There has been a bunch of debate on social media recently about how open to kink Pride events should be. One side maintains that kink should be kept indoors and making Pride family friendly is important. The other side says that kink has always been an important part of Pride, and we shouldn’t be embracing corporate sponsors and mainstream coverage at the expense of slicing up the community.
You can probably guess where I stand on the issue. It seems pretty messed up to have huge corporations like AT&T sponsoring events while at the same time telling some segments of the LBGTQ community they’re not welcome. Young children will think all the costumes are fun and older children will be more aware of and switched onto the issues than their parents. The only people who’ll be offended are the same people who say “I don’t mind what people do, as long as they keep it private.” In other words, their standards should be the community standards and everyone else should fit into their world view. Fuck those people.
Of course, the irony here is that I hate crowds, marching and doing anything before midday. So while I’ll make it to the latter parts of Seattle pride to applaud and cheer, I’ll not be in the parade and certainly not be dressed in anything outrageous. If I was going to take a kinky outfit public, this cartoon definitely represents my preferred option. After all, everyone likes a friendly dog.
This is from The Perry Bible Fellowship (original is here).
Slight tangent: A lot of the old timers question whether the mainstreaming (or at least, more mainstream acceptance) of kink removes the ‘taboo” aspect, which is for many folks, part of the appeal.
Some men and women use humiliation aspects of kink play in order to work through emotions and feelings. Mistress Midori had a great article on this years ago. For those folks, if (for example) those kinks were more widely accepted, would they still be able to work through those emotional aspects?
I don’t have an opinion, much less an answer. It’s just something that comes to mind whenever I hear anything about the mainstreaming of certain kinks.
I’ve heard that as well, but always found it slightly odd. I get the theory, but I think we’re so far off kinks being accepted or mainstream that it seems a strange thing for people to worry about. After all, here we have a case where actual LGBTQ people involved in Pride parades are suggesting kink be kept out of it. And I’m pretty certain they’re thinking about outfits and simple roleplay – not people fisting and pissing on each other in the middle of the street. So if you can’t be a little out on that one day of the year, then it seems we’re a long way from losing taboo status!
Of course I don’t really go for humiliation or working through feelings that way, so of course I could be totally off base here.
-paltego