Oct 272019
Sep 292019
- Harper’s Bazaar has a short photo essay on the kink look in high fashion, going back to the Versace 1992 bondage collection, though obviously this could go back much further.
- Pup play is enjoying an upsurge in popularity lately, and PuppyPlay.info has a short timeline on the kink, going back to 1912 which claims is the date of the earliest known fetishized animal roleplay. (This seems unlikely to me, as I would think there must have been art or photographs of fetishized animal roleplay in the 19th century, if not earlier; e.g. “mounted Aristotle”.)
- We’ve already seen Robert Yang’s Hurt Me Plenty, which simulates the BDSM interaction from the top’s perspective. Now, there’s Dominatrix Simulator, a VR game in which the player takes the role of a submissive (male or female), facing the dominatrix. The VR system can even tell if the wearer is kneeling correctly or incorrectly.
- The New Books in History podcast profiled Benjamin Kahan’s The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality, about the great paradigm shift, in which all sexual deviancy fell out of discussion to make way for the homo-hetero binary.
- The Porno Cultures podcast interviews Laura Helen Marks, author of Alice In Pornoland: Hardcore Encounters with the Victorian Gothic. She discusses how 19th century fiction influenced 20th century pornography.
- In an interview on The Advocate, comediennne Margaret Cho talks briefly about her experiences in a lesbian BDSM collective and its response to the AIDS crisis.
- OZY magazine profiles Jaya Sharma, the only woman from the BDSM community in India to be out in public life. She was the co-founder of the Kinky Collective, which does kink education in major Indian cities. It also talks about the class divide between English-speakers and non-English speakers.
- In honor of the 2019 Folsom Street Fair, a brief history of San Francisco’s Folsom district.
Aug 192019
- Vice has a photo essay on the latex dominatrixes and fetishists of Russia.
- The deceased alleged child molester Jeffrey Epstein purchased multiple books on BDSM slavery via Amazon, including SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude by Guy Baldwin, SM 101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman, and Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners by Christina Abernathy. (Rolling Stone, The Cut) Once again, we kinksters have to explain that just because abusers claim some link to consensual BDSM, it doesn’t indict BDSM as a whole.
- A female dominant describes how she sees herself reflected in porn and mainstream media, and it’s not flattering. “What I gleaned from this and pornography is that femdomming was a very specific thing based on coercion, humiliation, and exploitation.” Medium
- Slate has an article on the Chinese bondage community, and its struggles in a deeply conservative and heavily surveilled state. “BDSM and bondage are not illegal per se, but China’s laws are vague, and wording like ‘public promiscuity’ in Section 301 of the criminal code can be interpreted in many ways.”
- Andrea Zanin, aka SexGeek, wrote an essay on a kind of internalized respectability politics among kinksters, with scene players being suspicious towards lifestylers. “…over the decades of kink’s further mainstreaming, what’s happened is that kink hobbyists have drastically multiplied, and perhaps because of those numbers, many of them now see themselves as safer, saner and more consensual than full-timers because of what they perceive as built-in healthy limits on what they do.”
- Cools magazine has an interview with model Kimberly Mae that covers how latex fetishism has moved from Fetlife to Instagram. “Around five years ago an online migration in the fetish community began. Due to data breaches and other reasons, many visual fetishists (think rubber, leather, shibari, etc.) moved away from the Fetlife platform and on to Instagram. I think because we have so much more visibility on Instagram, particularly the latex style is becoming more and more mainstream.”
Jul 162019
- The Historical Blindness podcast has an episode on the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, an absurd porno-Gothic piece of anti-Catholic propaganda from the 1830s.
- German industrial metal band Rammstein has a long history of sadomasochistic themes in their lyrics and music videos, along with other transgressions.
- Earlier this year, Jack Thompson made history as the first trans person of colour to win the title of International Mister Leather. “I am all the things I am all the time.”
- Bustle has a short history of the corset, though it skims over the more fetishistic aspects.
- One of the more disturbing developments I’ve witnessed in the past few years is the rise of choking, and specifically non-consensual choking, in vanilla sex. Breath control is risky and frightening enough when done with proper consent and technique. But this is men incorporating it in sex with women with none of that, says the Atlantic.
