Huffington Post
by J.A. Rock
A couple of years ago, at a local dungeon, I watched some people do a Nazi-themed scene. Full uniforms, swastika armbands, goose-stepping, etc. I’ve seen a lot of unusual things at dungeons (and I certainly don’t mean “unusual” in a bad way), but this was the first time I’d seen something that pushed my boundaries a little bit on a socio-political level. I’m all for people engaging in any consensual activity whatsoever in the privacy of their homes, but things get a little trickier in a semi-public space.
Kink is about fantasy, yes, but people also base their play on some very harsh realities. From rape play to Nazi fetishism to slave auctions, to extreme scarification, gun play, bone breaking, domestic abuse scenes, prison beatings, and plantation retreats — events where black “slaves” go to actual plantations to serve white “masters” — kink is no stranger to ideas and activities that are potentially offensive and triggering.
In many cases, it’s possible to keep these activities private among the participants. But what happens when we bring them out of the bedroom and into the larger world? With such a vast array of kinky identities in existence, it’s inevitable that some people’s identities are going to step on other peoples’ toes. Rape survivors might not be keen on the idea of “play” based on their very real suffering and trauma. People of color dealing with the lingering effects of slavery and colonialism might find the idea of a plantation retreat sickening. These clashes exist not just between vanilla people and kinksters, but among kinky people too.
My latest novel is called Slave Hunt.
In kink, a slave hunt is an outdoor event where participants are divided into hunters and slaves (or predators and prey, or doms and subs). The hunters track the “slaves” through the woods, and, when the slaves are captured, they might be strung up on whipping posts or put in some kind of enclosure to be (consensually) tormented by the hunters.
In history, “slave hunt” is the term given to the Confederate invasion of the North with the aim of rounding up fugitive slaves (and free blacks), torturing them, and returning them to slavery. This included raiding parties that would burn the homes of anyone suspected of harboring fugitives. The legacy of that time period continues to give rise to very real pain and violence today.
So yes, Slave Hunt is a comedy in which a group of kinksters use “slave hunt” to describe a fun, sexy Saturday afternoon activity. But the term carries with it some major historical baggage. I’ve seen slave hunts in the kink world referred to as “sub hunts” or simply “hunts” (kinky slave hunts are not typically modeled after historical slave hunts; they just share a name with the historical atrocity), and I considered Sub Hunt for the title. But I went with Slave Hunt — not only because that’s the term I’ve seen most commonly used, but because if I’m inviting readers into this world, then I want to be honest about what the world looks like. About the way kinksters use history, language, and politics to shape our identities, and how we navigate the potential of those identities to cause harm and offense to others.
Words like submissive, slave, master, owner, property, etc. have different meanings in the kink world than they do in the real world, absolutely. But these words get their weight and their power from a larger context. And to be very clear, in kink, it’s not always a matter of creating a “game” or a “fetish” around a serious issue. Often it’s about using kink to confront that issue, and reclaiming power over an event or legacy that has held power over you. A rape survivor may use rape play to reclaim a sense of agency — to explore the idea of being helpless and brutalized in a context where they do have ultimate control over the situation. A black submissive or bottom might use race play to subvert real life racist institutions by being the one who sets the terms and limits of a racially charged scene. …