communication tool that has helped us both, particularly in these stressful times when it can be hard to drum up the energy for good sex, let alone good, clear, useful communication about sex. The two notes are called the Sex Menu and the Porn Menu, and I’ll talk about them both here incase any of you find this idea useful and want to “yoink” it for your own sex life. (All credit goes to mb for inventing these innovations – I’m blessed to have a spouse just as sex-nerdy as I am, and much more tech-nerdy than I am, who comes up with inventive and sexy usages for things like the Notes app!)

 

The Sex Menu is a checklist of all the sex and kink acts that my partner and I do regularly, ranging from the tame (kissing, breast stimulation, oral sex) to the wild (watersports, electrostimulation, ruined orgasms). As I’m the more submissive/bottom-y person in our dynamic, usually I fill it out to give my partner a sense of all the things I’m up for during a particular session, so that they don’t have to individually ask me about each and every thing they’re considering doing.

However, sometimes we switch it up by having them fill it out so that I can then go through it and uncheck anything I definitely don’t want to do. I tend to have more limits and limitations than my partner does, just due to the nature of our differing brains and bodies, so this works best for us, though of course you can adapt it to suit your particular dynamic.

This tool is especially wonderful for those of us who have a hard time asserting our boundaries and/or stating our desires; it gives me a way to express those things without feeling like I’m being rude, demanding, or overbearing. It also helps remind me of all the acts and toys I tend to forget about; on a stressful day I might not remember that a wax-play scene could help reduce my anxiety, until I see wax on the list and go, “Oh yeah! That could work.”

Because I have a chronic pain disorder, we keep a spot at the top of the Sex Menu for me to fill out my pain level du jour and the locations of the pain. This gives my partner a clear picture of what my body might be capable or incapable of on a particular night. Communicating about my pain can be difficult for me, especially when I feel I’ve been complaining about it a lot lately (which is usually the case these days, tbh), so I like having a built-in spot to describe it; it takes the pressure off me to be my own proactive health advocate.

 

The Porn Menu is another document, in which one of us will prepare a set of links to 2-3 porn videos for us to watch together before having sex. I have found shared porn-viewing to be a super useful pre-sex practice for me this past year, when pandemic stress has made my already-finicky libido even tougher to coax into action. Since my desire is responsive (à la “dual-control model of sexual response” as laid out in Emily Nagoski’s book Come As You Are), I usually need a little help – or a lot of help – to get turned on, and porn has almost always been a big source of that help for me.

My partner and I are both not the biggest fans of mainstream porn with high production values, and tend toward buying clips from indie creators instead. (Pay for your porn if you want porn to keep existing!) Usually we’ll try to match up our porn choices to what we’ve selected on the Sex Menu, so if I said I want oral, I’ll look for cunnilingus porn, and if I said I want to be fucked with a dildo, I’ll scroll through dildo porn sites – you get the picture!

 

Used in tandem, these two “menus” help me and my partner get on the same page about the sex we want to have, and get turned on together even when our lives are stressful. They’re also a reminder that sometimes the simplest communication tools are the best ones!

 

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at MyPornAdviser – feel free to check out their Anilos review if you’re curious about MILF porn! As always, all writing and opinions in this post are my own.