As a sexologist and BDSM* expert, I’m asked many interesting questions, such as: How could anyone enjoy pain? Isn’t pain automatically bad because it hurts? How could pain possibly be good? These are all legitimate questions, often asked by people who’ve heard about kink mostly through 50 Shades of Grey, but also asked by people who are kinky and not into pain play.
I’ll repeat: There are people who are kinky and not into pain play. The reason for the repetition is to dispel one of the most common misconceptions about kink—it’s all about pain. When many people conjure up an image of BDSM, the first thing that comes to mind is someone getting whipped or spanked. However, as the acronym suggests, BDSM is about far more than pain, though that’s a subject for another day.
Isn’t all pain bad? In short: No. In fact, it could be argued that all pain is good; it depends on how you define “good” and “bad.” Some might say that pain is bad because it makes the majority of people unhappy, which is not an untrue statement. Others might say pain is good because it acts as an alarm to let us know something’s happening that requires attention. This is quite true, regardless of whether the pain happened intentionally in the kink context, or by injury, accident, or malintent. So, pain is not objectively good or bad, but it is something that has a purpose. Also, we can say that pain is subjectively good or bad.
How can pain possibly be good? The BDSM community distinguishes between “good pain” and “bad pain.” Bad pain can be unintentional or malicious, and is generally unwanted, whereas good pain is desired by a sexual masochist in the context of a BDSM scene. A masochist experiences bad pain like anyone else—injury activates the nociceptors, which tell the brain that something’s wrong. Good pain, however, can send adrenalin, endorphins, endogenous opioids, and oxytocin coursing through a masochist’s system. This can be a highly pleasurable cocktail of sensation and emotion when in the right frame of mind.
There is yet another way that pain can be good for kinky people—in reclaiming a traumatic experience and repurposing it into a pleasurable one. Which brings up another all too common misconception about kinky people—something bad happened, and it turned them kinky (this, by the way, is supported by zero scientific evidence, as noted in Psychology Today). The reality is, trauma does not cause people to be kinky. People either have the potential to be kinky or they don’t, and at some point a person with kinky potential may or may not recognize their kink. Sometimes people are able to locate the origin of their kink, but oftentimes people are kinky without knowing why.
There are certainly kinky people who have experienced trauma, and some of those people connect their trauma to kinky desires. Again, this does not mean that the trauma created the kink. It means that aspects of the trauma imprinted on that person’s sexuality, which eventually expressed itself via BDSM. Some of these people are able to do something remarkable—they can positively reframe a traumatic experience by simulating the experience in the safe, consensual, and boundary-delimited space of the kink scene. What happened to them initially was uncontrollable, non-consensual, and painful in a bad way, but when they relive the experience in a kink scene, it is negotiated, controlled, consensual, and can therefore end up being quite pleasurable. It doesn’t make the original trauma okay, but it can take away some of its power.
This type of scene is not for newbies! The best-case scenario happens when a person engaging in this kind of edge play has a strong sense of self-awareness and a secure sense of trust in their partner, and feels confident in the use of safewords, or other means of communicating when they’re ready to stop the scene. On the other side of this complicated, next level, not-for-everyone type of scene, there can be empowerment and transcendence.
The bottom line: Sometimes pain can be very good indeed.
*BDSM is an acronym that evolved from SM or S&M to be more inclusive of the vast array of activities, behaviors, and relationships within the BDMS community. It stands for bondage and domination, the dominant/submissive power dynamic, sadomasochism, and sadism and masochism, though it also includes fetishes and roleplay, despite the lack of representative letters.