BDSM Academy
Tracing the contours of your desires, together.
BDSM explained without judgement, from the gentlest to the most intense. You will find a sourced guide, questionnaires to state your desires and your limits, positions, equipment and cards to play with, apart or together. The foundation is consent and talking, and it works for any relationship, vanilla included. No explicit images, and nothing is stored.
Take the Portrait testRead the guide
For adults. To leave the page in one move: Exit, at the top right, or press the Esc key twice.
01
The essentials, first of all
The foundation of everything: kindness and consent. Then, six markers that everything else builds on. If you read only one page after this one, read Consent.
- Consent is given before, checked during, and can be withdrawn at any time.
A yes given at the start does not cover what follows: the European Court of Human Rights restated this in 2005. Consent
- A stop word and a gesture, agreed and tried out.
The word for when you can speak, the gesture for when you no longer can. A gag makes the word unusable. Safeword
- Nothing around the neck.
There is no safe way to squeeze a neck: loss of consciousness can occur within seconds. Breathing and strangulation
- Scissors within reach whenever there are ties.
A compressed nerve does not always hurt before it gives way. Tingling is mentioned straight away, and the ties come off. Rope and nerves
- No scenes under alcohol or drugs.
Not for the person receiving, nor for the person leading: alertness, pain and consent become blurred on both sides. Safety
- Afterwards, you look after each other, and you check in.
The low that sometimes follows a scene, the drop, can come straight away or a few days later, in both roles. The body
02
The guide
Seven chapters and a glossary. Every figure, every study and every point of law links to its source.
- IUnderstanding10 minThe basic vocabulary, what research says and what it does not, and a way to begin that gives you time to find out what you want.
- IIConsent8 minHow to agree beforehand, stop during, talk it over afterwards, and recognise a yes that is not really a yes. This holds for a BDSM scene as much as for any intimate relationship.
- IIISafety9 minZero risk does not exist. This page sets out, practice by practice, what can go wrong, how to make it less likely and when to stop.
- IVWhat happens in the body8 minWhat studies have measured during real sessions, what is still assumed, and what that changes for safety during the scene and afterwards.
- VHistory7 minWhere the words, rules and communities of BDSM come from, what is documented, what was embellished after the fact, and why it still matters today.
- VIWhat the research says7 minWhat studies say about people who practise BDSM, with the sample sizes, the limits of each finding and the misconceptions they contradict.
- VIIWhat the law says8 minWhat the law says about consent, images, age and public play in four countries, and what that changes in practice for what you do.
- +Glossary13 minThe words you will come across at munches, in guides and on profiles, defined in a few sentences, with no needless jargon and no explicit content.
03
Saying what you want, beforehand
Three questionnaires to fill in on your own, then send to the other person by link or as a PDF. From kissing to rope, they are also useful in a vanilla relationship. Nothing leaves your device until you send it.
The big questionnaire of desires, curiosities and limits, in eleven areas: from kissing and cuddles to the most intense practices. It draws your portrait as a radar chart.
Today’s state: energy, mood, body, three wishes in order, what is not for tonight, signals and what comes after.
04
Cards to play, apart or together
Nearly a hundred instructions in ten families: words, the body, protocol, waiting, clothing, pleasure, toys, preparation, tenderness, and chance, where a die picks the instruction. Choose a card, change it, add a note, and send it by link, or draw it together and play it on the spot.
The other person turns it over, then accepts, chooses the gentler variant or declines, without having to justify themselves.
05
Twenty positions
How to take them, what they say, how to hold them without getting hurt. Each entry comes in a version with a woman and a version with a man, and can be sent as a card. All positions
06
Elsewhere
Platforms, podcasts, YouTube channels, books and places to learn in person, in French-speaking Switzerland, France, Belgium and Quebec. Resources
Need help now? In Switzerland: police 117, emergencies 144, La Main Tendue 143. In France: 17 or 112, violence 3919. In Belgium: 112, SOS Viol 0800 98 100. In Quebec: 911. All help resources
07
What the site does not do
No account, no cookies, no tracking, no fonts or scripts loaded from elsewhere: the site counts its page views without knowing who reads them. What you fill in stays in your tab. When you send it, your answers travel inside the link itself, in the part that browsers never pass on to the site. About
- No tracking
- No data collection
- No ads
- No sponsors
- Non-commercial
- No account
- Free