Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sinclair Sexsmith (you might know them as Sugarbutch) is here this week and we are talking ALL about kink, BDSM, and power dynamics.
We take a look at Sinclair’s journey from submissive to Top to Dominant to Daddy and Master. What is it like to live in a 24/7 Master slave dynamic? How can people learn more?
We also discuss using BDSM to heal trauma and depression – it’s a fine line, but it can be a powerful practice. Plus, what is Submissive Playground? Sinclair shares the details. I am so excited to share this chat with you, so settle in and let’s do this.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Sinclair Sexsmith and Dawn talk about:
- How Sinclair got started in D/s and where their interest in kink started. Hearing about their evolution from submissive to Top to Dominant and Daddy and a 24/7 Master is a wonderful example of how our sexuality is constantly changing and growing.
- Sinclair’s weekly series on Autostraddle called “View from the Top.” You can check out all the posts here.
- Growing up and discovering sex and sexual interests in chat rooms and online as teens. For us, in the early 90’s, it felt safe to explore and have these conversations. It’s also how Sinclair got their start writing erotica.
- Daddy Doms and how Sinclair experiences being a Daddy. There are a lot of misconceptions (like it’s incest play), so we roll around in the Daddy dynamic together and how it’s a lot of nurturance and loving control.
- 24/7 dynamics and what it’s like to live in a Master/slave or Dom/sub agreement that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Dawn worries it’s exhausting, but Sinclair offers a different perspective that is intriguing.
- The difference between being a submissive and being a slave – which has a lot more nuance than you might expect.
- Why you can’t always judge the health of a kinky relationship based on how it looks from the outside. A D/s relationship might look really bad, but for the people involved it’s healthy, consensual, and nurturing.
- Healing trauma and mental health challenges through BDSM and kink – what should you be aware of, why it can be helpful, and why it shouldn’t be your only source of healing. This is not for beginners, though.
- Sinclair’s 8-week online course, Submissive Playground, and all the amazing educators involved in the series. If you are in any way interested in exploring or deepening your submission, this course is incredible.
- A listener who wants to know how she can balance her need to plan everything in advance with her husband’s need to always stay spontaneous.
- Whether something that happened to a listener was a betrayal in their Dom/sub dynamic. It complicates things that this listener and her lover are married and cheating with each other, as that seriously ups the ante.
Resources discussed in this episode
“My Secret Garden” by Nancy Friday
“Slavecraft” by a grateful slave and Guy Baldwin
About Sinclair Sexsmith
Sinclair Sexsmith is “the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queer women” (AfterEllen), who “is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places” (Autostraddle). Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.Sinclair leads the 8-week online ecourse Submissive Playground (submissiveplayground.com) annually, where there is no wrong way to be submissive They identify as a white genderqueer butch dominant, a survivor and an introvert, and use the pronouns they, them, theirs, themself. Follow all their writings at patreon.com/mrsexsmith.
You can also follow Sinclair on Twitter @mrsexsmith, Facebook, Fetlife, and Instagram.
Listen and subscribe to Sex Gets Real
- Listen and subscribe on iTunes
- Check us out on Stitcher
- Don’t forget about I Heart Radio’s Spreaker
- Pop over to Google Play
- Use the player at the top of this page.
- Now available on Spotify. Search for “sex gets real”.
- Find the Sex Gets Real channel on IHeartRadio.
Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone. Dawn Serra here with Sex Gets Real. This week, we’re going to be talking all about dominance and submission, and all that kinky goodness. Because with me is Sinclair Sexsmith. Hi Sinclair.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Hi, Dawn.
Dawn Serra: How are you?
Sinclair Sexsmith: I’m doing so well. I’m really excited to talk to you.
Dawn Serra: Oh my gosh, me too. So glad you wrote to me and you were like, “I have this cool thing. I want to come on the show!” Because it was awesome and perfect timing.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Excellent.
Dawn Serra: So for those of you that don’t know Sinclair, let me tell you a little bit about them.Then we’re going to roll around in all these awesome discussions about submissiveness, and DS, and all of the things that people always have so many questions about. Sinclair Sexsmith is the best known butch erotica writer whose kinky groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queer women, which I adore, who is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff and writes for all the places which is a quote from Autostraddle. You lead an 8-week online e-course that’s called Submissive Playground, which is one of the things we’re going to be talking about today, which happens annually. One of the things about Submissive Playground is there’s no wrong way to be submissive, which I’m so excited to talk about.
I love that your bio ends with, “They identify as a white, genderqueer,utch dominant – a survivor and an introvert, and use the pronouns they/them/theirs themselves.” I think it’s so important to include that in our bios.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, definitely. I also am totally an identity nerd and get really into identity theory. So I tend to include strings of words that I use to describe myself. They fluctuate – like I’ve been using kinky, queer, butch, top for a lot of years. But as I’m more and more involved in anti-racist politics, I use white, everything that I can and as I’m more involved in the effects of more other marginalized identities in the sexuality worlds like being a survivor or being introvert does feel really important to me to include as well.
Dawn Serra: I totally agree. I love that you mentioned those things because as I read them and hear them, it tells me so much about the things that I can ask you about, and that if I were to have questions about being a survivor and doing DS, that you’re potentially a safe resource for that. So I think that it’s very inviting to be able to share those things with people.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, thank you.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Okay, so you created Submissive Playground which is this online course all about, there’s no wrong way to be a submissive and you have so many knockout superstars of kink involved in this online program that I can’t wait for people to go check out the info page about this course because it’s it’s just phenomenal. So I’ll have a link on sex gets real. But before we talk about that, I would love to hear a little about your story of how you got into DS and the role that’s played in your life?
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think I personally have been dominant and probably what they would say would more be like bossy and domineering, since I was a little kid. I’m the oldest of three and was always the leader of my little friend group. I ran into a lot of social friction for me, as I was socialized going further and further into elementary school and then middle school, and it became a lot harder for me to keep and have friends and relationships. So I think for a long time, I really tapped down and went, “You have to be a lot more submissive, you have to be a lot more like…” I had to learn, I had to tell myself, “You have to let other people lead. You have to do what other people want to do sometimes.” When I started being sexual, I ended up as a bottom for a lot of years, mostly my teenage years. I mean, maybe not a lot of years but when I started out– Because really for as long as I’ve been sexual, I’ve been kinky. That was never a question for me. It came out just as soon as I was like, interested in sex, I was interested in the dirty stuff.
