BDSM practitioner Annamarie Stockwell fills us in on one of Portland’s latest titles — ‘kinkiest city in America’
Annamarie Stockwell stands at the front of a room packed with students on Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus, swinging a single-tail whip.
She has the full attention of the class.
“I’m not a doctor,” she tells them, “but I play one in a dungeon.”
Earlier this year, Portland was dubbed “kinkiest city in America.” The ranking was based on the city’s total kink population, the number of kink-aware professionals listed in the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom’s (NCSF) resource directory, and on pornography purchase data collected by the study’s author, BDSM porn site Kink.com.
While Portland scored low in the latter category, it still grabbed the number one spot with 4 percent of Portlanders logged onto Fetlife – a social media network for kinky people. And, according to Kink.com, Portland closely rivals much larger cities such as San Francisco, New York and Chicago in the number of play parties, workshops and other resources available to kinksters.
The definition of kink runs the gamut including any bedroom activity beyond monogamous, missionary-position procreation. But in this context, it’s tied tightly to BDSM. Think bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism. There’s role playing, fetishes, pleasure mixed with pain and elaborate power exchanges where there are tops and bottoms, ultimate control and no control – although complete submission is an illusion. A scene can be paused at any time by any participant. The most common safe word is “red.”
Kink can be as mild as a spanking or as extreme as genital torture.
It’s all about exploring boundaries, both emotional and physical, says Stockwell.
She’s a switch, which means – depending on her mood – she can be a top or a bottom, a sadist or a masochist. Some people solely identify as one or the other.
And leather. There’s a lot of leather.
The largest BDSM membership-based organization in the Portland-metro area, Portland Leather Alliance, has been around since 1998. Along with educational events and fundraisers, PLA puts on Portland’s largest annual BDSM event, KinkFest, which brought more than 1,000 people to the Portland Expo Center in February.
Movies such as “Secretary” (2002) and “Fifty Shades of Grey” (2015) have transported BDSM from underground to mainstream, although some critics within the BDSM community say sex scenes in “Fifty Shades” are more about rape and less about BDSM. For those in the kink community, consent is key. Anything other than full consent is abuse, says Stockwell.
At age 34, she’s been immersed in Portland’s kink culture since shortly after moving to the region 11 years ago. While the local community has been growing as long as she can remember, as BDSM becomes less taboo and more accessible, she says she’s seen a marked influx in curious kinksters surfacing for the first time at events in Portland.
Newcomers have plenty to choose from. There are at least three different kink events almost every single day on the calendar Stockwell updates, PDX Kink Events. There are whip practices, rope-tying seminars, strap-on lessons and munches. A munch is a casual gathering for people interested in kink.
While Portland’s kink community has a packed events calendar, Stockwell says many people come into the community to learn what they need to learn about BDSM play, and then recede back into their private bedrooms.
“Having a community where you can come meet other people who are doing this stuff, I think, is really important because you get a more realistic expectation for what exploring kink can look like,” she says. People can walk away from reading or watching erotic material with ideas about power exchange relationships that just aren’t feasible for most schedules and abilities. For example, setting the expectation that a master and slave dynamic is something practiced 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “Nobody does that,” says Stockwell.
For kink newbies, Stockwell says munches can be a good place to start. She and her partner founded PDX Queer Munch, which meets at Radio Room the first Thursday of every month, and Vancouver Munch.
“If you go to a munch, it’s not a bunch of crazy, wild, kinky-looking people,” she says. “It’s mostly people sitting around talking about their pets – and also the fact that maybe they had a really good caning last weekend.”
For introverts, there’s the PDX Kinky Introverts Munch. In fact, Portland has a munch or party for just about every subgroup of kink culture imaginable.
“We have a group specifically for kinky women, groups for gay men, there are groups for bears,” says Stockwell. “We have queer groups, we have straight groups, we have groups that are specific to people who are exploring master slave dynamics, there’s rope – Portland is real big on rope.”
“There are a lot of events and workshops and groups that meet just to learn how to tie people up.”
