Why and When Kink Works

Understanding the Dual Control Model of sexual arousal helps explain how and why kink works, and why sometimes it doesn’t

I have written about, taught, coached, and advised about sex, mostly kinky sex, for decades. Name a topic in the realm of kink and I’ve probably touched upon it somewhere. But throughout all that time I kept wondering why exactly does kink work and what makes kinky sex good.

Then, the online algorithms served up this video in which Dr. Emily Nagoski switched on a lightbulb in my brain.

Nagoski is the author of Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life and she has a podcast of the same name, Come As You Are.

I often refer to moments like I had while watching this short, 9-minute video as “aha” moments. Suddenly, lots of things made sense in a way they had not previously.

Nagoski starts off mentioning that generally what we’re taught about sexuality is wrong. She mentions the falsity of the “desire imperative,” that we must somehow experience spontaneous, “sparky” desire for our sexual partner(s) and that we’re supposed to always sustain that desire.

We’ve all read those ubiquitous articles about how to keep the spark alive in a relationship. Nagoski says “screw the spark.”

Sure, sometimes we can be walking along and see someone who sparks instant erotic desire. That’s certainly happened to me and probably has to you too. But there is also responsive desire, desire that emerges in response to pleasure rather than in anticipation of desire.

Just that information alone can resolve people's sexual desire problems because they realize they don't have a desire problem. They just have responsive desire. So, it's not about figuring out where the pleasure is. It's finding a pathway to the pleasure.

Nagoski explains that the history of the science of sex therapy has three major phases.

Phase 1 was the 4-Stage Model. This model resulted from the work of Masters and Johnson. This model described a 4-stage model of sexual response: arousal; plateau; orgasm; and refractory. What was missing from this model was desire.

Phase 2 was the Triphasic Model. This model was created by Helen Singer Kaplan. Noticing desire was missing from the previous model, she created the desire, arousal, and orgasm model. Oddly, in light of today’s views of sexuality, it was considered revolutionary at the time to consider desire as a factor.

Phase 3 was the Dual Control Model. This model was developed by Janssen and Bancroft of the Kinsey Institute. They posited that sex works in our brain just like everything else in our lives. This model is a 2-part model of sexual response, the sexual excitation system (accelerator) and the sexual inhibitory system (brakes).

Sex is far more a brain process than a genital process. Genitals can be fun. The brain is essential. You can't have sex without a brain. So, the sexual excitation system is, colloquially, the accelerator or the gas pedal, and it notices all the sex-related information in the environment. That's everything that you see, everything that you hear, smell, touch, taste, and crucially all the sensations in your body, and everything that you think, believe, or imagine.

This is where the lightbulb went off in my head. Suddenly it dawned on me that this is why kinky play, which often doesn’t even include our genitals, works.

How often have kinksters casually mentioned that the brain is the biggest sex organ? Often. It’s said so often that it’s a truism within kink communities. But before watching this video I didn’t fully understand the mechanisms behind that statement.

Kinksters can be turned on by visuals including some of the fetish types of garb we wear. Certain smells like leather turn us on. Erotica and kinky imagery turn us on as does voyeuristically watching others play. Certain sounds can turn us on from the sexy whisper of a partner to the slap of a paddle. I know the video is addressing sexuality generally, but to me this seemed particularly applicable to the kinky circles I which I run.

The Dual Control Model also includes the braking portion of our sexual response, all the good reasons that we might not want to be turned on in a certain situation. Of course, it’s important to know when not to move ahead with our sexual response in an active way. Ensuring explicit consent is one such example. But there are other inhibitors everyone feels that put the brakes on our sexual desires in less positive ways such as stress, body image, trauma, and relationships struggles.

Then Nagoski mentioned something that made me again realize the applicability to kink play.

The Dual Control Model sort of makes it sound like “touch me here, don't touch me that way.” It could be as simple as that, but that's not how pleasure works. The perception of a sensation in our bodies as pleasurable or not depends on the context in which we experience it, and the context means the external circumstances and our internal state.

Bingo! Perhaps this is why kinksters often like to play in certain types of environments, wearing certain types of fetish clothing, when communing with other kinksters, when we’ve put aside the day-to-day thoughts and are happily deep in “play time” mode, and so on.

But, if our internal state is stressed, depressed, anxious, lonely, or experiencing rage, no amount of the external environment or circumstances are going to turn us on no matter how sexy someone else might perceive it. Just because all the kinky externals are in place doesn’t mean we’re naturally going to dive into the kinky action and have a good time.

Let me add that our internal state can simply be our mood and that mood doesn’t have to be a negative one. Perhaps we’re simply distracted by life obligations, family duties, or other things that don’t trip the internal kinky switches in the ways we need to have a good time. This is why I’ve gone to play parties and despite all the externals being perfect, I wasn’t always in the mood to play. I’m sure every active kinkster has experienced this.

Emotional context is everything. This is also why a hard spank on the butt can be a huge turn on for some, but if that same hard spank occurred when they’re not in the mood or otherwise mentally not in the game, it’s entirely unwanted. This is also why consent is so important to enjoying kink and sex. Without consent you can’t create an internal emotional environment conducive to having a good time.

Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term are not couples who constantly can't wait to put their tongues in each other's mouths. They're the couples who know how to co-create a context that allows both of their brains to have access to pleasure.

This is why in kinkster circles we talk about “setting up a scene” and similar statements that allude to us creating the external and internal environments in which we can have a good erotic time.

I’ve written here specifically about how Nagoski’s video applies as I see it to kinky sexuality, but the truth is she’s talking about sexuality generally. So, anyone watching it is going to come away with some great information and insights that will improve their sex life considerably.

Watch the video. It’s short and really good. I also plan to buy and read Nagoski’s book.

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