It took a little longer for me to really come out as queer, but the kinky definitely came first. As it kind of went on and on, I came more and more into my own power orientation of being a top and then that has evolved to being a daddy and being a dominant, and now I’m a master in a 24/7 master-slave relationship. I say the words master-slave with – well, I want to add immediate caveats to all of that because it’s a really complex phrase to use. Especially for folks in the U.S. that have this long history of slavery in this culture. So I say it with the knowledge that it’s a loaded term. We don’t have to go into all the loadedness, but I just want to say that we can have that conversation later or any of y’all who are listening, we can have that conversation if you want to.
Sinclair Sexsmith: The last six months or so, I’ve been writing a column on Autostraddle called View From The Top which really details the transition that I’ve done from bottom to top, to dominant, to sadist, and master. So there’s a lot of details in that column about the story. But that’s the broad strokes of it.
Dawn Serra: It’s so interesting hearing all of the different ways that people discover kink, either very late in life because they didn’t even know that it was an option and they start hearing whispers or reading books like 50 Shades of Grey, and it kind of tickles something in them. Then people who, pretty much from adolescence are like, “Oh, now I’m into the weird stuff.” I love hearing the variety of stories and I love that for you. It was like, “As soon as I was sexual, I was kinky.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, yeah. Totally.
Dawn Serra: How did that show up for you?
Sinclair Sexsmith: I did a lot of babysitting in middle school and high schooler and so, of course, I would go search the people’s bedrooms for dirty things. Early on, I acquired a copy of the book, My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, which is a 70s feminist publication about how women have sexual fantasies too, and it was a revelation. In 19, might have been the 80s, I guess. It was 82 or something like that. I’m not quite sure about the publication. It’s really a stunning read and actually, I would recommend it even still, because it’s still relevant, unfortunately. But it had a ton of stuff in there about what women fantasize about. And that more than anything else was a route for me around all these things are possible. So many of the pieces in there, so many of the things that people share and talk about is like, “Wow, I had no idea that other women fantasize and how normal this is.” So really, from the very beginning, I was like, “Oh, women fantasize and that’s normal.” So it was a good place to start for my sexuality.
The guy that I got together with – I was with a guy for about six years – my high school boyfriend. He was game. He was like, “What do you want to do? I’ll do whatever, anything. What are you into?” “I don’t know what are you into?” So we ended up with silk ties to the bedspread and light spanking. Nothing too extreme, especially by my current standards. But lots of exploration, lots of bondage, lots of impact, lots of rough sex, just like pretty much whatever we wanted. He was the one who bought me my first strap-on.
Dawn Serra: Oh, awesome.
Sinclair Sexsmith: We were open, we were very open and that part of our relationship always worked really well. The semi controlling abusive part was less good and the, “I think I’m gay” part was definitely more of a challenge. But the sex part and the kink is great.
Dawn Serra: That’s wonderful. To be young and to both of you be open enough to say, “I don’t know, let’s try whatever you’re into.” “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just try the things.” That’s fantastic.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, we met online in 1994. So the communities that we were involved with online were – I mean, that was just explicitly sexual. There was so much going on that was conversations around sexuality, and I am a writer really before any of those other identity words. So writing about sex and reading about sex has been a huge place of liberation for me and a huge place of knowledge and availability. Because people don’t talk about it even still, podcasts aside, people don’t talk about sex enough and don’t talk about it with their partners enough. There’s not healthy conversations about it in culture enough. So learning about it that way and reading it online felt like a really safe way to explore.
Plus, we could type to each other whatever we wanted, “Okay, now, I’m kissing down your leg,” or “Now I’m cumming all over your face,” or I don’t know whatever. If I was like, “Oh, this is kind of uncomfortable.” I would be like, “Okay, closing my computer.” It was not dangerous at all because we were typing to each other. So it was really easy to pause and redirect or change or alter what was going on, which was a great early way for me to explore. And it became a place – like a really early erotica route too. So I went on to write a lot of erotica and that’s where Sinclair, my persona came from, and where my website Sugarbutch came from. It got a lot of traction because of all the erotica that I write.
Dawn Serra: I love how you had the safety of being online to have some of those sexual explorations. I remember in my sophomore year of high school, this was way back when the only way to really get on the internet was dial up AOL or Netscape.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, that was probably about the same years that I was in high school.
Dawn Serra: Yep. Actually, I think it was 1994-95 that we were doing this, and I remember we had made a woman up who was in her 30s and we would go into all the AOL chat rooms and pick up dudes who were trolling for sex. The two of us would just sit there until three in the morning after her parents were in bed like, “Okay, now say this, now say this… Let’s see if we can get him to say this.” It was sad for the people who are actually trying to have this and engaging sexual expression with this fake person we had made up. But it was the first time that we actually started really engaging with people and hearing what people wanted sexually, and being able to like, “Let’s see what happens if we say this.” There was this fun curious element that in no way was threatening to our value as people because there was no real chance of physical harm or rejection happening.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Right. Totally. In a lot of ways you had all the power there. It’s really easy to stop and go somewhere else. We had all the power. I mean, they had the power too, and that they can do the same thing. But it can be a really empowering place. I know bad stories about that stuff, too, with people being harmed or people really starting to trust someone else who ends up lying about what they’re doing. So it’s not like it’s all good and easy. It certainly was a valuable place for me to explore.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I also think that the Internet of the early 90s was a very different place than even 10 years later.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. There’s a really, I mean, I don’t even know what the percentage was. But there were so few people on the internet at that point. I was running a little bit of a web design business in 1998. I remember trying to convince a couple different businesses that they needed a website and they were like, “Why do I need a website? I don’t need a website. What even is a website?” I decided I didn’t really want to do that because I didn’t want to do the work of convincing people that it was important. But even four years later, two years later, everyone had a website or was starting to. It’s phenomenal – the Internet revolution but we could talk about that all day.
