Reconciling kink and BDSM with my racial and cultural identity requires different spaces—and bigger dreams
In these last few years, I have discovered so much about my own body. This vessel is where I am reborn, over and over. The body is important to me, because of what it is capable of. It holds secrets. It holds power. It is a creator and receptor of intimacies that can’t be expressed in speech alone.
It was a few years ago, towards the beginning of university, that I discovered in myself a desire to explore BDSM and kink in real life. Or rather, the desire had always been there. Growing up, I knew I had interests or curiosities that were unconventional (perhaps a euphemistic way to put it). But I wasn’t sure how exactly to express, let alone pursue, my desires. I grew up in a mostly South Asian neighbourhood in Mississauga, a sheltered environment. I lacked resources and people I felt comfortable turning towards for support on this subject. While I had good friends, I didn’t know how they would react. I assumed—wrongly, I’m sure—that I was the only person in my neighbourhood and community who felt like this. I turned to pornography as a source of pleasure and learning, an outlet that, while useful, I still couldn’t help feeling ashamed to use. University became a beacon of hope; a chance to live away from home and to engage with sides of my sexuality I had long desired to explore.
I began to use apps and websites like Whiplr and FetLife to meet up with potential play partners, most of whom turned out to be white. A disturbing amount of racial fetishism took place in the sites that I frequented, but also in my real-life interactions. I’ve been subjected to a myriad of comments from white men, ranging from being called “Daddy’s Princess Jasmine,” to, perhaps most revoltingly, being told the stretch marks on my back looked like I had been “lashed like they do to women in Saudi Arabia.” After a while, I became sort of numb to these exchanges. A necessary trade-off for the pleasure I desired, I reasoned with myself. I also reasoned that this sort of stuff can, and does, happen all the time in regular dating too. Being a part of a community that maybe had more awareness about consent, does not stop racist white people from being racist white people. My sexual experiences in the bedroom were often littered with microaggressions that left a bad taste in my mouth, but I learned to swallow.
After a while of mainly limiting the kink part of my identity to the bedroom, I started to become more interested in participating in the wider, kink+BDSM community. I longed for more kink-positive friendships, people I could seek advice and comfort from, and a chance to explore my exhibitionist side, too. But I have learned that it is not easy to navigate the kink community in Toronto as a South Asian woman. There aren’t a lot of us who can go around and publicly disclose these desires with a sense of safety and confidence. Sex clubs or fetish events in this city can be overwhelmingly white. Even in a city as diverse as this, the people I interacted with who were comfortable enough to open up about participating in BDSM seemed to be mainly white.
And I myself am still not comfortable being freely, publicly open about my identity. In the kink spaces I do frequent, I’ve sanitized my race and ethnicity in an effort to stay hidden, and therefore safe. Online on FetLife, I avoid disclosing my race and religion in my profile. I don’t show my face in any pictures. When people message me, I use a play name that is racially neutral, non-distinct. Sometimes I think about growing my profile and posting more explicit pictures and videos, like a lot of other young women on the site do. It’s not uncommon to come across young women with over 20,000 followers on FetLife.
But then I am haunted by a recent story that unfolded on FetLife two years back: a young South Asian girl in Britain with a large following was blackmailed by an older man she met on the site. They had exchanged messages, and when she felt more comfortable, they spoke on Skype and exchanged personal information, including her real name. But when he later became jealous of the attention she received online, he became controlling and threatened to expose her profile—including the sexually explicit photos she had posted—to her family, unless she followed his rules. (When she didn’t listen to him, he eventually followed through on his threat.) She wrote a journal entry on her profile about what transpired, the impact that the event had on her relationship to her family, as well as her mental health. Though the community was very supportive of her, and her parents were much more empathetic than she had expected, it doesn’t erase the trauma and betrayal that she experienced, through no fault of her own. The nightmare scenario she experienced serves as something of a nightmarish warning to me whenever I desire to become more vocal in kink spaces. An ugly, small voice whispering to me, “You are not allowed to take up residency in this kind of world, unless you are willing to face all of its consequences. You are not allowed to pretend to be “fearless” when you are so obviously fearful.”
I am full of fear, but full of hunger, too. Yearning for more has become my de facto state. Recently, I saw photos online from Faete, a fetish dance and play party that happens every few months in the city. I felt envious of all the people dressed up in their fetish gear, looking kinky and beautiful, and perfectly content to have their photo taken and posted for anyone to see. When I do come across public profiles—whether on FetLife, or Instagram, or some other platform—of a woman with a similar background to mine, I am weirdly, unfairly jealous. Somehow this brown woman is able to publicly exhibit her sexuality, regardless of the personal and external consequences she must be facing. I wish I could allow myself to freely engage with my exhibitionism, whether through nude photo shoots, or attending more fetish events. I’m tempted to participate in more of these events, to maybe show my whole face and body in my online profile. But then I think, what if my family found out? How would they react? They are the most important thing in the world to me. I cannot willingly alienate them. I think about the story of that girl on FetLife constantly. Even though I was entirely sympathetic towards her, I know that if the same thing were to happen to me, I would only blame myself for the consequences. Because the ‘damage’ is preventable, right? It is preventable if I can somehow find a way to suppress my desires.
So instead, I dream. I dream of a community I can truly belong to. I dream of spaces where queer, kinky BIPOC folks can gather freely. Where we can have meaningful discussions about the intersections between kink and race (among other things). Where we can talk about sensitive, charged topics like raceplay in a nuanced way, without being surrounded by opportunistic white folks who only use the concept as a cover for their racism. A space to hold each other, to be held, and to heal from collective traumas. I dream one day of attending a space like Faete and being okay with being publicly photographed. I dream of one day hosting my own fetish dance party, one where BIPOC folk can come together, and simply dance, openly, lovingly. In the hope of liberation. And sometimes, when I’m feeling especially hopeful, I dream of a moment: one in which my family can embrace this side of me, and with pride too.
This moment I long for most is probably bound to remain just that: a longing. But the places that I dream of? Surely they exist. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places. I don’t know. But it’s difficult to find each other because it’s understandable why many of us stay hidden. Our bodies are more subjected to surveillance, to the politics of respectability. Fear, shame, ostracization, and violence all exist as potential consequences of exposure to our families, communities, society at large. I straddle the line of wanting to be true to myself and wanting to please my family, as many racialized people do.
But I have to be hopeful, right?
Illustration by Amy Jiao
Comments are closed.