And while she can’t tie a good knot to save her life, Stockwell stands out as a leader in Portland’s continuously growing kink community. She hosts monthly discussion panels on kink-related topics – June’s topic is dominant-submissive relationship trouble shooting – and she teaches a variety of BDSM workshops from the tamer Introduction to BDSM to Endorphin-Based Needle Play 101.
Stockwell also gets to flaunt her inner geek as a regular guest speaker at PCC and Portland State University. She usually takes over human sexuality classes for a day, explaining polyamory, which she’s been practicing with her partner for the past 10 years, or the origins and acronyms of BDSM – there are a lot of acronyms.
She’s been a regular guest speaker in PCC psychology professor Cynthia Golledge’s classes for the past five years.
Golledge says she’s seen her students’ attitudes toward kink evolve over time.
“I think it’s probably fair to say that in the 10 years or so that I’ve been teaching this, that not only do more people know a little more about kink, or BDSM, but the attitude is generally a little bit more favorable,” she says. “There’s been a slight shift toward more acceptance of the idea.”
Stockwell is also one of the core founders of Sex-Positive Education and Event Center, or SPEEC, a donor-funded nonprofit that sprung up after The Sindicate, Portland’s largest dungeon, closed in November 2013. The group is currently focused on finding a space it can lease for large-scale BDSM play parties and other events.
“Although it was born out of BDSM and the people on the board are from the BDSM world, we really want it to be accessible for any sex-positive group in town, whether they’re kinky or otherwise,” explains SPEEC’s board chair, Chris Olson. SPEEC’s reached out to more than 50 other “sex-positive” communities in the area for support.
For those who prefer a more intimate setting, Stockwell rents out her own private play space near downtown Vancouver, Wash., for about $200 a night. Customers range from couples and poly groups to small parties.
“Every once in awhile someone will have a birthday play party,” she says.
In the front room, or “parlor,” a padded spanking bench sits by a window and tasteful art decorates red-painted walls. A brown leather sofa and ottoman adorned with body pillows add an element of comfort.
It also features a wooden whipping post affixed to a small stage-like platform. It’s good to have something to hold onto when you’re being whipped or on the receiving end of “impact play,” she explains.
Walk toward the back of the house, and there lies the “classic dungeon.” Standard dungeon equipment furnishes the room – a massage table to the right and a sling that hangs from ceiling. “It’s a hammock for fucking, pretty much,” says Stockwell. Full-length mirrors line the walls. The only thing missing, she says, is a St. Andrew’s Cross, a tall X-shaped crux used to restrain a submissive participant at the ankles and wrists in a spread arm and spread eagle position.
In the back of the house, is Stockwell’s favorite play space: the medical room. It’s bright, white and sterile, but it’s no ordinary doctor’s office. Stainless steel instruments lie on a shelf next to a gynecologist’s chair. It’s in this room she says, she practices needle play and enema play.
Stockwell is “so incredibly out” when it comes to her kink, she’s even taken her parents on a tour of her dungeon – but they were forbidden from opening any cupboards or drawers. She didn’t feel like explaining what the needles were for.
“I’ve come out to (my parents) for so many reasons and in so many different ways over the years,” says Stockwell. “I’ve always been a little bit more sexually oriented than my other family members, or than most people that I knew.”
Born and raised in rural and conservative areas of Michigan, Stockwell says growing up, she didn’t know how to categorize her fantasies – but she did know she should probably keep them to herself.
Her mother, Gwen Stockwell, a school psychologist, says her daughter was always very inquisitive, with a different way of looking at things. She’s been supportive of Stockwell’s polyamorous relationships and kinky lifestyle. “There’s always something new,” she says. “She keeps us on our toes.”
When Stockwell moved to the Portland area in 2004, she was in her element. “I finally found people who were exploring queer politics and queer lifestyles, found people who were actively and healthfully exploring polyamory,” she says, “the kink community here is amazing.”
While not all poly people are kinky, and not all kinky people are poly, she says there is a significant overlap between the two communities.
As Stockwell walks back and forth in front of her audience at PCC, she exudes confidence and authority; her inner dominatrix is apparent.
It’s a confidence BDSM has helped nurture. She says watching people be present in their naked bodies had a deeply healing effect on her own body image.