Dawn Serra: So you had mentioned that you have experiences as a daddy, now you’re in this 24/7master-slave situation – a dominant, a top, a sadist.. So you’ve tried all of these things, and some of them are now a big part of your identity and how you are expressing your relationships and your sexual identity. I’ve had a couple of people on the show talk a little bit about daddy dynamics, and daddy doms, but I would really love for you to share your definition for a daddy dynamic and how you express that. Because I think that’s a space that still has a lot of misconceptions.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Sure, totally. I was a really reluctant daddy in a lot of ways and I didn’t come to it eagerly, I don’t know, desirous or easefully, even. I came to it conflicted and curious and not certain that it was going to work for me. At the same time, it was something that I was really obsessive about erotica and reading things, and fantasies for quite a long time. Because I would say to myself, “I have to understand how this works. I just don’t get it. I don’t know, I don’t get it. So I really should read it so I would get it a little better.” I think that kind of repulsion and lust can sometimes be this opposite side of the same coin. I didn’t recognize that at the time, but I was very much like, “I don’t know why people would do this and how is it different than incest? Or how is it different than incest play?” I queried a lot of my friends who I knew were into it or kinksters that I knew were into it.
So, I think that for me, ultimately, it became a kind of paternalistic role of nurturance and control and domineering dominance at the same time. And with a lot of masculinity in it. So that combination is potent to me as in my identities, and it has been potent from the people that I’ve dated who like to see that combination of things.
Dawn Serra: In your experience when you’re doing some type of daddy dynamic or play, is it naturally an age play thing in your experience or is it more about a certain type of submission that’s a little bit unique?
Sinclair Sexsmith: I think it’s both. It definitely started out for me as a certain type of submission in a certain way to relate to a power dynamic. But as it went on for me and as I got more comfortable in the role, the roleplay a bit became another way and another dimension to play with for sure. I mean, ultimately, for me, it’s about nurturance and it’s about the dominance that isn’t this cruel, forced dominance. But it’s about like, “This is for your own good. I’m going to control you but it’s because I love you. I’m going to spank you, but it’s because you deserve it.”
Dawn Serra: “You definitely earned this one.” I’ve gotten a couple of questions on the show about 24/7 dynamics. I know several people who have been in them for a long time and have explored them, and to be honest, the first thing that comes up for me is exhaustion when I think about it. But I would love to hear more about 24/7 master-slave, what does that look like? How natural is that for you or do you feel like there’s time when you’re like, “Whoa, I gotta really figure this out.”?
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, it’s interesting – 24/7. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about what it is and when people are in a scene, or even in a weekend long thing where you’re at a conference and you’re there with somebody and all you’re doing is being in a role. There’s this understanding that you go back to your “real life”. See my air quotes – back to real life. The only way to sustain 24/7 is if 24/7 is your real life. There isn’t a going back to something else and we don’t really even have times when we’re not in the dynamic. We don’t say, “Okay, we need to have a real conversation, so we have to get out of the dynamic now.” We can do it, we do real conversations in the dynamic all the time. That also has to do with, of course, our particular rules for our dynamic – if somebody had the rules of you never speak to me with a question. You never question me or you never talk to me when you’re upset or– I don’t know. If there were rules about restricting what my sub could say to me, then I imagine we would have to step out of the dynamic. But we don’t have that. There aren’t rules on what he can or can’t say. I guess there’s a role of be respectful, but that’s hopefully more of a relationship aspiration than you get in trouble for not…
Okay, so there’s two sides of it. On the one side, it is something that I have to work to maintain, and it is something that I have to strive for. But on the other side, it’s not something that I’m exhausted by at all. It’s something that feeds me and that lights me up. It’s something that if I have to work too hard, then I start asking myself “How can I use my slave to make this easier? What do I need right now? How can we come to this together in a more easeful way?” Because he’s my slave and we have that dynamic going on. I get to ask of him whatever I want and whatever I need. So if what I need from his service is for him to make me my favorite meal, bring me a bourbon, bring me some ice cream, and watch a Buffy marathon, then that’s what we’re going to do. So that’s really useful for me and makes me feel pampered and special. It is sometimes service for him to watch my stupid TV shows.
Dawn Serra: Buffy is not stupid.
Sinclair Sexsmith: No, no, not at all, but they’re stupider than that. But Buffy is not stupid. He did actually quite enjoy Buffy, but there are other ones that he’s enjoyed less. He’s still very good about snuggling with me and watching it anyway. I mean, I just use that as an example of we’re not always “in scene” exactly. The power is always there and there’s always a moment When I could say, “Alright, stop cuddling with me and get up and brush your teeth. We’re going to bed in five minutes,” and give an order, but it’s also within the context of our real lives and within the context of – we both have jobs that we need to get to and we both have family obligations, and pets and health things – all these other things that we have to navigate as people, as adulting. So it’s tricky.
I mean, at the same time, sometimes I have to check myself and go like, “Oh, am I treating him like a partner? Am I treating him like a slave right now? Or am I treating him like – am I being too coddling? Am I being too nice?” What are the ways that I can use him better and to really make sure I keep turning up and turning on that dominance and that mastery. Because it’s easy for me to slide into a domestic boring partnership. We’re like “You got home from work. Hi, here’s the dinner. Let’s take the dog for a walk.” But it’s really different if I say, “Alright, slave, you’re going to go put this butt plug on because we’re about to go take the dog for a walk.” That’s a really different thing to navigate than to be ho-hum about your domestic life.
Dawn Serra: So for listeners who are curious, what is the difference between being a submissive and being a slave?