- Videogames are a relatively young medium, and only recently have people begun using them to explore issues of identity and sexuality. Bobbi Sands’ “visual novel”, Knife Sisters, covers kink and BDSM, but has a hard time buying advertisements or getting funding because of its sexual content, even in relatively liberal Sweden.
- The blog The Elephant in the Hot Tub: Kink in Context has its own interesting study of the history and psychology of sadomasochism.
- Leo Herrera, who made the gay alternate history film The Fathers Project, wrote an essay considering our present, possibly-post-HIV world, and its increasing cultural conservatism in the form of “community guidelines” on Tumblr and Facebook.
Jun 172019
- It’s Pride month, at least in the United States. One of the ongoing controversies is whether kinky people belong in pride events (as recently asked on Twitter), and if so, whether that includes kinky people who are heterosexual.
- The Advocate says there’s no way kink should be banned at Pride.
- Gay Star News says “the kink community and the LGBTI community is inextricably linked“.
- Dazed says “The event should be as inclusive as possible, but raucousness, provocation, and fucking are important too; reconciling these things might be complicated but banishing kink isn’t the answer.“
- Race Bannon, who has been involved in the kink world since 1973, talks in a column for RECON about the number of kinky men he knows who don’t seem to be involved in the public kink culture. He cites the research of clinical psychologist Russell J Stambaugh, PhD (blog), which suggests that the majority of kinky people aren’t involved in any kind of organized group, and perhaps as few as 10 per cent of kinky people are involved in organized culture. (Not clear if this is referring to kinky gay men or kinky people in general.) (This agrees with my own hypothesis about “dark matter”, the unknown number of kinky people who are not involved in groups.) If so, kinky organizations as we know them only reach a minority of their potential audience. The remaining 90 per cent are served by social networks like Grindr, RECON and Fetlife.
- Black is the colour most often of fetish clothing, but it is also associated with mourning dress. Bellatory offers a quick history of black mourning dress, once required of the upper classes by law, and later imitated by the lower classes.
- To paraphrase the British comedy team Smack the Pony, “Nuns… Haven’t a clue what they’re for, but aren’t they kinky?” (video) Nuns have been associated with deviant sex since at least Boccaccio’s Decameron in the 14th century. Vintage Fetish Photos has a collection of erotic nun images from the early 20th century.
- Dr. Mark Griffith’s blog has a piece with citations on the fetishistic art of Allen Jones, which links to the BDSM-themed music and art of Adam Ant, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and forniphilia pioneer the House of Gord.
May 232019
- Fernwood Books just published the anthology Dis/Consent: Perspectives on Sexual Consent and Sexual Violence, which includes an essay co-written by Andrea Zanin called “The Bogus BDSM Defence: The Manipulation of Kink as Consent to Assault”. Hopefully this will contribute to the discussion and keep kink from being used to excuse assault, as in the Jian Ghomeshi case from a few years ago.
- Case in point: the trial of Keith Raniere, founder of the “sex cult” NXIVM. A high-ranked member of NXIVM ordered $900 worth of sex toys from Extreme Restraints. “Raniere’s attorney, Marc Agnifolo — who has consistently argued that all sexual activities between his client and female NXIVM followers was consensual — took issue with the prosecution’s classification of the BDSM sex toys as inherently degrading….” Rolling Stone
- Zetsu Nawa on Kinbaku Today writes about the rapid growth of Japanese-style rope bondage in North America and Europe over the past decade.
- Race Bannon explains why gay men aren’t turning out for heterosexual/pansexual kink events. “What turns us on is not democratic and never will be, and gay men typically want to have sex with other gay men in a gay environment.”
- A new documentary covers the life of a pioneer of feminist porn, the late Candice Vadala, better known as “Candida Royalle.”
- Psychology Today asks if BDSM is a leisure activity or a sexual orientation.
- Speaking of, should a K for kink be added to the increasingly-unwieldy LGBTQIAP acronym? MTV thinks so. See the discussion on Quora.
