At first, Lily Zheng saw kink as a way to have great sex. "I thought of it like an escalator: First I would do bondage, then this and that, and then at the end, I would have the most fulfilling, amazing sex ever," said the Stanford University junior, who is also co-president of the university's kink club.

But when the sex at the end turned out to be a disappointment — "I was just lying on the bed, checking out my nails and thinking, 'This is silly and not fun'" — she realized that she wasn't interested in sex so much as the dynamics of dominant and submissive relationships. For her, sex is a tool in service of those relationships, not something she cares about much for its own sake.

Zheng is part of a growing community of asexuals, or people who are not sexually attracted to any gender, who are attracted to the kink scene because they like touch, relationships, sensation, and power dynamics — all reasons that have nothing to do with sex itself. Many say that because kink focuses so much on negotiation and consent, this environment feels safer than traditional relationships, where sex is usually expected. Still, says Zheng, identifying as both asexual and kinky initially felt like "a huge contradiction" because of the stereotypes around both subcultures.

Kink is often broken down into the four categories — bondage, domination, submission, and masochism — and has become more popular recently, thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey. But while its roots were in explicit sex, it has become more about general "connection," with people "having entire relationships where explicit sexual contact wasn't a part of it," according to BDSM educator Mollena Williams-Haas.

Asexuals, or "aces," often divide attraction into three categories: aesthetic, romantic, and sexual, with the last one being the most self-explanatory. Aesthetic attraction means finding someone physically attractive without necessarily being sexually attracted. Romantic attraction or romantic orientation (often broken down into homoromantic, biromantic, heteroromantic, panromantic, and so on) means wanting to be in a romantic relationship with someone regardless of whether you want to have sex with them.

Aces don't experience sexual attraction but some aces have a sex drive and enjoy having sex, some are sex-repulsed and don't enjoy it at all, some really love touch and sensation but dislike penetrative sex, and so on.

Still, asexuality is often conflated with being celibate, prudish or, as Zheng said, pointing to another stereotype, "hating to be touched." So it can be confusing when people encounter someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction or isn't interested in sex, but is still very interested in the kink scene.

Lauren*, a writer in northern California, says she is involved in kink because she likes "sensation-play, interactions, complex human relationship, a balance of power and control and trust." Lauren has been "tying up my Barbies since I was about 3, which is probably a warning sign" but found later that she was not really into sex, and has since had many kink partners that she's never been sexually attracted to.

Instead of being into BDSM for the sex, she says, "I appreciate this ability to step outside normal social strictures and explicitly say, 'We are going to very carefully negotiate the way we interact with each other to be safe and careful with each other.'"

Not all contact during a kink scene is sexual because it often depends on the person and the context, according to Lauren. For example, cuddling with one person can be sexual, and not at all with another. And aftercare, or the contact after a scene, typically should not be sexual at all. "It's kind of like you picking up your cat, and you're hanging out and bonding — you're having very intimate contact, but very explicitly not sexual and sometimes to the point that being sexual would make that really uncomfortable and would be undesirable," she adds.

And even if one person finds the contact sexually arousing and the other doesn't, nothing else needs to happen. One asexual woman, Jessie, said that kink provided a situation where it felt OK for her partner to be aroused without there being pressure to actually have sex. Though this perhaps should be the case in all relationships, there are often more unspoken expectations in mainstream relationships.

"It doesn't necessarily make me uncomfortable that you have a boner, it's what you expect to come of that," Jessie said. "Arousal doesn't mean that partners are prepping for or expecting sex. My partner will get aroused, but for the sake of both our comforts, sex isn't the goal — not for me and not for him."

Jesse is one of the people that Lorca Jolene, a doctoral candidate at Chicago's Adler University, interviewed for her paper about kinky asexuals in the journal Sexualities. (Quotes from her interviewees are pulled from Jolene's journal article.) In the BDSM scene, sex is often seen as "just another kink" that is up for discussion, Jolene says.

"Nobody I've met is into everything; plenty of people have things they're anywhere from vaguely disinterested in to repulsed by," said Michael, another of Jolene's interviewees. For aces in the scene, sex is one thing they're not into, and it can be discussed in the same way that bondage or being hit across the face would be discussed.

The community is "not a utopia, but a microcosm, with the same '-isms — racism, sexism, and so on — that you see everywhere else," says Williams-Haas, the BDSM educator. But, at least in theory, there is more discussion about what is OK and what is not. "A kinky person who comes from a very traditional upbringing — maybe they're just into spanking and don't get the other freaky sex things — might not understand 'asexuality,' but they will understand 'you cannot penetrate me or touch me here' as someone's limit," she says.

Zheng, the Stanford student, says she has received pushback from people in both communities who think she has to be only one or the other. As a result, she thinks kinky aces can play an important role beyond simply proving that they exist. "Even though they're not mutually exclusive, asexuality can challenge kink and kink can challenge asexuality, so the intersection of those identities really have a lot of power to shape how we think about sex and pleasure and sensuality and touch," she says. "There's a lot that can be done from this position."

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