Sinclair Sexsmith: It probably depends completely on the slave or the submissive that you ask. There’s a lot of different ways that people use those terms. For us, a submissive is someone who engages in a power exchange or an authority exchange with someone else, where someone else has some authority over the submissive. It’s usually in ways that are time bound and limited. The dominant might have control over what the submissive wears and what the submissive eats, and what the submissive – the sex life of the submissive. But they might not have control over the work life or the family life or the long term goals or things like that of that submissive. The submissive often has limits of some sort. In the ways that we do it this slave is owned property and is allowed to – has given over time, body, will, mind – all those things that are inherently belonging to that person to their master. I mean, this is a deep philosophical conversation also, and I’m involved in some MS groups. We talked about this a lot, and there are a lot of differences.
One book I’d recommend if people are into it and want to read more is the book called Slave Craft by a grateful slave who is also Guy Baldwin. I think there’s two authors there. It has some good ideas and definitions about the differences. There aren’t a lot of really good MS books out there. The other one that I would highly recommend is called Dear Raven and Joshua by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny, that’s almost like an advice column where there’s just a bunch of different questions to these two folks who are MS teachers and educators. Then their perspectives on the answer. They’re very highly opinionated so they might not – their perspective might not work for everybody, but they have clearly given this a lot of thought. They’re kinky, queer, pagan, trans, feminist, poly. They’re hitting all the buttons.
Dawn Serra: They checked all the boxes on the form.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Absolutely. They have a lot of good perspectives that work well for me, anyway. It might not work for other people.
Dawn Serra: What I really like that I’m hearing is how you’re acknowledging the fact that there can be this wealth of information and experience that is being shared by someone who’s a trainer and teaches this stuff and lives this stuff. And still, it might not work for you and your vision of this. There’s space for all of that.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally, totally. I think that that was a really challenging thing for me as I was coming into more dominance and more mastery, that I wasn’t seeing representation of what it was that I wanted, or what I wanted to be. So I really had to work to carve my own space, and then as I got more confident in my own space, I was better able to go pull little bits and pieces from other people. But there really wasn’t one single where I was like, “That’s the relationship I want. That’s the structure that I want.”
Dawn Serra: So just out of curiosity for the way that you are living your master-slave agreement, if at any point your slave feels like something’s not working or they need something different, or they want to reevaluate how is space made for that conversation to happen?
Sinclair Sexsmith: We have check-ins, relationship check-ins, fairly regularly. They’re weekly-ish, I would say. They don’t happen every single week, but most weeks. There are a variety of questions that we ask each other and ourselves about how are things going right now? We’ve been together for five years, there have been moments where something really big did have to change. Most recently, I’ve been struggling pretty hard with some depression and my slave came to me and said, “I don’t know, this isn’t working. You need to deal with this a little deeper.” And that was really, really hard for me. I don’t want to go into it too deeply because it’s still really raw. Something that I’m living, not a story that I’m telling yet. But it was really incredible to have that ability – for him to have that ability to come to me and say, “This is something I’ve witnessed in you. I need you to get some help, and I need us to figure this out.” There’s so much space for those conversations to happen. I’m so welcoming of that level of dialogue about our relationship. So I would definitely say– I mean, how do you make room for that conversation in any relationship?
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it’s scary no matter what.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally. At some point, somebody has to bring it up and say, “I want to have a relationship conversation,” and you have to make time in your schedule or you have to find a time when you’re like, “Oh, okay. I guess the kid will be asleep for this long,” or whatever. So it’s the same way, really, and he’s not on a restriction of like, “You can’t talk to me about what you think about the relationship,” or anything. It might be the opposite. You need to talk to me about what you think about this and how it’s going.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I have seen abusive versions of MS play out in relationships in certain communities. And also seen very stern and strict, but loving and spacious versions of MS and DS, frankly. I think it’s so important for people to hear the different ways that that can happen to help squelch a lot of the assumptions. I also think for people who are outside of kink, hearing about a master-slave situation where technically the slave is owned property, I think can bring up a lot of like, “Oh my God, who would ever do that?” kind of knee jerk reaction.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally.
Dawn Serra: Hearing you talk about these conversations that you make space for and the way that you’re striving, and you’re being fed by this challenge to constantly grow and learn within this dynamic, I think is really needy and interesting.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Thank you. In a lot of ways, I think my biggest draw to this dynamic is because I’m totally a growth junkie, and I just want to continue to know myself and know my partner, and be really intimate and be really close. Of course, I have a possessive streak and a controlling streak. I don’t know if any master would tell you that they don’t. But I get to channel it in this one particular way, so it doesn’t come out weird and sideways in other parts of my life. I think that’s another thing that was happening before I was more of a realized dominant and master, which is that it would come out accidentally and unconsciously with various relationships or with my work or with other pieces of my life. And this way, when I noticed that coming out in other places, I can say, “Oh, that’s that thing. I need to let it go here and put it over there. Because that place, it fits really well. But this place, it doesn’t fit. So channel it over there, let this go. You can’t control your boss, you can’t control your work. You can’t control your kid,” whatever. I don’t have any kids.
Dawn Serra: But I can certainly control my boy.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Exactly, exactly. We both get very fulfilled by it because it’s a symbol of other things. It’s a symbol of intimacy. It’s a symbol of commitment. It’s a symbol of growth for both of us.
Dawn Serra: Frankly, I think, at least my experience with DSs, it’s such a symbol of trust.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally. Yes, yes, I have a major trust fetish. That’s really important to me. I don’t think any of it can exist. I think it’s really hard to exist without trust. Once trust is broken, it’s really clear when a DS or an MS relationship starts cracking and going sour. I, too, have seen dynamics where I thought, “Oh my god. I can’t believe they’re doing that, that looks really bad from the outside.” I’ve also seen dynamics that looked really bad from the outside where, when I knew them a little better, I got that it was really consensual and it was really feeding them and they were doing it for really smart reasons. So I try really hard not to judge other people’s DS dynamics, because of some of those experiences, even though sometimes I do see it and go, “Oh, shit.” I mean, because how can you not? All of us do, right? We see a relationship and we go, “Oh, dear. That’s bad.”
