“Filth Is My Politics, Filth Is My Life:” Conceptualizing Kink & Kink Communities

Abstract

This project explores kink communities in New England and Chicagoland. When considering regional differences, one of the most important factors is state legislature. Massachusetts is one of a few states that has prosecuted those in attendance at kink gatherings. I conducted field research of kink events and interviewed kink practitioners. These interviews have allowed me to detail their stories, adding a human element to a community that has been historically pathologized. In imagining the discrimination that kink practitioners have faced from a medical and pathological viewpoint (Clark, 1963), as well as from a legal viewpoint (Moser, 2006, Sheff, 2011), I make the case for kink practitioners to be viewed as a minority. In line with this, I apply Minority Stress Theory (Meyer, 2003) to kink practitioners, that the discrimination that they may face in their lives due to their identity puts practitioners at a higher risk for negative mental health consequences. I have also found it useful to include my own stories and perspectives as autoethnography. Kink communities are composed of people who are perceived as deviants and outcasts, those who may struggle to fit within hegemony. When considering leather clubs and leathermen, this banding together of outcasts is historically prominent. In a digital age where we strive towards cleanliness and perfection, kink communities can provide a framework for imperfection, grime, ambiguity, and dirtiness that gets at a more complete view of humanity and alternative options for forming bonds with one another.