In Praise of the Munch

How a year in the kink world showed me what true open-mindedness looks like.

I have been consciously in the kinky world for almost a year now since the word ‘shibari’ got my attention on a Tinder profile in late 2018. I have been to at least 15 munches in three countries. I get it now. I understand why we meet in person and why munches must exist.

I recently had the experience of telling someone about my new hobby, my life in kink. It was the wrong call. This person is a religious type…also a narcissist and not actually capable of listening or caring about others, but I knew that. And so I should have known that it wouldn’t go well, but I tried anyways. You see, besides wanting to share something that has had a very positive effect on my life, I also got complacent regarding kink and being open about it, because in Berlin, it seems like everyone is kinky!

The one time I ventured to KitKat for fetish night, I ran into my doctor, him in full-latex, me in a borrowed latex skirt, just a few days after visiting his office. On FetLife I encountered a client of mine within days of finishing a contract for him; during the summer not a week went by that I didn’t see someone from the munches or jams somewhere out and about in Berlin. Sitting at cafe telling a vanilla date about how much I love rope, and a few tables away was a woman from my rope class! Numerous times on public transport I passed kinky people I knew, or riding my bike through the park I passed them by.

But actually, no, most people are not in world of kink. Yes, there are surely many kinky people in the world, many of whom don’t know there’s a word for what they are, how they are are different from vanilla, but for those of us lucky enough to be aware that it’s called ‘kink’ we have the pleasure and blessing of getting together at munches and sharing a safe space for a few hours. A place where, despite being of such totally different kinks, walks of life and backgrounds, there is some common level of acceptance and even celebration for this ‘alternative lifestyle.’

The most dangerous people to share your kink with are the ones who have heard of it through pop culture or religion and are half-informed, the other half being their own prejudices … this person I told, or rather, tried to tell, cut me off and said that he knew about it from porn (the pot calling the kettle black, eh?) and he opined further on its dangers (heart attacks!) and how it ruins your appreciation for vanilla sex, and yada yada. We all know that porn is not representative of sex, and neither is BDSM porn representative of what your average muncher experiences in their play sessions.

The other phenomenon of BDSM appearing in pop-culture is that its always a particular type that the vanilla world can handle or make fun of (see the Netflix show Bonded where male submissives provide the main comic relief, or the infamous 50 Shades of Grey, which I probably don’t need to elaborate on here about its falsehoods and crappiness).

I am even a bit shocked at my own level of righteousness indignation at someone judging me and my ‘lifestyle.’ He didn’t even let me explain! The nerve! I suspect this shows what a privileged world I was existing in, where I was generally accepted and didn’t bump up against other people’s comfort zones or societal norms. I can now relate on a more visceral level — not only intellectually — to the experiences of minorities — heck, even members of certain religious groups — who experience being judged as wrong by some people who claim to know what is ‘good’, and right, and healthy and moral or whatever categories it is that their worldview creates. I can thank my exposure to the kink community for showing me what true acceptance and non-judgement looks and feels like.

Just to balance out the picture, I do have another highly spiritual, even religious friend who knew nothing of BDSM, but when I told him about how I like to get tied up, and what an almost initiatory experience it could be, he understood about these basic roles and power dynamics of the human psyche and said, “Maybe you can tie me up some day?!”

Sometimes I think that kink is an alternative universe, but it is still composed of people who come from the human world where some basic rules apply for social norms. You might forget this after spending too much time perusing FetLife profiles and reading too much about people ‘owning’ other people and doing things in the privacy of their homes, but when it comes to munches and online interactions, the ‘random stranger’ rule still applies. Until you meet someone at a munch, or have significant interactions with them online, you actually don’t know them.

I read somewhere about studies done into privacy vs. anonymity in human culture, and they’ve shown that privacy is necessary for our health and well-being, but anonymity is harmful. We need to move past anonymous freaks on the internet and get to know each other in real life, to build up relationships, nurture connections and be in community. Just as in vanilla life you don’t make real lasting friendships by sending one chat or having one conversation at a party, the same applies for kinky connections.

I’m noticing now how over the past year, through enough conversations, and seeing people again at parties and jams, I can slowly say these are my kinky friends, my community. I trust them in this context. I trust this person with rope, that person with a flogger, etc. I am thankful that I came to my first munch and met real people, humans who I am glad to see again regularly; a place where I can breathe out and be myself and not worry about being judged for being into whatever it is that I am into. In fact, I find great joy in the process of being truly open to whatever the kinky universe is going to reveal to me next,

Come visit Berlin, there’s quite a community here!