Dawn Serra: “That won’t end well.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally. It is a question of also, how much do I get involved? Do I say something? Is it my place? Sometimes it is because they’re close friends, and sometimes it’s not at all.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So you had mentioned your experience with depression. I know one of the things that’s always really interesting for me to dig into is I have experienced DS as a way to really push my edges, and grow and confront some of my fears and assumptions, and insecurities – to be able to work through those. I’ve also experienced DS as a way to help me heal some traumas.
I think one of the things that we see from BDSM teachers and trainers is there’s always that disclaimer of, “Kink is for everyone, but don’t use it if you have trauma or if you’re suffering with depression. Go get professional help for that.” I know why people say that. But I definitely think there’s space in the ways that we explore our dominance or our submission to help us heal some of those old wounds or to help us move through challenges that we’re experiencing in our life. I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences around using DS and using these dynamics, not only for personal growth, but also for healing and navigating these really difficult life circumstances.
Sinclair Sexsmith: It’s such a huge topic and it’s one of my favorites, even I would say. It’s so complex. I do also get why kink educators say, “Don’t lean on this as your primary source.” And I really do think that people who have trouble who have mental health challenges or who are, what’s the new word of it is neurodivergent – that their neurology is not necessarily “typical”. I think they should be involved with some mental health professionals and if they want to play with kink then I think they can do that at the same time. But I’ve also been involved with some kink relationships and with some DS with folks who would – exes of mine and then in workshops and coaching situations, because I also do some DS coaching where they had never been to a psychiatrist or psychologist before. They’d never been to a therapist, they’d never talked through their trauma or done their work on it on that level. And coming to kink as the first thing that they do can be really explosive. It can be really intense.
So I highly encourage people to have a couple layers of it already peeled off before they go at it with the kink thing. That all said, I think there’s some magical things that can happen with power and with deep sensation, and with trust when playing with various kinds of kink with partners, and in working around trauma. I mean, I’ve had scenes with people where I’ve recreated something horrible that happened to them, and then they get to re-live that experience, which is often terrifying. But they get to make it end a different way. They get to have the empowerment at the end or they get to have the ability to say no, or they know throughout the thing that they have the ability to say no and that things will stop and change. So it becomes this reprogramming and letting go for option of the scene.
Sinclair Sexsmith: I think there’s some things about power dynamics and this deep psychology of it that can also be re-parenting where people learn to repair themselves or reparent each other, and heal some of the wounds of childhood of like “I wasn’t listening to you,” “I didn’t get enough attention,” “I didn’t get enough touch,” whatever it was. I think there’s some ways that playing with the psychology and the nurturance of DS can be deeply satisfying that way. That’s not for beginners, that is beginner play. So go slow, build trust, start anywhere, start somewhere. But go easy and learn about this stuff as much as possible and make sure that any of that stuff – anytime you’re playing with psychology or trauma, or survivorship or wounds of people. We need to have a lot of trust in each other and be as safe as possible.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, and we owe it to the people that were either in relationship with or that we’re doing some pickup play with to let them know as much as we’re aware of what potential triggers are, so that we’re not potentially putting ourselves in a situation where we get super triggered and then this person feels like they’ve just done something horrible.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, totally. I think in some ways, I have said that I became a top because I started sleeping with women and that’s not entirely true. But those things did happen at the same time in my life where I came out as queer and started dating women. Then it was partly because the people I was sleeping with had some trauma history and I started being aware of the ways that topping and cathartic release can happen, that I got really into it. I got really into the ways that women and other marginalized gender folks hold trauma in their bodies, and the ways that we can use sex and sensation to move it out. And that’s part of what led me to do work with Body Electric for a lot of years, and then to do with sacred intimacy training, and to work with body trust, which is a collective of me and three other folks who put on a variety of workshops and accoutrements and play around erotic embodiment. We actually have a podcast also called The Pleasure Lab, which is pretty fun – with some try this at home experiments about embodiment and erotics, and then a lot of whimsy and fun things about being more in our bodies and what does it mean to to play with all the different realms available for our bodies.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. For me, one of the things that kink has offered me is a way back into my body, which for so much of my life, has been a very unsafe to be. Being flogged, for instance, and allowing the sensation to exist and actually being able to lose myself in that moment. For a long time, it was one of the only ways that I could really get in my body and experience that kind of stuff outside of fucking, because walking around from day to day, I spent so much of my life just living up in my head and having no idea what was going on in my body because it wasn’t a safe place to be. I think, you’re so right, this getting to rewrite some stories and give ourselves new experiences or new endings, or new ways to exist in something that maybe hasn’t felt okay for a long time.
Sinclair Sexsmith: It’s complex all this power, bodies. That’s one of the reasons why I love playing with it because so many things come together in it, and I am so curious and interested in the different forms of power in the world – how do we have personal empowerment? How do we play with power interpersonally between people, and then what are the power structures that are in place in this culture? As an activist and a feminist, someone who’s interested in social justice movements, that piece is always there and always underlying a bunch of other stuff that I’m doing; partly because I fight the patriarchy or fight the queerarchy every day. I do go fetishize some of that stuff in my kink play and it feels like I wouldn’t love it so much if I wasn’t so involved in fighting it all the time. Does that make sense? It’s a kind of a lust, despise coin as well.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So before we jump into a couple listener questions, I would love for you to give us a little bit of a taste about what the Submissive Playground is all about and who it’s for.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Sure. So Submissive Playground, it’s an eight week online course. rife, my boy and I have done this for three years now. This will be the fifth time the course is running. We have 16 guest educators who are amazing; they range from really well known folks like Midori, Madison Young, Lee Harrington, to folks who you might not know super well right now but you probably will in the future because they’re amazing. Like Miasha Za and I don’t know who else. Tilly King is another amazing one. He talks about chronic pain and masochism. I put it together really because I noticed as a dominant, a lot of submissives – a lot of commonalities between submissives who are striving, and I’ve been a coach for a while, as well with folks. So I was noticing a lot of the similar challenges that people were going through, and wanted to just put it all in one place and make it more accessible. Because a lot of folks would love to, I don’t know, have a personal DS coach, but who has that kind of money? So if you can do one, like a course and invest a little bit here, you can get a lot of still that data out of it.
