Ask an Ancilla is an advice column for kink, sexuality, feminism and fetishism. Ancilla answers all questions to the best of her ability and is not an expert in all things kink, sexuality, feminism or fetishism.

Question: I am new to kink and the kink community and I am overwhelmed by what I see. I don’t know how to proceed and I am unsure about who to trust. What advice do you have for a newbie?

First of all, congratulations on taking this step to explore yourself and your sexuality. The most important thing I can tell you is to always remember that this is supposed to be fun and if it is, at any time, causing you more grief or stress than enjoyment, it is perfectly okay to take a step back and reevaluate.

Here are some general bits of advice that I think may help you:

• Trust that you know more than you think.
  You may be new to kink or the kink community, but you were not born yesterday. Typically, “newbies” tend to have a lot of advice thrown at them (I know, the irony), and sometimes the advice itself can be overwhelming. Do not treat your lack of experience and/or youth like an impediment or apologise for it to anyone. The easiest way to be taken advantage of is to mark yourself as a target and unfortunately this world does contain people who seek out people who present as unsure about themselves and those who defer to “elders” because of their youth/inexperience. This does not mean you have to know everything you want right off the bat, or that you have to pretend to know it all, it means that you are the authority on yourself and your own sexuality, and even if you are venturing into something new about which you are still learning, you still the authority on how you do it and how you apply that learning. Retain and assert that right at all times. Empower yourself with it.

• No one can tell you what you want.
  Start where you have already started. What brought you here? Maybe you have been fantasising about being spanked for as long as you can remember. Maybe you have had a lifelong fascination with being bound with ties. Maybe you are excited by knives. Whatever it is that made you seek out kink or a kink community is a good place to start exploring it. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of fetishism you see around you, but just because it exists, doesn’t mean you have to participate or learn about it. Talk to people who have the same fetish as you do and try to focus these conversations not on the experience they have and you don’t, but the motivations and desires you both have experienced, without which you wouldn’t be in the same place. You have those in common with every kinkster. Some of us may have tied up hundreds of people and some may not have tied any yet, but the desire to tie is common to all of these people. The desire to tie is what makes you part of this group, having already done it x-number of times is not the price of admission.

• Instead of seeking advice posts or structured curriculums, ask questions at the source where they arise.
  This is advice not just for kink, but life in general. A lot of times people seek out explanations for behaviours they have seen from the world at large instead of the person they saw engaging in those behaviours. Just ask the person. Most people are helpful and happy to answer your questions. If you see something and are confused about how it was done, a problem you are having with doing the same thing that they seem to have solved, an idea that you have considered but have been doubtful about safely executing. It can be anything. However, refrain from asking overly personal questions, phrasing your questions as an attack on the person you are asking, asking biased questions designed to prove something. Make it clear that you are looking for help understanding something. The worst thing that will happen is that the person won’t answer your question. That’s not so bad, is it?

• Gain technical knowledge.
  If the thing that you are interested in requires the acquisition of skills, acquire them. Learning is a great way to meet other people who are learning. Attend a rope class, try a few basic ties on yourself, learn about rope and what kind of rope is good for what, learn about potential problems you could face while tying. Don’t try to jump ahead to the coolest, shiniest thing you see or feel like you have to do everything today. Do a thing. Also remember that your level of engagement is determined by you. If you don’t want to ever practise suspensions, you don’t have to learn them, you don’t have to participate in that and it is perfectly fine. It doesn’t make you less-of a rigger.

• Share yourself.
  A lot of times I see newer people lead with and share only the fact that they are new and don’t know anything so they have nothing to share, but that’s not true. If you don’t have experiences to share, you do have desires, fantasies, the roots of your sexuality, the process of discovering your fetish, the signs you noticed through your life that you may have a fetish, the social context of your sexual exploration and your entire personality to share. Share yourself because you may find that people are eager to communicate with others who they find relatable and just being “new” is not enough of a point of relatablility. You attract more information about things in which you are interested, by putting out information you have about that thing. Just because your information is not guided by a decade of experience does not mean it is not a valuable perspective. Just don’t tout it as expertise, let it be what it is, your experience.

• Make friends.
  I know it is hard to decide who to trust and there is no blueprint on the establishment of trust. People, young and old, trust the wrong person all the time. A few things to keep in mind:
  a) Don’t trust anyone simply on the basis that they are experienced. Being experienced does not mean they have your best interest at heart and trust is about that more than it is about being proficient at what you do.
  b) Base your trust on their personality, not the prowess of their sexuality. The same way you would if you met this person in a different context.
  c) Suspend the notion of a socially-created position of trust. No one is trustworthy by virtue of any of their credentials.
  d) Let micro-instances of people’s intentions towards you, guide you. If you reached out to someone for help about something specific and they immediately start to flirt with you, their intention is clear and you can choose what to do with it.
  e) Expect them to reveal as much of themselves as they demand of you.

• A good tip on making friends is to go with genders and orientations that aren’t romantically or sexually attracted to how you identify. I am not saying people cannot be friends with the gender they are attracted to but I am saying that sometimes, early on, we become confused about whether we are seeking a friendship or a sexual attachment, and becoming friends becomes a path for people with less than honourable intentions to “get to you”. If you wish to avoid this problem, this is a good way to do it.

• Be respectful of other people.
  I think this speaks for itself.

• No matter who tells you how something is to be done, you don’t have to do it that way if that doesn’t feel good or desirable to you.
  There is no gospel on how you have to do anything (expect in terms of safety, and even then, there are expert guidelines at best). If you want to be a submissive but you don’t want to wear or like collars, you don’t have to do it. If you are a masochist but you don’t want to be spanked, you don’t have to be. The best thing about sexuality is that it’s all about you and how you want to design it. The typecast of a kinky role is not what you are trying to achieve and the goal of learning is not to get to the stage where you have fully embodied it. If someone only wishes to date you if you fulfill a checklist they have brought that allegedly states the parameters of being a dominant, they are a moron and you should call them on it or just, leave, if you aren’t the confrontational sort.

Just a few general tips that I think will help! If you have more specific questions, please write in.