Kink As Battleground.

Every single time I write something that is a bit explicit in terms of my fondness for violence, consensual nonconsent or anything that falls into the edgier category, especially within the confines of my relationship with a cis het man, I get a particular type of commenter (or messages). This person, frequently a man but not always, lauds me at not being like *those* feminists who clutch their pearls whenever someone wants to do the harder stuff or tells me that nowadays for people like *us* to do what we want we have to be open to being persecuted by the *woke intelligentsia*. They believe I empathise with their crusade against ethics culture. I must, right? After all, I want to play rape and simulate abuse so I must be *on their side* when it comes to bemoaning the loss of our culture to the woke generation.

I am not.

However, there is a second part to this. Every time I write a long, thoroughly considered essay about the ethical ramifications and sociological influences of something, like rape-play for instance, I get a lot of support from a certain type of person. You know how there’s therapy-speak? This type of person engages in a lot of ethics-speak, but not a lot of ethical behaviour necessarily, just a lot of virtue signalling and high-horsed crap that relies, at least partially, on putting other people down. There are a lot of staunch positions and a lot of right-sounding sentences that are ultimately hollow. These people laud me for not being like those other girls who just let their dominant partners brainwash them into believing whatever they want. After all, I want to discuss the environment in which sexuality exists—the good and the bad—so that must mean I am *on their side* when it comes to declaring how everything I deem unethical is definitely criminal and to be condemned.

I am not.

When it comes to the society of kink (and I think I much prefer that term to community), this is and maybe has always been the most precarious line I find myself walking. Before I continue, I want to be very clear about a few things. I think ethical considerations about what we do have been wonderful for the practise of sexuality in all ways and I fucking love it. I absolutely want to be punched in the face and I totally want to understand the best, safest and most-aware way to achieve that. I just don’t like bullshit. I love the support of thoughtful people who practise similar things as I do and bring that insight to the table, I appreciate the questions of people who want to know more, I enjoy the opposing positions of people who make me think, I like the feminist influence on fetishism as much as I like the queer and others, I love experienced people who make valid arguments about detrimental changes to the culture, I love newer people who bring newer things with them when they join the fray. This is not a post about *sincere* people who bring their honest views to the table, it’s not about what is good and what is not. It’s about the society of kink as a battleground between performative progressivism and toxic good-old-dayism, and how somehow, in our own ways, we’re all a little bit stuck inside it.

I’ll just start with how I feel about it personally, not as an observer of society, but as a subject of it. It feels weird and uncomfortable. When I write a super rapey post of fucked-up eroticism or a fetishised brainwashing one, and a predator-presenting, harem-exploiting, feminist-hating dude tells me he loves the writing, I can live with that, but when he congratulates me on *getting it*, and welcomes me into some kind of covenant that implies that I get what him and his type are about, I want to rip my writing to shreds because I do not get it and my edgy-ass edge play is not an indication of whatever the fuck you think I am about. I am a raging feminist, it’s not a trad-wife style dog whistle to entrench me into all the allied bullshit. I am deeply slavish in my sexuality but you will never find me in a relationship where I relinquish my *rights* as a citizen or woman. Not even the tiniest ones. I do not glorify mental illness to the goal of predatory creeps exploiting people to get what they want. I am not letting anyone get away with parroting kink adages to me and hoping to fool me into doing this or that. I do not think dysfunction is necessary for fucked-up gratification. I don’t intend to obey the *culture* over the people in these relationships. I don’t do gospel-truth versions of lifestyles and I run from any community that gets a bit cultish (unless the cult was co-designed for sexy reasons). Most importantly, I *am not flattered by the insinuation that I am that oh-so-rare woman who unlike the other oh-so-dumb women totally gets it*. I am like the other girl. I am and always will be the architect of my own mayhem. Fuck off, I am not on your side.

I am not entirely certain why the edgier stuff and a certain type of socio-political viewpoint is so ubiquitous, maybe it really is as simple as the fact that predators and creeps coopted some types of play because they believed it was easier to trick people who were into those things into believing they were genuinely into BDSM and not abuse, it seems like an extension of the rest of society, no? You tell a random on Hinge that you are kinky and they assume it would be easier to *convince* you to fuck than another person. I do know that I think some of this outlook towards fetishism comes from…well, the gutter-and-perversion view of fetishism. To a good degree this still exists, but twenty-years ago, when being kinky just meant you were the scum of society and entirely responsible for anything bad that happens to you, it created a unique environment where there were two types of approaches. One, you could recognise that we were in a dangerous position, organise and seek to create systems of protection for everyone because of the enforced necessity of self-governance. Two, you could recognise that being viewed as horrible by society meant you could really do anything you wanted, no ethics required, because you’re already being viewed as horrible. I think the people who treat me like I “get it” are nostalgic for that time of no-responsibility and something about the things I am writing reminds them of it (probably the imagery). The gutter-and-perversion image serves them because it allows unfettered impunity.

It certainly is prevalent. For instance, you know how most kink films and shows demonstrate kinky relationships in this “break from reality” kind of way? Like the protagonist practises kink like a bad habit or the way they do it is bad, and then eventually they either go back to their “real” life or they “fix” the bad in their habit. Fundamentally, that comes from the gutter-and-perversion mindset, I think. It’s just that for most people, that mindset causes us to view ourselves with a lens of self-loathing or brokenness, but there is no reason why it couldn’t cause you to believe that living in the gutter means you have to operate by the rules of one. It’s like “playground rules” as a concept, they aren’t *fair* or even ethical, but so long as enough people agree that is how it is or should be, anyone who disagrees can just leave the playground, and that is likely why all the gatekeeping accusations are directed at these people because that does seem to be what they want. *Let me act with impunity, take victims and get out of here if you don’t like it. This is the gutter, we operate by gutter-rules.*

I am not here for that.

