Prelude
It wasn’t so long ago that I really devoured everything on the subject of kink and sexuality. This included the podcast ‘Why Are People Into That?!’, also known as ‘Ya(P)->T?!’. Once a week, producer and sex worker Tina Horn interviewed her respective colleagues from the BDSM scene. Each episode focussed on one topic relating to sex, kink and gender. The best thing was that the podcast was not ashamed to address kinks, which even kinksters prefer to keep quiet about, such as cannibalism, fascism/Nazis, clowns, piss and poppers. But there were also episodes on erotica, trans porn, how sexy books can be or which BDSM comics people can recommend in the podcatcher. As you can imagine, I was a little sad when I had listened to all the episodes and realised that no new episodes were being produced. From my point of view, I still had a long way to go and the topics were far from exhausted.
But people move on, find other projects, and I didn’t have to wait long before I received the announcement that Tina Horn would be publishing her podcast as a book in the near future. I’ve been waiting eagerly ever since, and suddenly the time had come. The wait was partly worth it…
The actual meat
The book consists of nine chapters (plus Intro and Outro). Each chapter (similar to the podcast back then) deals with a main kink, which sometimes also functions as a hook, which Horn then uses to roll out and explain further topics.
In the first three chapters, Horn uses the more well-known kinks such as Feet, Impact Play or CNC as an introduction to possibly pick up the fresh meat of the kink scene and to discuss the basics of the BDSM scene. What does BDSM mean? What are misconceptions? What are the basic things to bear in mind when practising BDSM etc.? The CNC topic in particular serves to explain why communication, check-ins, consent models and yes-maybe-no lists are important.
After that, it quickly gets down to business. Six further chapters follow, in which the sex worker explains her relationship and the cultural significance of the following kinks in essay form: fisting, cash, cannibalism, sploshing, bimbofication and orgies. There are also explanations of vore, ageplay, mommy/daddy, fauxcest, sex parties, poly relationships, masturbation and porn.
To be honest, the book doesn’t really pick up speed until the fourth chapter. The basics are ticked off and Horn finally dives into the world of kink, without any additional explanations or comments on safety, but instead it’s finally all about kink and the cultural readings and interpretations of it. Only then does Tina Horn mention more colleagues and other publications that deal with the practice and cultural history of BDSM. If you’re as much of a book nerd as I am, you’ll be delighted with the many small footnotes and the final bibliography.
Each essay is fluid, the subdivisions that sometimes pop up sometimes come up a little short. What takes centre stage is narrative prose; the academic explanations with the help of Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler or Julia Kristeva are brief and provide more of a supplement than the focus of a chapter. Which, to be honest, I very much welcome, because the last thing I want to see in my kink and in a BDSM book is psychoanalysis (I have a deep aversion to it).
Nonetheless, the book isn’t perfect. I know that book titles, like blurbs, don’t necessarily have to come from the author themselves. Once the author submits the manuscript, the publisher will do everything possible to edit the book so that it sells well. Of course, the author can object, but in the end it’s the publisher who decides whether the book is published or not. In other words, the title of the book is completely misleading.
This book only deals with the US BDSM scene. Other continents or scenes such as in Germany or Japan do not appear and are not mentioned. What’s more, yes, the book only touches on psychoanalysis, while at the same time empirical studies on sex, kink and gender are missing, and anecdotal evidence is the unit with which the book works. On the one hand, it is understandable that a sex worker does not have the academic resources to administer various studies. However, as a really successful and established sex educator, she would have the social connections to possibly access them, provided they have been published. And even if there aren’t many studies on BDSM, they do exist. The fact that they are missing here is a shame and a waste of potential. (My personal go-to would be the Pubmed platform or the personal website of a sociologist called Slut, PhD whose studies deal with the topics of sex, gender and BDSM. If you still haven’t had enough, you can read up on TASHRA [The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance] or even become active in the organisation yourself.)
Furthermore, the first three chapters really dragged on. I know that safety, consent etc. are important in the BDSM scene, but I would really like a kink book that doesn’t take me by the hand like a small child and explains the basics to me again in great detail. There is enough introductory literature for that.
All in all, the book is suitable for advanced beginners who would like to take a closer look at the subject of kink in their free time. For all humanities scholars who are also kinksters and thought that this would be their publication, I’m sorry to disappoint. You are really better off with the podcast of the same name. Nevertheless, it was enough for at least two new favourite quotes and because you’ve held out this far, you can read them now:
„Fetish is an aesthetic of intrigue. The fetishist obsesses. The fetishist experiments. The fetishist explores the limits of what the object of their desire can do when it is inserted, compressed, or drenched. The fetishist is driven to experience how their lust loses and maintains its form, in ways that are mundane but unexpected, like a foot pressed against a transparent windshield. But just because fetishists are interested in one thing, that doesn’t mean they’re indifferent to everything else.“
„Those of us who have never had access to those things love cash because it’s freedom we can touch and smell and stack. Interest rates and the price of gas and the promise of student loan forgiveness may fluctuate, but with cash stashed in your boot you can get at least some of what you need to survive another day. Maybe that’s how money can make us horny: by alleviating anxiety so that we can enjoy life for a moment.“
Book data:
- Author: Tina Horn
- Year of publication: 2024
- Publisher: Hachette Book Group, Inc.
- Language: English
- Number of pages: 320 pages
- ISBN: 978-0306832567