Foundations glossary

Explore each term in this topic, then open its full explanation for context, sources and related reading.

Aftercare
Planned support or communication after a consensual kink or BDSM scene, used to help participants move out of roles, attend to comfort and make sense of the experience. It may be emotional, social or practical, and its meaning and preferred form vary between people rather than following one universal routine.
BDSM
An umbrella term for consensual adult practices involving restraint, rules, power exchange, intense sensation or role-based experiences. Its initials commonly group bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism; not every participant is interested in every element.
Consent negotiation
An explicit and continuing process through which adults agree the scope of a kink or BDSM interaction, including roles, boundaries, communication, relevant risks and conditions that could affect capacity. Negotiation may happen before, during and after an interaction; it is not a contract that grants blanket or permanent permission.
Fetish
A sustained erotic or intimate focus on a particular object, material, body feature or highly specific context. In everyday speech the word is often used broadly; having a fetish does not, by itself, establish distress, impairment or a clinical disorder.
Kink
Kink is a consensual adult interest, fantasy or practice considered unconventional in its context. Kink may be sexual, sensual, relational, aesthetic or some combination of these. The label describes a possibility, not an obligation, and each adult decides whether it fits their own experience.
Paraphilia
A clinical and research term for a persistent pattern of atypical sexual interest. It is not interchangeable with paraphilic disorder: contemporary diagnostic frameworks separately consider consent, distress, impairment and risk of harm.
Paraphilic disorder
An ICD-11 mental-health diagnosis, not a synonym for paraphilia, fetish or kink. The relevant diagnostic requirements concern a persistent and intense atypical arousal pattern involving non-consenting individuals or, where behaviour is solitary or involves consenting adults, marked distress not explained solely by rejection or fear of rejection, or substantial risk of injury or death. An unconventional interest alone is not a disorder.
Partialism
A pronounced focus on a particular non-genital body part or feature. Feet, hands and hair are commonly discussed examples, although the focus and its significance differ between individuals.
Safeword
A pre-agreed word, phrase or non-verbal signal used during consensual adult activity to communicate a need to pause, change or stop—especially where ordinary language might be ambiguous within role-play. A safeword supports communication; it is not consent itself and never makes ordinary words such as ‘no’ or ‘stop’ invalid.