- The Cannes film festival includes Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, a BDSM-themed drama from Finland, directed by J-P Valkeapää. It’s about a grieving widower who stumbles into an encounter with a pro domme.
- King Edward VII’s custom made sex chair. From the Smithsonian via Jezebel.
- NPR’s All Things Considered has a piece on what the vanilla world can learn from BDSM about consent. Podcast & Transcript
Apr 172019
- The Dig History podcast has a couple of relevant episodes on, first, the career of the “great American censor”, Anthony Comstock, whose influence is still being felt today, and second, the history of rape and consent in culture in the law and culture of early America, showing that consent, as we define it today, is a very recent development.
- The Guardian has posted Lasting Marks – the 16 men put on trial for sadomasochism in Thatcher’s Britain, a 15-minute documentary on infamous Operation Spanner case, in which 16 gay men were arrested for consensual sadomasochism in the 1980s.
- We’re still struggling to get the police-judicial system to understand BDSM. A recent case in San Francisco demonstrates this, in which a man was assaulted during a BDSM scene, and was told by police and lawyers that it didn’t count.
- The Black Party, a NYC-era gay circuit party with a strong BDSM element, has a forty-year history, but it’s struggling due to rising rents.
- There are a handful of articles on BDSM subcultures around the world, especially in places that are less tolerant of sexual difference, such as the Kinky Kollective in India (podcast), the Phillipines, and Turkey.
- The GOOP lifestyle brand, known for selling jade eggs for vaginal insertion which may cause bacterial vaginosis or life-threatening toxic shock syndrome, now sells BDSM gear, specifically a nude leather bra and thong and a black leather flogger. Shows just how acceptable BDSM has become, among a certain affluent segment of the population.
- Bonding is an upcoming comedy/drama series on Netflix about a gay man who works as a assistant to a professional dominatrix.
- Rick Castro, whose career of fetish photography goes back to 1986, has an exhibition at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, CA.
- Fashion has turned its wandering eye back to the fetish subculture again.
Mar 162019
- Cleo Dubois has been involved in the BDSM community going back to the 1980s, and also a major player in the body modification/modern primitive community, not to mention married to the late Fakir Musafar. The Mike Mantell Show podcast has an in depth interview with her.
- The Advocate has a set of rare photos from a 1962 gay motorcycle club event.
- Iceland’s entry for the 2019 Eurovision song contest is Hatari, a self-described “anti-capitalist techno BDSM band”. They had retired for failing to destroy capitalism. Now, they’re back, and they’ve challenged the Prime Minister of Israel to an Icelandic wrestling match for the right to found “the first ever Hatari sponsored liberal BDSM colony” on Israeli soil. From Pink News.
- The Imaginary Worlds podcast has a profile of Margaret Brundage, 1930s pulp magazine cover artist, many of which had sadomasochistic themes.
- They say every generation has its sexual awakening movie. According to this Indiewire article, Millennials were taught sex positivity by Cruel Intentions (1999). “Millennials may be having less sex than previous generations, but we are talking about and embracing kink, BDSM, role play, and queerness with an openness and lack of judgment that is irreversibly influencing media and culture for the next generation.”
- More changes in San Francisco’s landscape could squeeze out the city’s leather district, which was and still is the major incubator of the greater BDSM culture. The Catalyst will have to find new space by the end of 2019. This comes after designating the leather district and setting aside a leather pride mini-park. I fear that in a decade all that will be left will be the monuments and memorials, while the living heart will be gone.
- In NYC, Charlotte Taillor’s kink collective and residence has run afoul of objections from her neighbors in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. New York Times, Gothamist, New York Daily News.
Feb 162019
- I’m old enough to remember how different and exciting the Internet was in the 1990s. So does Violet Blue, who lays out just much has changed for the worse since then, especially with the censoring of Tumblr last year. “I can tell you for a fact that Tumblr helped a generation of frightened, isolated kids trying to figure out their sexual identity.” Her essay on Engadget.
- David Wraith has an overview of how terrible the SESTA/FOSTA laws are, stifling freedom of expression on sexual matters while subjecting sex workers to greater danger.
- On the brighter side, England has reviewed its obscenity laws and a number of kinks, including spanking, BDSM, and female ejaculation, are now okay in porn, as long as they are shown as consensual.
