Please, Stop Trying to Save Us

Kinksters are in the news again today. But not in a good way. So, despite all the new studies coming out telling us that people who do BDSM are not only perfectly healthy on a whole, but that we may even be more healthy than the norm, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, III used a recent, rather unrelated court case about consent to claim that the "asserted fundamental liberty interest in engaging in BDSM sexual activity is clearly not protected as judicially enforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment" and that “a legislative restriction on BDSM activity is justifiable by reference to the state’s interest in the protection of vulnerable persons.”

“Vulnerable people” not just being people like the unfortunately uninformed and inexperienced girl in this specific case, but kinksters as a whole. Including fully consensual adults.

"The danger in advocating only for a specific type of sexual expression is that other forms of intimate sexual expression become neglected, resulting in decisions such as the recent ruling," Ricci Levy, president and CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, pointed out. "This ruling appears to directly contradict the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas which held that states could not criminalize consensual intimate activity between adults."

This is why so many kinksters have mixed feelings about the spotlight focused on us as of late. On the one hand, it’s bought about a lot of awareness about the lifestyle and opened up a lot of much needed discussion both in and out of the community. It’s made it safer and more acceptable for more of us to be out of the closeted toy box, as it were.

But, on the other hand, the Fifty Shades Effect has made those who are already prejudiced against us feel threatened and thus emboldened. People like Ellis, who seek every opportunity to hurt us under the pretense of saving us. Of saving others from us. In ways that just push us back into the shadows and ignorance. In ways that can and will actually harm us. In ways that, without proper access to information and community and protection, can get us killed.

And, personally, it’s hard to see that kind of misguided prejudice as salvation.