I’ve had to unfollow so many people recently over “”“”kinkshaming“”“” (still loathe that term with the fiery passion of a white hot sun, like, oh my god it’s so stupid). People are incredibly simplistic about their objections to kink in a way that is very, very similar to how people object to sex work. It’s not a coincidence that anti-sex work feminists are almost always anti-kink as well (but the number of anti-kink feminists who are sex workers is significant and boggles the mind). Because anti-sex work feminists ignore all discussions around capitalism and the carceral state and ALWAYS assume sex workers are never having critical discussions about the industry ourselves, and anti-kink feminists ignore all discussions around the psychological development of sexuality and the pathologization of alternative sexualities and ALWAYS assume that people with particular kinks are never having critical discussions around them ourselves.
Let me explain something to folks. Anyone with a conscience and a “”“"problematic”“”“ kink (throw ‘problematic’ in the pit with ‘kinkshaming’ plz) has already spent more time hating themselves then you ever will. There is no shame that you can inflict on people who are into rape play because we are all already ashamed– EXCEPT for the people you’re purporting to direct your critiques at, the people with zero conscience and zero social consciousness, who are not coincidentally the only people who are not going to take any of your comments to heart.
But okay, let’s say you don’t care about people’s feeeeelings and you are a righteous warrior who only cares about oppression and surely kinky people cannot be oppressed. No, we can’t, not for being kinky, although isn’t it interesting how so many of the people with icky kinks are oppressed in ways directly related to our kinks, e.g. women abuse survivors (rape/incest/age players) and People of Color (race players)? Let’s pretend you’re not a white person going off on race play (although you probably are)– you’re still being oppressive. Every single person who engages in sexual shaming around kink is part of an oppressive ableist process of pathologization.
Because kinks are still classified as psychological disorders, but only when they cause the person distress. So that gross ‘Daddy Dom’ (an FYI on what these terms actually mean) who all of your “ewwwww incest play” posts are ostensibly directed at, who is actually a terrible person, is not going to be pathologized by any of your commentary. The women like me who developed these kinks as a result of our childhood abuse, however, are the ones who are going to be pathologized. Literally. You are part of the process of classifying us as mentally ill, because we couldn’t get a diagnosis of ‘masochist’ if we lived in a world where feminists understood sexuality and sexual trauma and approached the topic with nuance and compassion (or, like, didn’t approach it all) and therefore didn’t teach us to fulfill one of the diagnostic criteria: hating ourselves.
Here’s a proposal: don’t talk about kinks you don’t have. Just don’t talk! Signal boost our own discussions (although many of them take place in closed spaces like FetLife forums because most of us know better than to want to talk about this shit in front of people like you.) And stop participating in a process of pathologization that disproportionately harms those who are abuse survivors, mentally ill, neurodivergent, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming. That is oppressive– not ‘sex critical’ or anti-‘sexpos’ or just ‘honest and mean’ or whatever. It’s oppressive. And I’m tired of listening to it.
All of us are. Read some of the asks other kinky people send me and then sit with yourself for a long second, okay?
ETA: I thought this was made pretty clear in the “don’t talk about kinks you don’t have” part, but just in case: this post is not directed at kinky people critically discussing their own kinks, whatever words they’re using to describe that (including ‘kinkshaming.’) This post is also not an endorsement of sex positivity, which I’ve spent a lot of time critiquing elsewhere.
ETA II: To clarify, here is a very incomplete list of things that I do *not* consider ‘kink critical’ or ‘shaming’ for the purposes of this post: being squicked by a kink and expressing that publicly, being triggered by a kink and expressing that publicly, finding pornographic drawings of My Little Ponies hilarious, hating on pedophiles, telling the Super Mega Domly Dom in your notes to shut the fuck up, making the (probably useless + totally obvious) blanket statement that people should be aware of the social inequalities that influence the development of personal kinks. Basically, as long as you’re not implying someone is morally bankrupt or psychologically damaged for having a particular kink, conflating consensual sex with abuse, or telling individuals to “examine themselves” as if a) they already haven’t and b) that will magically make them vanilla, IDC what you feel or say.
I think maybe "don’t talk about kinks you haven’t experienced trauma related to” might be better
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 