Is the Kink Scene a Cult? Interesting Podcast

[BelaLugosisThread]

Was I In a Cult UK Kink Scene episode

Latest episodes of the 'Was I In A Cult?' Podcast features a guest who gives a shocking account of the UK Kink Scene. She states the scene acts as a cover for coercive control and abuse and gives a horrifying example of attempts to link 'dark age players' to "Minor Attracted Persons"/ AKA paedophiles

From the comments it appears "Kink shaming" is the new hate crime as there's quite a pile on in response to these episodes. The guest provides a convincing feminist critique of this subculture and I found her story alarming. Yet it appears only 'lived experience' that fits a certain narrative is authentic as she is widely dismissed as phobic and bigoted.

Worth a listen

Oh and the use of euphemism is common to both cults and "kink".

Kink = paraphilia
BDSM = violence
The scene = grooming circle
Safe word = danger / distress signal

Etc, etc.

Read It. It stood out as a great comment. Enough for me to remember it! Or the gyst at least.

Although to be fair my response was a long and cutting version of "I'm sorry the blokes you shag are low quality leftovers who need a monumental effort to turn on because of their pathetic kinks, meanwhile I'm having a great life with a bloke who loves me for being me and not because I represent some kink they can get fulfilled by anyone willing to not wash their feet."
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Oh wanted to engage with a pro kink person earlier in this thread who made the comparison to BDSM being like rugby or running a marathon.

This is a point commonly made in pro kink circles. I've even seen a framed news article in a kink venue making this point.

For one: it's a false equivalence. Sports are not sex games.

For two, sports have regulatory bodies, public scrutiny and accountability that the BDSM scene does not. And no, UK safety alerts, is none of that. Sporting bodies care about injury to players and will change the rules based on findings. The shutting down of the points raised in the podcast, namely the scene is a cover for domestic abuse, that consent is thin and is not trauma informed, and ultimately, even if you still believe in the consent model, you're engaging in sexualised acts with a person who gets off on abuse.

For three, the comparison to sport just strikes me as a framing that benefits abusive men. Sex can be more of a game to men. They don't have to live with the risks and consequences as much as women do. It's a way of distracting from the fact that thoughtlessly playing in someone's mind can have unpredictable and traumatising consequences.

For four, extreme sports can actually be a form of self harm. It's pretty common for people with addiction to get crazy into sport as it's another form of a buzz. Oddly enough, the addiction community is open to this and it's something that's discussed.

A better comparison would be comparing BDSM to what joyful, intimate and truly vulnerable sex looks like. A thing that's hard to do, as culturally I think we've lost a collective sense of what that looks like.

It was a fair point to make. As a former dominant woman, I could very much relate!

I'm happy independent (don't like 'single') and I'm open to future, healthy intimate relationships. You give me hope. I know when I first left kink, I felt sexually broken for months. Working on myself has meant I've turned a corner there. Though I'm still not ready. Still, if I get desperate can always go a kink event and have the attention of porn sick creepy cheaters 🤣

For the record, I never did anything with anyone in a relationship. I have used some drugs though. So that means I'm a terrible person, do feel free to dismiss anything I say /s

The poster who has been very vocal about believing that men with what she believes to be 'vanilla' wives will be worshipping at her feet (cringe!) outright said to me that they don't believe that a man sexually aroused by strangling a woman is more likely to be dangerous than a man without that kink. So it's hard to take anything they say especially seriously.

The other thing was how Fatballs is using "Other woman" tactics of pretending to herself that women in relationships with men don't get the full picture without understanding that in healthy relationships, sex is talked about a lot, in detail, the secrets are shared, the desires are met. Just because some men stray or watch porn it doesn't mean that all men do this all the time.

I've worked for years with men who have mental health issues. Theres an increase in the men I speak to in their forties and fifties who are now rejecting porn along with heavy drinking etc Some of them are prioritising their mental health and relationship connections over the things that made them feel shady in the past. A lot of second marriages are built on this honesty. The way Fatballs is painting men is sadly cynical. Relationships, actual relationships where you share your life as opposed to a toe suck, are complex.

Fetishes are reductionist and depersonalised. It's night and day when you are having sex with someone who has fetishes vs someone who can actually connect with you on a real level and actually wants to stick around and build a life with you, as well as fuck you every day, because no one else will do but you.

