the commodification of kink

CW: Sexual and physical assault, and descriptions of heterosexuality. My copy of Leatherfolk edited by Mark Thompson is stained with tears, I hid my wet eyes from fellow passengers on the A train as I devoured it on my way to work. So many pieces in that collection really touched on the emotional facets of leather and illuminated all the ways that queer love pushed to the margins can bring us all closer together. Leather is sexy, yes, but it is also tender and it is nothing without community. I remember when my ex-girlfriend gifted me a copy of Coming to Power, the coveted and very out of print Samois leatherdyke anthology. I was ecstatic as I knew this book held so much significance to my erotic lineage. I furiously took notes and read and reread my favorite passages. Another ex gifted me a tattered copy of Leather Women edited by Laura Antoniou, its well-loved pages imbued with the energy of others like me who came before. I kept it in the little cubby next to my bed for years, a talisman to bring forth pleasure and pain. Power Circuits edited by Raven Kaldera includes an essay by Andrea Zanin that was really pivotal for me in understanding that my own ideas of polyamory can work with D/s. Even my Fist zines, five little anthologies of lust and communion, unite experiences of leatherdykes across the globe. BDSM anthologies are not new. They are some of the most important published work on sexuality, inviting lonely and isolated readers into the erotic worlds of those who dare to live their desires, making plain that another way is possible. All of these books are, for the most part, timeless in connection. They are self-published or published by small presses specializing in themes of sexuality or alternative relationships. This material is surely seen as frivolous by most major publishing companies unless, of course, you’re Dennis Cooper or equally famous enough to convince the publishing gods of smut’s artistic and monetary merit. Enter Kink: Stories, an anthology just released by Simon & Schuster and edited by Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon. I first learned of this anthology from a Leather Associate and was naturally confused why S&S would publish what I thought was going to be a book of kink erotica. Wow, I wondered, is this still the aftershock of Fifty Shades? On February 9th, its release day, Jade cooked baby beef (a dish with vegan beef named affectionately after Kala) and the pod got comfy on the couch and attended a virtual panel with the two editors and two of the contributors. One of the editors spoke negatively about the commodification of kink without making the connection, at least not out loud, that this book is a major contributor to that phenomenon. The other admitted to not being able to even talk about sex because it’s that level of mortifying. One of the writers said that he didn’t even know what kink was until he was asked to contribute to this anthology, while the other said that kink was all about centering her own desires. The discussion and readings left me dry, confused, and not hopeful at all that the book would actually live up to the hype. Not even three weeks later, Kink has already been named a national bestseller. The introduction to Kink is really lovely, full of ideas I’ve written and spoken about many times before. It primes the reader for stories that are breaking stereotypes and maybe even setting positive examples of kink as a practice to a very wide audience, something I can get behind! The mainstreaming of kink usually comes filtered by respectability, and this did not sound like that. Kink is often pathologized in popular culture, the attendant desires flattened, simplified, and turned into a joke, a cause for only shame. In movies, television shows, and popular books, kinky people are often also serial killers, emotionally stunted plutocrats, and other stock villains or exaggerated figures of fun. Instead of pathologizing kink, the stories in this anthology treat it as a complex, psychologically rich act of communication. Kink in these stories is a way of processing trauma, and also of processing joy, of expressing tenderness and cruelty and affection and play. The emotional dynamics of kink are as varied as those of any other human experience, and the stories here explore the whole gamut of human feeling, from exuberance to anguish. Rejecting reductive ideas of normalcy and aberrance, these stories allow for investigations richer than etiology, treating kink as one of the tools we use to make sense of our lives. Unfortunately, most of these lovely ideas were directly contradicted throughout the themes that wove most of the stories together, kink not being one of them. Not only are several of the stories in this anthology not about kink, they’re not even about sex. Confusing, I know. Most of the stories that do include kink and/or sex left me angered by what I felt was a lack of congruence between the introduction and the words on the pages. If I wasn’t already a very well versed practitioner of BDSM, a professional even, I would walk away from this collection thinking the following: kink is assault, kink is not negotiated, kink is shameful, kink is not done with people you love, both parties involved in a kinky encounter don’t need to be into it, consent is not necessary, vanilla sex is kinky if you’re queer, and kink is a way of avoiding intimacy. “‘There’s something a little wrong with me…I don’t want to be this way,’ she said, turning toward him her pale, determined face. ‘I’d rather not be this fucked up.’” R.O. Kwon’s story “Safeword” features a husband who, after years of marriage, gets his wife to admit she is not sexually satisfied because she has unfulfilled masochistic desires of which she is very ashamed. He takes his wife to a dominatrix to learn how to beat her (bravo!). He wants his wife to be happy, but he does not want to hit her at all. He hates every second of it. “He didn’t want to hit Jihyun anymore— he wanted to get out of there. He wanted to untie her and take her home, soothe her and have sex with her, his wife, whom he loved. But he kept going.” The wife thinks something is wrong with her and is extremely ashamed, while the husband is straight up not having a good time. Sounds hot, right? Shame, something the editors mention as always connected to kinky desires in mainstream media, pops up over and over again. If kink in popular culture is a cause for only shame, why include so many stories where characters are mired in it? It would be a complete lie to say that kinksters don’t deal with shame, but in specifically calling out that this collection aims to not position kink as shameful, it’s totally missing the mark. Alexander Chee’s story “Best Friendster Date Ever” has characters who have pretty standard gay sex with some light bondage and say things like “None of my friends know me like this,” and “When I had sex with people I didn’t know, I became someone I only met when I had sex with strangers. I found that the people I met like this often loved it but hated me for doing it, for knowing it about them afterward… There was the rich shame and the defiant pleasure.” Here we see more shame, but this also touches on another theme—kink is most often done with people you don’t know, almost as a way of avoiding intimacy. Cruising is a cultural norm with both roots deeply planted in BDSM and queer culture. While cruising is great, casual encounters are always at the forefront of mainstream portrayals of kink adding to its cold and pathological social aura. The movie Cruising immediately comes to mind, Angels in America is another. People emotionally invested in kink as a lifestyle usually don’t go from casual SM hookup to casual SM hookup. Kinky people build community and relationships, even family. In Kink, and perhaps also in real life, casual encounters are easier when desires are shameful. When kink is used to ward off true intimacy it is rendered other and distant, which stunts the bea… Get full access to Dead but Delicious at daemonumx.substack.com/subscribe