“There are times now where I can just lose track of how I feel about my body in that moment,” she says. “These things, like in high school, that I thought would always be there at the front of my mind, ‘How fat are my thighs? What can I obsess about on my body?’ and now I don’t have to do that all the time.”
Today, “sexy” is an adjective she uses to describe herself — even on her business cards. But for Stockwell, the kink lifestyle isn’t all about being sexy and the act of “bumping juicy bits together.” She compares the endorphins released during a good BDSM scene to runners’ high.
“That’s one of the main reasons I really love BDSM,” she says, “when I am really struggling with something – if I can push my body physically – I get emotional relief, I get this feeling of release, and it’s wonderful.”
As erotic as BDSM may be, not everyone mixes it with sex. “Some people might compare getting a really heavy flogging to getting a deep massage, because our bodies react in similar ways,” she says. “For some folks it’s a spiritual path, there’s catharsis.”
Historically, BDSM appears in many religions as a way of challenging the body for spiritual enlightenment, Stockwell tells the students.
The self-deprivation of Buddha, the self and public flogging practiced throughout Christianity and the use of cat o’ nine tails during prayer in some strict monastic orders of the Roman Catholic Church – like the Opus Dei monk, Silas, in Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code.” These are all examples of using BDSM activities in spirituality.
And then there are those who find relief from chronic pain by subjecting themselves to intentional pain. Stockwell says she finds relief from her own chronic nerve pain for several days after engaging in BDSM play.
“If I’m bottoming to a flogging or to any number of things, my chronic pain actually eases up because my body does all this great endorphin stuff and releases all these chemicals that make my body feel better – and I know I’m not the only one.”
While Stockwell identifies as kinky just as much as she identifies as queer, she says it’s not a protected status.
“As soon as you get outside the major urban areas, there’s still a lot of risk, and there are still places where you can lose custody of your kids – you can lose your job,” she says. “If I still lived where I’m from, I would never be as out as I am now.”
Her partner, Kat, owns and operates a side business selling sex toys made out of recycled rubber. She has to keep a low profile or she risks losing her day job. For this reason, Stockwell asked we omit her last name.
Oregon’s freedom of expression laws make it a pretty kink-friendly place, says Stockwell, but that isn’t the case in every state. “There are places where people can be and have been prosecuted for assault even if everything is consensual,” she says.
According to NCSF, even when consensual, BDSM activity is frequently “prosecuted under state criminal laws dealing with assault, aggravated assault, sexual assault or sexual abuse.”
Stockwell considers much of what she does to be sexual activism. Through education she hopes to help demystify BDSM by correcting misnomers and emphasizing safety and consent.
One common myth, she says, is the notion that people into kink are trauma and abuse survivors. “Abuse is so rampant in our community,” she says, “it doesn’t matter what subculture you look at, there’s going to be people that have experienced abuse. It’s not connected in that way we think it is.”
She also emphasizes the importance of full consent, safety and proper etiquette. For example, it’s considered very bad etiquette to ask someone at a munch or play party about the details of their professional or family life.
“Ask them what size cock they like up their ass, absolutely, but don’t ask them where they work,” says Stockwell.
Play parties, she says, can vary. There might be a theme, like rope or role playing. And it’s not a free-for-all — most people play with their partners or people they’ve played with before, she says. Some people go to socialize, some to play and some to watch. Parties usually dedicate spaces for different activities, because, says Stockwell, you don’t want to “have somebody chitchatting about their mortgage” right next to somebody who’s trying to enjoy “a really good single-tailing.”
Also off limits? Touching other people’s toys, slaves or other human property without permission.
As medieval and mystifying and as BDSM’s façade may seem, Stockwell says participants take it light-heartedly. Her partner’s safe word is “French fries,” and the reality is, she says, “A lot of times we’re laughing our asses off while we do this stuff.”
Select Portland Kink Events
PDX Queer Munch
Talking Kink Q Center
Expanding your BDSM Experience SheBop
SPEEC Launch Party Red Rose Ballroom
Oregon Leather Pride Week oregonleatherpride.org
