FtB Con Postmortem: Racism in the Kink Scene

This past weekend was FtB Con. On Saturday, I was on a panel about kink for those who were beginning to explore it. I brought up issues of racism that I have faced online and off in the scene and specifically described a situation where I was nonconsensually fetishized for my skin tone at a kink event. Another panelist compared the situation to being followed and harassed at a mall and advised that people ought to firmly say “Stop!” to anyone who was doing such a thing.

As the panel wasn’t about exclusively my experiences and I felt a little flustered, I didn’t cover all the reasons why the situation hadn’t been that simple for me. The idea that it would have been easy for me to halt what had been happening is based on the assumption that the only power dynamics at play in kink spaces are pre-negotiated ones between consenting adults. Continue reading “FtB Con Postmortem: Racism in the Kink Scene”

FtB Con Postmortem: Racism in the Kink Scene
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When Straight Male Submissive Desires Muck Up Feminism

[Content Notice for Consent Violation, BDSM, kink. Some links and discussion NSFW. If you don’t understand a term, click the links or access the whole glossary.]

BDSM and kink do not exist in a bubble isolated from the influences of a sex-hating, sexist society. As such, there often is replication of extant societal norms within alt-sex contexts — the disproportionately-high number of BDSM households where one man has many female partners who are supposed to be faithful to him, for example. When said replication occurs with the enthusiastic consent of all involved, non-participant personal discomfort with it, even discomfort stemming from a legitimate place, isn’t necessarily a legitimate reason to criticize it. At the same time, marginalized people’s discomfort with their oppression being replicated by kinksters is not something to be dismissed out of hand.

Continue reading “When Straight Male Submissive Desires Muck Up Feminism”

When Straight Male Submissive Desires Muck Up Feminism