Welcome to the next instalment of the Kinky Dating series, this time we will talk about creating a kinky personal ad. If you missed the first few articles, check out Creating Your Kinky Profile and Kinky Dating – Know Yourself. Stay tuned, as each week we will be looking at more aspects of kinky dating!
CREATING A KINKY PERSONAL AD
While a kinky personal ad tends to be a mixed bag when it comes to success, there are ways to help ensure you get more positive feedback than negative. Often people will post ads that have a laundry list of demands, post their ad in a place where it’s not welcome or post an ad before their profile is even complete. Let’s talk about how an effective kinky personal ad is constructed and the common mistakes that many people seem to make.
POST ONLY WHERE APPROPRIATE
A big mistake that happens all too often is people posting a kinky personal ad where they aren’t welcome. As any moderator of a Fetlife group knows, if you don’t keep on top of the personal ads, they will quickly take over your front page.
If you want to post an ad on Fetlife, Collarspace or another forum based website, make sure that you only do so in places where ads are allowed. Posting a kinky personal ad in a place where they aren’t allowed says a lot about the poster – none of it positive!
Think about it, if you post where the rules forbid it, you’re saying you don’t care about rules or the boundaries that others have set. In BDSM, we need to trust that our partners will honour our limits and boundaries. You can see how this is a problem.
You may have posted your ad without reading the rules, or without reading them all the way through. Who wants a partner, in BDSM or vanilla life, who isn’t attentive or glosses over things like rules?
Finally, posting a kinky personal ad where it isn’t welcome shows that you think you’re above the rules. Are you that special that the rules apply to everyone else but you? Who wants a partner with an attitude like that!
Most kink based websites will have areas where posting kinky personal ads is acceptable. Some may be location based, while others are orientation (kink or sexual) based. So a straight male dominant is wasting his time (and being pretty disrespectful) posting in a group for lesbian dominants.
Making sure you fit the demographics of a group is really important. I can’t tell you how many dominant men post looking for female subs in the femdom groups I’m a part of. Heck, we have even had the odd female sub wander in looking for a male dom (so it’s not just the guys who are clueless here!). When people post ads in groups that they shouldn’t be in, it comes off as disrespectful. Those male doms who post in our groups? They often respond to being called out with “all women should be submissive, you just need an alpha male like me to put you in your place!” I can’t even begin to tell you how fucked up that is – and how unappealing it would be to any potential partners.
LISTING YOUR DEMANDS
Some of the most unappealing personal ads that I’ve seen are a laundry list of demands, with very little about the person posting. It makes a person seem arrogant if they do this – like the fact that everyone will be attracted to them is a given, so they can just make these demands and have people clamour to meet them.
I will post a caveat; this does appear to work for a small sub-section of dominant women looking for submissive/bottom men. While I don’t know what the eventual outcome of these ads are, they do get a fair bit of response. I will say that both the list of demands and the people posting seem to have a very porn-fueled vision of BDSM or they are professional dominants looking for clients (this is often clearly stated in the ad). I don’t think that this approach will result in quality matches for most dominant women or submissive men.
While it’s perfectly fine to have qualities that you’re looking for in a partner, your kinky personal ad should have more depth and detail than just this list.
AVOID NEGATIVE OR OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
A huge turn off in kinky personal ads or profiles is the use of negative language. Someone saying “no fatties” is going to turn people off, including slim people. A better approach to this is to use more positive language (and I don’t mean saying “no overweight people” instead).
Express what you do want in a partner. If you are attracted to a slim body type, say so. Be clear about what you want, don’t say broken things like ‘athletic’ when you mean thin (or thin when you mean active/athletic). An athletic person can be a person of any size, and thin people can be unhealthy or not athletic.
Now, this moves us into some more delicate territory. While personal preferences are perfectly alright, how you express them can end up being offensive and make you look like an ass. I’m not going to get into the need to examine our desires critically and talk about not fetishising minority groups in this article (but I will write about it in the future and link to it here when I do). These articles talk about the subject to help show you why eroticising people due to race and benevolent racism are issues.
Be aware that the language you use can be very offensive, even if you don’t mean for it to be. Something that has come up a lot recently, likely due to the increased visibility surrounding trans people, is using language that is deeply offensive, whether by honest mistake or bigotry.
Saying things like “I’m looking for a real/genetic/born woman/female” is really broken, for a bunch of reasons. First of those is that trans women are real women, full stop. Using “genetic” as an indicator is also pretty offensive since there are lots of intersex people out there or folks who are women (or men) but whose genes are expressed in a way that can be somewhat ambiguous. While I don’t have time or space to get into all of it here, check out this wiki for a quick lesson.
Using language that erases or calls into question other people’s identities is a problem, but it happens all the time in personal ads, defended by the idea of preference. While it is important to describe the person you’re looking for, make sure you aren’t offending people in the process.
AVOID STEREOTYPES
This follows closely on the previous topic. Fetishising people for their race, gender identity, ability, or any of those things is really problematic.
