If your play has ever veered left of vanilla, you’ve probably heard of FetLife. Founded in 2008, FetLife is its own breed of NSFW social media that’s sometimes known as the Facebook for kinksters. The comparison tracks. With nearly nine million users, FetLife is the largest active online gathering of kinksters, and is a vibrant and bustling network of like-minded folks who live to explore every nook and cranny of BDSM.
With so many people using it already, you may be feeling the pressure to sign up yourself. Nothing feels more embarrassing than being new to a play party and looking slack-jawed when someone rattles off their username and favorite local munch.
But does all the hype live up – and do you absolutely have to join FetLife to be a “legitimate” kinkster?
The short answer is no. If you like to get kinky, you can still be a valued member of your local kink community without joining a single social media site. But the site is popular for a reason, and for many folks, FetLife offers the promise of community, a deeper understanding of BDSM, and new ways to explore the shape and edges of desire.
Everyone is different, and knowing whether FetLife is right for you starts with how you weigh the pros and cons.
Although an account isn’t an automatic badge of kink, it is popular for a reason – and there are several supporting players in this behemoth’s corner that make FetLife the cornerstone of kinky online engagement.
One of the best things about FetLife? The zero-tolerance policy among the community about kinkshaming. Most folks there have been on the receiving end of negative judgments before, and the community is dedicated to creating an inclusive space for everyone. After all, the whole point of the site is to let people be who they are and to give folks the liberty to explore intimacy in whatever way evokes their fantasies.
It’s not just the community that fights against judgment: it’s the website itself. As soon as you set up your profile, you’re greeted with an abundance of choices to help the kinky world see you for who you are. – starting with over a dozen different ways to label your sexual orientation and gender identity.
And as one of the OG sites for polyamorous people to shine, FetLife also lets users list as many partners as they want – in whatever configurations best represent them. Relationship statuses aren’t one-size-fits-all, either: FetLife features over twenty different relationship definitions to choose from, including member of a house, leather family, metamour, widow, and lover.
The detailing doesn’t end there. You’re also able to whittle down your kink identity, as well as proclaim your love for different fetishes – and with their list of hundreds of fetishes, you’ll be sure to find the ones that represent you best.
With all this customizability, FetLife immediately engages users with the possibility to be their most authentic sexual selves.
FetLife may have a (NSFW) feed to scroll through, but it’s not just a place to meet new lovers and indulge in some kinky DIY porn. Instead, the site lives up to its social media status with multiple ways to connect with the community – like blog posts.
With the click of a button, you can share your two cents for the whole kinky world to see. Your posts can be kink-specific, but they don’t have to be. Some folks use the blogs to vent about their day. From a stressful conversation with your grandpa to the French press you just knocked onto your computer, the FetLife blog community welcomes it all.
Join groups to personalize your social sphere, and to share your kinkiest thoughts with folks whose desires look just like yours – and then take those new relationships to the streets. No matter where you live, FetLife is so popular that there’s likely to be a meetup group in driving distance. The most popular gatherings are called “munches.” These nonsexual gatherings are casual opportunities for kinksters to get to know other folks in the neighborhood over cocktails or trivia nights.
The munches are casual, but often open doors to other, spicier opportunities like play parties. And who knows? Those connections can even blossom into something deeper. Virtually or in the real world, you might just meet your next long-term play partner, your future spouse, the dom you’ve always needed, or lifelong friends.
Freed from worrying about what your Uncle Grant may think on Facebook (hi, Uncle Grant!), or the hesitation that your old favorite high school teacher (hi, Mr. Golden!) might discover your booty pics on Instagram, FetLife lets you do you without having to worry about who’ll stumble across your thottiest thoughts.
The only policies against content on FetLife are ones that can land the site in hot water. And keeping in line with their commitment to inclusivity, FetLife does something simple to set itself apart from the Facebook megalith: they don’t discriminate over who can post what. With each passing year, Facebook and Instagram tamp down further on freedom of sexual expression, pointedly targeting and silencing queer folks, people of color, and the plus-size community. When a thin, straight, white woman posts a photo, it’s a beloved addition to the Gram, garnering a million likes – but if a trans* Black woman with curves posts the same thing, the photo is removed or the user is shadowbanned without explanation.
The pick-and-choose nature of Mark Zuckerburg’s legacy has most queer and kinky folks looking for a new place to be themselves. For many, that outlet is FetLife, where you’re free to post photos that would make Zuck faint. Most fetishes are suddenly fair game, and your nude body, ropes, pony play, or the sweet welts from a recent caning are all perfectly appropriate profile photos. Best of all? There isn’t a boss or family member in sight to worry about.
FetLife wasn’t made by vanilla folks looking to make a buck. It’s a labor of love crafted and maintained by kinksters who know the ins and outs of the lifestyle – including the stigmas that surround it. Because they know firsthand what it’s like to be in the community, users can hop on board and play without worrying about having to reveal any aspect of their true identity. All you have to share is the information you’re willing to divulge. Many people you talk to on FetLife use aliases, obscure their faces, and don’t even reveal their location – and that’s all perfectly allowed.
And although you need to prove you’re over eighteen to register, the people monitoring this site are diligent in helping users maintain anonymity. As kinksters themselves, they know what’s at stake.
Sure, there are sites like Alt.com, and you can hang in carefully veiled spots on other social media sites if you’re careful. And while Reddit and Twitter both have strong sex and kink communities, it’s not quite the same as FetLife. Acting as a one-stop-shop for all your kinky needs, this website is kind of like a virtual megaplex of BDSM-friendly content. Porn? Check. Reflective blog posts? Check. Social meetups? You bet.
Everything but the kitchen sink is here, and you only need one username and profile to get going. While other sites may have bits and pieces of these offerings, there’s only one that has it all in one place – and that’s a perk that’s hard to beat.
As great as all those benefits are, it’s not all good news. When you’re deciding whether or not FetLife is for you, keep these things in mind right next to the positives:
If you’re a newbie, FetLife can be overwhelming. With no less than seventy-seven ways to identify your kink role, the sheer bounty of options can stop a fledgling kinkster’s journey before it begins.
And while they do offer three ambiguous categories of identity (“evolving,” “exploring,” and “undecided”), it comes with a caveat. In a world stuffed with dungeon masters and seasoned subs, does anyone actually want to fess up to being completely inexperienced? It can be embarrassing, and unless humiliation’s your kink, that can be enough to stop folks from getting beyond creating their profile.
While the site has great functionality without paying a dime, it’s still worth pointing out that full access to all the goods costs a little bit of dough. At only five dollars a month, membership isn’t breaking the bank, but when so much content out there is free, it can steer folks away from going all in.
Messaging, blogs, joining groups, and all the essential aspects of building community are free, which is great, but if you’re looking to tailor your feed or search deeper in your kinky history archives, you’ll need to pay. The biggest service unpaid members miss out on? The videos. In what is essentially user-uploaded kink and porn content, the videos are an allure that many folks find irresistible (seeing your friends’ porn? Yes, please).
But if paying is a barrier, you might just be out of luck.
For years, FetLife was a site where anything that could happen, would. Any kink you could conceive of was welcome, no matter how far it deviated from the BDSM credo of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” (SSC) and into the territory of Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK).
A few years ago, that all changed. Like so many other spaces that once held sex-positive, sex work, and erotic content, FetLife hit a wall after Trump signed the controversial FOSTA/SESTA bill into law.
This bill says it’s there to fight human trafficking, but what has ended up happening instead is that sex workers have been pushed to the margins and are less safe than they were before. Without regular platforms to share their services safely, job security for sex workers has become even less stable – and FetLife felt the law’s burn as well.
After this bill passed, many credit card and online payment companies refused to work with companies who had erotic content, effectively halting FetLife’s income overnight. In order to keep receiving premium membership payment, the site banned talk of full-service sex work or escort service, as well as anything that the credit card company deemed “illegal or immoral content” or “blood, needles, and vampirism.”
Quickly and without warning, anything that could fall under that umbrella was banned on the site. While this isn’t a specific fault of FetLife’s, it’s frustrating nonetheless Folks who want to engage in RACK together are suddenly without a platform to find each other.
As with any dating or social site, there are latent risks involved with meeting people off the internet. I’m not talking about the munches, or even play parties. When a munch is nothing more than a board game night in a pub on a Tuesday, you’re not likely to have issues with consent and safety. And even play parties are generally incredibly safe, with a strong emphasis on honoring boundaries.
Where the risks arise are when you meet folks one-on-one straight off the web. Kink always carries certain amounts of risk, but engaging in Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) with someone you don’t know carries implicit dangers – especially if you’re new to the scene.
Folks sometimes masquerade as sadists or doms to violate others’ boundaries, particularly preying on inexperienced folks just delving into their submissive kinks.
To keep that from happening to you, make sure you go to munches and build community with honest folks in the community. Field potential doms at play parties first, and learn from others about how they interact with subs and the community at large.
BDSM and power play isn’t the problem: folks who ignore safewords and consent are. The BDSM world as a whole is far more inclusive and concerned with consent than vanilla circles are, and there are amazing doms and tops out there who cherish their subs and understand the dynamic. The trick is finding them – and unfortunately, FetLife makes it harder than it should be to weed the bad doms out from the good...
