BDSM for Beginners: How to Try It Safely as a Woman
BDSM for beginners: how you try it safely as a woman, at your own pace, with clear limits set beforehand and real aftercare afterward.
Glossary
BDSM checklist
The same sheet as the kink list, with a name that asks you to want something rather than just check something off.
What is a BDSM checklist?
A BDSM checklist is a sheet of sexual and BDSM acts you pick from, choosing what you want to try, rather than a form you run down line by line and tick off. In the Dutch scene it is a keuzelijst, literally a selection list, and that word says exactly what it is: a list of items you get to choose from. It is one of the names for the same sheet as the kink list.
| English term | Selection list, the translation the dictionary gives for the Dutch keuzelijst; in the scene the sheet itself is the kink list |
| Also known as | kink list, checklist, yes/no/maybe list |
| What the name stresses | choosing, and so wanting; not checking off |
| Everyday meaning | any list you choose from, right down to the Top 2000 preselection |
| In the newspaper archive | 809 articles, none in this sense |
| Biggest pitfall | so many lines that people stop choosing and give up |
Why choosing is not the same as ticking off
Because choosing asks you to want something. The Dutch dictionary describes a selection list as a list of items you can choose from, and gives as its example the preselection for the Top 2000, the year-end radio countdown Dutch listeners vote a shortlist into. That is a very different act from running down a checklist, where all you do is confirm whether something has been handled.
It is also an ordinary word. The newspaper archive of the Dutch Royal Library holds keuzelijst 809 times, the oldest from 1915 in an ad for a shoe shop in Hoorn, and not one of them is about sex. So the scene did not coin the word, it borrowed it, for exactly the reason above.
Does a long checklist overwhelm you?
Less than you would think, and that is good news. The best-known test of this was run by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper in 2000: at a tasting booth in an upscale grocery store they put out six kinds of jam one day and twenty-four the next. With six on offer, nearly thirty percent of visitors later bought a jar; with twenty-four, only three percent did. More choice, fewer decisions.
Ten years on, Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter Todd lined up sixty-three such experiments side by side, more than five thousand participants together. Their finding is sober: on average the effect was close to zero, with wide differences between the individual studies. So a long list is not automatically a problem.
What follows from that for you is not the number of lines but what you do with them.
- For the person filling it in, what counts is that every line asks you to want something. That is harder work than checking a box, and it also gives you more back.
- For the person reading it, the tone shifts. A chosen line is a wish; a ticked line is at most no objection.
Jam is not sex, and neither study is about it. What they do show is that the length of a list is no alibi. Pick as many as you can talk through that evening, and leave the rest where they are.
Where this fits on this site
Choosing gets easier the moment someone asks about it without passing judgment. That is exactly what happens in the pre-talk; whatever you skip simply stays where it is. You can read how that conversation goes on the page about the BDSM date.
Sources
- When choice is demotivating. Can one desire too much of a good thing?. Sheena S. Iyengar & Mark R. Lepper, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(6), 995-1006, December 2000. Three experiments in the field and the lab. Provides the tasting booth with six versus twenty-four jam flavors in an upscale grocery store, and the result that nearly 30 percent (31 people) of visitors at the limited display later bought a jar of Wilkin & Sons against 3 percent at the extensive display, plus the finding that participants with a limited choice were more satisfied afterward with their selection.
- Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder & Peter M. Todd, Journal of Consumer Research 37(3), 409-425, October 2010. Meta-analysis of 63 conditions from 50 published and unpublished experiments with 5,036 participants in total. Provides the finding that the mean effect size of choice overload was close to zero, with a wide spread between studies, and that possible preconditions but no sufficient conditions for the phenomenon could be identified.
- keuzelijst. Dutch-language Wiktionary. Provides the description “a list of items you can choose from”, the English translation selection list, and the usage example from NRC of 29 December 2014 about songs missing from the selection list for the Top 2000.
- Newspaper archive of the Dutch Royal Library (Delpher). Queried through the SRU service on the newspaper collection, 10 August 2026. Provides that keuzelijst returns 809 articles, with the oldest on 16 November 1915 in the Hoornsche courant, an ad for the shoe shop De Roode Laars in Hoorn. So in Dutch the word is old and ordinary, and it appears nowhere in this archive in the sexual sense.
Related terms
A checklist is the same sheet as the kink list, seen from the choosing side.
- Kink list. The scene name for the same sheet, with a freely readable example alongside it.
- Yes/no/maybe list. The third name for the same sheet, which puts the three answers themselves in the title.
- Sub list. The Dutch form that goes around, filled in by whoever submits.
- Dom list. The same lines, chosen by whoever takes the lead.
- Boundary. What you run into the moment you start choosing from a list like this.
- Negotiation. The talk where your choices and the other person’s come to lie side by side.
Frequently asked questions
What people still ask about the checklist.
What is a BDSM checklist?
A BDSM checklist is a sheet of acts you pick from, choosing what you want to try. It is the same sheet as the kink list, but the name puts the stress on choosing instead of ticking off. Away from the bedroom, this kind of list is simply any list you make a selection from.
How many things do you pick from a checklist?
As many as you can talk through in one conversation, not as many as are printed on the sheet. That a long checklist would freeze you is less certain than it sounds: the meta-analysis by Scheibehenne, Greifeneder and Todd across fifty experiments found almost no effect of choice overload on average. So the number of lines is not your problem.
Who can you turn to with questions about a checklist?
Victor, a gigolo with more than twenty-five years of experience in BDSM and a background as a psychotherapist. He would rather help you choose than watch you struggle through a whole sheet, and talking it over commits you to nothing. Send your question through the contact form or start by chatting for free.
Blog
Articles about choosing where you start
A checklist makes you want something. These two pieces are about that moment: where you start when you have never chosen anything before, and what the pre-talk does with it.
Communicating before a date: build real connection
Communicating before a date builds trust and real intimacy. Why I always make contact, and flirt a little, long before we ever meet.
More to know
Still have questions about the checklist?
I'm Victor. If you're stuck on choosing because everything looks exciting and scary at once, I'm glad to think it through with you. Asking costs nothing.