Kink community: Meet Alice Hunter

There are not many of us female kinky bloggers in London, and even fewer focus on events reviews in the BDSM and SWINGER community.

Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing a fellow female kinky blogger and published author Alice Hunter, owner of Unicorn Hunting. 

Firstly, can you please tell us who you are and how you identify yourself?

I’m Alice Hunter, swing and kink scene writer. Spent a lot of life as she/her but now I can be she/her/they (thanks Gen Z’s- you are making the world better!)

I say I’m a bi poly switch, so identity decisions may not be my strong suit. But more than anything, I see myself as an aspiring explorer and urban ethnographer of the London underground scene. Not a tourist though- I’ve found a community I love and want to share and celebrate it and the folks who make it wonderful.

What archetype do you best identify with?

Switch, primal, exhibitionist, experimenter, non-monogamist. I really enjoy something that’s new and playful, but more than anything I like the teetering balance of power. To give it all over with one hand then take it all back with the next. The wrestle. The competition. The game.

When and how did you get into the kink community?

I joined the kink community around 2017 or 2018. I’d been converted over from the swinger scene by friends who did both.

I had a lot of hesitancy at first because of the terminology and rules to learn, and felt like maybe I’d be uncomfortable with people who were into things I’d only seen on late night Channel 4, but I was really wrong.

What kept you coming back to it? 

Although I’d made a friendship group with the swingers, largely with the single women, the kink scene just seemed to be made up of people who were so much more open. Open to friendships, different kinds of connections. Different looks, situations. Open about themselves and who they really want to be and what they like. It seemed more inclusive. More wonderful.

People really seemed to make real friends and support each other day to day, and look out for each other.

I’ve often said the swingers are the homecoming king and the prom queen – the kinksters are the Emo’s smoking behind the bike-shed. Put all the ‘outsiders’ together where they don’t have to feel shamed and repressed and conform, and what do you get? An absolute colourful explosion of neurodiversity, honesty and community love. I’m all about the community love.

How did you start the blog?

I can thank the unicorn-seeking couples for that! As a single woman on the apps you get messaged constantly by couples wanting MFF. Now, having learned a thing or two about pick-up with a former party partner and actually taught vanilla pick-up professionally (as well as had some very nice threes in arrangements where I wasn’t the ‘unicorn’ for a couple), I was a tough audience for them.

If you get 20 or 50 messages a day, the couples blend into each other. Not least because their approaches were largely terrible! There were demands, weird power dynamics, entitlement, assumptions that I existed to please them… Me being me, I tried to give them a heads up as to why they weren’t getting anywhere with their approach (spoiler alert- if you want to get a unicorn for an MFF, make it about HER fantasy, not yours.).

I got really tired of trying to nicely tell people no all through the day and explain why. I thought to myself, ‘You know what? I could write how to do this into a book, and then direct them to it when they are asking me why I won’t meet them.’

So I did.

Love that! What happened after that?

I made the book by writing a series of blog posts all about the topic, then put them together to publish. It’s called ‘Unicorns and How to Hunt Them’. I was kind of hoping JK Rowling might later offer me a few million to surrender the title of one of her sequels but no luck so far.

By that time, there seemed to keep being more things to write about. I’d met a couple of other scene writers and was deeply enmeshed in a lovely Kink Event community that existed at the time, Future Parties. It had a chat group and each day we’d greet each other with ‘Morning Deviants!’. I was hooked. They could have sold me Future Parties merchandise and coffee cups and I’d have bought them.

Oh, that sounds captivating, please tell me more!

Being part of swinger or kink chat groups with a whole bunch of friends is really lovely in many ways (though it can eat your life) but it’s also a place where so many topics come up. How do you handle someone cheating on you when you agreed to be non-monogamous? How do you put yourself back together when the life (and certainly the scene) have left you feeling broken and worthless? How do you prepare to have the most amazing night when you go out to a sex club?

The blog and book contained, at the time, a whole lot of stories and quotes from people who shared their own feelings and experiences. I wanted to preserve them. Honour them. Examine them and see if we could draw out lessons and ways to deal with things from our collective decades of knowledge and experience.

I was working on a sequel to the book, focussing on how single women can best navigate the swing scene, but then lockdown hit. All the (some say salty) posts delving into different aspects of female anger (male and non-binary too, certainly, but the topics would largely have been of use for women to build their armour) suddenly seemed a little pointless.

What happened after lockdown for you?

When the world finally stated to re-open, nobody (myself included) wanted to wallow around in collective rage at poor treatment by silly boys and the angst at being objectified when you want to feel empowered. No, we were happy for literally any contact, of any kind. What’s more, the world changed. The events changed.

A lot of the ickier aspects of the old swing scene of pre-2020 (like gender pricing, men joining play without consent, couples privilege) suddenly got tossed out most of the scene by the new-wave Gen Z ethics as to how parties should be run. This statement may be a little unfair. The kink scene has certainly always been about consent. What was new is that the kink ethos came to the swinger parties. The new parties, the ones just starting up. And so very many started up.