The more I think about this the more strange it is that @ByGentleFatball doesn't acknowledge the increased risk presented by someone who strangles you vs someone who doesn't.

Of course it is inherently more dangerous to have sex with (or be intimate in any sexual way with) someone who strangles you versus someone who doesn't. It's restricting oxygen to your brain. It is in itself dangerous. It's high risk. It can lead to injury and death.

Someone (of either sex) aroused by strangling someone, knowing those risks, is absolutely more of a danger to a sexual partner than someone who doesn't strangle them. To argue otherwise is completely bizarre.

@ThisBrickOtter

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Have hope. There are many men who have moved past all this "clutter" and who want something better. You, by virtue of the beauty of your own battle scars are more than enough for a partner whose eyes are finally open.

I found the comments on drug use by that poster ridiculous. If she's never smoked a joint she has no idea how good sex can be on a rainy Sunday afternoon listening to the Beatles on vinyl. 🤣

Talk about vanilla!

Thank you. I really appreciate your kindness. Your comment about men in their 40s and 50s realising the harms of porn and drink really resonated. Been on a similar journey myself.

I know the 'cast is asking how kulty kink (sorry not sorry) is, but this thread got me wondering about how closely related it might be to addiction. God knows I met so many porn sick people during my time there. People seem to forget you can get addicted to any 'good' feeling. Especially anything that hacks the reward system.

I've still a way to go, but I feel so much more at peace with myself for getting out of kink.

Have a lovely day and thank you for your posts.

This seems a real sticking point for you.

I actually think a lot of feminist patriarchy theory is overblown, but from a psychological perspective, the idea that a man wanting to be sexually submissive to a woman is somehow anti-patriarchal is really lacking in insight. I won't say that it's necessarily always misogynistic, but it absolutely can be, because the fact that the woman I'd dominant is part of the humiliation or loss of control.

So what you have to ask is, why would being controlled or physically dominated by a woman be particularly humiliating?

The idea that a man who performs a submissive sexual role can't be abusive or sexist is quaint.

The need to escalate the experiences to the point where boundaries and limits are constantly being tested is addictive.

In other thoughts...

The Other Woman narrative around Kink hold strong with attitudes about "vanilla" and how everyone else isn't in on the secret. Secret spaces bind people in secret pacts. But secret rooms are just that, and most men are not being honest in the secret rooms either. Men who are having affairs are not being more honest with their affair partners, not even if they are having the kind of sex they have always fantasised about, because they are usually telling lies about the woman at home. Usually the affair partner isn't an upgrade but a collection of willing body parts he can mindlessly use and then easily walk away from. She might feel like they have intimacy and special attention but he's not staying to provide security or comfort or the actual practice of love.

The kink scene uses the language of safety and infantile words such as "play" as other posters have also pointed out - knife play, breathe play...

Beyond one night stands, I've never been in a long term relationship with a man who ever classified tops/bottoms/sub/dom because these are men who are just having sex on an EQUAL level with a woman they love and also hold as an equal. The power dynamic isn't there because they aren't men addicted to a power dynamic and I'm not interested in power dynamics in bed, I'm interested in sex without games. In a partner who gives as much as he takes. My female peers in the 90's used to joke generally about submissive men being lousy lovers who can't give pleasure, and dominant men as being insensitive lovers who just get it done their way without waiting to ask you want you would like. We will all die one day, we don't have time for selfish lovers. Both types in their fetish persona extremes are selfish.

Intimacy isn't just about how someone turns you on. Intimacy isn't bloodletting or strangulation so you can get a more intense orgasm because you've desensitised your body so much you can't have an orgasm without having to use a power drill.

Intimacy is about dropping the pretence and the self deception. In other cultures sex holds a different place, in the culture I come from for example, sex is seen as a spiritual bonding, the focus can be on sensuality, deep connection, a willingness to see the other as a cosmic being equal to yourself. And if you have a partner who holds these values then it's ludicrous to suggest that they secretly crave some grubby pink toes over something as elevated and "high" as someone who sees him as a whole man, a provider, nurturer, protector, who also has pain, shame and a need for protection himself. It's ridiculous to think that men who have evolved to this level of self awareness would be comfortable strangling another human because who in their right mind for one second would risk oxygen starvation to the brain of someone they profess to love?

