Kinklist

What is a kinklist?

A kinklist is a list of sexual and BDSM acts where you mark, line by line, whether it is a yes, a maybe, or a no for you, usually separately for giving and receiving. A kinklist fixes nothing; it supplies the words for the conversation that follows.

What a kinklist looks like in practice

Like a shopping list, but with hundreds of lines.

The best-known example is free to read. In 2010 Heather Corinna and CJ Turett published a list on Scarleteen that is still being updated, with blocks on body boundaries, forms of address, relationship forms, and acts. Within each block the lines come in pairs: “a partner who touches me sexually without asking” sits separately from “touching a partner sexually without asking.”

The fill-in code goes beyond yes, no, and maybe. Corinna and Turett add IDK for “no idea,” F for something you fantasize about but do not want to do, and N/A for what does not apply to you. That F in particular does work: according to the authors, people mix up fantasy and wish, and acknowledging that difference takes pressure off sharing.

How a kinklist works

It gives you a menu for something you usually talk about without one.

That image comes from the makers of the Scarleteen list themselves: talking about what you want with no overview of what exists feels, to them, like ordering in a restaurant without having seen the menu. A kinklist solves two things at once. You do not have to invent anything from nothing, and you do not have to say it out loud the first time.

That is also where the weak spot is. Cara Dunkley and Lori Brotto point out, in their review of the consent literature in Sexual Abuse, that it is not enough for two people to agree on which acts are allowed; they also have to give them the same meaning. Two ticks next to “spanking” can mean a tap with a flat hand and half an hour with a paddle.

Why people fill in a kinklist

Because writing is less scary than saying.

Someone who has not spoken something out loud for twenty years does not do it just because the occasion arises. Ticking a box, though, they can: alone, with no face across from them. That moves the hardest step onto paper.

• For the person filling it in, the gain is self-knowledge. You come across lines you never thought about, and usually a few no’s you did not know you had.
• For the person reading it, guessing turns into knowing: you see where the room is and where it is not.
• For the two of you together, what counts most is the conversation that follows. Allen Mallory, Amelia Stanton, and Ariel Handy set 48 studies side by side for The Journal of Sex Research and found a positive link between sexual communication between partners and sexual functioning as a whole (r = .35), and looser links with desire, arousal, and orgasm. In women the links with desire and orgasm were stronger than in men.

A caveat belongs right after that. Those figures are correlation, not cause: it does not follow that a filled-in list changes anything in bed. And a kinklist is nothing for a first date. Corinna and Turett note explicitly that you should already know each other for a while before such a list can lie between you.

How people fill in and discuss a kinklist

Alone first, then together, in that order.

Corinna and Turett put that step up front: take your time, fill it in on your own, and answer for your life as it is now. Only after that do you lay the two lists side by side. That the tool now also exists as an app changes little about this; according to the encyclopedic entry on the yes-no-maybe list, the gain of those digital forms is precisely that you answer separately and then compare.

The conversation afterward runs almost the same way every time. The yes’s go quickly, the no’s faster still, and then you get stuck for half an hour on the maybe lines. That is the payoff, not lost time. For Corinna and Turett a maybe is not half a yes but an “I could” with a condition attached: with certain people, or only at certain moments.

Misconceptions about the kinklist

“A filled-in kinklist is consent.” No. Corinna and Turett describe such lists as starting points and explicitly not as a finish line, and add that your answers will change. A tick is a starting point for a conversation, not a standing yes. What consent actually is, is on consent.

“Only the receiving side fills it in.” A kinklist is role-neutral: the same list is filled in from both sides, and the version of whoever takes the lead is a dom-list.

“The longer the list, the better the agreement.” According to Dunkley and Brotto, the shared meaning of the words counts at least as heavily as which words are on the list. Fifty lines you both read the same way are worth more than four hundred quickly ticked ones.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. I regularly get filled-in lists sent to me, and the pattern in them is constant.

The no’s are sharp, and so are the yes’s. The maybe column is almost always the thinnest, while that is where the most interesting part of the evening sits. What I see: people use “maybe” as a polite form of no, while it is meant for “yes, provided.”

