Kink tech 101: How to safely explore your erotic edges with BDSM technology

Exploring new sexual practices, particularly within the realm of kink and BDSM, comes with a unique set of considerations regarding safety. Introduce technology into the equation, and an entirely new dimension of challenges and opportunities emerges.

What’s interesting about the intersection of kink and technology is that the kink community inherently recognizes these challenges. While incorporating technology into kink practices may introduce additional complexities and potential safety risks due to reduced human control, it also holds the promise of elevating safety standards in this domain.

A match made in heaven? Or perhaps in the dungeons of hell – depending on your kinky preferences.

Defining kink tech

Firstly, a kink often refers to a non-normative sexual practice or pleasurable activity outside conventional “vanilla-sex” scripts. These desires can encompass a wide spectrum, from powerplay and roleplay to sensory play. Importantly, a kink need not necessarily be sexual; it can be an intimate form of play. In contrast, a fetish often involves a specific sexual act or object necessary for arousal.

BDSM —an acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism— can fall under either the kink or fetish category. Thus, when discussing kink technology, what we aren’t referring to is a particular fetish for technology, known as technophilia, which defines the sexual attraction to technology.

In this context, we are exclusively looking at how technology can be designed for and used in a kinky setting to explore your sexual edges. For example, playing with pleasure, pain, or power. All while emphasizing safety.

Kink safety measures: Knowing the difference between good & bad pain

Speaking of safety in kink, it’s crucial to understand the acronyms that underline the basis of consensual play, such as RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink), SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual), SSICK (Safe, Sane, Informed, Consensual Kink), PRICK (Personal Responsible Informed Consensual Kink), and the four Cs (Caring, Communication, Consent, and Caution).

What’s particularly intriguing about kink exploration is its capacity to explicitly navigate the boundaries around desires and limits – often referring to the limits of pleasure and pain. These sensations are interconnected, as certain forms of “good pain” can trigger the release of endorphins similar to those experienced during pleasure. For example, spanking on the “sweet spot” under the fleshy bit of the butt.

It’s crucial to discern between “good pain” which can deepen our experience of pleasure and “bad pain” which typically indicates something is wrong. For example, spanking on the area of the lower back around the kidneys can be dangerous.

The use of kink tech demands an even more acute awareness of these distinctions, along with a deep understanding of your limits, and the associated risks.

The benefits of kink tech

AI kink tech for self-discovery

While most AI chatbots won’t allow for NSFW content, there are plenty of adult-themed platforms popping up – and it wasn’t going to be long before a kinkier version came out.

In beta testing, KinkTalk AI is developing a kink-friendly chat experience that “allows any user to explore their personal sexual preferences. It also introduces conversational erotica to adult entertainment – where we currently have a lot of visual and audio,” says its founder, Jack.

At present, it offers four different characters: a dominant step-mom, a 21-year-old subservient schoolgirl, a protective bodyguard, and a dominant roommate, for users to interact with and explore their kinks and fetishes.

Jack envisions the people who will use KinkTalk AI are those “on a journey exploring their own sexual awakening and wanting to indulge in various kinks they may be interested in. I hope it is viewed and used as a safe space for people to discover themselves before bridging to something with another human.”

While KinkTalk AI currently offers a pretty heteronormative lens – as the user has to pick between being male or female with an opposite-sex character – ModelV2 offers some erotic hope with custom character creation. Jack shares that his goal for the AI is to “fine-tune it enough for a user to have full control of defining the AI’s persona in the roleplay. This would allow for a very intimate, personalized experience.”

Online platforms and apps forming kink communities

While people have some opportunity to connect in real life at local Munches (a play-free social gathering) and play parties, technology has transformed the potential for anyone interested in kink, allowing connections to flourish online beyond local geographies.

When it comes to topics like kink, it’s naturally harder to openly discuss fantasies as these are often deemed taboo by mainstream society. Online forums and sex-positive apps are hopeful and potentially utopic spaces for people to explore desire and connect with other kinksters in a safe container.

Not to mention the fact that resources around safety and kink are more widely available online than they ever were offline.

Sex-positive dating apps and fetish sites, like Feeld and Fetlife, offer a platform for people to find and meet people who want to help fulfill each other’s kinks and fetishes. Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto and editor-in-chief of Boyslut zine, shared with SEXTECHGUIDE that he’s “been using hook-up apps since my early twenties, allowing me to find and meet other kinksters”.

Kink tech toys for exploring power play

Since the pandemic, long-distance remote-controlled sex toys have become widespread. These are great examples of tech that can be used for kink purposes. Zane shares that he’s “used long-distance, Bluetooth-controlled sex toys to control my partner’s orgasms without being in the same room.”

