There has been friction between the kink community, specifically the BDSM community, and the LGBT+ community recently. The issue being, the BDSM (bondage & dominance, discipline & submission, and sadism & masochism) community wants a letter and space in the LGBT+ community. The answer is no.
There is no issue with someone who is not cishet, and a member of the BDSM community having space in the LGBT+ community for their LGBT+ experiences. There are lots of members of the gay community that are also involved in BDSM, however, kink is not a sexual orientation. It’s how you prefer to have sex. You can be cishet, and into BDSM, and that does not give you the right to have space in a community that you don’t belong to.
There are several issues with including BDSM in the gay community. The first is, it’s not a sexual orientation. If you’re heterosexual and into BDSM, you wouldn’t call yourself part of the gay community, so why do you need space in our community? With the Fifty Shades of Grey craze, which isn’t even a safe or accurate portrayal of BDSM, more and more straight people are feeling oppressed for how they like to have sex. That’s not the LGBT+ communities fault, or issue. You have the BDSM community, and that should be enough to share your experiences and feelings.
Another prevalent issue is, including kink in the LGBT community makes the community sexual and 18+. There is nothing inherently sexual about the gay community, and adding in kink, makes it sexual, and completely inaccessible to children and young teens that need space for their experiences. Adding kink to the LGBT+ community hyper sexualizes the gay experience, which doesn’t have anything overtly sexual about it. It’s absolutely selfish to try and force your sexual habits into a community about who people love, or their gender identity.
The whole issue of BDSM wanting space in the gay community really just seems like bored straight people that want more attention, and another community to be in. They have a community, they don’t need to crash into another one.
There is no comparison between ‘oppression’ between the BDSM community and the LGBT+ community. With inane attention seeking statements such as this, “Sexual orientation is far more about who is putting his penis in your butt—or who is spanking me with a belt—than it is about how either activity occurs”. This whole statement ignores everything about what sexual orientation is. According to Webster dictionary, sexual orientation is “a person’s sexual preference or identity as bisexual, heterosexual, or homosexual”, obviously there are more variations then listed there, but kink is not one of them. We use ‘sexual preference’ as who you like for their gender, gender presentation, not how you like to have sex. It’s not about ‘how’ the activity occurs, it’s about who you have the activity with, and activity doesn’t necessarily mean sex. Assuming that everyone is sexual or has a sexual interest in their partners completely ignores the asexual members of the community and invalidates their experience. The only arguments I have seen supporting kink being a sexual orientation are largely transphobic, misinformed, or otherwise painful.
If you want to participate in BDSM, that’s totally fine! Be safe, be prepared, and know what you’re doing! However, comparing, and expecting the LGBT community to give them space, is ridiculous. They have their own 18+ community, and that’s where they can relate to other people with similar experiences. The LGBT+ community is not a dumping ground for people that feel that other straight people are being mean to them because they won’t stop talking about latex at work. BDSM has its own community for a reason, and they do not need space in the LGBT community.
Comments are closed.