If a person doesn't love you, they can do anything dehumanising to you that he wants, and it's a game of seeing what the bodily reaction will be, how much your skin and orifices will break and bleed. If a someone doesn't love themselves it's easy for them to beg to be humiliated. None of this is sex. It's the abyss. Everything becomes about hard, fast obliteration to an end goal that doesn't care about you or them, but instead merges you both in pain and endorphins. It's self harm plus orgasm to "seal the deal".

People who have been sexually abused and who are healing from those power dynamics don't want more pain, they want healing experiences. When someone who has been so desensitised by abuse and coercion starts to come back to themselves and look at the rubble of the destruction that has occurred and the lies they have had to tell themselves and others in order to keep locked in the abuse cycle that they are perpetuating by participating, they often reject anything that doesn't feel connected, real, lasting and safe. There are many men I've worked with who have been sexually abused who instead of acting out the abuse on others will reject the abuse power dynamics and instead choose partners who see them as equals. One man said to me that his wife "has his back" and the idea of having sex with another woman "who doesn't have my back, makes me feel like she might turn on me or physically attack me and I wouldn't be able to sleep." Men are a bit more complicated than the snapshot of them that casual sex, sex workers or fetishists get to fully comprehend from the limitations of the brief encounter.

The kink scene whilst using the language of consent and safety, plus the infantile word "play" added to every unsafe practice imaginable, can hide the exploitation and abuse, under the guise of consensual word use as a shield to justify their actions. They may claim that harm is part of the play or manipulate partners into unsafe situations under the guise of “pushing boundaries.” There are goals, boundaries to push. Like gender ideology uses words to veil and hide intent under rainbows, there are goals, extreme goals, to prove how non vanilla you are, how exalted you have become (Clive Barker really pin (heads) this down in his ritualistic Hellraiser religious overtones)
Kink becomes a religion for believers and damn you if you don't get it.
Everything must be harder, nastier, dirtier, riskier... did something tear deep inside or is that a portal to oblivion where to quote one of Neil Gaiman's victims "The pain was celestial".

Or back in the real world you could just relax with a nice cup of tea after a really good shag and wait in bed for him to bring you some chocolate whilst all the lovey dovey feel good hormones bond you and flood you with joy and you know what it feels like to be listened to and cared for.

I said care for and not "aftercare" which sounds like some kind of perfunctory medical check up after someone has had an operation.

And this whole consent bullshit that has been spouted - fucking cheating married men with your feet takes away consent from their partners so maybe the Fetlife posters shouldn't come on all santimonious about that. A "vanilla" partner that you are feeling sorry for who is being cheated on cannot consent to sex without her knowledge of what else he's doing so really it's rape of his partner that is being encouraged and enabled by this so called secret safe space FetFoot and weak man are holding between them.

From ghoulies and ghosties and weird pornsick creeps with kinks, good lord deliver us.

Also, if you need this much ceremony just to get off, you’re seriously sexually repressed. I said what I said.

Yes, it's as if we need to have the sissification fetish discussions all over again . . .

This! It drove me crazy when I was playing the role of a dominant woman, the sub man to sissy transition. I wanted to dominate manly men, not men with a feminity humiliation fetish.

Entitled arseholes obsessed with power, and expecting you to be grateful as they've given you the gift of their submission! Only it's 'their submission' to determine. So essentially they remain in control and the architects of their own fantasies.

Subby men I found to be rigid, often petty angry men. Lots of self-hatred as well. Emotionally constipated.

Vulnerability isn't submission in a healthy context. BDSM is the performance of vulnerability, as an avoidance of authentic vulnerability in my view.

I think these two sentences sum it up for me.

None of this is sex. It's the abyss.

What is interesting is the wide variety of people following FWR and the views expressed. However surprising for a feminist board.

Just like a royal board attracts anti royals, the feminist board is like catnip for catty misogynists.

Not sure I would call myself pro kink. That I am trying to work it out at the moment and this thread is helping with the wide and varied opinions.

