How will the millions of people with kink sexual inclinations, if not orientations, fare under the incoming Republican administration? Are kink groups or individuals in danger of being discriminated against or persecuted in any way? Are they under any threat going forward of losing their civil rights to free expression of their sexuality with other consenting adults, or to form life-long relationships, raise families, or gather in community? Are there risks to their employment, or housing rights, or to being treated fairly in divorce and child custody cases? Will kink sexuality be protected from demonization by religious organizations, pathologization by mental health institutions, or criminalization by government agencies?

 

Any definitive answer at this point would be speculative. However, I feel it is critically important to be prepared, both individually, and collectively, to stand our ground as best we can, against whatever threats may be on the horizon. 

 

My intention is to initiate thinking about what a proactive stance of preparedness at the personal and collective level could look like. How can we most effectively push back on any intrusion of our civil rights to be who we are, as consenting adults, participating in kink? 

 

I am inviting others to add their perspectives and suggestions, as to how we can best be prepared to collectively respond to any policy or law that would endanger or infringe on the civil rights of kink-oriented people, or the consensual activities they participate in. Here are mine: 

 

Objective:

• To identify and be alert to potential threats to kink sexuality as they develop in the current and future political landscapes. 

• To strategize proactive measures for kink individuals and groups to defend their civil rights.

 

Current State: 

• The political atmosphere is shifting with a noticeable influence from conservative religious individuals and groups, which historically have views opposing kink expressions. 

• This opposition holds true for certain leftwing feminist groups as well, who rigidly misunderstand consensual power exchange versus abuse, despite the positive scientific research on consensual kink and mental health.

• There’s also a noted ignorance and pathologizing of kink within some scientific, academic, and therapeutic disciplines, despite the revisions depathologizing consensual sadomasochism in the 2013 edition of the APA’s DSM 5.

 

Desired Outcome:

• Establish an online resource repository of sex and kink-positive, peer reviewed research related to kink; 

• Create current lists of national and state-by-state laws related to kink and a place to file incident reports that alert to encroachments on kink civil rights; 

• Identify kink-positive mental health professionals, expert witnesses and attorneys who can defend consensual kink in court; 

• Build networks of kink-positive social media influencers and experts to amplify the response to any infringements;  

• Develop evidence-based educational materials based on the latest scientific research that establishes kink as a healthy, consensual expression of sexuality; 

• Cultivate media outlet and legislative contacts for each state for press releases and outreach of various sorts related to kink sexuality or practices, or negative news.

 

Some of the suggestions above can be found in-part within existing organizations such as the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, and Kink Aware Professionals. I believe however, there is a necessity at this point, to establish kink as a unique sexual orientation with a distinct population requiring its own stand-alone organizations. In this case, I am proposing the formation of something like a “Kink Civil Rights Advocates” social media group to start with, and eventually a non-profit organization that could respond and push back against any kink-negative policy or legislation. The repository could include curated educational materials that individuals or groups could access and use for various outreach or defense efforts. Such a kink-focused group could be part of a coalition of sex-postive LGBTQ+ groups to collaborate on efforts of mutual interest, but also stand alone to focus on the issues specific to kink.

 

The Road Ahead

Regarding the potential impacts of the incoming Republican government on kink-oriented sexuality, I see some positive signs, in a related sense, that a number of prominent gay men have been nominated to Trump’s Cabinet and administration. There were also some number of gays and lesbians across the presidential campaign effort at the state level, stumping for the Republican platform. I’ve never seen any overt indications that Trump himself has prejudice against gays or lesbians, nor that he would initiate legislation denying their established civil rights as APA recognized sexual orientations. 

 

As of the latest federal ruling by the Supreme Court in the decision, Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states in the USA. This made it unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex marriage. I do not anticipate there will be any regression of the rights the gay and lesbian communities have fought hard for and won so far. If there were any serious efforts made in these regards, the gay and lesbian communities are well entrenched after 70 years of activism for their civil rights, and have significant clout and connections politically, socially, and economically to push back hard, if needed. 

