The Brooklyn Rail

Rule 34 is an internet theory that states: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” Indeed, our interconnectedness, proximity to filmed sex and horned-up imaginations have made it such that we never have to watch a show, thirst over a celebrity, or read a book without wondering what those same characters would look like on all fours. Second Skin, the writer Anastasiia Fedorova’s new book on kink and desire, suggests a modified version: if it exists, someone has a fetish for it.

With a playful eye and a genuine appreciation for all of the ways humans get off, she explores kinks like leather, latex, BDSM, feet, gloves, and machines with surprising comfortability. “The world is burning; I may as well come out as a pervert,” Fedorova writes. Second Skin goes down easy—like a rubber glove adhering to every corner of your skin. Really, it’d be hard to find a more experienced narrator; a wide-ranging fetishist herself, Fedorova often starts a chapter with a steamy description of her engagement within the medium. The book opens with a scene where she and a play partner are in head-to-toe rubber, “him on a leash, me standing above him.”

This openness to view every corner of human sexuality as worthy of investigation makes Second Skin a wholly welcoming romp through modern sexual glitches. Fedorova has a therapist’s eagerness to probe; “and tell me how that makes you feel,” she might say to someone with a boot on their face. “In another life,” she notes, “I could have been someone who writes sexually charged reviews for car parks on Google.” That’s putting it lightly—the book goes from rubber to leather to feet to gloves to pup play, making an erotically fluid case for each.

But this egalitarian view leads to some overly excited analysis—there are only so many times one can hear about how radical queer sex is before the idea loses its staying power. With her rosy view, Fedorova is prone to overhyping the act, once asserting that “we fuck in the intersection of sexuality, consumption, pop culture and senseless lust.”

Do we? This sort of mealy-mouthed theorizing has infected the culture canon for years now. Occasionally the book dips into Obama-era rhetoric of resistance that has the cadence (and sticky-sweet virtue) of the now-infamous London mural reporting that “Sex with refugees is jasmine-scented and beautiful.” Must everything need to be this clinical breed of soft resistance? For sure, queer people have been prosecuted and tortured for sexual deviance in the past—the Russian-born Fedorova documents this all too well—but in 2026, perversion as protest comes off a bit pompous.

Exploration, rather than analysis, would have helped in areas where the cultural importance of deviant desire is scrapped in favor of case studies. The section on gimping is the only one with detailed confessions from the fetishists and their goals—ranging from “relinquishing my autonomy for the enjoyment of others,” to “the practice of enclosure, of letting go of myself,” to AuDHD-friendly “sensory deprivation.” Fedorova repeats that it’s impossible to fully inhabit the mind of a fetishist, but this section’s candid “Greek chorus” gets pretty close. Rachel Aviv’s psychological masterwork Strangers to Ourselves did this successfully—when someone has an interesting story, let them tell it. It’s more entertaining—and, perhaps, radical, the aim of the book—to hear from a fetishist doing the dishes in head-to-toe rubber, rather than a theorist explaining why this is powerful.

A couple of overconfident sentences aside, Second Skin makes the case for the broad understanding of what Fedorova likes to call “extended sexuality.” Understanding humanity’s “multiplicity of pleasure and fulfillment” can lead to acceptance, interest, and better sex. Communication is the central point, and shedding the social stigma requires conversations, even if it’s a boner-killer during pillow talk. “To take away the complexity [of fetishes] would be to take away our agency to interrogate boundaries and taboos,” she explains. “To write on fetish is to face the ugliness and the messiness in ourselves.”

Despite this, I yearned to learn about something truly disgusting or horrifically boundary-pushing. Fedorova briefly dives into when fetish becomes objectification, examining “race play,” in which the races of sexual partners (along with slurs and objects associated with racial history) are used to enforce a power dynamic. But that’s the thorniest example in the book. A foot fetish is old hat—you couldn’t find anyone who likes to be pissed on?

Even if the internet has birthed some truly pearl-clutching admissions, Fedorova is right that “for the first time in history, our knowledge of desire is not limited to our own experiences or to those of our close confidants.” Open Reddit and find some of the most insane dating stories or mortifying disclosures to know that it’s a place of hedonistic beauty, not shame. “We should all know less about each other,” a New York Times opinion essay famously starts. Wrong! We can get as close as we can to another human by knowing what makes their engine run.

Yet there was another idea in Second Skin that I disagreed with initially—when speaking about issues of consent, boundaries and community pleasure, Karl Verboten, who runs London’s kink-heavy Klub Verboten, says that a shift in the culture has occurred: “We’re less transactional with each other, we’re thinking a little bit more about responsibility for each other.”

Perhaps in England, this reads differently, but my American mind couldn’t help but recall the pandemic that was exacerbated by others’ ignorance and indignity, along with the narcissist we’ve elected, twice, who is now running the country having promised a steady diet of cruelty, rage, and self-preservation. At least for the general voting public, it appears we’ve become more selfish, scared, and willing to forgo responsibility in the name of what’s best for us.

But maybe the fetishists have a point, or simply operate under a different guide—their shared shame pointing them to kindness instead of anger, understanding instead of vitriol. I certainly won’t be showing up to work in a gimp costume tomorrow, but sexual exploration—a brief realm where one can engage in fantasy, sublimation, and pleasure—can bring a greater understanding of what makes us tick, the power structures beneath us, and, if you’re lucky, an orgasm. There is space, in all of our bodies, for more.

So can a politics of desire be transformed into a politics of, well, politics? Should the next “No Kings” protest be led by dominatrixes in twelve-inch heels whipping dog-masked men? New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently shouted out the gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry during a press conference—is a rubber-laden chief of staff next? Second Skin finds this possibility necessary and obviously a little erotic. It’s a matter of time before “In God We Trust” is replaced by “Different Strokes for Different Folks.” And isn’t that a more fitting American dream?