A friend of ours from the Desire trip recently wrote a post on asymmetrical swinging over at Life on the Swingset. That post inspired Shara and I to unpack some of our experiences from Desire and during that process it became clear that the concepts of “full-swap” and “soft-swap” seem very foreign to us. For those not up on the swing lingo, full-swap means you’re open to all kinds of penetration with playmates. Soft-swap basically means (in a heteronormative context) no cock in the pussy or the ass, but other play (usually including blowjobs) is on the table.

Before I get too far into this, you should go read The Doctor’s article, as it’s what inspired this post. Go ahead, I’ll still be here when you get back.

Welcome back. I’ll start by saying that, while I’ve done a great deal of group play with with a wide range of playmates, most of it has been kink-centric. Considering the norms of group play in the BDSM community, that means I consider myself to have had deeply intimate and sexual encounters with people who have never seen my dick. Shara has a wide range of play experience; but before I started more thoroughly corrupting her, all that was one-on-one (sometimes with an audience).

I got chuckles from a few people when I used the phrase “vanilla orgy” in our Ruminations on Desire post, but I stand by it as the most apt description of the event. Lots of naked people (over a dozen), lots of enthusiastic sex in various combinations, but at the end of the day it was a whole bunch of the ol’ in/out shuffle except for the paddling I gave Shara. The vast selection of toys consisted almost exclusively of things designed to be shoved into a pussy or ass.

Everyone seemed to have a great time (including us), and the only reason I mention it is as an opportunity to highlight the double-edged sword of lingo like “vanilla.” From what we’ve seen, the average non-kinky swinger uses the term “vanilla” to describe monogamists. From the standpoint of the average kinkster, however, most swingers seem to be pretty vanilla.

There’s a tremendous amount of practical, psychological and philosophical overlap between the swing and kink communities, but the similarities help highlight the differences. As a kinky person, I find the terms “full-swap” and “soft-swap” to be almost nonsensical. They have the ability to make sense in a hetero vanilla format where play tends to revolve around cocks and where you stick them, but as soon as you start including a wider range of sexual activities (bondage, spanking, flogging, humiliation, power play, cuckolding, etc., so forth, ad nauseum) they completely fall apart.

Let’s see how much fun we can have with an example. Let’s say I negotiate an ambitious and aggressive but fully consensual scene with a submissive named Christy (randomly selected so she has a name). That scene begins with her being shackled to the door for a thorough flogging that gets us through her first orgasm (either from the flogger or my fingers). She won’t be allowed to come again for a while.

Christy wanted to try watersports and humiliation, so I tie her up in the bathtub and piss on her, then stand there while she showers clean and tell her what a filthy little whore she is for liking it. She kneels on the floor and watches her man fucking Shara, until he’s done and she gets to beg for permission to lick Shara’s pussy. She’ll have to be very convincing, and it will probably take a few tries.

Then, while she goes down on Shara, I take the opportunity to redden her ass again before covering it in candle wax. She gets to come a few more times. Up to this point, she hasn’t even seen a hard cock other than her husband’s. If everything went well, she gets the privilege of begging to suck my cock while I smack her in the face with it; and she eventually gets permission and blows me.

/close scene

/after care

According to the full/soft swap conventions, my play with Christy was soft-swap. Her husband’s play with Shara, which consisted of him fucking her and them watching us, was full-swap. Christy and I didn’t technically “go as far” as they did, because I didn’t stick my dick in her pussy or ass. Let that sink in for a minute.

We engaged in well over an hour of intense, extremely sexual, potentially worldview-altering play that went to at least one or two dark places, but it was only soft-swap based simply on where the willie went. Nonsensical.

So, circling back to The Doctor’s article, while reading it I felt a lot of sympathy for him and his Sexy Thing (and not just because we happen to know they’re awesome people). In the rush to label ourselves and our play in order to more easily communicate our needs and limits with others, it’s really easy to become a victim of concepts that are intended to smooth the road.

I think that on the topic of equality (or, really, equanimity) and balance in the play we engage in with others, kinky people have a distinct advantage based solely on the variety of activities we tend to engage in on a daily basis. Once the whole BDSM buffet is on the table, you’re pretty much immediately forced to abandon that concept that something is “off” if the particular play you do with a swing playmate doesn’t mirror what your partner is doing that night across the room.

It’s a lot harder to quantify “how far you went” in comparison to “how far they went” when the play involves so much more than inserting Tab A into Slot B (or C or D). It forces a much more fluid concept in which each person is interested in going as far as they’re comfortable with, and everyone has a good time within those limits. The boundaries certainly involve where the willie goes, but they do so without revolving around that single aspect of play or being defined by it. Sure, it can potentially be confusing, but that’s why we negotiate scenes beforehand.

To go a step farther, it’s pretty common for kinky people to seek out swing partners to engage in particular kinks their primary partner isn’t interested in (or, sometimes, capable of). Let’s say Christy’s husband had no interest in humiliating her (or maybe he doesn’t identify as dominant and didn’t know where to begin), so that’s something she did with me that she’ll never do with him. This doesn’t lessen the experience for anyone…if anything, it elevates the play for everyone by virtue of the fact that people are literally getting things they don’t/can’t get at home.

It can be said of both the BDSM and swing communities that we can lose sight of the forest for the trees, and end up getting trapped by our own conventions if we forget that the whole point of all of this, for all of us, is to open up and explore those paths of pleasure on which the fearful dare not tread.

Soft-swap, full-swap…none of it really matters if you choose not to force yourselves and the people you play with into little cages that define them. Unless, of course, the cage is negotiated beforehand…