Whether you’re in the same room, or on the other side of the world, controlling a partner’s toy can heighten an erotic experience as there is power at play, dominating by withholding and edging their pleasure, and submitting to the whims of another.

There are also a variety of teledildonic devices that allow this control to become even more creative within kink practices, including simultaneous dual-connected toys, audio-activated sex tech, exploring digital non-monogamy, or allowing strangers on the internet to control your toy.

Lovense, for example, set up a platform that lets you have online orgies with up to 100 people with everyone controlling each other’s toys, virtually fulfilling a lot of people’s kink for group sex, without having to even be in the same room as each other.

Kink tech devices for discovering pleasure and pain

While vibrators offer an alternative sensation in traditional sex (self or partnered) to enhance the experience of pleasure, there are devices that incorporate a range of intensities that verge on the edge of pain.

Zane told SEXTECHGUIDE about his experience at a queer sex party with a “thera-dildo”, a Theragun with specially designed dildo attachments, made by Therafun. “It was extremely intense,” he shared, and even though he had a partner warm him up with “a ton of lube and their fingers” it still didn’t prepare him for the “intensity of what was to come.”

“Even on the lowest setting, a Theragun moves aggressively and rapidly, far faster than fingers or a penis ever could. At first, I couldn’t take it longer than five seconds without it being too painful.”

He mentioned that after some breathing and relaxing, “I could last about a minute, and it felt a combination of painful and pleasurable. I was taking deep breaths as my eyes rolled to the back of my head.” In a similar vein, fucking machines have been around for years in the BDSM world.

Letting technology take over the control —offering penetration at an excessive speed to stimulate the G-spot or P-spot can be the ultimate form of submission— as long as you know your limits and create a safe container to submit.

Kink tech devices for new sensation play

Another kink tech device that enhances the human experience, by turning the human body into a sex toy, is electro-stimulation. Also known as E-stim is the “application of a small electrical current to the body via the skin to activate the nerve endings” Claire Blakeborough, Marketing and Communications Manager at ElectraStim explains.

It is most commonly used in the medical field for pain relief or muscular rehabilitation, “but within the adult industry it’s been adapted to stimulate those same nerve endings in a pleasurable way,” Blakeborough told us.

Within a kink setting, electro-sex offers intense sensations “akin to spanking, slapping, or sharp prickles with little to no physical effort on the part of the giver” which is perfect for ElectraStim’s users who are professional Doms and Dommes, explains Blakeborough, “as they can inflict a huge range of stimulation with a very simple setup.”

Not only is it great in a BDSM dynamic but when playing with a partner, “electro-stimulation can be shared in a unique way,” says Blakeborough, by touching each other while using the unipolar accessories “you’ll complete the electrical circuit, and feel the sensations throughout all areas of your skin that’s touching. This means that massage, foreplay, and penetrative sex can be transformed as both your bodies become the toy.”

Zane tells SEXTECHGUIDE he’s used electro-stimulation himself. While it wasn’t intentionally for sexual purposes, he remarked that the “benefit of electro-play is simply experiencing a new sensation. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever tried sexually … Not to mention the endorphin rush you get from anticipation is a high in and of itself.”

The power of electro-stimulation, Blakeborough emphasizes, is that “it can sometimes ‘override’ our natural responses to stimulation as the nerve endings are targeted so directly.” She explains that consensually forced orgasms are achieved much more easily than with a vibrator due to the targeted stimulation, whereby “many of our users report their climax takes them by surprise when playing with electro.”

The illusion of safety with kink tech: Censorship, privacy, and health considerations

Sex-negative platforms

Social media might seem like a great place to meet people who are into the same or similar kinks, but thanks to online censorship and a sex-negative business landscape, safety is a shallow concept. Kinksters, along with sex educators and sex workers, are often shadow-banned or removed entirely. Leaving people to their own devices, and having to resort to other means, like OnlyFans (which in in 2021 briefly threatened to remove adult creators entirely) and the many similar alternatives that have launched since.

Many sex-positive apps are shut down or banned from Apple and Google Play Stores. This censorship is often because payment gateways have strict restrictions about any content that could be deemed ‘adult’.

Privacy issues

Of course, controlling a partner’s toy from afar comes with risks, such as how you communicate ongoing consent and what extra precautions you will include. For example, it’s pretty much a no-brainer to have an agreement that you can turn off the device at any time, no questions asked.

Additional risks come into play with Wi-Fi-controlled devices as they can be easily hacked if not protected properly. Privacy is less set in stone, as weak protection could leave personal data exposed, and devices could potentially be controlled by strangers non-consensually.

