Learn By Doing
Contrary to the way much of the education in kink communities is delivered you are usually far better off learning by doing than by simply watching.
Attend any of the steadily increasing number of kink conferences these days and you’ll quite likely be presented with an assortment of educational classes on the event schedule. Similar classes are also available at local events in cities both big and small.
Most of those classes will be someone at the front of the class demonstrating how a particular kink technique is done while a room full of people sits and watches. Perhaps at some point there will be a question-and-answer period. But the students will remain in their seats throughout.
Occasionally some kink technique classes are offered as hands-on workshops, but most of the time kink education is a one-way delivering of information from instructor to student, no student participation necessary. In learning theory circles, this is sometimes referred to as “push” versus “pull” education – pushing the education toward the student rather than the student being engaged in pulling the education to them.
This is not the ideal way to learn kink techniques whether that’s how to use rope correctly or spank someone erotically. If something involves some sort of physical erotic technique, watching is typically a poor substitute for learning by doing.
I know, what I’m saying is heresy to some. To denigrate kink education in any form flies in the face of “how it’s done” these days. But my own education and background require me to speak what I feel is truth.
For much of my professional freelance and corporate life I was a classroom trainer. I mostly trained employees on software applications but occasionally delivered training about businesses processes or specific company or industry information. I often created the training materials from which I taught. I eventually ended up managing big teams creating instructional materials and curriculum for large companies.
In my non-professional life I’ve been an instructor in front of so many kink class settings that I lost count years ago after teaching more than 200 of them.
As a writer, I’ve also written extensively about the science and practice of learning with that culminating many years ago in writing a book about self-education, The Art of Self-Education (paid link).
I know a thing or two about developing instructional materials, how to deliver such training, and the effectiveness of training in learning outcomes. I’ve come to believe that perhaps we in the kink communities are doing much of our instruction wrong in the guise of “educating” kink practitioners whether newcomer or longstanding players.
There has been some research specifically about the effectiveness of watching or reading versus doing in terms of learning outcomes.
In “Learning is Not a Spectator Sport: Doing is Better than Watching for Learning from a MOOC,” researchers determined that doing far outweighs watching or reading when it comes to effectively teaching people how to do something.
We estimate the learning benefit from extra doing to be more than six times that of extra watching or reading.
Yes, six times more effective.
Show someone how to erotically tie rope and they’ll maybe learn it. Provide a hands-on experience of learning by doing and it’s perhaps six times more likely they’ll learn the skill better. The research focus was on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), but I contend the videos in such courses, often produced to the highest quality and delivered by an esteemed professor or instructor, are a fairly close parallel to an instructor in front of a kink class.
Now, I’m specifically talking here about doing stuff physically, There are also lots of kink classes, presentations, and panel discussions that are more about the cerebral side of kink and sexuality. I could make an argument here that learning in those scenarios would still be improved if those in the audience were charged with being engaged in using that information in some meaningful way as part of the learning or information delivery, but for now let’s stick to the kinds of instruction aimed at teaching physical kink techniques.
In “Research: Watching an Expert Do Something Makes You Think You Can Do It Too,” it’s pointed out that researchers found that people who learn how to do something by watching increased their confidence in their abilities to do something but their skills were not significantly increased. They concluded that watching something is not as effective a teaching strategy as many believe and that watching should be combined with practice to achieve significant skill improvement.
From a kink sexuality technique perspective, think about the conclusion that confidence was increased but not skill. Imagine that someone watches an advanced erotic technique in a class, perhaps one that requires lots of practice and safety considerations to do properly. They walk away with increased confidence they can do it but not the actual skill to do so. That’s a recipe for potential disaster for certain types of advanced play.
I’ve mentioned just two of many studies but ask any kinkster who’s been around for a while how they best learned to do something and my guess is the vast majority will say they learned best by doing it not just watching it.
Sure, watching something can give us information. It can provide a baseline to go off elsewhere and experiment. Truthfully, that’s how it was done for decades long before the trend to teach kink in a classroom-style setting went mainstream.
When I came out into kink (leather to use the terminology of my gay leather roots), there were no classes. There were no instructional books. There were no kink conferences or workshops. There was no internet so there certainly weren’t any online videos.
We learned by doing. You might watch someone doing something at a play party, or hear through the grapevine that someone was good at a particular type of technique, and you’d ask them to show you how to do it. Perhaps the experienced person ended up mentoring the learner for a while until the learner’s skills were acceptably good. Alternatively, you might observe something and make a pact with a play partner to explore it together with as many safety valves built into the scenario as necessary.
What am I getting at with all this?
Am I suggesting we retreat and pull back on the plethora of kink classes that have replicated like rabbits across the kink spectrum, at least in the United States? No. That cat is out of the bag and I don’t think there’s any putting it back in.
But maybe we can begin to err on the side of effective teaching and learning and stop pretending that simply showing people or doing “demos” (I dislike that term, but that’s for another time) is actual kink education. At best, it’s a teasing of information that can pique someone’s interest in a type of kink or play, but rarely does it fully teach what’s being shown. That’s not how true learning takes place.
Perhaps more classes and presentations should have a disclaimer attached to them. Something akin to “do not try this at home without experienced supervision” or something like that. Some might think that attendees at such classes and presentations are already defaulting to the assumption they’ll need to leave the class and practice what they learned elsewhere in a controlled or at least collaborative, mutual, real-time play situation. But sadly, many do not.
I’ve witnessed far too many people attend a class on an advanced skill at a conference for which they have zero prior experience and then observe them later in the event play space attempting the same skill unsupervised as if they’ve been doing it for years as part of their regular erotic endeavors.
Sometimes this can work out fine and be safe. Sometimes it works out badly and becomes unsafe. Sometimes, perhaps more often, it can lead to a bad kink experience for one or more people involved and that can be mentally as damaging in its own way as any physical harm that might occur.
If someone is charged with creating a conference class lineup or standalone local class, maybe try to require hands-on instruction of some kind be part of that class.
Some classes are already being presented as hands-on workshops and I’d love to see more of those offered.
If someone is going to teach a kink skill to a class and there’s no chance to build in a hands-on component, at least make part of the information alongside the demonstration include how a student can best go off on their own and safely practice what they saw. I’ve seen a few instructors do this and my insides are always applauding when I see it happen. Give the students guidance on the best next steps to learn what they’ve seen but have not yet done.
If you’re going to read about or watch something and go off on your own to practice it, do so with the full collaboration of whoever you’re playing with and mutual understanding that you’re in exploratory mode and no expectation of being highly skilled is assumed. I believe this is actually how most kinksters learn to do what they do. So fostering as much safety and caution when doing so is of utmost importance, especially for anything even remotely risky.
What I don’t want this post to come off as is telling people to not do kink education. Like I said, that cat’s out of the bag anyway. But I do hope we don’t fool ourselves that simply showing students how to do something is creating the deep and practical learning that’s necessary to do it as part of a play scene in which we obviously want everyone to have a fun and safe time.
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"The only way you're going to get experience is by actually playing." I overheard that from an older guy giving a younger guy some advice during lunch at a Satyrs MC, Badger Flats run. It's some of the best advice I've ever overheard (before this post). I related to the younger guy's desire for confidence during play. A decade later, and after attending many kink classroom classes, I have to say that 95% of my skill and confidence has come from actual play.
I started getting a lot more experience when I was honest with potential partners about my limited experience. Somehow, I'd come to believe that a Dom/sub scene was very ridged with lots of ways for it to go wrong. Be perfect, or you suck. After I changed my pre-play convo to a more playful, "We're just two dudes in a playroom," everything became more funk, sexy, and satisfying for both of us.