The comparisons to pushing the human body to it's limit in sports I learnt at a kink talk from a woman doing her PhD research in kink. And I am not sure I fully agree with all that I learnt there. I think I agree that the reasons for kink to exist are understandable looking at human psychology. But whether you should be allowed to do that in this society is another matter, and who gets to decide that?

As you quite rightly say, sports are safely regulated, the kink scene is not. But even then some sports aren't safely regulated - transwomen or men with DSD competing against women.

There is no overarching organisation in the kink scene and this can lead itself to a dangerous "cult". There is no agreed limit to what is acceptable. Full disclosure, for me, I think strangulation is wrong, but acknowledge that some people can experience pleasure from doing it. Just like I think cannibalism and fgm is wrong, but some societies in the world practice these. Those people that engage in those practices think they're right to do so. Who gets to say? And who's responsibility is it to ensure vulnerable people are not abused or hurt?

Lastly I think I can be vulnerable while engaging in the kink practices I get pleasure from, and that leads to increased intimacy with my partner. But it isn't the only way we are intimate or vulnerable with each other.

Catty misogynists who are scared of sex 😂

I'd rather be a pearl clutcher than losing the entire set up a bloke's bottom and then finding someone else's green toenails up there too along with a copy of The Story of O.
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Hmmm, I think my analogy of cannibalism and fgm is crude. Ignore that.

Apparently so. And as always to reprimand women for having the temerity to question who benefits and who loses in an exchange or set of arrangements.

Also, if you need this much ceremony just to get off, you’re seriously sexually repressed.

Yes, it's very try-hard.

Appreciate you engaging in good faith. You remind me of my early days in the subculture. It's great that you're thoroughly thinking about this and getting different views.

I can say I don't think I could have talked myself out of it at the start, it just felt too right. It's only on coming out of the other side have I been able to make peace with it all. I got into it as a reaction to childhood shit. Met a lot of damaged people, and some great people too (who also left any I'm in touch with).

I will pick up on your point about feeling vulnerable in kink and leave you with this challenge. Really? Authentically vulnerable? Entirely exposed and entwined with the one you love? Or do you need a fair bit of paraphernalia to aid the process? Watch out for that. The more paraphernalia and ritual involved, the less vulnerability is exposed. Vulnerability is freestyle jazz dancing to each others minds and body's. It is not a checklist of agreed ritualistic acts.

What was the talk you went to? I've also been to one by a woman with a PhD and thought it was the BDSM equivalent of Jordan Peterson stitching together arguments and 'research' to get the message "it's all fine here" across. It felt like a recruitment campaign. I'm also very away that a lot of the BDSM 'research' is done by BDSM practitioners.

In a similar vein, went to a porn and young people conference years ago, with actual independent researchers. Making a very different case for online porn causing fear of sex, mysogyny, harming self image and really damaging young men in particulars ability to form healthy relationships with women. The speakers outlined how it was hard to get their research out there, due to the amount of pro-propaganda research funded by the industry. Porn feels like the cigarette smoking of our age. BDSM researchers the hardcore smokers determined to prove the bad practice they've committed to, and lost so much to, is actually really good and healthy.

Ah yes, I never left any sport activity with sexual trauma! Or a sense I'd punched myself in the face for the pleasure of another, somehow.

This is an incredible post Wands!
What the gender id/women conflict has set off for me, and this one here about kink, is how all of this seems to me to be a microcosm of a cultural trauma extending back eons.

It's a healing that needs to happen and we are waaaay off track right now I think.

Looking at how individuals come to health amd wholeness after trauma and abuse, is a useful model for how we do that on the macro level.

The raw and honest posts on here illustrating this are so insightful and enlightening. They stand in stark contrast to the stories of power dynamics, deceit, and hurt.

I always have the utmost admiration for those who manage to find some healing from their pasts and share their hard-earned wisdom. It gives us all hope I think.

On my view, it starts within the individual's relationship with themselves, then in relationship with others, and potentially, extends all the way out at some point to the culture at large.

For society to get to a place where where the value of sex and relationships is based on mutual care and respect, honouring of each other's unique differences and strengths, and equal humanity, and wanting what's healthiest for both self and other within relationships - is a Utopia I can get behind.

To my mind, anything else just perpetuates.