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

What about dominant women who "abuse" men?

Wow. OK. Firstly, you started off by minimising my experiences because you decided it was a 'squat rave'. When I reiterated that it wasn't, and named the club as being the best known fetish club in London, you moved the goalposts so that now, Torture Garden isn't representative of the kink scene anyway.

Do you see how you're falling into the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy here? Do you see how you're having to shift the goalposts to allow you to discount any experience that doesn't fit with your defence of the scene?

I don't find your ad hominem attack on me to be insulting, no. I had a rough start in life. To quote Larkin, "An only life can take so long to climb / Clear of its wrong beginnings". But I did it. and now I'm thriving, surrounded by people who love me. There's no darkness, dissonance or degeneracy in my life anymore. That is why I never need to flail around, project my cognitive dissonance, and employ logical fallacies to get right with my own mind. If you'll allow me another quote, I think it's quite apposite, from that prophet of human nature Dostoevsky:

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him., or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone."

@ByGentleFatball

I don't want to be.insulting, really, but it sounds like you were a semi junkie if you're the drug taking one hanging out in a dodgy crowd. They just happened to be kinky.

Saying 'I don't want to be insulting' then calling someone 'a semi junkie' is ridiculous.
And mean spirited.

Whataboutery! I suppose that's all you're left with as an argument?

We know a minority of women are abusers, predators, murderers etc which is why safeguarding must acknowledge the risks all adults can pose to the vulnerable. But this is a feminist board that centres women and we are well aware of the grim statistics that highlight the vulnerability of girls and women to aggressive and dangerous men unable to self regulate. Promoting the lifestyles and demands of these men is an odd thing to do on a feminist board.

I'm not the poster you were addressing, but I'll venture that she agrees with me that getting off on strangling people is serial killer shit, regardless of sex.

@ByGentleFatball

You keep asking people to compare men who strange women to women who strangle men.

I would argue that neither is healthy.

But positioning the two as equal is to knowingly ignore the hugely disproportionate number of men killing women in society vs women killing men. This reflects that there are many, many more men who wish to inflict harm on women than the other way around.

And there is also the fact that the size and strength of the average man and woman means that men are massively more likely to be able to stop a physical attack / going 'too far' by a woman than a woman would be by a man. Again making the risk level higher.

Surely responsible people on the kink scene, especially when it comes to strangling, would be even more aware of the above and acknowledge that this particular kink would lend itself to men who are aroused by women being harmed?

I've got daughters. Adult and teenager daughters. I've told them that any man or woman who wants to experiment with breath play and choking is an abusive fuck who they should run from at a hundred miles an hour. They were actually quite relieved to hear it, this sort of kinky sex has been so normalised in porn. 🤮

Having actually experienced the kink scene, and also having attended other organised activities. I thoroughly disagree. Kink attracts predators. It's also attacks people with neurodiversity and trauma. The scene claims to be safe and care about consent. It does not.

You blaming individual people, is also an absolute classic, though more through naivety than logical flaws. The focus of the podcast was on the culture itself, and how it claims to be safe, and... Isn't. I found it telling in part 2, the point that link has an incel problem, because there's something there to attract incels. Can't say my running club has an incel problem. Or the cinema society I was in.

From my experiences, which I'll post about later, the kink scene is way more toxic and dangerous than it wants people to know. Especially new people. Again, in the podcast, Amelia made the point that the kink scene relies on a thin model of consent. If there was a care about the wellbeing of the traumatised and vulnerable, a trauma inform model would be the norm. It isn't. Because that would put off the predators by making them accountable.

Happy to read of your different experiences, but please stop trying to discredit the accounts of people you've never met. You sound like a judge in a rape trial blaming the victim for not crossing their legs and wearing a skirt.

"Consensual breath play" = strangling.
It's dangerous, there's no safe way to do it.

"What you have to remember is that studies have shown that most anti kink people fear that their partners will desire sexual activities they can't give them. So they think by shaming kinky people, it will deter their partners from seeking out kinky partners and leaving them. That's why you see all the irrational fear and lashing out."

"Anti kink people" = people who just want sex without excessive pain, humiliation, fetishes and strangling/beating/fisting.

"Fear their partners will desire sexual activities they can't give them" = fear being injured or murdered during sex.

"So they think by shaming kinky people, it will deter their partners from seeking out kinky partners and leaving them." Or they think that they would like to avoid men specifically who want to injure them during sex and who get hard cocks by imagining inflicting pain on them. They think women who are up for this have some kind of masochistic leaning which signals massive red flags about the healthiness and wellness of someone who would be so careless with their body as to invite torture.

"That's why you see all the irrational fear and lashing out." Women who have been sexually assaulted are not lashing out or irrational.

So I call bullshit on this. Sorry.
Studies on anti kink people. Hahahah.
Link all your studies and let's look at the blue hair and pronouns and hard drives of those doing the studies.

"What about dominant women who "abuse" men?"

There's always something creepy about men who want to be abused during sex. I encountered one once. The way he lay there groaning he wanted to be used made my stomach turn.