 

The same capacity to defend themselves at the policy and legislative level, may not hold as true for the related communities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

 

There is an important distinction to make between the LGB groups and the TQ+ groups. LGB denotes one’s sexual orientation, while the TQ+ define themselves as a gender orientation. LGB, along with heterosexuality are recognized by the American Psychological Association as definitive sexual orientations with a biological foundation. Gender identity is included within their guidelines in a positive, though subjective way, that establishes the importance of allowing individuals the freedom to express their gender in a way that may not conform to their sexual orientation. I fully support the right of any adult gender nonconforming individual to have their civil rights to be and express who they are, protected by law.

 

However, the TQ+ individuals have largely immersed themselves within a radical postmodernist, identitarian, political ideology that extends far beyond their individual right to express who they are. The ideology is an activist political movement that professes its mission is to – smash the patriarchy, break the binary, condone underage chemical and surgical sex-change procedures, fight fascist white supremacy, white male privilege, allow men who identify as trans women in women only spaces, impose gender neutral language on everyone else such as people who give birth instead of women, enforced pronouns, and much more. I believe this political ideology aspect, which has a vast infrastructure of taxpayer funded non profits, academics and government institutions supporting and encouraging these ambitions, will likely be largely defunded and dismantled under the Republican controlled government.  

 

Risk to the Kink community

In my opinion, the kink community is an outlier at the bottom of the scale of preparedness and capability to proactively respond to any threats to our civil rights. 

 

There is a long history of kink-orientation from within the gay and lesbian leather communities. In fact gay leathermen were the first visible kink group to emerge back in the 1950s. Outside of that, the handful of other kink groups are currently nowhere near as organized, and have about zero clout, politically, socially, and economically. As far as I know, there is no organization focused on the civil rights of kink-oriented people specifically. 

 

In the public political arena, kink is barely on the radar as a subject to directly address…yet. That could rapidly change, depending on how this next chapter in the “War on Sex”(great book by Marty Klein PhD) might play out. I would say kink individuals and groups are extremely vulnerable and virtually defenseless against a sudden attack of hysteric propaganda or legislation criminalizing or pathologizing kink in one way or the other. Such threats to our civil rights would need a rapid, reasoned, coordinated, and evidence-based response to deter them.

Warning Signs

My guess is that if there were an effort to attack kink rights, it would first come through restrictions and criminalizing many if not all genres of consensual BDSM porn. It is the easiest target to go after if they decide to restrict or censor online porn. This could be our canary in the coal mine alert! 

 

If ethically produced, consensual kink porn starts being banned, things could be poised to cascade down to criminalizing any D/s-BDSM activities, even between consenting individuals in the privacy of their own homes. This type of criminalization could put any kink individual at risk in criminal cases, divorce, and child custody cases, certain employment situations, and housing discrimination. And even without overt criminalization at this point, many kink-oriented people already face discrimination in the courts in these regards. I have already been called as an expert witness in a number of cases that tried to pathologize kink practices and individuals. I also experienced this first-hand from my own divorce in the late 90s where I was viciously outed by my ex to all my family, my two middle-school aged sons, friends, and business associates, vilified, ruined financially, and lost parenting rights because the court deemed my kink-orientation made me unfit to be a loving father, nor to be treated fairly in the divorce settlement. 

 

These potential threats also demonstrate the importance of working to establish kink as a recognized sexual orientation, with the sanctioned approval of the APA. This would remove the basis for the subjective pathologization of kink used by spouses, employers, landlords, courts, and others to justify discrimination against kink individuals. I am preparing a peer-reviewed paper based on over 10,000 people who participated in my kink-focused research survey, to make the case for kink as an integral sexual orientation, that should be officially recognized by all sanctioned psychological institutions. Accomplishing this would provide the scientific and legal basis for defense of kink sexuality against discrimination in court matters. This is a longer term effort. 

