By: Jacob Mattie, Opinions Editor

There’s no kink police — unless you’re into that.

Roughly, a kink can be described as an unconventional sex behaviour, and there is little further clarification. The result of this is that anything you enjoy — be that citrus fruits, avoiding your responsibilities, or thrift shopping — can become a kink. All it takes is a little creativity and the involvement of sexuality.

The most familiar kinks fall under the umbrella of BDSM: Bondage/Discipline (or Domination) /Sadism (or Submission)/Masochism. It’s from here that the images of a sex dungeon arise; full-body leather suits, riding crops, and wall-mounted anchors are most common under the BDSM term. But such conspicuous styling has caught the eye of popular media, and has really blown things out of proportion. The vast majority of kinks are more mundane, and are shockingly common — with about a third of people reporting some experience with sexual creativity.

I don’t think the statistics are as clean as that. A kink like sensory deprivation can be taken to an extreme with things like blindfolds and noise-cancelling headphones, but has its roots in something as accessible as closing your eyes. If you find yourself closing your eyes during intimate moments, then congratulations! — you’ve made a foray into the world of kinks.

Spanking falls under the terms of sadism/masochism, and even labels as consistently exaggerated as domination/submission can manifest in a relationship dynamic as mundane as one partner consistently being the one to choose what film to watch during your movie nights, or which restaurant to eat at.

So great — we’re all kinky to some extent. But how does this relate to getting off in a thrift shop? That’s skipping a few steps, but the motivation behind a kink is a collection of actions or circumstances that make sex more pleasurable. Pleasure and sex are inherently subjective terms, and so all that’s needed is a way to combine them. Do you think it might be fun to find a cute outfit at a thrift shop and seduce your partner with it? That could be defined as a mix of roleplay and dressplay — similar to what motivates lingerie — or you could forego the labels entirely. Have fun with it! There are no gatekeepers to sexuality, so get creative with what you’re into.

I won’t go into detail about all the ways you could use citrus fruits, but if you end up getting arrested for public indecency — well hey. Handcuffs are great for bondage. Keep up the communication and have fun out there.