The thing that hurt you.
- Southern Suitor
- May 2, 2022
- 8 min read
I have written posts that attempt to untangle some of the complexities of masculinity and body image issues, my wishes that the suit & tie fetish community behaved with the same solidarity and inclusivity as the leather community, and why the sub/dom dynamic can only exist when it is safe, sane, and consensual. However, I realize that these three posts center on kink-shaming: namely, I criticize “alpha male” toxic masculinity; the body-shaming inherent in the muscle growth fetish; the neoliberal politics of the findom fetish; and the centrist, capitalist, colonialist politics of the suit and tie fetish. Or, in simpler terms, there are problems with the things that we love, and I want to try to figure out how to deal with those problems.
However, each of the critiques that I outline above share the common thread of dismissing or belittling the pleasures and desires of entire online fetish communities. Although my intentions for these critiques are to help people think more critically about the things that turn them on, even a well-intentioned critique of sexual pleasure will carry a whiff of internalized queerphobia. In attempting to make sense of the problems of these online fetish communities, I have exposed my own internalized queerphobia, and I need to reckon with that fact. Inspired by the excellent video essays of @LthrEdge on Instagram, my purpose in this post is twofold: first, to apologize for making people feel shame or guilt about the things that they love; and, second, to try to understand how to embrace kink ethically in a culture that tells us that what we love is wrong.
There's a simple solution to the second "fold" of this post: take the thing that hurt you and turn it into something that gives you power and pleasure. But, as with all simple solutions, that's easier said than done.
My own kink-shaming has come at a painful time in our public lives. Queerphobia and transphobia are still the norm in our culture in the United States. We only need to look to the recent wave of “don’t say gay” bills, or the repeal of LGBTQ employment protections, in various Republican-led state legislatures. These are the active forms of bigotry and oppression represented by politicians: both the conservatives who peddle this legislation and the liberal politicians who fail to mount an effective defense of vulnerable communities. And then there are the passive forms of bigotry represented by rainbow capitalism. The cute little rainbow logos we see every June are simply a facade that corporations and cities with overfunded police departments use to make themselves look cool. At the end of the day, those of us who grow up in the Red Wilderness of the United States still deal with pastors who spew hatred, politicians who deprive us of our rights, and family members whom we must shut out of our lives for our own safety. So I acknowledge, too, that this is a moment when our community is in danger. Kink-shaming is always hurtful, but it is especially hurtful now.
Kink-shaming is an internalized form of queerphobia, an internalized form of loathing directed at any non-procreative, pleasurable sex acts. In the United States, the shadow of the Puritans stretches far and wide. We can only grow up in an queerphobic culture for so long before we start to believe what we are hearing: if non-heterosexual, non-reproductive sex is bad, then kinky sex must be worse. We as men (i. e., any of us who identify as male) get bullied for presenting as anything other than the heterosexual ur-masculine ideal, and, sooner or later–from what I can discern–we come to eroticize those who insult us. Or, as I put it in a previous post of mine, I believe this is why we jack off to pictures of guys who make us feel like shit.
Does this mean that all kink for all LGBTQIA+ people is a symptom of queerphobic abuse? No, of course not. However, queerphobia is a pervasive force in the politics of the United States, so it is not wholly possible to extricate queerphobic abuse from the ways that kink has been used against us. Kink is not a symptom of this abuse, nor should we think of kink as merely a reenactment of this abuse either. Rather, I propose that we think of kink as a coping mechanism, a tool, a weapon, a way to turn that pain into a source of pleasure. Each form of kink manages the obstacles of internalized queerphobia in a different way.
Some of these sources of dismissal and internalized queerphobia come from within our own ranks, as the case of kink-shaming illustrates. To be a queer person with a kink is, in a sense, to be doubly marginalized: a minority within a minority. Even with the broader mainstream acceptance of kink within the LGBTQIA+ community–and even with the way kinksters sneer at “the vanillas” as a way of distinguishing their own, as a mutually reinforcing way to push back the mainstreamers who have pushed back against them–kink still continues to be used by cultural reactionaries as a way to villify all queer sex, and as a way to characterize all gay sex as dangerous and deviant. “Groomers” is simply the latest version of “faggot.” The history of gay fetish communities and the way that evangelicals have targeted those communities to serve their own queerphobic ends merits its own post, but it’s worth thinking about how kink has been weaponized against our own community, and, in turn, how our own community has internalized that pattern of dismissal and condemnation.
I cannot speak for kinksters everywhere: there are many, many forms of kink. But I can speak from what I've noticed in the patterns of my own experience with both the suit and tie kink and my ongoing attraction to muscular bodies. As the “Southern” part of my pen name indicates, I grew up in a conservative part of my country. I was bullied by the same “all-American” jocks who still drive gas-guzzling pickup trucks with stickers of Confederate flags, or “Back the Blue,” or “Let’s Go Brandon.” I would steal glimpses at them in the locker room and suffer the penalty of their ridicule. And, later in my life, I still glut myself with porn featuring muscular bodies that reminded me of the young men who hurt me.
