Kink + Bondage

A new club focuses on a different sort of sex education.

By Lynn Fultz

Maybe you’ve seen the posters around campus: “whips,” “gags,” “blindfolds,” “spanking,” to name a few. They’re the calling cards for the Kinky Cardinals, a local group started by two Ball State University students to promote “safe, sane and consensual” kinky sex.

“I’m a kinky bastard,” says Paul Starr, a telecommunications major and BDSM practitioner. “I’ve got a chest full of toys you probably don’t want to see, but if you have any questions feel free to ask me. Otherwise, I’m just not going to bring it up.”

Starr has years of kink under his belt. In an effort to promote education and understanding for an often misunderstood sexual lifestyle, Starr and his girlfriend Jesi Martindale, a freshman fashion merchandising and design major, have started a munch group, called Kinky Cardinals, for Ball State students and Muncie residents.

A munch is an informal get-together for those who are interested in kink. It’s a low-pressure environment, in public, and normally with food. A slosh is like a munch but is held where alcohol is served.

“It’s a way of hiding in plain sight,” Starr says. “It’s good for new members to the community to dip their toes in the water. The basic idea is just to be social. We don’t always talk about kink, and, in fact, it’s common to go an entire munch meeting without bringing up the subject.”

The munch is new to Muncie but has a very active scene in Indianapolis and other metropolitans. “You can find a Munch nearly every day in Indy,” Martindale says. “And there are several group-specific munches for doms [dominants], subs [submissives], straights, gays—you name it, you’ll find it.”

Starr and Martindale heard, while attempting to start Kinky Cardinals, that the area was very anti-kink, even though an S&M nightclub, Dominion, used to exist in downtown Muncie.

“The fact that Muncie used to have a club encouraged me to at least give munch a shot here,” Starr says. “[Indianapolis] laws are very restrictive to this specific community, and there is no way for such a nightclub to exist within the city or county, even.”

Munches, and the affiliated groups, serve to educate their communities.

“We aren’t looking to ‘convert’ people,” Starr says. “Either you’re into kink or you’re not ... and most people have known from a young age that they would play a little rougher. But that doesn’t mean non-kink people shouldn’t know what it involves and see that perfectly normal people participate in it.”

It is important to understand that BDSM can be part of a healthy, normal sex life. Dr. Gaither, an associate professor of psychology at Ball State University who teaches a course on human sexuality, says, “The public has, [when we talk about BDSM and sexual sadism and masochism], a blurring there, where anything that is not reproductive sex is deviant behavior and that those who would put together humiliation or pain with sex in some sort of way … they’re the rapists of our society. The reality is very few rapes are committed by sexual sadists in our society.”

While sexual sadism and masochism are categorized in the Diagnostic and Statistcal Manual of Mental Disorders, Gaither says, “Those are cases where people are intense, having recurrent fantasies or fears about being hurt or humiliated or inflicting it upon someone else, and it causes them significant distress. They do it with consensual people, but they are freaked out by the idea.”

Members of the BDSM community can struggle with their sexual identity in a way that is very similar to that experienced by homosexuals. Gaither says that sometimes, in both the BDSM and gay communities, these people grow up in environments that aren’t conducive to their sexual identities. It can be upsetting that other people have problems with their sexuality, but it doesn’t mean they are crazy.

Another reason a person might be distressed at their interest in BDSM is because there is a lack of positive depictions of this lifestyle. Gaither asks, “How are people supposed to grow up and be integrated into society and feel normal when the only ideas they are shown about themselves are abnormal?”

“Too often the media eroticizes the extreme end of this lifestyle,” Martindale says. “There are different levels, from light to heavy play, and there are different reasons people participate.”

“Of course there are the people who play for the erotic aspect, the sensation,” Starr says. “There are people who do it to feel small or big, in control or not in control. And there are people who, unfortunately, use it for therapy, to work out previous abuse or trauma — when they should be seeing a professional instead.”

If BDSM interests you, but you’re uncertain about how to integrate it into your sexual identity, Gaither suggests you find someone to talk to.