It’s broken down into a couple different modules with some of the core things that we identified as both the super sexy, and sometimes the really challenging pieces of submission. So there’s two really corporeal models of masochism and bondage and then there’s two that are a lot more psychological discipline and service. We go in depth into each of those concepts. We look at some guest videos, we read some porn, we watch some erotica, and everybody has some homework. Part of who the course is for, ideally, folks are on the self growth, like DS’s self growth path, and who like homework and, who want to be given tasks and assignments. And that is not all submissives, for sure. So the folks who want to do that investigation and work are the best fit for this for this exploration.
Dawn Serra: Would you say it’s for people who really know they’re a submissive and they’re trying to find their way or get clearer about what’s a good fit for them? Or could it also be someone who’s like, “I think that I might be a submissive and I’m not sure where to turn.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Absolutely. I think both of those. There’s a variety of folks that I think this would work really well for. So people who are like, “I’m pretty sure – I read 50 Shades of Grey and I’m like, ‘Oh, I really want that.’ But am I really? What does that mean? How do I even start?” It’s a great place for that because you get a lot of sense of what kind of things happen in DS relationships and what kind of play is available. One of the most fun parts of the course for me and for a lot of folks I think is the submissive community. It’s the many other people who are there, and there’s a message board in a chat room that people can go and make contact and share stories with each other. And that becomes really a goldmine of information and camaraderie, which is really good.
It’s also been an excellent place for folks who are like, “Yeah, I’m definitely submissive, but I really need to up my game. I want to be better at some things.” Or “I want to take it deeper. I have a desire for more, but I’m not sure what that is.” Then it’s also been great for more advanced submissives, who maybe have been in DS relationships for a long time, and maybe to the point where they’re getting bored. They’re like, “Yeah, I’ve done it all. I wrote the book on that. I teach classes on it, whatever. But now I need to remind myself why it’s hot and I need to get back into it.” They need to turn it back on again, it just becomes a default and it’s kind of in the background. So I think there’s a lot to get out of it for a variety of experiences. It tends to be fairly queer heavy and women heavy. There tend to be a lot of queer folks and a lot of women but there’s always a smattering of cis gays and trans guys, and switches too. Folks who are switches. Sometimes I top but also I submit in these ways, so I want to work on my submission particularly.
Dawn Serra: That sounds so fun and so fascinating, and so rich, and oh my god. I can’t wait for everyone to check it out, because the website is beautiful.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, thank you. rife is my graphic designer as well as everything else. And It’s very useful to own a slave who’s a graphic designer as someone who produces media content. So he has designed a ton of the back end course and it’s really lovely and fun to navigate for sure.
Dawn Serra: I’m going to have a link to Submissive Playground on the show notes for this episode and also on Sex Gets Real so everyone can check it out. Then if you are ready, I have a couple of listener questions that might be fun to roll around in.
Sinclair Sexsmith: I’m ready. Let’s do it.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so this first one is from a listener named Louise. It says: “Hi Dawn, I love the podcast. You have improved my outlook on sex and enjoyment since I’ve been listening. Doing things that make me feel sexy only adds to the overall dynamic. I have a partner of almost 20-years. We have a fantastic sex life. I read Mating in Captivity and truly felt like the elusive lucky couples mentioned in that book. We’re a fairly introspective couple and I’ve recently realized that he is a person that likes to choose in the moment what he wants to do, as opposed to plan and anticipate things which is more like me. So my question is this, if I’m really into light bondage, impact, play sex slave type stuff, and he’s really not a planner, how do we incorporate scenes into our lovemaking? I know that we’ll talk about it and play a little bit, but I was wondering if there is a way to lay out a bunch of options and then maybe let him decide in the moment. If you have any thoughts, I’d appreciate it.”
So, what do you do if you are a planner who likes some kinky stuff and your partner’s like, “Now I don’t want to do any planning. I just want to figure it out in the moment.”?
Sinclair Sexsmith: So I’m assuming that he’s open to the kinky stuff, even though he’s not much of a planner.
Dawn Serra: That would be my guess.
Sinclair Sexsmith: That seems true. Makes it easier to answer this, that’s for sure. So, I think that she kind of answered her question in the letter, too, which was, “Can we just lay a bunch of stuff out and have him pick and choose?” Sometimes, as in some of my dominant classes, I talk about creating a palette of permission, where there’s this artists palette that has 10 or 20 things on it that you know, as the dominant, that your submissive likes, or you know as a kinky person that your play partner likes – whatever it is. So you can pick from that palette from whatever you want. So, if he goes into the bedroom and lays out the rope and some paddles, and some floggers and a blindfold, and some hot wax or whatever it is, and then goes, “What do I want to play with tonight?” He knows that anything on that table would be a great thing to play with. Because that’s something that his partner likes. I think that’s a great way to be spontaneous. You could go, “Okay, I’m going to do this and then this, and then this and then we’ll fuck, and then good night,” or I don’t know, depending – your mileage may vary of the order of course.
A lot of folks use a lot of BDSM as a precursor to the orgasm, as foreplay to the orgasm. So I think she can answer her own question there. I think the trick is to go to the classes or conferences, or to wherever and get the skills about learning about how to use those toys or those particular things, so that when they’re at home and ready to be playing around the skills are there. He doesn’t have to go YouTube some bondage ties or something. You can just be like, “Oh, here’s some rope. Let’s do that tonight.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I also think that there’s this inherent assumption sometimes that comes with kinky play that the top or the dominant is going to be responsible for planning all the things and knowing all the things, and then surprising the bottom or the submissive with, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” The submissive or the bottom has just as much skin in the game. So it’s okay for her to come up with all of these plans, and make a list of all the things she’s interested in; maybe even saying, “Lately I’ve been in the mood for…” then giving him some options and then in the moment, he gets to be spontaneous from that short list. I think sometimes people feel like as the submissive, you just basically show up and the dominant is the one that’s responsible for all the planning or the top.