On the other hand, there definitely is a culture of people who seem to want some kind of *perfection*. Look, once again, let me be clear about what I *don’t* mean when I say perfection. I think we should always aim at zero-tolerance for abuse or violation, we should ponder our actions deeply, we should consider how our sexuality is shaped by society and we should take things like ethics seriously enough that we include them in everything we do, that is not perfection, that is honestly, bare-minimum. However, performative progressivism and its idea of *perfection* is a whole other thing. It’s a lot of nice and smart-sounding *bla-bla-bla* that rarely *does* anything and consistently demonises people it should ally. For instance, when I write exploratory essays, like this one or one on (let’s say) rape-play, I try not to be a denialist about it. I don’t believe all fetish is healthy *for all people*, I do believe trauma can inform our fetishes, I do believe gender and privilege could have a role here and I do believe society has influence on what we view as power in the first place, and the performatives like that as much as the genuine enthusiasts, they love an essay like that (even if they only read like, one-third) because it sounds socially woke yet it is almost always the same people who will read a bit of erotica about the exact same thing and lash out at me for being *everything that is wrong with kink*.

The same issue with imagery that makes me creepily beloved to a predator makes me unbearable to another type of person. It’s partly because of a very specific phenomenon of internet (but specifically, social media) culture that has been growing in popularity for the last decade. We are so easily able to espouse our desire for an ideal and perfect world on a platform that lets most people say anything that we’ve become capable of tricking ourselves into believing it exists and all it takes is saying the right things in a tweet or a reel and then burying our heads in the sand and as with most things like that, the bar for what is “good and ideal” is pompous, unrealistic, exclusionary and prissy as fuck. We’ve also just started to *package* everything we say online. Like, it’s not enough to just be into getting your ass whipped, it has to be packaged into engaging content or, more commonly, a cause. Okay, I agree, freedom to live sexuality as you desire is a valuable cause but that is not what I am talking about, I am talking about every single thing needing to have a *deeper meaning* (which, shockingly, is never really that deep) or being some kind of wellness product (kink as therapy as a product) or in some way, having a slant that makes it *good* and virtuous. Like, look, I genuinely care about the intersection of politics, trauma and my sexuality but all of that is so I can curate my actual desires into reality and I don’t want reality erased from my reality.

It's kinda funny to me that what seems like sex-positivity culture and ethics-culture, the kind that denounces religious fundamentalism for the sexual shame it created and the hypocrisy it fostered, seems also to do the same fucking thing. I know a sexual educator who in her progressivism tells all young women that casual sex is traumatic to them and they shouldn’t do it. I know polyam educators who denounce all BDSM because it is fundamentally abusive to women and its roots are sexist because of how it has been practised (like dude, have you seen how polyam has been practised? Come on). I think roots matter, I think it matters where things come from, but when it comes to desire, I think they matter especially because they can guide you into developing systems for what works for you while eradicating elements that are problematic, if all we’re going to do is refuse to writhe in pain because the *roots* are wrong, even as our bodies will respond to nothing but that as pleasure, then why even bother investigating? Let’s just not do it at all because slapping a new face on gutter-and-perversion culture doesn’t mean it’s not still gutter-and-perversion culture. I am not exploring the intellectualism of kink to be rid of it, or to demonise it with the right argument so I can be rid of it, I do fucking love it. It’s all my bodies wants as pleasure and I am not giving it up for unconsidered precious sensibilities that believe, like the religious fundamentalists they denounce, that we should all have some sanitised version of perfect sex. And this culture, this “I am so important because I have a TikTok account and must have the right opinion on everything otherwise I will be cancelled” culture is fucking tedious. It feels like talking to robots. I don’t know why these people hate ChatGPT when they sound like it.

I am and always have been extremely wary of hardline opinions and the society of kink seems to thrive in them. The well-meaning side of kink will often say things that sound very good but aren’t very nuanced. Things like: *The lack of aftercare is always abuse. Leaning on a dominant for emotional support is akin to treating them like therapy and therapy is the purview of only a white-defined mental health culture that excludes collective, community-based approaches to mental-health. Kink is always about trauma. Kink is never about trauma. Kink can only ever be valid if it is empowering. You can never play or give true consent if you smoked a joint or are of “unsound” mind. If you don’t have a safeword, abuse. If you do CNC, abuse. If you don’t have a five-page declaration justifying why you are allowed to do what you do, abuse.* The pretend-progressives they live for bullshit adages and that is why when they read my erotica, thoroughly devoid of adages or cushioning for sensitivity to reality, they pull out the pitchforks, whereas in my essays, I talk a lot more about things that *sound* right so I seem palatable. I am not palatable, not you anyway, you’re just not reading very closely and half the time I don’t agree with what you are saying because to me, like literature, sexuality is a mad slice of reality, it’s representational of who I am and what I love and what is odd, contradictory, incomprehensible, imperfect and painful about people and humanity. I like messy, I like imperfect, I like sitting in contradiction and I hate living in an aspirational reality.

And so, I often find myself, in the middle of these two worlds, and feeling like I belong in neither of them, but I am being viewed as part of them, or being measured for their standards. I am not interested. I am interested in my sexuality—mad, messy, wild, strange, emotional—and I am interested in my ethics—evolving, intersectional, faltering, thoughtful—but I am not interested in good old days nor in the upturned noses of imagined perfection. Neither of those things seem to serve anyone, really.