 

Threats from the Right

Many on the left are convinced Trump is beholden to, and wholesale owned by the Project 25 group. I believe that premise is way overblown, and was heavily propagandized by the left. I don’t believe that Project 25 itself is really part of the equation here, but there’s clearly a lot of Christian right influence among those who fervently supported Trump. 

 

Many of the the speakers and top supporters at Trump’s rallies, were all in about their Christian God, Jesus, miracles, and Trump being sent by their God to preserve their Christian nation. This faction of the right undoubtedly has a very narrow view of sexual pleasure beyond procreation. They would readily use their influence if they could, to initiate a whole range of censorship and persecution of any alternative sexualities they deemed as a sin or an abomination. Kink porn, books, toys, educational resources, and certain targeted kink influencers, businesses and groups, could easily become the front lines of such an attack. 

 

While these threats are entirely speculative at the moment, my point is to be vigilant and prepared to respond to any such moves by the government or institutions, left or right. My hope is that there will be enough of a buffer from the more centrist elements of the incoming administration, existing law, and especially from the more sex-postive, gay and lesbian contingents in the Trump administration, to help keep the separation of church and state intact…we’ll see.

 

Threats from the Left

Besides keeping an eye on the Christian Right, there’s also a contingent of leftwing influencers, academics, scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists who have what I have coined, “Kinkphobia.” (See this article, Is Kinkphobia a Crisis in the Mental Health Field? from Psychology Today, about my encounter with one such Kink-negative professional psychotherapist group) 

 

Here are 2 examples just from the last week from a noted PhD sex neuroscientist Dr. Deborah Soh subjectively claiming, without citation, that anyone’s “sexual kinks are the result of trauma and abuse,” and a feminist news and info editor responding to the Neil Gaiman accusations: ”BDSM itself provides cover for abuse, by design, under the banner of ‘consent’…”. The horrific comments in this thread highlight the terrifying depth, and the similarly misinformed mindset of kinkphobes across the left and right. 

 

Even though the 2013 DSM 5 removed adult participation in consensual sadomasochism as a pathology, there is still as much entrenched faulty thinking about kink within the academic, scientific, and therapy professions, as there is on the Christian Right. Even when confronted with the DSM 5 revisions, and other peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary, they cling to subjective moral views, beliefs, and feelings that kink just can’t be normal. This is the exact same situation as the views of legislators, psychologists, and academics in the 1950s, that kept homosexuality pathologized as a deviant sexual behavior disorder until the 1972 DSM 3 revision. There’s a significant gap between the current scientific understanding of kink and public/religious/academic and clinical perceptions. 

 

A united well-informed Kink collective

Within the current political climate, my hope is that kink groups and individuals can be proactive and better prepared to protect and preserve the civil rights of kink-oriented people. This would include the vigilance, educational efforts, and a united well-informed kink collective, to counteract potential threats from the left or right political, religious, or scientific narratives that misrepresent the nature, validity, and mental health of kink-oriented people.

 

Please share your own thoughts, ideas, resources, and interest in participating in such an effort in the comment section below. Or, if you would be interested in participating in a zoom meeting to discuss how to best approach this idea send me an email at galen@galenfous.com. Let’s see what might unfold as the next step in such an effort to “Be Prepared!”

 

About Galen Fous MTP

Mr. Fous is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Modern Sex Therapy Institutes, where he offers sex-positive continuing education approved classes for therapists in the field of sexuality. He is the founder of Sexual Integration Therapy, a sex-positive, non-pathologizing sexual health model. He is a private practice sex therapist, researcher, public speaker and author (The Sharp Edge of Love, Decoding Your Kink), focused on supporting clients seeking to embrace their innate, authentic sexual desires free from shame, fear and past trauma. His current sex research explores the collision of fear, shame, and trauma with sexual development and desire.