So I think that she’s absolutely on the right track that if she’s a planner, then she gets to put all of her lovely planning and organization skills to good use and make this really delicious, kinky spreadsheet of some kind. Then he gets to, in that moment, be like, “Okay, this is what I feel like doing right now.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, absolutely. It helps you know, it helps to share fantasies with each other about what you were just saying of, “Lately, I’ve been thinking about this.” It helps to keep in touch with each other about the inner erotic life. What have you been thinking about today? What are you fantasizing about today? What kind of craving do you have? Part of being a dominant also, for me, is making little rules. So sometimes I have rules where my boy has to text me something dirty every day or write me three scene examples of things that he’d like to do. Then I get to be like, “Oh, I’m going to pick this part from scene one, and a part from scene two, and I’m going to put this all together.” And I know that it’s something that he would be into, but I still get to put my own flavor on it.
Dawn Serra: That sounds delicious.
Sinclair Sexsmith: It’s pretty fun. Plus, I get dirty things in my inbox, which is my favorite.
Dawn Serra: Oh, yeah. That’s the best, right the middle of your day and, “Well, now my day is better.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Exactly.
Dawn Serra: Okay, I have a question from a listener who is going to remain anonymous, and it’s about a DS dynamic that she has and whether or not there was a betrayal. So if you’re up for it, it’s a little bit long. She gives us some backstory, but I’d love to read it to you and then we can roll around in it.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Great.
Dawn Serra: So it says: “I absolutely love your podcast. I’m new to BDSM at 42 years old. The long story short, is that I reconnected with an old lover back in December who showed me this world and I have to say I love it. We’re both married and I don’t want to leave my marriage of 20 years. We joined Fetlife a few months ago, and I really like connecting with lots of other BDSM people. I’m learning so much and making lots of friends. My dom daddy and I are both very open minded and in love. We’ve been talking for many months about having a threesome with a fun kinky female. Eventually, we would also like to try a DP scene. I’ve been chatting with three lovely ladies, but they’ve pretty much all turned into friends, which is great too. I’ve been faithful my entire marriage up until now, as has my dom, and we don’t want any random hookups. But what happened recently was he messaged a few ladies to make friends on Fet, and one seemed to click. He shared the conversation. with me and what happened was I completely freaked out.”
“We had discussed no one on one with other people. It was just going to be some sex and no intimacy. I found his messages to her upsetting, because although he tried to keep it kind of Q&A, it kept getting derailed and bordering on sexting. She asked because it would be her first time, too, with a woman and if we were opposed to one on one sex with him. He willingly offered it and said that oral was on the table too. Although we discussed that a threesome was something we were willing to do together. We never said that it would be one on sex with one person and the third. He admitted that after he had been talking to her, he got really aroused and he got carried away, but I feel really hurt and defensive. I just listened to your podcast on consent and threesomes, and I feel like he broke my trust as a dom. We refer to each other as sir and daddy, and me as sub and little or baby girl. He was negotiating the guidelines between him and her without me being involved. And it felt like a knife going through my chest. I’m not sure what to think, because I’m not upset with her in any way or the idea of sharing in this threesome setting, but it’s the fact that I feel like he left me out and he didn’t abide by our agreement. Did he break our contract or am I out of line for feeling upset?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, so it sounds like they are pretty new to this daddy-little girl dynamic, and they had been talking about a threesome. He started engaging with this woman in a sexual way that made her feel betrayed. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on the dynamic and how to work through that.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Honestly, it feels much more like a poly issue than a DS issue. I think that most folks who play with both poly or who play with other people, and you play within a DNS dynamic have to decide if the DS is inside of the poly or the poly’s inside of the DS. So it sounds like she and her dom were approaching this negotiation with having a threesome as equal partners, That she gets to say what she is and isn’t comfortable with, that he gets to say what he is and isn’t comfortable with, and they’re trying to find some equal ground to go, “Great. Let’s go play with this thing that is exciting.” Which would be very different than a dominant who said, “You’re going to play with this person and I don’t care if you like it or not,” or “ I’m going to loan you ou,” or whatever, “I’m going to choose or I’m going to play with who I want.” That would be more like the power dynamic is on the outside and the poly is underneath that or that the open non-monogamy is underneath that.
So it sounds like they’re navigating this openness, this non-monogamy from an egalitarian place. What it sounds like to me is that they both stumbled on a boundary that they may or may not have known was there, and that it all depends to me on what his responses to this action. If he’s going, “Oh, you’re right. I did get carried away. I understand you want it to be not one on one, you want this as something that we only do together. That’s totally okay. I’m going to back off. We probably shouldn’t mess around with that person because I maybe went too far already.” Whatever, then that’s one thing and I think she can rebuild the trust with him, and that it’s not a huge violation necessarily. But if he’s going, “Well, I don’t know, she’s pretty hot. I really want to play with her. This is the way she feels comfortable.” That’s a different kind of reaction to have. But I don’t necessarily think that he did something – cheated or that he broke trust really deeply, but I totally understand that her feelings were really hurt and that she was threatened. And that’s totally real. I don’t mean to downplay that, but I think that he didn’t necessarily break anything as a dominant, I hope. I think it’s possible to redeem.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I mean, what I’m getting from this is, you’re right, the hurt feelings are super valid. But what it really sounds like is there’s some confusion around what they’re doing. She’s brand new to BDSM and they have this daddy-little girl dynamic, but at the same time, they’re co-planning this threesome, that, at least from her email didn’t sound like it had very many power dynamics. It was more like, “Let’s do this fun thing with this third person.” To me, this is just classic – this is what happens when you start trying new things, and it’s involving other people, and you aren’t really sure of what feels in what way. And when you stumble on something, it can feel really shitty, and horrible. Then you have to take stock and say, “Okay, well, we learned that thing. So now let’s regroup and decide how we want to move forward from here.”
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally, totally. Well said.
Dawn Serra: Oh, go ahead Oh sir.
