Mentor

What is a BDSM mentor?

A mentor is an experienced BDSM player who helps someone with less experience along with advice and explanation. Mentors usually do not play with their mentee: the guidance stands apart from the play. What the mentee wants to know decides what the conversation is about.

Where the word mentor comes from

From the Odyssey, by way of a French novel from 1699.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands traces mentor back to the French mentor of 1749, named after Méntōr, a friend of Odysseus. In Homer’s epic the goddess Athena takes his shape and so becomes the counselor of Telemachus, the son left behind. The name became a common noun only after François Fénelon’s didactic novel Aventures de Télémaque of 1699. In Dutch, mentor is first recorded in 1734.

Why people look for a BDSM mentor

Because this is not something you check with your GP or your sister.

Benjamin Graham and colleagues had 48 members of BDSM communities name for themselves what their community does for them, in The Journal of Sex Research. The 133 answers yielded fifteen categories, among them acceptance, safety, and the sharing of knowledge. Exactly what a mentor exists for.

For a beginner a mentor mainly saves searching: you do not have to work everything out yourself, and you can ask a dumb question without an appointment attached to it. For the one mentoring it is a way to pass on experience without turning it into play.

In that same study, participants also named downsides, such as conflict among members. A mentor has a taste of their own, is no neutral authority, and is no substitute for professional help.

How mentoring works in the Netherlands and Flanders

Usually by email, anonymous, and with sharp limits on what the mentor does.

Stichting Info BDSM, a volunteer group from the Netherlands and Flanders that has existed since 2011, calls a BDSM mentor an experienced colleague who has read and thought a lot about BDSM and lets the mentee benefit from that head start. A sounding board, then, not a teacher. Their approach says just as much about what a mentor is not: no meetings in real life, no sessions, no dating or matching service, and the mentee decides when it stops.

It once went differently. Anthropologist Matthew D. Johnson describes how the open education gatherings that rose after 1970 took the place of the close mentorship before it, and that many mourned that loss.

More on mentoring

Within this glossary, BDSM explains what a mentor shows you the ropes of, and kinkster covers the label you give yourself once that has worked. Beyond this site, Stichting Info BDSM puts its method on paper: the only Dutch-language place those principles are written out.

Where this fits on this site

A mentor explains, I take part: that is the difference. If you would rather learn in practice than by email, the page about the BDSM date has what gets agreed beforehand.

Sources

• mentor. Etymologiebank (Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal), including M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (2003–2009). Supplies the meaning “wise guide, counselor”, the oldest Dutch attestation from 1734, the borrowing from French mentor “wise counselor” of 1749, the naming after Méntōr, a friend of Odysseus in Homer’s epic, the fact that Athena takes his shape in the Odyssey and becomes the counselor of Telemachus during his father’s years-long absence, and Mentor becoming a common noun in the wake of Fénelon’s Aventures de Télémaque of 1699.
• Member Perspectives on the Role of BDSM Communities. Benjamin C. Graham, Sarah E. Butler, Ryan McGraw, Shelby Marie Cannes & Joanna Smith, The Journal of Sex Research 53(8), 895–909, 2016. The only study that has members of BDSM communities name for themselves what their community serves. The publisher releases only the abstract; that has been read here and nothing has been drawn from the full text. Used: the seven work sessions with 48 participants, the 133 unique terms they produced, the fifteen categories that include acceptance, safety, and the sharing of educational knowledge, and the finding that participants also named negative sides such as conflict among members.
• Leather Culture. Matthew D. Johnson, glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, entry from 2004, encyclopedia edition 2015. The author is an anthropologist and historian. Supplies that education became the cornerstone of the more open organizations that arose after 1970, that this educational mission in a sense took the place of the close mentorship of the period before it, and that many mourned the loss of that more intimate model of passing on knowledge.
• Hoe zien wij mentoring?. Stichting Info BDSM, consulted August 2026. A volunteer group from the Netherlands and Flanders, founded in 2011, and the only Dutch-language organization that describes its own mentoring practice; as such authoritative about that practice and not about BDSM in general. Supplies the description of a BDSM mentor as an experienced colleague who has read, thought, and reflected a lot about BDSM and lets the mentee benefit from that head start, and the working rules that meetings in real life are excluded, that the foundation does not want to be used as a dating or matching means, that no sessions or play are offered, and that the mentee in principle decides when the mentoring stops.

Related terms

A mentor is the way into BDSM itself: someone who explains that world to you before you step into it.

• BDSM. The field a mentor shows you around.
• Kinkster. What you come to call yourself once that has worked.
• Kinklist. The fill-in sheet mentor and mentee often use as the first homework.
• Consent. The subject a mentoring conversation most often lands on.
• DM. The same care, but at a party and for everyone at once.
• Protector. The same distance from the play, but as a buffer instead of an explanation.
• Lifestyle. What it turns into when BDSM becomes more than an evening.