It is possible that many gay men have been bullied by precisely the sorts of musclebound brutes they eroticize in the porn they consume as adults. In the context of the suit and tie fetish, the same can be said of the many other forms our bullies assume: the boss we loathe, the queerphobic pastor at the megachurch pulpit, the politician signing our rights away, the smug menswear wonk who sneers are our attempts to dress to what he perceives as his level. (Said menswear wonks are often gay men themselves, older ones who have had the time and means to accumulate cultural and financial capital with which to bolster their inflated perceptions of themselves.) These suited bullies operate in fundamentally the same way as the high school jock. Boasting their impeccable attire, they gatekeep a standard of masculinity that hovers just beyond our reach: a standard with a price tag that, even on sale, would cost us several times one of our grocery bills. After all, menswear is for guys who don’t have to worry about things like grocery bills. And so we continue to lust for the men who hurt us.
Yet they excite us all the same. That's the twisted thing that gives kink its twist: it revulses us, yet tantalizes us with the possibility of revelation. And that's what fascinates me about it, too.
Many forms of kink follow that pattern: take the thing that hurt you and turn it into something that brings you pleasure. Alexander Cheves has compiled a list of kinks, highlighting some of the taboo aspects of certain ones. Cheves ends his list on an instance of narratophilia (the kink for abusive language), when he claims he felt "reclamation" from being called "faggot" during sex–a word that I still find difficult to hear, and a word whose prevalence among gay kinksters I understand, but still cannot fully embrace for myself. Cheves also frames this discussion in the same context as kinks for religious iconography. Since many of us in the queer community experience hatred from conservative evangelicals, the logic seems to be one of taking back our agency from the those very sources of bigotry. This tactic can also be a means of queering the heteropatriarchal norms that have denied us and harmed us throughout our lives. Astrid Ovalles, in another Advocate piece, calls for the LGBTQIA+ community to reject "customs established by patriarchal, heterosexual norms," and embrace kink in all of its forms.
Beyond the personal level of bullying, there is the larger version of this debate, namely whether representations of kink belong at pride parades. The usual response: "oh, but it's a matter of consent," or "think of the children." But if kink is part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and if our community wishes to be inclusive, then this rather Puritanical application of "consent" seems to be another form of gatekeeping. Keep Pride sanitized, family-friendly, and corporate, I suppose? Writing for Vox, Alex Abad-Santos casts the debate in more historically grounded terms: the inclusion of kink at pride parades isn't really about harnesses and leather, but rather about whether pride is still political, now that it has become respectable. As Abad-Santos puts it, "Instead of broadening mainstream culture to accommodate the humanity of the LGBTQ community as a whole, respectability politics asks a community to change itself for mainstream sympathy."
Is there a way, then, for us as queer people to reclaim kink, to reclaim our queerness? Is it politically feasible for us to say “fuck you” to the straights? Amanda Chatel in an article for Bustle proposes that "kinks like BDSM . . . make you far more mindful in bed than vanilla sex." This is likely because BDSM, when practiced correctly, involves communication, negotiation of boundaries, and care: the taboo nature of kink invites conversation, and requires discussion. Chatel concludes her article with this: "Kinks are not the result of a damaged childhood or some sort of perversion." So perhaps there is a way to advocate for kink as a healthy form of sex, while still keeping kink weird.
Against this broader backdrop of societal queerphobia, internalized queerphobia, and in-fighting within our own community, I hope that the need for my apology makes more sense. I kink-shamed, and I apologize. A part of apologizing requires me to grow aware that I have internalized forms of queerphobia and bullying in my own life. Guilt is a necessary stage of that realization, but it is fortunately not a permanent one. On the other side of guilt lies acceptance.
I want to be clear that I do not think it's healthy to pathologize kinks, or to dismiss them all as symptoms of psychological problems. Kink can be restorative, can be empowering. Kink can offer a way to take the thing that hurt us and turn it into a source of pleasure. However, kink can only do that when we choose to be critical and reflective of the things that turn us on, and when we recognize that, while our own histories of queerphobic trauma are indeed deeply personal, those personal histories are intertwined with these broader societal histories of politics, queerphobic abuse on the grandest scale. I believe kink allows us to cope with that form of abuse, as well. Does this mean that the suit & tie fetish community can grow more politically active, as the leather community has? I certainly hope so. The political right has been weaponizing the iconography of respectability–the corporate iconography of suits and ties–for years. Time to show the conservative bullies how to tie a real double-windsor, I say. But that’s for another post.
When I give my critiques of the suit & tie community, or critiques of masculinity and body image, I do not intend anybody to feel shame about things that speak to them. Rather, I want people to recognize that for many of us these fetishes are far from straightforward. For many of us, these fetishes carry the unspoken burdens of trauma, the bitterness or anger that comes from growing up in a conservative culture that teaches us to loathe the things that we are drawn to. My hope is that we can have better conversations about the things that hurt us, and the things that excite us.
This post took several months of introspection and drafts. A special thanks goes to @Thoughtful_Fetishist and @SuitPvssyExec for offering me critical comments at various stages of composing this essay. Thinking through this stuff is difficult, and I made lots of mistakes along the way. But it's good to have a community of kinksters who are willing to listen and to engage in difficult conversation. Those are the conversations I wish to have.
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