Welcome to our glossary! We believe BDSM is customizable. There's no one size fits all for relationships, sex, or kink. Here you can explore, share, and learn about the many ways these things are practiced.

Welcome to our glossary! We believe BDSM is customizable. There's no one size fits all for relationships, sex, or kink. Here you can explore, share, and learn about the many ways these things are practiced.

Our Definition

conventional sexual behavior, relationship styles, or personal preferences; lacking in BDSM, kink, or fetishism.

Common Practices

Everyone is different! You'll see this repeated throughout our website and glossary. Common vanilla practices include, but certainly aren't limited to:
  • No form of (acknowledged) power exchange or hierarchy involved in one’s intimate relationships.
  • Preferring sex that is considered “normal” and will not raise any eyebrows. 
  • Lack of involvement in the BDSM community 

Harold is monogamous, with a conventional relationship style, and prefers to have sex in the missionary position for procreative purposes.

Tiffany tried out some kinky behaviors, like fuzzy handcuffs, but ultimately decided that she prefers vanilla sex. 

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Help us improve the glossary! We're looking for:

  • Anecdotes for kinks in practice, tell us about a scene or an interaction that you feel best illustrates an entry
  • Suggestions for topics to add
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We want to illustrate as many sides of kink as we can to both normalize kink, sexuality, and the diversity within it all, and we can't do that alone!

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