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

Thank you for sharing this and I hope so much that therapy has been positive for you. Would you be happy to share how you got involved in the first place? Or perhaps a more general observation about how abuse survivors may end up involved in the scene?

I think we need a name for groups that can be coercive, that predators can easily hide in, or that are especially unhealthy for vulnerable people, but that don't strictly fit the definition of a cult.

YY @Thelnebriati

Did you listen to part two and the part about consensual non-consent? That really does not sound like taking consent seriously. At, all.

I thought the points made that the model of consent used is a thin one, and the point about it not being trauma informed a powerful one.

Also, i dont buy the argument you can consent to being abused. Who on earth is attracted to role playing being an abuser? Abusers!

Tell us you've not listened to part two, without saying you've not listened to part 2. It is essentially the interviewee showing a great deal of self-reflection.

Please, elaborate on how you assess someone to be unstable or dangerous. Serious question.

Sure, happy to. I was drinking very heavily and using drugs at the time, mainly as I know now to self-medicate and forget my abusive past (I'm now nearly two decades clean and sober through AA and NA). I was also a Goth and active on that scene. If you're hanging around people who use party drugs a lot (speed, coke, E, MDMA) and are out clubbing a lot, sooner or later you will start being around people who want to push the boundaries of life in general - because they're traumatised, because they're lonely, numb, they just want to feel something. Pretty much everyone in my social circle had some form of past trauma which I think is why we were using drugs and alcohol the way we did. And on a scene like that there's always going to be predatory men, in it for what they can get (many of them are also abuse survivors of course). Also, there's definitely a crossover between elements of the Goth/Cybergoth/Cyberpunk scenes and BDSM. Like I say, it's about pushing boundaries. So, hang out on that scene long enough and sooner or later you will meet people who are also into BDSM and someone will suggest you come along to the next night at this famous London BDSM club. The club as I knew it have several floors and to of the floors played music I was into as part of being a Goth so that was also an attraction.

So you go, and if you're me, you're drinking heavily and taking drugs and of course that lowers your inhibitions. My first night, I agreed to a certain act with a man and he immediately stormed through my boundaries and went three or four bases beyond what we had agreed. On that occasion I shouted and wriggled free but on others I didn't due to being wasted/full of despair/not feeling I was worth anything.

I remember on my first night lots and lots of mainly men gathering around a cage that a girl was in. The things that the dom man was doing to the girl looked painful and I suppose I gasped or swore or something because several men turned round and assured me 'she loves it don't worry'.

Now, disclaimer I've got no issue with BDSM as part of consent, two adults yada yada. I would just say from my experience that 1. The scene comes with A LOT A LOT of drugs, more endemic than normies think maybe and 2. Consent can be blurry if you are an abuse survivor, wasted or generally vulnerable and also maybe not au fait with how the whole thing works.

I think it's very murky and was actually quite shocked when I went to Pride a couple years ago to support someone I love who was in the parade, to see that the BDSM scene was represented in the parade. I thought that was actually the antithesis of what Pride should be about, which in my view is about safety, tolerance and respect.

That's upsetting to read @GiveMeSpanakopita

@BelaLugosisThread I listened to parts 1 and 2 and my thoughts are:

I did not think it was a cult. I can see the similarities, but I think you'd have to loosen the definition of cult to the point of meaningless to include it. I agree with the poster upthread who said we need another word to describe groups like these.

I thought it seemed like a community (or sets of communities) that have good aims but that are incredibly vulnerable to infiltration and, for want of a better word, mission creep. I thought the observation that it was a microcosm of our culture and that it acted as a concentrated location for all of the same (patriarchal) issues was probably correct. Of course you could say this of almost any community or organisation that exists, but the potential for harm is so much higher here given the activities and the vulnerable people that are drawn to it.

I also thought that, regardless of the kink roles men and women may play, it seems to mainly be women who are at risk of exploitation and harm. Women, particularly young women, seemed to be commodified within the community regardless of whether they were dominant, submissive or switch.

I noticed more generally that vulnerable women seem to be drawn to the community and that these women appear to be deemed credible enough to consent but not always credible enough to be listened to. I admit I may be over reaching on that one.

@Flustration I think the path I went down is very common actually for many women and girls who end up being exploited in some way. When I've read the accounts of survivors of grooming gangs, the similarities with my early adulthood are always striking: trauma, drink and drugs, hanging around in groups where you're not judged if your primary aim in life is to get wasted, then boundary pushing, further and further, and on one level you are consenting but on another you are not.

