The success of Fifty Shades has opened a Pandora’s box of curiosity into edgier sexual practices, leading some in the kink community to argue that that it’s crossroads in a civil rights struggle
The Guardian
by Kim Wall
Blindfolded on a chair, the woman tenses visibly as the knife flicks open behind her. The man, tattooed, wearing a black velvet vest and gothic boots, pulls her hair to bend her head back. She smiles. He caresses her neck, and then puts the blade to it, hovering it across her body’s thickest and most vital arteries. Continuing downwards, he draws intricate patterns on her décolletage. She moans faintly.
He picks a new knife – sterilized, razor sharp – and slashes off the buttons of her black blouse. The shredded garment falls off. Her jeans follows, until she’s in her underwear. He then grabs a larger blade, and methodically penetrates the first two layers of skin (the third causes bleeding), leaving a symmetry of pink lines across her belly. He kisses her nose and forehead, strokes her glossy red hair (which he, a hairdresser, has spent hours dying), and removes the scarf from her eyes. The scene is over.
The air in the room, a suite of a classy hotel in midtown New York,where I was invited to attend the annual BDSM Writers Conference, is tense. The audience – mostly white, middle aged and female – is spellbound. One woman is so uncomfortable that she moves to a designated safe-person in the back, but remains too intrigued to leave.
Knife-play may appear extreme to those not versed in BDSM fetishes. But it can also be curiously sweet. For Nauttiboy and Troublemaker, together for 15 years and playmates for 10, knives are a path to intimacy. He’s dominant, she’s submissive. He has “trained” her and keeps the key to the collar she always wears. Sometimes they play at their New York home, sometimes in dungeons, but whatever they do invariably follows the three strict commandments of the kink lifestyle: safe, sane and consensual.
Having no intention to cut her (“Don’t harm your toys, or they won’t want to play with you”), Nauttiboy uses a classic ER trick – finger on the point – when removing her clothes to prevent any bloodshed. Just in case, he always carries hospital-grade disinfectant wipes and a first-aid kit. They’ve never had an accident, and the faint scars on Troublemaker’s body are all intentional: souvenirs and badges of honor.
Still, all the mutual pleasure in the world can’t change the fact that the couple’s games remain illegal.
Today, the fetish lifestyle has become fetishized by the mainstream. The 50 Shades of Grey trilogy has sold more than 100m copies worldwide, and author EL James was 2014’s highest-earning author. The film adaptation, to be released this week, became 2014’s most watched trailer within days.
This landslide commercial success opened a Pandora’s box of curiosity into edgier sexual practices, leading some in the kink community to argue that the bestseller marks a crossroads for their civil rights struggle.
“Fifty Shades was our Stonewall moment,” says Susan Wright, author and activist at National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), an organisation promoting the rights for all adults engaging in safe, sane and consensual behavior. “Because of it, BDSM has burst into the mainstream media, allowing everyone to start talking about kink. Before, the media coverage of BDSM tended to be more negative, but now you can’t go on the internet without finding a new article about exploring your fetish.”
Even so, the kink community protests that it remains stigmatized and even criminalized. The spectra of the BDSM community – which includes various fringe preferences such as master-slave, dominance-submission, leather, polyamory and a diversity of fetishes – spans from hobby to lifestyle. For professional dominatrices, it is even a job. And these days, it’s also a political movement.
Dr Charley Ferrer – therapist, sexologist and talkshow host – is the mastermind behind the BDSM Writers Conference. Puerto Rican, curvy, wearing black jeans and a glittery top, Ferrer tears up as she recalls her own “coming out”. Losing her teaching job at an east coast college over her sexual orientation (she insists she never revealed it to her students and says the college found out through her book) she turned stigma into gold. Coming out as a “dom”, she reversed racial and gendered expectations of meekness that never fit her (“so many fucking rules! It just had to stop at some point”). As a Latina, woman and mother, kink became her rebellion.
“BDSM is currently where LGBT was 30 years ago,” she says. “Our struggles are parallel to those experienced decades ago when gay people were also thought to be suffering from a ‘mental illness’ that needed to be cured.” …