Sinclair Sexsmith: I think with a lot of navigating new things, you don’t always know your boundaries until you stumble onto them. So it becomes the skill – you have to have some fuckup recovery skills, because if you’re if you’re going into new uncharted territory, you just don’t know where the fuck up is going to happen because it probably will happen at some point. So you got to figure out how to regroup, how to get back together with your partner, how to put the brakes on right away and go, “Whoa, I just found a place where this sucks, let’s stop.” Which is really challenging and not everybody’s so good at it. It’s really sensitive when we can make mistakes or go too far. For some people, one sort of, we went too far is a deal breaker. But for playing with edgy sexualities and non-normative sexualities, a lot of times, we’re going to go too far so we got to flex that muscle and get stronger at it.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. The other thing that jumps out at me a little bit is both of them are married and they’re having this – they’re cheating with each other. So it’s not an ethical non-monogamy with the married partners, it’s that they’re secretly having an affair. And that’s going to complicate things too. If you are married and then having this BDSM relationship with this person, and your spouse doesn’t know about it, the stakes are super high.
Sinclair Sexsmith: That’s a very good point.
Dawn Serra: So if the stakes are already really sky high for having this relationship, and on top of it, you’re brand new to BDSM, adding on other people and trying other things too quickly, I think, is putting a flame near a powderkeg. In this situation, I think they really need to tread carefully around how high the stakes are, that’s going to make everything seem a lot more drastic and dramatic when they do stumble on those things. Because it’s not just their relationship that might get shaken up. If something really does devastate you, it can take a toll on your marriage. That makes it, I think, a lot more challenging to deal with these things. Even just beyond the normal.
Sinclair Sexsmith: That’s a really good point. Here’s the other thing, she already knows that he’s willing to cheat. Because he is. So for him to then talk to somebody else and make it seem – even if it seemed like it was just a little too far from what they’ve negotiated, she knows that he’s willing to do that. So her reaction might not be so out of line because part of her understands that he’s willing to go too far and he’s willing to violate the trust of someone that he loves.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. For me, as we’ve been talking, the thing that I’m starting to feel is, it sounds like there needs to be some work around really digging in and getting clear on how much trust there is. Whether or not that needs a little bit more time and attention before you jump into threesomes and group sex, and things like that. I think maybe go back to basics before you add another complicating factor on top of everything.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Yeah, it’s funny when you read it, and when I was thinking about my response to it, it didn’t even occur to me, the marriage part and my dom separate from my marriage. I just kind of assumed that everybody was above board about that. But that’s just the world that I live in. I do think it’s really common for married folks to discover that they’re kinky later and not want to leave their spouse and not want to change their domestic life in some way, but that they discover that this is the thing they really can’t live without or they really don’t want to. I know a lot of married folks who have become non-monogamous to have kink play in their life. So that’s a very common thing and it’s very possible to talk about it, and meet folks who are navigating that challenge because it is really challenging.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I agree. I want to wish, both of the listeners who wrote in, luck with navigating your kinkiness and finding ways to be spontaneous, and plan and also finding ways to really nurture yourself – to that anonymous listener on the second one, to nurture yourself through what sounds like a very challenging and potentially complicated situation. Sinclair, I would love for you to share with everyone how they can find you and stay in touch. I’ll, of course, have all the links on Sex Gets Real but for people who are listening and want to check you out right away, where can they find you?
Sinclair Sexsmith: Absolutely, submissiveplayground.com is what’s coming up the most next. We’re working on that real hard right now, it starts in October. I write at sugarbush.net, which has a huge archive. It’s 10 years old now. So it’s got a lot of stories out there, a lot of dirty stuff, a lot of stuff about power dynamics, and feminism, and kink and whatever anything I can think of. I do lots of toy reviews, lots of strap-on sex. That’s kind of my thing. I also teach college workshops that travel around and teach, and talk in the Spring and in the Fall. So that’s gearing up and that website is Mr. Sexsmith calm, which is mrsexsmith.com. Right now I’m working from a Patreon really strongly so all of my writing is at patreon.com/mrsexsmith. The folks who are on Patreon, that’s where I’ve been writing really deeply about this stuff around depression, and DS and mastery; and the stuff that’s been more recent me going on with my relationship and how challenging it’s been to navigate being a depressed person and trying to be a dominant at the same time. So folks are interested in more of that story, it’s through the Patreon. It’s just too tender for me to put out in general public. So it’s behind a wall right now. But hopefully soon, when it gets a little stronger, I’ll be able to tell more of those stories.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I love how you said “living the story versus telling the stories”. That makes total sense.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally. Somebody else wrote that recently. I totally stole that. But it makes a lot of sense to me too. I mean, I have a lot of places. Most of the time, you know, Twitter is a great place to follow me because all the stuff I’m doing is always there. I’m always talking about Twitter all the time. There’s a mailing list, of course, from sugarbush.net or from any of those places that you can get involved in. Keep in touch with what’s going on.
Dawn Serra: Yay. Well, I will have all the links to all the things for this episode, so everyone who’s listening, please go check it out. If you are at all interested if you got that little tickle of like, “Ooh, that might be me,” about submissive playground, please go check it out because the folks that are involved with this – some of the expert speakers were blowing my mind when I saw them, including Princess Kali. She’s one of them, right?
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, yeah.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, she was on the show a few weeks ago.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Oh, fantastic. I love her. Tina Horne, who also runs the wire people into that podcast, which is fantastic. Andrea Zanin, who’s a well known master out of Toronto. Katie Diamond, who is Ms. International, Ms. Bootblack 2011, and artists. There’s so many, there’s so many great people. The folks who come and attend the class are really amazing, too. There’s usually a cohort about 50-ish people who’ve come and people have made really deep friendships out of that. So I really love it. I love hearing everybody’s stories and talking about their lives, and chatting about submission. I feel really lucky to be able to make a space like this.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it just sounds so juicy and delicious. I love it.
Sinclair Sexsmith: I know. You should come.
Dawn Serra: I know. I’m going to check it out.
Sinclair Sexsmith: Totally, totally. I’m so glad to talk to you today. Thanks for making time for me.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. To all of the listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Of course, you can submit your own questions and comments and stories over at sexgetsreal.com. I would love to hear from you and always follow along on Twitter and Facebook at Sex Gets Real. This is Dawn Serra and I will talk to you next week.