Thread by @MariBrighe

Sorry to nest threads, but this is important to consider about the “kink at pride” discourse.

Sex-negativity and trans-exclusion rhetoric are closely bound, as the original T*RF movement grew from 2nd wave sex-neg camp. It’s not *universal* but it is *common*.

https://twitter.com/anamardoll/status/1396843306185809924

This is also why SW*RF and T*RF are so often two sides of the same coin. You essentially won’t find anti-trans rhetoric without sex-negativity. (The racist/fascist connects are newer.)

There are definitely exceptions in the sex-neg root material. MacKinnon was trans-affirming.

It’s interesting to see that sex-neg rhetoric filter through Gen Z as a reaction to the Gen X and Millennial highly sex-pos attitudes (drawing its roots from 2nd wave sex-pos, who really did “win” the Sex Wars).

They pick up more on respectability and “protecting people”.

BUT

It’s important to note that BDSM was at the heart of the Feminist Sex Wars.

On one hand, you had folks like Dworkin and MacKinnon who were adamant that BDSM was “ritualized abuse”, and castigated its practice especially among lesbians as vile and trying ostracize women involved

One the other hand, you had folks like Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia, SAMOIS, and the Lesbian Sex Mafia building community for queer BDSM, especially for lesbians and trans folk.

They argued that controlling people’s sexuality and policing desire was not feminist nor liberational.

That all comes back to the core of Pride and its core politic of Queer liberation (at least as originally conceived).

Pride *does not* draw from Gay Respectability or Assimilationist politics.

Queer liberation is antithetical to policing sexual expression and respectability.

To loop back, the assimilation and respectability parts of the LGB have always tried to push trans folks, sex workers, and kinksters to fringe of community. We don’t fit their white picket, minivan suburban fantasy.

We saw this A LOT during the marriage equality movement.

As marriage equality came to dominate the discourse, you saw Pride really shift in tone and demographic, and a lot of this sex-neg, kink-neg, quietly-trans-woman-neg stuff snuck in with it just as Gen Z was starting to look at the LGBT world and Pride.

We can’t blame Gen Z too much...many have been robbed of their birthright connection to their own history, to the wider experiences of the community beyond their own generation. They don’t know because we haven’t been able to teach them.

The odd double-edged sword of acceptance

In summary— you cannot take kink out of Pride bc it makes you uncomfortable. Pride is space for all kinds of expression and to police it is to cut out the heart of what Pride is about: liberation.

Pride is a protest at its core— a protest *against* policing desire/expression.

If you are interested in reading some of important theory work that underpins this, my first suggestion is always Gayle Rubin’s foundational queer theory essay on the privileging of certain kinds of desire and denigrating others— Thinking Sex.

sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/…

I also would recommend:

The essay collection “Leatherfolk”

“Women in Leather” by Toni Solenne

Also worthwhile reading is the history of the Society of Janus (a BDSM organization tightly wound with the queer community): hawkeegn.com/bdsm/janhis.pdf

As always, if you enjoy or find value in my threads, consider tossing a few bucks in my tip jar so I can dream about the hospital not owning my soul.

ko-fi.com/MariBrighe