There was also a sort of attitude split in the scene (somewhat reminiscent of the 1970’s culture split perhaps). Some events are sober. Spiritual. Based on love for ourselves, others, the world and sacred sexuality. Others are pure mad hedonism that seems to mix dancing, kink, chemsex and somehow still roll this all up into amazing friendship opportunities, rather than the crazy Tarantino disaster it sounds like. Perhaps 90’s rave culture would be the closest comparison.

What are you doing these days?

These days I’m mostly reviewing great events. I do this for free for the community, so people can make choices as to what they will like and what’s going to suit them best, rather than getting ripped off by marketing from big companies that convincingly peddle BS. When I have a notion for a fun topic to explore I’ll throw that in too.

I also interview people from the scene. Most, if not all of us, have learned lessons we wish we knew at the start, so I try to capture these. These words of wisdom. These wonderful characters.

These snapshots in time of the London underground kink and sex party scene that you’ll never really see in the mainstream media. The reality, not the titillation. Not the freak show for vanillas to gawk at and tut. The beauty. The absolutely unique, ephemeral beauty of the person and the time and the collective spirit of the era.

In three words, how would you describe yourself?

Curious. Persistent. Teachable.

What’s your writing style like?

I absolutely love words. I only recently realised I have a sort of word neurodivergence that other people don’t have. To me the words themselves (rather than their meanings) have colour, shape, movement and feelings. I like them to run together in a way that feels musical to me. I like to put them together in a way that feels beautiful to me.

I’m not sure what sort of writing style that is- self-indulgent probably. But when I’m doing ghost writing or a commissioned piece for someone else I’ll adapt it to what’s needed. It breaks my soul to go over a lovingly crafted paragraph and stuff keywords into it for SEO. 

Can you tell us a little more about your blog?

Unicornhunting.blog? It’s a free-to-use guide for those interested in delving into London’s underground kink and sex party scene, providing advice for newcomers, niche explorers, app reviews, event insights, interviews with intriguing individuals, and in-depth information on topics that pique your curiosity.

It caters to couples, single women, single men, and also includes content related to the LGBT community. The blog encourages community involvement with various contributors submitting their pieces, adhering to non-commercial principles to maintain objectivity, integrity, and independence from sponsors and advertisers.

Ah! I feel you, we have similar views on blogging. Can you tell me in a few sentences what your book is about?

A simple guide for couples looking to be more successful picking up women for threesomes. Ostensibly. It’s got a lot of hate from the poly’s over the years for that title (Unicorns and how to hunt them, your guide to scoring threesomes like a boss) and, to be fair, it will make a newbie unicorn hunting couple far more successful. But it doesn’t do it with trickery or some sort of toxic masculinity entitlement. It will take you on a journey. A little four hour journey. And at the end of it you will understand exactly how to be people the unicorns will love.

Is there anything you regret writing about? 

In my book, there’s a single sentence in the last chapter that, looking back, I find horribly transphobic; although it wasn’t intended that way and was more about feeling out of my depth due to the novelty of the situation, it makes me realize how differently I’d respond and feel now, showing personal growth over time. I contemplated removing it, but it feels like editing with the benefit of hindsight is a bit like cheating, as it represents a genuine emotion from when I was new to certain ideas, and others may have similar experiences.

We all have room for growth and learning, and that includes not pretending we were always perfect or that we always responded and thought about things correctly. In a decade, I’m sure I’ll cringe at things I’m writing today. We’re all on a journey, and we all make mistakes. Instead of pointing fingers and creating villain backstories, we should be building paths to redemption, and the best way to do that is through embracing the unfashionable virtue of humility.

What keeps you coming back?

I didn’t really leave. These are my people. These are all my friends. I don’t know vanilla people any more. Kink people are easier to get on with.

What else are you involved in? 

I can sometimes be seen doing a little dungeon monitoring, popping up in a coat room at an event or other bits and pieces. I’m wary of the mainstream media after that SkyNews fiasco with me a few years back.

Do you have any advice for young kinksters? And swingers like yourself?

Take your time. Read things. Talk to people. If you are a woman, don’t expect to find a relationship or dominant. Don’t believe everything you see, hear or read. People have different perspectives, and different motives. Not everyone who welcomes you is your friend. This is for you to learn about yourself and build your community and have wild adventures you never even dreamed of. You will start weak and foolish and make mistakes. Then later you will be strong and look back on yourself and see how much beauty there was in your vulnerability at that time.

Will you share a funny anecdote from your life in the scene?

I’m saving them for my reviews haha. But funny is subjective. A lot of things I don’t include because they just sound completely made up and ridiculous and surreal. Even though they absolutely happened.

Anything else you would like to add? 

Least favourite thing people message me: asking me to send them women/where to find women/send them my friends to chose from/nudes/teach them pickup for free/ to condense the whole book into 1 fact that will work.
Favourite things people message me: that they loved something I wrote and ask a question about part of it/hire me for events/hire me for writing/collaborate on a project/introduce me to cool people.

And that is all for today, thank you Alice for the time and patience, and catch up soon at the next party!

To you all, take care and keep it kinky!!