Pushing past vanilla: The Pleasure Protocol Made Me Rethink Everything I Thought I Knew About BDSM

I was watching Tonight’s Conversation, which has probably become my favorite relationship conversation show, when a woman walked up to the microphone and asked how she could get her partner to be open to doing more than vanilla sex. She danced around it for a minute before finally hinting that she was interested in BDSM, and you could literally feel the room change. People started laughing, but it was that uncomfortable kind of laughter where you can tell everybody has an opinion and nobody really wants to admit how much they know. Ace Metaphor made a few jokes, the host had some fun with it, and eventually the microphone landed with former panelist Tripp Fontaine. Tripp started answering the question and then casually revealed that BDSM was actually something he was into. Now suddenly everybody wanted to listen. That awkward laughter started sounding a whole lot more like curiosity.

A few days later, I happened to see a married couple on Instagram who regularly give other married couples ideas for keeping their sex lives interesting. Their philosophy is pretty simple: make things exciting enough at home that neither person feels like they need to go looking elsewhere. One of the things they suggested couples explore was BDSM. At that point I had seen it twice in a matter of days, coming from two completely different relationship spaces, and then The Pleasure Protocol: A Contemporary Guide to BDSM by Shelby Devlin landed in front of me. I figured the universe was either trying to tell me something or at least telling me I needed to stop laughing with everybody else and figure out what these people were actually talking about.

Let me admit something right here. I did not even know exactly what BDSM stood for. I knew there was bondage involved. I knew somebody was probably getting tied up. I knew there might be a gag somewhere, and I assumed pain was a pretty significant part of the whole situation. None of that sounded particularly sexy to me. Once you start breaking down Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism, it honestly sounds even more intimidating. What I quickly realized reading Devlin’s book, though, is that BDSM is a much bigger umbrella than the images most of us have attached to it, and you can explore parts of that umbrella without anybody getting hurt.

That is where The Pleasure Protocol got interesting for me because Devlin starts at the beginning. She does not write as though everybody reading already owns a collection of whips and knows the terminology. She explains power, roles, consent, trust, boundaries, surrender and why different parts of BDSM appeal to different people. More importantly, she removes some of the darkness we have automatically attached to it. You begin to understand that for some people the attraction may be bondage or physical sensation, while for somebody else it could simply be the freedom that comes with giving up control for a little while.

And ladies, that part I understood immediately. Think about how much women are responsible for every single day. We are making decisions at work, managing homes, thinking about children, worrying about parents, remembering appointments, planning meals and somehow keeping track of the thing our husband has been looking for for 45 minutes that is sitting directly in front of him. There is something interesting about the idea that an experience built around trust could allow a woman who is constantly in control to willingly hand some of that control over to her partner. On the other side, a husband or partner who enjoys leading may enjoy having a space where that dynamic has been clearly discussed and welcomed. Once I understood it that way, submission stopped automatically sounding like weakness to me.

What I also appreciated is that Devlin does not approach any of this with shame. She is comfortable with the subject, comfortable with her own experience and comfortable enough to explain things without making the reader feel ridiculous for not knowing them. That matters because sex is one of those subjects where grown people will sit around giggling like middle schoolers rather than simply admitting there are things we do not understand. Her openness gives the book the feeling of talking to a woman who knows this world from the inside and is willing to explain it without trying to convince you that you have to join it.

Of course, BDSM technically became mainstream years ago when Fifty Shades of Grey had women everywhere suddenly interested in a red room. But I do not know that mainstream necessarily meant comfortable, especially in the Black community. We knew about it, joked about it and maybe had a few private conversations about it, but it still felt like something happening somewhere else. Watching that Tonight’s Conversation audience reminded me of that. Everybody laughed first, but once somebody openly admitted he participated in it, you could almost see people leaning forward.

I am not walking away from The Pleasure Protocol saying every married couple needs to run out and start tying each other to the bed tonight. I am saying I understand the conversation differently now. The biggest surprise for me was realizing how much of BDSM can actually be about communication, boundaries, trust and allowing yourself to explore another side of intimacy with someone you already feel safe with. I opened this book thinking BDSM was mostly about pain and being tied up. I closed it realizing that, for a lot of people, the real attraction may simply be having enough trust with somebody to let yourself go.