But then I'm used to healthy sex where no one needs to play victim or beat the shit out of someone else to feel alive. So of course it will repel me.

Abuse is abuse.

And the dismissal of these risky behaviours as ‘play’ shines a beacon on how this all has to be reframed and minimised.

yeah and the kink affirmative therapists all seem to fit that description too: the blue haired pronoun displaying, still
living at home with Mum and Dad, pro gender woo, Cass is a bigot type of therapist. Are they the best people to counsel you? God no.

Let's spell this out clearly.

Some people like strangling other people. Strangling other people can kill them.

Some people like strangling other people during sex.

Some people want to avoid stranglers.

It's ok to not want to be strangled. It doesn't make anyone "vanilla". Most people don't want to die during sex.

noviolence.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Strangulation-Factsheet-PDF-v4_2019.pdf

"Strangulation is the restriction of air caused by something outside the throat. Choking occurs when something inside blocks the airway. Strangulation has only recently been identified as one of the most deadly forms of domestic violence: unconsciousness may occur within seconds and death within minutes."

Let's be clear. It's attempted murder if it goes wrong. Who in their right mind would risk it?

@ByGentleFatball

Fear their partners will desire sexual activities they can't give them

So they think by shaming kinky people, it will deter their partners from seeking out kinky partners and leaving them.

You honestly think that me believing that men who are sexually aroused by strangling women (even with the woman's consent) are more likely to be dangerous than the average man, is because I'm worried my partner will cheat on me because he might have a kink I don't share?

Do you not believe that a man sexually aroused by strangling women (even with their consent) is more likely than the average man to be dangerous to women?

My thoughts on this subject aren't centred around me personally or my relationship, they are centred around the safety of women.

I fucking hate the kink scene. After 20 years of happy marriage my exH got into it and was completely enveloped in it. I said fine do what you want but I dont want to be involved.
He insisted I get into it, I refused and he walked away. Said he felt embarrassed to have a vanilla wife. His comete personality changed. Wallked out. Never spoke to me again. I havent seen or spoken to him for 7 years.

I'm sorry to hear this it sounds like you are better off without this man though. Manipulative and coercive to insist you have to do it too or he'd leave. That's not what consent is.

And framing "kink shaming" as an act carried out by women scared that their partners will leave them for others is right out of the abusers handbook.
Let me strangle /hurt / abuse you or I'll leave you for someone else more easily coerced !!

“And framing "kink shaming" as an act carried out by women scared that their partners will leave them for others is right out of the abusers handbook.

Let me strangle /hurt / abuse you or I'll leave you for someone else more easily coerced !!”

This cannot be pointed out too many times.

However, it will take more than posts on FWR to convince those with very low boundaries unfortunately. And especially those with misogynistic views, even if those people are female.

And not being able to recognise that you have very low boundaries is part of the issue at heart.

Yes

Defensiveness and ad hom attacks reveal a paucity of good argument.

If there was no abuse problem within a community there would be no need to sneer at the out group - labelled 'vanilla'or 'anti kink'. And no need to discredit critics.

A healthy community is able to handle questions and criticisms.

This thread has been interesting, and led me to reconsider past experiences and dynamics. I appreciate everyone's input - there are some deep seated social dynamics woven into these issues that can take a very long time to unravel.

So they think by shaming kinky people, it will deter their partners from seeking out kinky partners and leaving them.

That argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It also proves that you haven't engaged with any of the objections women have posted right here on this thread.

"So they think by shaming kinky people, it will deter their partners from seeking out kinky partners and leaving them."

I'd be delighted if my boyfriend left me if he was the type that gets hard over cutting off a woman's oxygen supply.

If he left me for someone with such low self respect that they would put themselves in that kind of risky situation, honestly I'd be better off. I'd pity them but I wouldn't want part of it.

Luckily I have a partner who thinks that men who get turned on by causing their partners extreme pain are dangerous and predatory and who wouldn't harm a hair on my head. He so boring sexually because he's "vanilla" that we have sex every day in many positions and he is really nice to me. When I ask him what his kinks are he says "Your eyes, your hair, your body."
What a boring bloke. What am I doing wrong? I do hope he doesn't leave me for a woman who wants to be strangled and pissed on and who has to wear a nappy.

And not being able to recognise that you have very low boundaries is part of the issue at heart.

In a nutshell.

On a thread that was mostly grim reading this really made me laugh:

Suburban scene now I would imagine to be older, a little wobblier, hairier arsed, with someone ending up hoovering up the nachos and looking bored whilst the other three have sex.

If your cool, ultra-special, non-normal, non-vanilla scene actually looks like a piss-take on Brass Eye maybe it's time to rethink your hobbies?

Yes. The inanity of ‘if I don’t agree with kink because I fear it’ is laughable. If my partner needed extreme sexual practices to have a satisfying sex life and it involved abusive acts (from either partner) I would be leaving the relationship due to understanding the interactions of abuse. No fear of it. I understand that needing to act out abuse or to be abused is a sign that I don’t want to be in that relationship.