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sasha_featherj00j and I are doing idea generation for a proposed WisCon panel on kink. Please comment! We need to come up with a description, and possibly suggest people for the panel and things to discuss. Being politically sex positive: Kink Bingo, Fandom, and understanding Kink through fiction
Points to indclude:
kink is a lens through which you can see the world
it can be an oppressed identity
No kink-bashing, everyone's kink is OK, kink as an umbrella that includes infinite things
define terms: squick, BDSM, others
Intersectionality
ETA: Thank you for leaving comments; I may not respond to all comments. This panel is being planned partly in response to a disappointing panel at Think Galacticon entitled "Dangerous Sexuality".
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:36 am (UTC)But I think that's about as much as I feel safe saying in public on this topic. It's something people have to figure out where they stand for themselves.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:52 am (UTC)1. Saying "all kinks are OK" is not the same as "you will not be publicly shamed for your kinks in this space".
2. Safer space is needed in our society because kink shaming is so common (yes it happens all the time in fandom).
3. It is not the kinks themselves that are unhealthy, but the approach or the way they are carried out. Much like a fanfic can be problematic or respectful even if it's gen, it can also be so when it is a hardcore kink fic. It's not the kink that makes it so: it's the way it's written and approached.
4. Who gets to be the arbiter of problematic vs unproblematic? We all see things differently.
5. Something new to me that I just learned: asking people to explain themselves, to examine their desires, can be a bludgeon of the powerful:
http://sm-feminist.blogspot.com/2009/03/examination-and-lost-tempers.html
http://fierceawakening.livejournal.com/1000547.html
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Date: 2011-09-13 05:47 am (UTC)I have found self-examination useful, and the fact that it is usually uncomfortable at best does not make it less useful for me, and I don't feel my personal motivations for examination involve a) foregone conclusions that everyone must agree with me on, since I don't really know what I think about everything, or b) the assumption that kink is bad and intrinsically unfeminist, since I don't believe that.
I'm not telling or asking other people to examine; but I do feel that there's often a general pressure against it for people who want it, and I'm not comfortable with that.
And this is why I don't like talking about this stuff in public.
(And I find the implication in the first post that radfems are "the powerful" really...odd. I'd say radfems are marginalized by mainstream feminists as well as by mainstream society. While I certainly don't agree with many radfems on all topics, I do think they often have uncomfortable things to say--right or wrong--and that is generally not a popular thing with the mainstream.)
I do think #4 is something of a strawman: there's NEVER an ultimate arbiter in any social justice debate, but that doesn't mean we should stop talking about things and pretend everything is always awesome. People aren't going to agree on everything, of course, but...that's people?
...anyway, this has kind of wandered off-topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if these sorts of things come up at a panel discussion, depending on who's in the audience.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:52 am (UTC)But I respect your desire not to talk about it! It's certainly a thorny topic.