Last Thursday, two campus organizations with seemingly dichotomous missions came together to discuss a topic of intersecting interest: sexual assault in the kink community. Sex Out Loud & PAVE members hosted a public discussion on this “problem of pushed boundaries within a scene that eroticizes pushing boundaries.” The event was part of a series of Pillow Talk sessions that Sex Out Loud has been hosting throughout the year.

The context for the discussion was an article published in Salon magazine at the end of January, When safe words are ignored: Women in the bondage and kink scene are speaking out about sexual assaults in the community, and calling for change. The BDSM community, for so long, has been viewed as a “cover” for perpetrators to facilitate abuse. To combat this misled assumption, the attitude of some kinksters has generally been to deny the existence of any abuse. One participant at the Pillow Talk drew attention to the ridiculousness of this assertion– violence happens in all communities, so of course it will inevitably occur in the BDSM scene as well. Kitty Stryker– a sex worker, kink activist, and feminist blogger who was interviewed for the Salon article– says, “How on earth can we possibly say to society at large that BDSM is not abuse when we so carefully hide our abusers and shame our abused into silence?”

The Pillow Talk session centered on conversations about safe words, consent culture, risk-aware consensual sex, and victim blaming within the community. One particularly heated conversation centered around deciding whose responsibility consent should be. Kitty Stryker poses the question, “Is it the fault of the submissive who didn’t safeword when they should have or is it the fault of the dominant who didn’t notice that their submissive didn’t safeword [when they should have] or is it the fault of the community that makes it complicated?”

This becomes even more complex when we consider that there is a general “cultural disdain” for submissives to use their safeword; they tend to gain a reputation as “difficult” or “whiny” submissives. On the flipside, some dominants would argue that a submissive that neglects to safeword when their boundaries have been crossed has subsequently turned their dominant into a rapist, “without their consent”. Mind=blown!