I don't think the consent model works terribly well when applied to traumatised women with poor boundaries especially when there's something in it that they need to survive emotionally such as drugs to numb the pain. But I understand the consent model is probably the only thing that the law can work on, I suppose. Would be good for students/teachers/GPs/police/social workers to have more training on trauma, addiction and the effects on boundaries and sense of self and agency. Well maybe they already get that training, I don't know.

Thank you so much for such a full and honest reply. I know social media comes in for a lot of (justifiable) criticism but it gives people who might never meet IRL an opportunity to share experiences. I have no wise words of wisdom to give (still trying to sort myself out!) but I am so pleased that you have been able to move your life in a good direction.

Just popping in to say this definitely is not my thread.
Thanks!

@BelaLug0si you aren't actually Bella Lugosi, he's dead, after all.

So I doubt anyone thought it was, or is particularly interested in your input if you have nothing to add. It's a play on words on a song name.

Because they act in ways that show a lack of emotional regulation or outright predatory behaviour.

Anytime it's suggested that people with a history of abuse/trauma should be gatekept from the scene, the women go mad. They say it's antifeminist and victim blaming.

There's a real problem with mentally ill, emotionally unstable people gravitating towards the scene and people romanticising mental illness in like an Emo type way. It's for everyone to have their personal limits about who they spend time with. Personally I give those types a wide berth in the scene (and in life) and won't attend places where they are in leadership positions.

My post had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with kinky dating (finding a partner where you will have a power exchange in and sometimes out of the bedroom) vs vanilla dating (finding a partner for a egalitarian relationship outside the bedroom irrespective of what happens inside it).

You could say there are several levels of the kink.community. it's regional and also fetish/kink oriented. So you have the rope people and the electro people and whatever else.

Whether it is literally the global kink community as a whole, or the rope community of Brighton and Hove, if it's agreed by the community that someone is bad news, they are deplatformed. It's just that not everyone always agrees about certain people unless they experience whatever it is themselves.

I'd.go as far as to say kinky people invented the cancel.

It isn't only vanilla people.who forget to consider that. Kinky people.do all the time. If you're perceived as female, then people typically assume.you are submissive.unless you're there with a whip. And even then...

That, and I think also a lot of the thrill of kink is actually about boundary pushing and transgression.

You can't really transgress and not transgress at the same time, sure, you can fool yourself a bit but there are limits. (I also think this is the reason for the tendency to put the "community" in opposition to the vanilla people - maintaining the idea of what you are doing as transgressive requires someone to think it is in fact transgressive. If everyone thinks it's normal there is nothing exciting about that.

Plus - if you transgress often the same things cease to be transgressive, so you have to up the stakes in some way.

This is why it's fundamentally not a healthy approach to sex, it will always be ultimately unstable and involve finding and crossing new boundaries.

That, and I think also a lot of the thrill of kink is actually about boundary pushing and transgression.

You can't really transgress and not transgress at the same time, sure, you can fool yourself a bit but there are limits. (I also think this is the reason for the tendency to put the "community" in opposition to the vanilla people - maintaining the idea of what you are doing as transgressive requires someone to think it is in fact transgressive. If everyone thinks it's normal there is nothing exciting about that.

Plus - if you transgress often the same things cease to be transgressive, so you have to up the stakes in some way.

This is why it's fundamentally not a healthy approach to sex, it will always be ultimately unstable and involve finding and crossing new boundaries.

Yes, exactly.

Transgression is only a fetish for some people. Others like to play in well confined limits without any form of pushing limits. People who specifically like that type of play are called edge players.

Another big problem when it comes to women protecting other women is that newer, inexperienced women don't want to listen. It's the same as trying to warn anyone not to get with your ex. You come across as patronising and/or jealous.

A good example of someone being socially cancelled after being legally acquitted is a guy called Liam "The Wolf" from America. I'll find a link later but he's basically cancelled despite being found not guilty.

Just popping in to say that I utterly reject the term "vanilla". It is to the "kink" cult (I find that euphemistic term likewise ridiculous; it's a sexual deviation at best and a perversion at worst) what "cis" is to the trans cult: an attempt to reorient the world of the majority/ordinary to foreground their fringe perspective. They've been disturbingly successful at infiltrating the mainstream and popularising their bizarre cult slang and ideology, just like the trans cult. In fact, both have risen in parallel and with significant overlap, which I don't think is a coincidence.

I am NOT a "cis" woman, and nor do I have "vanilla" sex. It's just actual sex - the dictionary definition kind - rather than ritualised violence and abuse masquerading as sex.

I think most of us prefer vanilla dating to power exchanges - that sounds abusive (because it is).

Opinions are like arseholes

Ok