Looking for an Asian woman because they are “naturally submissive” is pretty racist, as is looking for a black man because “they all have huge cocks”. Neither thing is true, those are just racist stereotypes. Similarly, devotees – people who have a fetish for the disabled – are equally distasteful (and a thing I’ve had to deal with). I just read that trans porn is apparently one of the most searched for ‘fetishes’ on many porn sites right now, but turning trans people – especially trans women – into fetishes is a real problem.
Hopefully, the linked articles will give you some insight into why even seemingly positive stereotypes can be offensive. Turning people into objects without their consent is not the way to attract a partner!
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PEOPLE ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE
When writing your ad, it’s really important to remember that you are looking for a person, not a fetish dispenser. In the world of F/m, we call it looking for a “life support system for a whip”. Think about how that would make you feel if your humanity was erased – again without your consent!
Talk about the qualities and the personality that your ideal partner would have, again using positive language. You would want them to share your interests, so talk about that. Are you looking for someone who is smart, funny, caring, independent, well read, etc? Say it, even if it sounds a bit cliche.
You can sort of avoid the cliches if you are more precise. I think everyone is looking for someone with a good sense of humour, but what does that mean to you? Do you like snarky humour? Quirky? Are you more of a slapstick, silly humour kind of person? You get the idea!
LEADING WITH KINK
Obviously, if you are posting a kinky personal ad, you’re looking for someone who is into some aspect of BDSM. While you should include things like your kink role and the one you would prefer your partner to have, don’t start listing all of your kinks in the ad. Those details are better left for private discussion.
For instance, I always state that I am dominant and looking for an eventual 24/7 dynamic with a submissive or switch partner who is submissive to me. I don’t mention that I enjoy chastity or medical play – that is what profiles and personal conversations are for.
WHO ARE YOU?
The purpose of posting a kinky personal ad is to get people interested in you, with the hope that it may lead to friendship or a romantic connection. In order for that to happen, you need to tell people who you are.
Again, don’t lead with your kink. Talk about the qualities that you think a potential partner would find attractive. What do you like doing? What makes you an amazing and unique person? Do you have any cool skills or talents? What sort of things do you have to offer a partner?
You want to be able to stand out from the crowd, but not sound like you’re bragging – it’s a fine line to walk, so you may want to have someone else read your ad over before you post it.
CHECK YOUR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR
Whenever you are trying to engage people in a written medium, like the internet, you should be aware of your spelling, grammar and writing style. You don’t need to be an award-winning journalist or best-selling author to write an effective kinky personal ad, but clear communication is important.
Run your ad through spell check, either in your browser or using a word processing program. Many will also have a grammar check if you aren’t confident in your ability to use punctuation properly. You should also break your text up so that it isn’t one huge block. You don’t need hamburger paragraphs (does anyone else remember those?), but separate your ideas with a line break.
I have seen over and over again, women complaining about people who use text speak in messages or personal ads. I would imagine other people aren’t crazy about it either. I think this is a case of knowing your audience – millennials may be able to get away with some text speak where people from older generations are going to look down on it. The way I see it, a kinky personal ad or preliminary messages should be more formal – you’re trying to impress! I would avoid text speak, swearing, slang and other forms of relaxed language, but YMMV
BE CREATIVE (OR AT LEAST DON’T COPY AND PASTE)
Once you’ve crafted the perfect ad, you need to post it. Try not to post the same ad in multiple places all at once. Tailor your ad to your audience. The kinky personal ad you write for the spanking personals group may be different than the one you write for the M/f group, which may also be different than the one you write for the queer poly group.
Just like you alter your cover letter when applying for different types of jobs, tailor your kinky personal ad to highlight your best qualities depending on your demographic.
DON’T COME OFF AS DESPERATE
Keep in mind that spamming your ad to 10 or 20 groups will make you seem desperate, and I don’t think anyone finds that attractive (ok, probably a few people do). Either way, it’s bad form and makes it look like you have nothing else going on, other than posting personal ads everywhere.
DON’T RELY ON ADS ALONE
Don’t just post a kinky personal ad and think that you’re done, or that the person of your dreams will message you, no more effort required. If it were that easy, there wouldn’t be unhappy single people.
If you’re posting on a site like Fetlife or Collarspace, which have discussion forums, get out and start discussing. While I’m not a member on Collarspace, I do know that on Fetlife, your activity shows up on your profile. If a person’s only activity is posting personal ads, it’s often seen as a negative.
By chatting with others in the discussion groups, you have the chance to socialise, discuss topics that interest you, as well as the chance to make a good impression on people who may respond to your ad. You can also gain insight into what people are looking for in a partner.
LIST OF THINGS TO DO AND NOT DO
So here is our overall list of things that you should be doing in your kinky personal ad and the things you really shouldn’t do.
- Only post ads where they are welcome
- Don’t write out a laundry list of demands
- Keep your language positive, list what you do want instead of what you don’t want
- Avoid using offensive language, don’t insult groups of people
- Don’t use or play up stereotypes – positive or negative
- Don’t objectify people
- Don’t lead with your kink
- Show what you have to offer and who you are as a person
- Use spell and grammar check
- Avoid the use text speak or other informal language
- Don’t spam your ad
- Don’t look desperate
- An ad alone isn’t enough
Stay tuned for next week, when we discuss the fine art of messaging people!