This article was originally published on SexWriting.

When you think of a sex blog and of BDSM the sole, immediate thought association is with Ayzad. A reformed journalist, a BDSM expert for over twenty years, author, extreme eroticism scholar and an organizer of kinky events including Sadistique. All of these definitions wouldn’t be enough to give him full credit, for he is more than that still. A personal coach, consultant, kink educator and sex blogger, not to mention a lecturer on the many aspects of unusual sex.

If you don’t know him yet, his website cum blog www.ayzad.com is a smorgasbord of thoughts, tips, research, news and revelations about fetish, paraphilias, BDSM. Sharp, incisive, ironic and erudite, he certainly is a man to be followed, if only out of curiosity. And this interview with Ayzad is proof of that. Do you want to find out whether you are a sexual explorer too? And do you want to learn more about this kinky sex expert? Then get comfortable and enjoy our chat. Action!

Let’s start at the beginning: who is a sexual explorer?

Lots of people! You probably already are one too, because that term indicates anybody who approaches sex with a curious and critical attitude, having no prejudice and respecting their partners as much as themselves. That doesn’t sound like much, and yet it represents the beginning of a chain reaction that enriches us personally, contributing at the same time to improve society as a whole.

Fact is, lots of social problems – like for example the sexism denounced by the #MeToo campaign, or the syphilis epidemics currently spreading in many European countries among a general indifference – can be traced back to an obsolete approach toward sex. To overcome it and live much more serenely it is sufficient to adopt a handful of principles which are pretty widespread already, and which are listed in the Sexual Explorers Manifesto.

Your blog offers lots of education about unusual sex. How necessary it is, and why?

When we talk about sex normality is just a statistical term, a percentage indicating which practices are more or less common. Until we stay within the borders of the Safe,Sane and Consensual territory there are no “right” or “wrong” preferences nor practices, and sure enough each one of us has their little obsessions making them wonderfully unique. What I perceive as unusual might be banal for you, and vice versa.

Observing the less common practices and fantasies is fun, but it is also a way to open your mind to that diversity and to allow us to appreciate some aspects of humanity we might have never even conceived otherwise – or to discover new pleasures. Above all, these subcultures always reflect something of ourselves too: by thinking them over you end up knowing yourself better or arriving at fascinating new discoveries. Let me point you to two articles that illustrate this in practical terms: one is about furries, and the other about the history of boudoirs. I promise you’ll be surprised.

What kind of responsibility do you feel toward your readers as a sex blogger?

Sex is an odd topic: we think and talk about it constantly, but then we do it sparsely and rather badly. The main culprit is the disinformation caused by embarrassment, taboos and often disappointing “experts”. That’s why in my job I try above all to be precise, researching everything to death before writing any article. Also, since I often write about BDSM and other extreme practices, I always give the highest importance to inform about safety: I’d never want somebody to get hurt after getting inspiration from something I wrote inconsiderately!
Besides these practical aspects, I am deeply convinced that living sex serenely is the key to a happy life. So every time I sit down to write I make a point of giving my readers at least one new element for them to enrich their sex lives.

Who reads your extreme sex blog?

Are the things I write about really so extreme? Go figure: to me, the really depraved ones are those who see sex just as a mechanical performance, with a limited and unchanging script like most people…

However, I believe my audience to be composed of three large categories: the diehard fans of one practice or the other, who often they can find treated more correctly than elsewhere. Then there are lots of curious people, who come in with an excuse to find something new and funny to talk about with their colleagues during their coffee breaks, and some times discover new things to try in private.
The last group is composed of those looking for a solution to personal issues related to their unusual sexuality. For them I work as a personal coach, and I am proud of having helped many people to reclaim their happiness.

Perverse eroticism can be narrated in so many ways. Yours is ironic, but not only that.

Irony is inevitable: partly to lighten up topics that can sometimes get rather… intense, and partly because taking yourself too seriously is never healthy. Also, come on… How can you not smile when you stumble on stuff such as the jelqizer, the daikon molester, the bridge brides or the absurd sex toys of my Do not buy it! saga? One day I even began curating a weekly feature called Inexplicable Moments in the History of Sexuality, collecting visual proof of the weirdest ways the human race goes about sex. I thought it would last just for a few installments, but we have reached the two-hundred-and-eighty-seventh with no end in sight!

On the other hand, dealing with unusual sex also leads to pretty serious thinking I love to share with my readers. Just to make a few examples, I happened to write about the transcendent power of sexuality, the ethical quagmires connected to sex dolls built for pedophiles, the media manipulation of young LGBT suicides or the social responsibility behind the social network users management policies. Point is, we are culturally used to consider sexuality like a dimension apart of sorts, separated from “real life” and not that important. But that’s very far from the truth! Sex is literally the engine that keeps life going; it is more or less directly connected to everything we do, and it deserves to be treated with the respect due to something that, at the end of the day, fills most of our thoughts anyway.

Does writing about sex change between paper and online?

If the approach remains the one just described, considering sexuality a subject with the same dignity of economy or politics, the answer is no. Of course you must take into account the audience you are writing for, but that is always true for anyone writing as a job.

The problem is that traditional publishing is necessarily subjected to market and advertising requirements whose first directive is not to upset the advertisers, nor the hypocrite aunt, and neither the vicar. The result is that any sane publisher will only be able to write about sex in terms of scandal, blame or sarcasm – making a great disservice to the readership. This is also the reason I rarely appear on paper.

The business model of traditional publishing has long imploded anyway, both for magazines and books. Today there are ways to self-publish online and reach many more readers – and working in a manner remarkably more dignified and free than in an old-fashioned editorial office. On my part, I have even revoked my book publishing rights from most of my old publishers: I can achieve far better sales on my own, while offering my readers similar quality products at a fraction of the price. It’s the XXI century, and there is no concrete reason anymore to sacrifice whole forests to the vainglory of an industry that’s dead and buried.

In your opinion you become a sex blogger, are born one or do you improvise?

Am I allowed to be impolite? I am under the impression that most of self-described “sex bloggers” are essentially reviewing rubber dongs and awfully-written romance novels. A hobby that may be entertaining, but which doesn’t exactly require much skill.
Then there are those who write about sexuality: in that case you need language and journalism competencies, but also medical, psychological, cultural, analytical ones, and more… Just like with any serious professional approach, the results are proportional to the effort and investments you put into it. Maybe it is a coincidence, but in the two decades I spent working in this field I have witnessed the rise and disappearance of countless characters, while the professionals can be counted on a threesome’s fingers, even globally.

Ayzad, is there something you still haven’t discovered about sex and you can’t wait to?

Surely! I keep finding new things almost every day, and that’s what makes my job so exciting. Of course you have to be a dedicated seeker… but the positive side for everyone else is that, if they want to skip the whole research part, they can simply subscribe to my free newsletter to receive a weekly summary of my discoveries by email.

Before parting our ways, tell us once and for all why we should all get into extreme eroticism!

All, as in everyone? Please don’t! Sex – extreme or very vanilla – is a joy to be savored only when and how you feel like it: turning it into an obligation or an obsession takes all the pleasure out of it.
Conversely, everyone of us should open our minds to different prospectives from those we are used to, like we said in the beginning talking about sexual explorers. I merely believe that, among a number of different possibilities to achieve this, unusual eroticism is the most exciting one. Come visiting at www.ayzad.com maybe, and peek around the various areas: you might discover you agree with me.