For example, kink technologies such as the Cellmate chastity cage, and an endoscopic dildo have both been at risk of hacking – which could easily leave users trapped in their devices or having their private parts watched, non-consensually. Causing not only privacy issues but the risk of physical and emotional harm too.

Physical safety

Speaking of physical safety, the latest Cellmate chastity cage has added electro-stimulation to the device. E-stim can be particularly dangerous – and while All ElectraStim toys are “designed and manufactured to the same standards as the medical industry” not all electro-sex devices on the market are created to the same safety standards.

In order to feel physically safe when using kink tech you must be aware of the risks before using any given device — and ultimately accept that there isn’t a total safety net here, because technology isn’t human and cannot listen or respond to your needs in the same way.

To keep things as safe as possible, this involves doing your research, reading the fine print, and listening to the experts. For example, electro-stimulation play should NEVER be above the waist and especially nowhere near the chest or head, and you definitely should not try electro sex if you are/have:

• Pregnant
• A heart condition of any kind or a pacemaker-fitted
• Epilepsy
• Any genital disorders or injuries

It’s important to do your own research before using any kink tech device. ElectraStim offers specific advice guides for what to look out for when playing with electro-stimulation.

When playing with kink tech that is designed to penetrate, like a Theragun dildo or ‘fucking machine’, it’s important to make sure you are fully aware of the risks, and how to decipher between “good pain” and “bad pain” in your own body.

As Zane mentioned, you’ll want to ensure that you’re body is fully prepared for such an intense experience. He reflects upon his own from a place of learning, whereby “next time I do this, I will spend an hour relaxing and stretching out my anus in preparation. I want to be a lot looser going into this, so it’s less pain and more pleasure.”

How kink tech can help with safety concerns

Despite the risks of kink tech, there are some redeeming qualities that technology can offer to increase safety when exploring kink.

Pre-scene negotiation is necessary when exploring kink practices, and kink tech tools such as the NoGrey app (which no longer exists), or kink-positive dating apps, which offer a space for people to express their kinks and sexual preferences in advance of connecting.

Having an online space to share this information can be particularly useful. Sexual communication is hard enough, largely thanks to an unhealthy dose of societal shame around these topics.

Research shows that “sometimes it’s just easier to type things than say” what we want when it comes to negotiating in BDSM partner sexual communication.

The results of one study from 2018 indicated that using technology had a positive impact with “disinhibiting, particularly in negotiation, fantasy exchange, and channel selection, multimodality within checking in, planning, foreplay, and preferring face-to-face sexual communication and activity, relational maintenance, particularly within 24/7 hierarchical relationships and LDRs, as well as changes in sexual communication mediums with relational progress.”

KinkTalk AI was also created to help bridge the gap between having personal desires and knowing how to communicate those desires.

Jack shared he “noticed that experimenting and exploring within the kink community can be a daunting task and often a barrier for many people to even begin exploring their kinkier fantasies.” He has the idea of KinkTalk, a kink-friendly AI, “to act as a bridge for people wanting to explore various roleplays, sexual preferences, and all things kink in the safety of their own privacy.”

He goes on to say that “there are countless stories of newcomers performing scenes without proper safety precautions and that is something we all are saddened to see. A goal of ours is to integrate the necessary etiquette within the bot as a way to educate newer members of the kink scene and hopefully avoid risky events.”

When it comes to devices like E-Stim, there is also the necessary need for a real conversation. As Blakeborough explains, this isn’t just a “simple” purchase. Real conversations around desires and limits are fundamental for safety.

It could be argued that the additional precautionary measures make it safer, or at least more risk-aware and consensual, than introducing your average sex toy into a dynamic where perhaps no communication has taken place beforehand.

What’s next for the realm of kink tech? The playful possibilities are endless

So, we’ve covered the benefits, limitations, and redemptive qualities – but what does the future hold for kink technology?

Personalization is pretty ideal when it comes to intimacy – we know there isn’t one size that fits all in sex, hence the need for better communication tools, but also a deeper understanding of what our desires and fantasies are, and how to make them a reality.

One person who is very attuned to his desires is Zachary Zane. His hopes for the future of kink tech would be to fulfil an “ultimate fantasy” of his, “something that allows for bigger and better gangbangs. I don’t know exactly how that would look, but I just love servicing a ton of men and women simultaneously, so any kink tech that helps facilitate gangbangs is my fantasy!”

Perhaps with the development of virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, and wearable devices, kink tech could help to facilitate a wide array of fetishes and kinks in the future.

Let’s just hope the kinky robots are into dominating for fun, and not mulling a more subservient future for us mere humans.