“It’s important to find support or a mentor,” he says. “Freshmen have advisors in their majors, new AA members get sponsors, new drag queens find drag mothers. When you’re taking on a new identity, find someone who is settled in that identity, and seek support or guidance in some sort of way.” However, Gaither says, “If you’re really stressed out about it, talk to a professional first.”

There are a lot of considerations when exploring the BDSM lifestyle. “With integration,” Gaither says, “they have to think about how OK they are with people knowing about it, just like the coming out process. There are ways to be discreet about behaviors but that means engaging in the behavior only with people you trust.”

Trust and communication are key elements to staying safe when practicing BDSM. “Find trusting relationships, trusting people that you can do this behavior with,” Gaither says. “When using code words, you have to have faith that the person is actually going to respect that. If they don’t, it becomes rape or sexual assault.”

Make sure you can communicate with your partner, and communication occurs before, during and after a session, which is known as a “scene.” Create safe words – words that are not typically said during sex, in order to communicate problems.

“A very common code for starters is simply green, yellow, red and sometimes blue,” Starr says. “Green means everything is good and can continue. Yellow can mean that a threshold has been reached or that the sub partner anticipates a potential problem coming up and that the scene should be paused for discussion. Red is simply ‘Stop. Now.’ Blue can mean there’s a technical difficulty, like a rope coming loose. The important thing is to sit down with your partner beforehand and figure out what words you want and what they’ll mean.”

Communication can get more complicated when a gag is involved, but it’s still possible and even more important.
Starr says, “A simple method for the person tied up is to hold on to something — a scarf or a squeeze ball — something easy to grasp. If a problem comes up, they can drop the item.”
Have a communication system in place, and use it. “Ten times out of 10, I’d rather ruin a scene than a relationship,” says Rob Smith*, a member of Kinky Cardinals.

Heavy BDSM play, for some, will draw blood, but don’t forget that other bodily fluids are also involved where sex is concerned.

“Engage in safe acts, safe sex,” Gaither says. “Most people don’t incorporate condom use into sexual fantasies at all, but you’ll have a very short-lived career. With BDSM practitioners, it’s a community, and [not playing safe] will get you kicked out of the community.”

So how do you play safe? For starters, you get educated. Look at resources online, talk to the Kinky Cardinals, and find people with experience and learn from it before putting yourself and your partner in a potentially dangerous situation.

Education helps prevent injury where none is intended. There are correct and incorrect ways to tie ropes when practicing bondage with your partner. Ropes are for restraint, and incorrectly tying them can cause unwanted pain, numbness and loss of circulation.

Other forms of play — flogging, spanking, paddling, edge play, branding, to name a few — all have safety considerations and techniques to minimize the potential danger inherent in these activities.

This education, and an overall sense of community for this brand of sexual identity, is what Kinky Cardinals hopes to provide for Ball State students and the surrounding community. Kinky Cardinals is not recognized by the university as an official club, and they’re never going to apply for that status either.

The primary reason you will never find Kinky Cardinals in the Pride Guide is because of the legal considerations of such an organization.

Cuffs, a group similar to Kinky Cardinals, formed at Iowa State University in 2000. As a sanctioned campus organization, they ran into trouble when what started as educational discussions about kinky practices evolved into a flogging demonstration on school grounds in 2004. The school charged them with assault, even though those involved in the demonstrations gave consent and were not harmed.

Such legal concerns would undoubtedly arise with Kinky Cardinals. The group promotes education in many forms. They meet weekly to discuss topics of interest for BDSM practitioners. Movie nights for the club entail watching a film that portrays BDSM and discussing the messages it delivers about the lifestyle. And, of course, there are demonstrations. The first demonstration, held in November, showed members proper rope bondage techniques and discussed sensory deprivation.

“The slogan for Kinky Cardinals is ‘safe, sane and consensual,” Martindale says. “One of the founding ideas of the organization is to help educate people on how to safely practice BDSM.”

As Starr says, the club isn’t out to force these practices on anyone. The community is organizing in an effort to find like-minded individuals, learn safe practices and provide access to resources that can be difficult to find in a world where some people may think such risqué topics are better kept bound and gagged.