The only thing worse than bad sex, is boring sex. You may read this and think to yourself, “Boring sex? Me? Never. I’m fabulous in the sack” (flips hair). Stop lying, queen. You are part of the problem. Faking it and praying to make it. Dozing off while your partner flails around on top of you like freshly caught fish. The cacophony of heavy breathing, forced moaning, and cheap lines lifted from movies where doctors seem to only specialize in genitals and plumbers always offer to snake more than just the household drains. Gurl. We. Have. All. Been. There. But when did sex become so mechanical (Put it in and pant)? So uncreative (you must put it in or it isn’t sex)? So heteronormative (***pause for eye rolls***)?
Whether you are tired of your masti coming missionary ishtyle or just need a little more masala in your vanilla bedroom situation, the good people of Gaysi have got you covered. On August 21st the Gaysi Family and friends got together and organized K Se Kink at the Upstairs Studio in Bandra. Inspired by a recent workshop on kink, the team decided to bring kink to the people with a riveting panel discussion and conversation on fetish, consent, and the limits of our own desires. The two-hour event, designed to be a crash course in kink, gave the audience a sneak peak into kink subcultures from the perspective of practitioners. The panel featured resident kinkspert (kink expert…HA!) Nischint, kink aficionado Raj from The Kinky Collective, the always on point Agents of Ishq creator Paromita Vohra, and Gaysi’s own Priya as host.
For the uninitiated, kink is simply any kind of sexual practice, desire, or urge that is considered unconventional. As the fabulous panel members suggested, kink is itself a relative term, like queer, one open to interpretation based on the cultural norms and logics that structure any given society. Thought this way, kink is not so much a readily available buffet option of sexual fetishes for the sexually daring. Rather, the term kink indexes modes of sexual expression that seek something beyond normative forms of sexual interaction.
Normativity here is not simply about whom you are having sex with (man, woman, genderqueer, trans*, etc) but how you are having sex. As Paromita suggested, sex is deeply tied to relations of power. It is precisely these relations of power that kink not only aims to sexualize but also question. For instance, Priya’s emphasis on consent, negotiation, listening, and aftercare indicated that kink subcultures seek to democratize the sexual encounter between persons, while simultaneously leaving the individual body a dictatorship. From safety words to rules to the art of listening, the panelists highlighted the importance of allowing each person to confidently and authoritatively vocalize what is and is not pleasurable during sex.
It is not a kink event unless someone gets spanked, gagged, or tied up. So, a little demonstration was necessary. As one volunteer assumed the position to get spanked by Raj, another participant was bound and tied up on his knees, while Nischint caressed them gently. Both situations highlighted one of the key revelations of kink: to disrupt how bodies experience pleasure and challenge what can be thought of as pleasurable. Behind the whips and chains and the pleasure talk was not only attention to care—to making sex a team effort rather than a race to climax— but to using kink as a way to challenge what we think sex is. Rather than sexual pleasure being about pole or hole, kink asks us to dream about the body’s potential to be a whole sexual organ, one sensitive to touch, caress, and even some light (or rough) spanking. At a time when there is so much talk of banning, of normalcy, of that which is natural, the event invited us to dream of an otherwise to our mundane sexual lives. Nothing says Sunday-Funday like the Gaysi Family team, chai, a little hardcore bondage, and the collective search for new ways of finding sexual bliss.
A very special thank you to all of the participants and to IMBesharam for providing a few kinky products from their collection. You can find more of their sexy products here.