- Kink Guidelines is a project “to explore what constitutes clinical best practices in working with those who are interested and/or involved in kink, BDSM, and/or fetish eroticism.
- The city leaders of San Francisco have approved the construction of Eagle Plaza, a small park commemorating the Eagle bar’s contribution to the LGBTQ and leather/kink cultures.
- Lupercalia, the ancient Roman festival that loosely corresponds to Valentine’s Day, was known for men playfully whipping women “believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy”, according to Plutarch. Today, whipping rituals are a part of fertility festivals in parts of Europe, Mexico and Asia. From Vice.
- Even though Walmart, regular drugstores and other mainstream retailers now stock vibrators and other sex toys, sex products are still caught up in controversy. Producers risk rejection from retailers, payment processors, crowdsourcing platforms, and advertising venues. Sex toys have to toe the line of being for “health and wellness”, not for pleasure, which would be prurient. The Verge has more.
- Puppyplay for gay kinksters seems to be on the rise lately, and Slate has a profile of a San Francisco polyamorous pack.
- Kerrang has a list of BDSM-themed songs, including the classic “Venus in Furs” by Velvet Underground.
Jan 222019
- The Divine Deviance documentary, in which I am a contributor, is holding another round of fundraising. Even a small contribution can help make this valuable documentary possible.
- The University of Guelph is running an anonymous survey on kinky people and their relationships.
- In the UK, BDSM is still technically illegal, ever since the case of Brown 1993, also known as the Operation Spanner case. Samantha Pegg, a criminal law lecturer, discusses the possible legal reform regarding BDSM, while still emphasizing that consent should not negate all legal liability.
- Cosmopolitan UK has a frank discussion of a woman’s involvement in BDSM as a way of processing her earlier rape.
- Narratively has a feature on an AA meeting held in the basement of a fetish shop in NYC, and addresses the difficulty of kinky people hiding or revealing their kink in therapy or recovery settings. Starting in the 1950s, Alcoholics Anonymous refused to list gay meetings in their literature. This policy did not change until 1974. It’s also important to remember that a lot of NYC kink venues in the 1980s had a lot of liquor and drugs around.
- Modern Meadow is a biotech company pioneering a kind of artificially-grown leather. Instead of a plastic like pleather, this is an organic material grown in a factory. This has several advantages over conventional leather production: less environmental impact from caustic substances, less animal cruelty, and it can be grown in large sheets to order. How this compares to conventional leather in terms of fetish or fashion remains to be seen. “Modern Meadow is not… actually out to ape leather. Rather, the firm’s aim is to produce a new material in its own right, complete with brand name.” The company’s line of materials is called Zoa. Perhaps some future generation of fetishists will prefer it to leather.
- Slave Play, by Jeremy O. Harris, is a dramatic look at possibly the most emotionally and culturally charged form of kink: raceplay. Three couples (two hetero, one gay male) flipflop between antebellum fantasies of racial domination and modern scenes of couples arguing. Interview with the playwright (video)
- We’re facing a new rising tide of online censorship in online communities like Tumblr and Facebook. Gloria Brame has a few tips on surviving this. Race Bannon discusses how, like it or not, social networks like Tumblr and Facebook have replace physical gathering spaces for connecting, organizing and discussing our sexualities. The moral panic over sex trafficking has led to SESTA/FOSTA and the subsequent restrictions on social networks, as covered by Cookie Cyboid on Medium.
- The mainstreaming of (a heteronormative subset of) kink in the form of Fifty Shades Darker coincided with Fetlife deleting a large amount of images and groups, and Kink.com moving out of the Armory building in San Francisco. MEL magazine covers the economic and social fortunes of the kink world.
- Waterboarding as a form of torture goes back at least to the Spanish Inquisition, but I would hazard there’s been an increased interest from the kink community in the last couple of decades. It’s been banned by the United Nations and classified as torture by the UN, and the US government has forbidden it. That adds an additional element of taboo to this technique, which would explain its popularity with certain edge players. It’s also more dangerous than some people think. Rolling Stone covers the controversy.
