Are You Actually Kinky? podcast episode

[jesse_the_k]

Avery Trufelman* leads The Cut’s† weekly podcast. This week’s news hook is #metoo accusations against powerful men who attempt to fight back by saying "don’t kink-shame me." Trufelman opens with:

There’s no question as to whether these men crossed a line with their partners; still, the actual meaning of kink remains somewhat mysterious. Authors R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited a new collection of stories called Kink.

Listen: https://pod.link/1437189814/episode/d44a082938d479ae48dc431bc058dfc8

Read: https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/the-cut-podcast-are-you-actually-kinky.html

GREENWELL: Kink is a way of dramatizing things to which one may have been subjected. It’s a way of taking violence that one has suffered and to transform that violence into an occasion for pleasure. That’s an incredibly powerful thing that kink and other kinds of sexual practices can do. I mean, the ways in which we eroticize questions of oppression.

[… snip …]

One of the things that our book does not do is try to present kink as, like, a pure sort of stream of positivity.

KWON: It seems to me like a not entirely separate impulse from the ways in which we can turn our personal-life problems, trauma, suffering, loss into literature and into art and into writing. It’s turning pain into flowers.

Roxane Gay’s short story explores kink at home:

But I’m old. And so what does it look like in a marriage? So what would a couple that was sharing this kinky dynamic look like? How would it look in the sense of erotica? That’s the story I wrote. Kink is a very specific subset of the erotic, and it can mean a lot of things. But I think it’s like queer, a catchall term. It’s a catchall term for people who are interested in dominance and submission, BDSM, and alternate forms of sexual expression.

TRUFELMAN: Roxane’s story is all about that unknowable tension that still exists between this married couple and the way kink lets them exist in that void. Knowing that can’t really unravel the mysteries of each other and the mysteries of themselves. Honestly, they’re not trying to. As Garth and R.O., the editors of Kink, point out, looking for a “reason” or a root cause of kink is so not the point.

Kwon & Greenwell curate a kink reading list https://lithub.com/on-taking-kink-seriously-a-reading-list

* I loved her ARTICLES of INTEREST series

† The Cut is part of the New York Magazine/Vox media empire

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

This week’s news hook is #metoo accusations against powerful men who attempt to fight back by saying "don’t kink-shame me."

The hook was good. Most of the podcast felt like a very well-written feature imported from 10+ years ago*, that had nothing to do with the hook. It was frustrating to listen to. They started out talking about abuse being concealed as kink, and they glossed over most of the reasons why that works.

It's extremely hard for us, as a society, to punish abusers when the victims don't recognize the behavior as abuse. Or when they are afraid to report it. The podcast reminded everyone that top and bottom always negotiate and establish clear boundaries, so bdsm is not abusive. They didn't mention anyone being uncertain how to define their own boundaries. They didn't mention how closets of all kinds facilitate abuse, how victims will not only hesitate to report abuse but they will even hesitate to think of it as abusive. Not just closets where everyone is trying to hide, but groups that are tiptoeing out into respectability (possibly even MORE with them.) It costs a lot to shatter the group's respectability. I'm not talking about the cost to the prosecution or the media. I'm talking about victims of emotional abuse second-guessing their own consent, their own desires, their own choice to trust, because of internalized slut-shaming, kink shaming, and a desire to claim whatever residue of power is available. And there's something I think of as avoiding a shande fur die goyim. We can't tell people about it, we can't *believe* it, our people don't do things like that, there must have been some mistake.



*I wonder if it was imported from some location where all manner of kink is currently the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, without likewise suppressing unmarried sex or homosexual relationships. It's changed so very fast. The Killer Wore Leather and Rule 34 read like period pieces.

[jesse_the_k]

They started out talking about abuse being concealed as kink, and they glossed over most of the reasons why that works.

Excellent points -- thanks so much for making it clear what was missing. I was intrigued by the anthology precisely because stories included non-exemplary as well as celebratory kink.

If you have the time, I'd appreciate learning about books/sites/whatevers which explore more I'm talking about victims of emotional abuse second-guessing their own consent, their own desires, their own choice to trust, because of internalized slut-shaming, kink shaming, and a desire to claim whatever residue of power is available.

[adrian_turtle]

The kink examples that are coming to my mind are all personal communications, or from old Usenet newsgroups. The non-kink parallels screaming in my head are based on music and/or homosexuality.

The music business is ferociously competitive and emotionally intimate, at the same time. Consider a big name conductor who works with promising young violinists, tells one of them what potential they have, grooms them with duets, and invites them into bed. A year later, the young violinist thinks, "this guy is a demanding bully, and half the time I hate him, or hate myself for sleeping with him. Still...I'm sleeping with him because he's charming and because I love playing with him (those duets!) and it's worth putting up with his bad temper sometimes. I'm not sleeping with them for the sake of my career, because that would make me some kind of whore." The young musician thinks of themselves as responsible for any abuse, because the relationship started from their own crush on their mentor. And they fear that disclosing the relationship will damage the reputation of the orchestra they love, as well as their own career, while fueling either homophobia or sexism.

See other aspects of the theater business. See Shlomo Carlebach (well, not him. You've probably never heard of him.)

A generation ago, there was a popular fiction among lesbians that domestic violence was part of the patriarchy and thus could not exist in a relationship without men. (Do I need to reiterate that this is not true? It's not true.) So somebody who was scared and miserable in her relationship didn't want to think of herself as being abused. That popular fiction helped people feel safe, and it was emotionally easier to cling to it.

[starshipfox]

I really admired both of Greenwell's collections of short stories. His work often focuses on sex that is on the boundaries between abusive and rough, and he seems to be interested in degradation and humiliation and how love does not redeem those things. In Greenwell's work, kink is often poorly negotiated and not always consensual.I'd be very curious to read his work as an editor of kinky stories, because he is certainly not afraid to engage with complexity. Thank you for sharing the links!

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks -- sounds like it's going right on my TBR.