Kink 101 Workshop: Why Don’t You Just Fuck?

This blog was written by me, Phoenix Phyre. While everyone at Swinky Life is very open minded and all accepting, I am, by self definition, a cisgendered straight male (he/him/hey you) and speak personally from that perspective. Here at Swinky Life, we strive to be respectful to everyone, including not asking anyone to be PC… in this blog, I speak from my authentic voice. If anything here offends anyone, please contact me directly at phoenixphyre@swinkylife.com and let me know.

~ Phoenix

What is This All About?

“Why Don’t You Just Fuck” is Swinky Life’s Intro to Kink and BDSM workshop. Sometime back, we wrote a quick blog on the idea, and then evolved it into a workshop. It is, to be honest, one of the primary reasons Swinky Life exists at all. As our love for all things kinky grew, along with our love of the swinger lifestyle, we knew we really wanted to help others find their way to a place where they could live lives filled to the brim with the amazing fun and adventure that we were experiencing. We know (or at least strongly believe) that ignorance and fear of the unknown are two powerful forces that keep people away from kink. This workshop was created to resolve those concerns.

This workshop, at its core, is about teaching you the basic ideas behind what makes kink, kink. Then teaching you how to approach them in a way that is no longer scary in any fashion.

What Will I Learn?

A LOT!! This is actually a very big workshop, and our goal is to tailor it to the specific audience so that they get exactly what they need. For the purpose of this blog, the specific audience under discussion is the attendees of Naughty N’awlins 2022.

Our goal is to teach the whys first, then the hows. Knowing why keeps you motivated positively, rather than afraid, or confused. Once motivated, we teach the hows. Those hows mean SAFELY how and help you begin to create an actual skill set. Once you have a basic skill set in place, you can then progress at your own pace towards mastery.

Think of this like playing a musical instrument. First, you have to learn the instrument. Then, you need to learn some scales. You COULD just learn to play a song… but then you only know one song. Learning the scales takes longer, and feels harder… but then, you can suddenly play lots of songs… kinda… one note at a time. BUT… you have the building blocks. The rest is just practice and experience.

At Swinky Life, our aim is to give you the building blocks to move forward, and the motivation to want to continue.

How can kink enhance your relationship?

The motivation comes directly from answering this question. This blog is not a summary of the workshop, but more of a motivational talk about it; but this section is closely following the content flow of the class. And so, when we discuss how kink can enhance your relationship, some of the things we will talk about are:

• Communication
• Trust
• Intimacy

These things are foundational to good kink play. As luck would have it, they are also pretty important to any healthy intimate relationship. Did I just say that kink can make any intimate relationship stronger? WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?

Introduction to Sensation Play

Once we have you motivated, then we begin to teach you skills. We begin with Sensation Play, and to be honest, this is a big umbrella that covers most of kink. While we will go over more detail in class, the act of calling it sensation play normalizes and destigmatizes it. It lets people who are nervous about it approach it with comfort and enthusiasm.

If I said to you “Take this stick and beat the hell outta her ass with it”, you may be a bit concerned about that. But If I say “Take this stick, and lay it gently on the small of her back… now slide it, slowly, down towards her ass, lifting your hand as you go, so that by the time you reach her ass, the only part left touching her is the very tip. Now, take the tip, and drag it slowly… SLOWLY… gently, right down the crack of her ass…” Wow, that sounds hot as fuck!! This will be how we discuss sensation play throughout the entire workshop. Taking something that would normally be considered brutish, and turning it into something fun, romantic, playful, and very interesting. And it will all be about creating new sensations for your lover.

Introduction to Impact Play

But at the end of it all, you really do want to smack her ass… or her boob… or her legs… etc. The progression from sensation to impact can be as fast or slow, harsh or tender, dramatic or subtle as you like. But the point we will stress is that they are all variations on the same theme. Impact play is anything that strikes your lover with a percussive force… be that your hand, a flogger you got from a vendor or the wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer. A shopping trip to Home Depot will never be the same after this class!

Introduction to Rope Play

No Swinky Life intro to kink class is complete without some exposure to rope! Rope has a million uses in kink and bdsm, and is by far the favorite toy and medium for me and Myrina. There is much depth and technical consideration for good, safe rope play; however, there is only a limited amount of time for the workshop. Therefore, in keeping with Swinky Life tenants that you leave every workshop with enough hands-on skills to run to your room and get busy, we teach two or three knots to get you started. These knots are universal, and we will quickly demonstrate multiple variations of how they can be deployed.

Hands-On Practice

Finally, the practice… again, like practicing your scales, this is very important. Practice in the beginning makes sure you are doing the basics properly. While you can do that on your own, it is so much more effective and efficient if done with someone who already has a strong skill set. But beyond enforcing good basics, practice over time is where you really begin to see and learn the nuances. We will get you off to a good start on this.

How Is This Class Different?

This brings us full circle, back to the beginning of this post. We ended the intro by saying…

This workshop, at its core, is about teaching you the basic ideas behind what makes kink, kink. Then teaching you how to approach them in a way that is no longer scary in any fashion.

We have all been to many Kink 101 workshops, and as we discussed this (in a paddle boat, on a lagoon, in Belize, as we were dreaming up Swinky Life workshops) we agreed that most of them were quite bad. They did not motivate, or encourage; some of them frankly made it all seem even scarier. They did not teach skills, they just showed off their own skills. They did not provide us anything but trepidation. Many of them were not even capable of filling their time with relevant content. They just became open conversations about random shit loosely related to bdsm. In short, they were awful.

We wanted to do better. Much better.

Our goal for every Swinky Life workshop is that you leave with skills and information that allow you to go directly back to your room and begin having fun. In this particular case, we also want to engage your mind. Make you curious and excited to begin exploring your new kinky world. Finally, much of kink takes a little bit of equipment… So, in this class, we also provide a goody bag full of things to immediately get kinky with.

Everything in the bag will be used in the class, so you will know what to do with it later. As we said earlier, everything about this workshop is tailored for the target audience of the day, including the contents of the bag. It is not a gift bag of high-end equipment. It is a fun bag to get you up and going in the workshop, and keep you up and going long afterward.

Seriously, we hope this workshop changes your life. We hope that in one or two hours we can open your mind up a bit; fill it with a good mix of new information. We put real solid things into your hands. Let you feel how using them to implement this new information can spark an emotional and physical response of its own, and send you down a new, as yet to be explored path, that brings years of delight to you and your playmates. This is our goal. And that is what makes this workshop different.

If you are coming to Naughty in N’awlins this year, please check the schedule and come to our workshop. We would be honored to see you there.

~Phoenix