Category: (Sado)Masochism
Subcategory: Types

Tickling

Tickling involves stimulating specific sensitive areas of the body to produce involuntary laughter, squirming, or distress. Tools range from fingers and feathers to specialized implements like wartenberg wheels, brushes, or electric toothbrushes. Common target areas include feet, armpits, ribs, neck, and sides of the torso.

The physical sensation creates an overwhelming, uncontrollable response that bypasses rational thought. Tickling can quickly progress from pleasant to intensely uncomfortable or even painful for many people, despite continuing to trigger laughter. The inability to control physical responses creates a unique form of submission through physical vulnerability. The intensity builds with duration, making extended tickling sessions particularly challenging. Unlike many other forms of stimulation, defensive tensing of muscles often increases rather than decreases sensitivity.

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This is a description of an activity in the BDSM checklist (also known as a 'kink list'). Want to discover what (more) kinks you might have? Maybe share them with a partner? Start the checklist!

About the category (Sado)Masochism

Sadomasochism involves the consensual exchange of sensation that many would find painful or intense in non-erotic contexts. This spectrum encompasses both the giving (sadism) and receiving (masochism) of such sensations, creating experiences where pain, intensity, and pleasure become interwoven through deliberate and controlled application.

People enjoy sadomasochistic activities for diverse reasons: the intense endorphin rush that creates natural highs, the intimate trust required between partners, the transformation of pain into pleasure through context and arousal, and the cathartic release many experience through intense sensation. Rather than being about suffering, well-executed SM play creates unique states of consciousness and connection that many practitioners find impossible to access through other means, offering profound physical and psychological experiences when practiced with skill and care.



All activities in the checklist: