Ask Kim Kierkegaardashian is an advice column by a mashup of the nineteenth-century existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and the reality star and fashion maven Kim Kardashian West. Are you suffering an existential crisis? Vexed about what to wear? Send your questions to [email protected] (or address them to @kimkierkegaard on Twitter). Questions may be edited for clarity and length.
Dear Kim Kierkegaardashian,
I had a recent partner who was really into dirty talk. That doesn’t come very naturally to me, but I was managing O.K. until she specifically asked me to call her a slut. My woke brain started arguing with my caveman brain, and it made the whole thing distinctly unsexy for me. Is it problematic to call a woman a slut in the context of consensual sex, if she requests it? Does it deny her agency or make me a chauvinist to even raise the question? Should I be worried that things like internalized misogyny might be affecting her agency? Is it insane to stress about any of this? I feel like normal people can probably manage to talk dirty without writing a philosophy paper in their head. Please advise!
Signed,
I. Kant (Successfully Talk Dirty)
Dear I. Kant,
As a fellow overthinker, I relish those moments of dissolute bodily pleasure when my mind melts into orgasmic goo. I’m referring to my spa-day junk-food binges. As I’m devouring a bag of Doritos, while wearing a mud mask, in a hibiscus bath, after having been worked over by a masseuse’s nimble fingers, the unexamined life seems so worth living.
But respite is brief. We’re humans, burdened with self-awareness, vexed by anxiety, prone to engaging in such higher-order tasks as making art, writing books, and calling each other sluts in bed.
The last of which (to answer your question) is a perfectly fine thing to do, IMO, when it’s not only consensual but explicitly requested. Your partner might just want to enjoy a little harmless transgression, like wearing white after Labor Day. Transgressing boundaries and taking ownership of an epithet are classic fashion power moves.
There may also be an existential DM in your friend’s request. “Call me a slut” could mean “Remind me that I am merely human, trapped in a body and subject to its animal cravings.”
In fact, titillating talk is often low-key profound:
“Rip my clothes off.” = I wish to lie naked before God, giving my conscience nowhere to hide.
“I like it when you spank me.” = The sting of your hand is a mere tickle compared to eternity’s judgment upon the sinful.
“You’re making me so horny.” = From the moment of birth, we are destined for the grave, yet you mock me by stimulating in me this illusion of vitality.
“Let’s wear costumes.” = The one thing I cannot bear to be is myself.
There are layers in this kind of banter, I. Kant, and the bedroom can be a safe space for respectful lovers to explore them, to retool words that might be shockingly inappropriate in another context, sort of like a mashup advice column does. The trick is to keep the naughtiness within respectful and caring boundaries, like cutouts in a bandage dress.
But consent is a reversible raincoat—it goes two ways. You don’t have to engage in any of this if it fills you with dread. Just politely decline, or paper over the awkwardness by calling your bedroom boo something that sort of rhymes with “slut” (like “hot” or “delicious glazed doughnut”), as if your ears had been stopped by your roaring lust.
Keep in mind, though, that people often mistakenly spot skin flaws on others that they suffer from themselves. In other words, good for you for being sensitive to the ingrown hairs of internalized misogyny, but the rash you’re feeling might be your own. The instinctive assumption that a woman doesn’t understand what she wants is borderline. You don’t have to participate in the dirty talk to cultivate respect for other people’s inscrutable desires.
In any case, when the sinning is over, explain your misgivings and listen to where she’s coming from. Maybe you’ll get into the word after she explains why it makes her eyes pop, or together you’ll come up with a word that both makes her toes curl and makes your cheeks glow. Discussing your existential turn-ons and turn-offs might even make for more intimate, sexier sex—instead of writing a philosophy paper in your head, write it in bed, and call it foreplay.
But now I’ve got you overthinking again, I. Kant, when the thrill of this whole thing might just be in the improvisatory, consensual shock of it. Excessive intellectualizing not only gives you forehead wrinkles, it can also be a form of despair, no less than mindless sensuality. Your rational mind can sometimes distance you from the world, because the world isn’t always rational. And calling people terrible things in bed, in certain cases, might just be the best means of getting closer to them.
XOXO
Kim Kierkegaardashian