The second thing that has stayed with me: the words on such a list carry nowhere near the same weight. So on the lines that really matter I ask further with “and what does that look like for you.” Usually a picture comes back that differs from what I had imagined.

What you can do yourself

• Fill in the kinklist alone first, without your partner over your shoulder. What you write while someone is watching is an answer to that person, not to the question.
• With every yes, ask about the execution. “Yes” to being tied up says nothing about wrists, rope, or duration; let the other person describe in one sentence what they picture.
• Treat every maybe as a no as long as the condition attached has not been spoken.
• Put a date on it and fill it in again in six months. A kinklist is a snapshot.
• Agree on a safeword before you put the list away. The list covers what you thought of; the safeword covers the rest.
• Do not share it on a first date. There is too much personal on it for someone you barely know.

More reading on the kinklist

On this site the article on sharing fantasies is about the conversation such a list is the tool for, and consent explains why a filled-in list is not consent.

Beyond this site, the Scarleteen list is the place to read one and print it right away, even though it is broader than kink alone. What has been measured about talking about sex is at Mallory, Stanton, and Handy.

Where this fits on this site

Most people do not get stuck on the list but on the conversation after it, and that goes more easily with someone who does not bat an eye. How such a pre-talk goes is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• Yes, No, Maybe So: A Sexual Inventory Stocklist. Heather Corinna & CJ Turett, Scarleteen, first published June 10, 2010, updated March 12, 2025. The full, freely readable list itself. Provides the layout in blocks with paired lines for giving and receiving in each block, the fill-in code Y, N, M, IDK, F, and N/A with F for fantasy, the observation that people mix up fantasy and wish, the instruction to fill in the list alone first and to answer for the present and the coming months, the definition of a “maybe” as “I could” under certain conditions, the comparison with a restaurant where you have to order without a menu, the warning that this is not material for a first date, and the observation that such lists are starting points and not a finish line, with answers that change.
• Couples’ Sexual Communication and Dimensions of Sexual Function: A Meta-Analysis. Allen B. Mallory, Amelia M. Stanton & Ariel B. Handy, The Journal of Sex Research 56(7), 882–898, 2019 (DOI 10.1080/00224499.2019.1568375). Meta-analysis across 48 studies. Provides the positive link between sexual communication between partners and sexual functioning as a whole (r = .35), desire (r = .16), arousal (r = .21), lubrication (r = .17), orgasm (r = .23), erectile function (r = .19), and less pain (r = .12), and the finding that the effect sizes for desire and orgasm were higher in women than in men.
• The Role of Consent in the Context of BDSM. Cara R. Dunkley & Lori A. Brotto, Sexual Abuse 32(6), 657–678, 2020 (DOI 10.1177/1079063219842847). Review of the literature. Provides one point here: that it is not enough for participants to agree on which activities are allowed, but that they also have to share the same definitions of those activities.
• Yes no maybe list. Wikipedia. Provides the description of the tool as a list of acts where partners fill in yes, no, or maybe, with room for giving and receiving, for triggers, and for safewords, the observation that such lists are in use both in BDSM communities and among sexologists, and the description of the digital forms in which partners answer separately and then compare the results. This entry is short and leans partly on journalistic sources, and serves here only as a description of the tool itself.

Related terms

• Consent. What a kinklist is a tool for, and why filling it in does not yet produce consent.
• Dom-list. The same kinklist, filled in from the side that takes the lead.
• Boundary. What a kinklist makes visible per line, and why that boundary can shift.
• Hard limit. The no’s on the list that come with no condition.
• BDSM test. The questionnaire many people fill in before they start a kinklist.
• Check-in. How you gauge along the way whether it still fits, after the kinklist has done its work up front.
• Mentor. The person who goes through such a list with you without turning it into a play date.
• Negotiation. The conversation in which a filled-in kinklist is used.
• Squick. The word for the disgust behind a no, which the list itself does not make visible.
• Sub-list. The filled-in half from the submissive side, which on the circulating form has no maybe column.
• Yes/no/maybe list. The same list outside the scene, where the name states the answer scale and not the content.
• Checklist. The broad name for the same sheet, with the origin of the word and the experience column.