I watched the new Netflix thriller “Gerald’s Game” over the weekend. It’s the one with the poster showing the lead character (played by Carla Gugino) chained the a bed with handcuffs wearing a sexy slip. Yeah, now you know the one I mean.
So the movie is actually very good, and I recommend watching it. But I want to address the kink-related aspect of it – don’t worry this doesn’t really contain any spoilers, this only relates to the first 10 minutes of the movie.
The Scene
We have this scene where the husband (Gerald) and the wife (Jessie) start to play with some bondage. But everything about it is the antithesis of what BDSM should be about – let me count the ways.
He surprises her with the handcuffs that he brought along on their romantic getaway to a remote lakehouse. Based on their conversation, they had experimented with bondage previously and he realized that she wasn’t into it, but went along with it to please him. Gerald persuades Jessie to let him handcuff her and at first she is ok with it. And then he starts doing a series of things which they had not discussed or negotiated previously: biting, intruder roleplay, covering her mouth, daddy dom roleplay (which is evidently a trigger for her). Before too long Jessie tells him she doesn’t like it, and tells him several times to stop. He stops once only after she kicks him, then tries again and only stops when she bites his lip.
Sadly, it seems a pretty realistic portrayal of a kinky partner doing all the wrong things to try and get a vanilla partner to try BDSM. I suspect arguments like these have unfolded in bedrooms all across the country.
If you want to introduce kink to your vanilla relationship, then open communication should be the starting point. Talk about what you want, establish some parameters, and agree a safe word. Once in-scene, don’t coerce your partner into doing things they don’t want to do, and for fuck’s sake don’t shame them if they want to stop or use their safeword. If it turns out that you and your partner just aren’t compatible in terms of kink needs, I recommend this article about kinky people dating vanilla.
Final thought – if you are going to put someone into inescapable bondage in an isolated place, even if it is otherwise safe & consensual, consider worst case scenarios and make sure that someone knows where you are how to check in with you.
Writer, photographer, hedonist, Dom. After years of at-home BDSM, Dexx finally embraced the kink community and met many fantastic fellow kinksters in the scene. Along the way, it occurred to him that it would be just super if there was a magazine-style web site which catered to people interested in BDSM, and he recruited some of his friends to help create it. Find him here.