Is the Kink Scene a Cult? Interesting Podcast

Although I know a bunch of people into BDSM, this is the aspect that never sat well with me. Not saying they're all like this, but if your guy likes to beat up women, maybe building a scene around giving him the cover for that isn't a great idea. Feel like a square saying it, but domination and sadism aren't good character traits for healthy relationships.

Sadism only with fully informed consent in a loving relationship, or respectful casual encounters, with mutual benefit is unlikely to fully satisfy a true sadist. That's the elephant in the room.

Alas the poster above and the pile on in the comments makes me think perhaps it is more a Cult than I credited it as being!

I think that's why most women avoid these threads, OP. They are always an exercise in handwaving away abuse.

Just listening to the second part and I think she hits the nail on the head when she says of some relationships she'd seen, "Even though it's consensual, you're still in a relationship with someone who finds abusing their partner attractive".

Although I know a bunch of people into BDSM, this is the aspect that never sat well with me. Not saying they're all like this, but if your guy likes to beat up women, maybe building a scene around giving him the cover for that isn't a great idea. Feel like a square saying it, but domination and sadism aren't good character traits for healthy relationships.

I haven't yet, but your post seems to imply that the whole UK kink scene is abusive and facilitates paedophilia and I wanted to refute that. Apologies if you weren't trying to suggest that, but it's how it came over.

Obviously this woman has had an awful experience of the worst part of it, but the whole scene shouldn't be written off on that account. People easily assume that if someone is kinky they will tolerate or even been turned on by anything and everything no matter how repugnant, but that is not how it works!

I listened to the podcast and in this part 1 you get a sense of her general experience of the scene and some dodgy dynamics it attracts, but I didn't come away thinking it was necessarily culty— though maybe she goes into it a bit more in part 2?

"Vanilla people don't talk about consent"
"Vanilla people don't consider some women might be dominant"

lol

Whenever you talk about a cult, people in the cult are going to tell you there is no cult. It's kind of how we can identify a cult.

Who is the 'we' here? How is the community consulted? Who decides that someone should be 'expelled' from the community? How is the expulsion carried out? Genuine questions btw

But I've already said, in the post you're quoting, that I dont assume all women are submissive and all men are dominant. You're maybe being a bit sealiony?

There is nothing wrong with vanilla sex - which is generally enjoyable for both parties. And people who go in for vanilla sex (sounds like an insult btw) also do other more adventurous things: dress up, sex in odd places etc., which require consent.
Coercion is a point of view, btw - and can be recognised later rather than at the time.

So lets get this straight - its a community that talks a lot about consent - far more than vanilla couples - but has no way of identifying and refusing entry to unstable individuals or CSA survivors who shouldn't be there in the first place?

If we consider someone to be unstable or dangerous from their actions, then no, they won't be offered a platform to discuss their views. That's sensible.

And actually she's a dominant leaning switch if you want to be totally accurate. She will switch for some play.

I didn't say she isn't. I said people outside kink don't consider dominant women.

If you're aiming to make the kinks scenes sound less like a cult, might I suggest that this:
"That's why it's best we sort our own problems and hold our own discussions. Which we do. It's just when someone has been expelled from the community, they're no longer welcome to speak on such platforms."
is possibly not the way to go about it?
An insular community, living only by its own rules, expelling and then ignoring people who disagree - what could possibly go wrong?

She isn't the bogey man. She's just a woman with attachment issues and poor judgement who lacks the insight to accurately reflect on her experiences. Nothing special or new.

So really your "feminist" approach to this is painfully inaccurate and short sighted because the priority is speaking about (bad) men rather than (all) women. That isn't feminist, it's a gender war.

You can't be thinking about kinky women if you assume they are all submissive and therefore all have the same vulnerabilities. Dominant women have different risks on the scene to submissive ones. People just never consider that we exist in their anti-kink campaigns.

All the reasons they give for kink being wrong assume that the woman is sexually submissive to a dominant man. They forget queer couples and as I said, dominant women with submissive male partners. That's why it's best we sort our own problems and hold our own discussions. Which we do. It's just when someone has been expelled from the community, they're no longer welcome to speak on such platforms.

No, I don't assume that, but this is on the feminist board, so we're discussing how women are affected
The same would apply to male CSA survivors who feel they need to "replay" their horrific childhood experiences as adults