to go into therapy, but I wanted a Kink Aware therapist who wouldn't shame me for my S&M preferences. The specific therapist I preferred was out-of-network for my health insurance, which meant I needed help paying for it. My dad was cool with it, but he didn't say much. My mother paused when I told her... and then she explained that S&M is part of her sexuality, too. I was shocked. I was also incredibly relieved. If my brilliant, independent mother was into S&M, then suddenly I felt much more okay about being into it myself. It turned out that she had explored S&M late in life -- and she went through the same anxiety about feminism and S&M that I'd felt. "You're not giving up your liberation,” she told me. Mom also acknowledged the stereotype that S&M arises from abusive experiences. "I once worried that being raped made me into S&M," she said. "But I remember having S&M feelings in my childhood and early teens, long before I was raped. I was like this all along." When she said that, I caught my breath in recognition. This is another topic I often repeat myself about, but that's because it's important. As it happens, the biggest and best-designed study on S&M found that there is no correlation between abusive experiences and being into S&M. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence within the S&M community that a lot of S&Mers, though not all, feel our S&M identities to be innate (sometimes described as an "orientation"). This is not to say that there's anything wrong with understanding or processing abuse through consensual S&M. The psychologist Peggy Kleinplatz once published a scholarly article called "Learning From Extraordinary Lovers: Lessons From The Edge," which discusses how therapists can help their clients by studying alternative sexualities. Kleinplatz included a case study of a couple whose S&M experiences helped them process their histories of abuse. However, abusive experiences should not be seen as the usual "creator" of S&M desires. (For more on thi