The deeper you dig, the more troubling the site gets in certain lights and shadows. In February of this year, HuffPost published a disturbing account from a woman who met her rapist on FetLife. New and “inexperienced” in the world of kink, she wasn’t sure what the norms were, wasn’t educated on consent and safety, and played with a man who engaged in consensual nonconsent without safewords – an ultimate no-no to even the most basic kinksters on the scene.
But the woman HuffPost called Adrienne didn’t know that the lack of safewords wasn’t the norm. All she saw were glowing commendations from other women who had spent the night with this man and had their whole world rocked. Liam Gordon Murphy’s alias was “The Wolf,” and he had a following. Between meeting women in person and his “fantasy” blog posts featuring scenes of consensual nonconsent with no safewords, the traction Murphy had gained was staggering. A full retinue of people who were so dedicated to him and his style of “play” that devotees began calling themselves his “maidens” and forged a group some 650 strong. His content all fell into the “willing victim” trope, where people are grateful afterward that their assault happened, despite protesting the whole time. While rape fantasies can be a healthy part of a sexual relationship, they’re only safe when all parties have had lengthy conversations and established safety precautions that enable the scene to be as powerful as it can be without putting anyone in real danger.
Murphy did none of that. But still, with so many glowing reviews, there seemed to be no way Adrienne would be in actual harm – or so she thought. The first few times with Murphy were fine, but after they’d been meeting for a few months, he violated her consent while she was tied down and unable to stop him, and although she cried and told him “no” repeatedly, to him, it was all part of the consensual nonconsent “game.”
When she tried to voice her feelings about it online, she was immediately silenced – by both his followers and the website itself. And that’s where things got sticky. Many people had come forward concerned about Murphy's approach, and each time, they were silenced by FetLife itself.
One person didn’t accuse him of assault, but just voiced their concerns about the content of the stories. Commenting on yet another of Murphy’s rape fantasy pieces, the user wrote, “Under the banner of ‘It isn’t rape if the victim gives permission afterwards’ then I guess all behavior in the story is worthy of all the loves and comments it received.”
For that relatively tepid criticism, the user received a message FetLife that slapped them with the equivalent of a virtual restraining order, forbidding them from commenting on any of The Wolf’s posts again.
This happened often. Anyone who spoke on the dangers of play without negotiation, especially with people who hadn’t yet learned the (literal and metaphorical) ropes to BDSM, found themselves banned, blocked, or otherwise reprimanded by not only other users, but FetLife themselves.
When HuffPost aired all of this dirty laundry, naturally, there was no response from either FetLife or Murphy. Curious for myself about the lack of accountability, I dusted off my long-abandoned FetLife account and started browsing groups – and it turns out that this culture of suppression doesn’t just start at the top: it comes from the bottom as well. You can still find “Wolf Dens” around the world promoting the way that The Wolf preyed on young women.
And what’s interesting to note about these groups is their zero-tolerance policy...for disparaging someone or calling them out. It’s not a zero-tolerance policy against crossing boundaries. Instead, the survivors are the ones wearing the heaviest shawl of blame, and the survivors are the ones who have to present evidence. “Slander” against a perpetrator is frowned on in these spheres. While FetLife absolutely must be held accountable for listening to accusers rather than silencing them, the community itself has to be held accountable as well.
While there are pockets of consent-emphasized culture, by and large, the more “mainstream” of the niche kink scenes on FetLife are reported to enable perpetrators while working to discredit and silence survivors. But is it really any surprise, considering this attitude is written right into FetLife’s rules and regulations?
The site has explicitly prohibited making “criminal accusations” against its members (like rape) meaning that survivors have nowhere to go to warn others about a perpetrator, and the perpetrator is free to use the platform for their dirty work. And when you confront the site about this, silence is the only answer you can expect to get. If you look at articles from The Atlantic and HuffPost, two major outlets, neither the CEO John Baku nor any representative from the company have responded to “repeated” requests for comment.
All of this isn’t to say that consensual nonconsent shouldn’t be allowed. When approached with safewords and a communicative spirit that has all parties’ best interests in mind, it can be a fulfilling place to hang your hat and explore your proclivities. But consensual nonconsent is only healthy when everyone agrees that safety and surrender are the goals, not one person’s pleasure or kicks over another’s – and especially not in exchange for the sub’s actual safety.
Some people have a fantastic, revolutionary time on FetLife, while others struggle to see what all the fuss is about. Worst of all, there are some folks who love the site at first blush before finding themselves under the thumb of predators like Murphy. And in a culture where groups, website admins, and the CEO himself protect perpetrators and rapists from being called out, and willingly keep future victims in the dark, it’s important to ask yourself what your exact goals are with joining FetLife.
The site is rife with issues, but there are golden community members there as well. The trick is finding them. Dominant, submissive, or switch – you’re in charge of determining how fulfilling FetLife is fo you.
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