Is Kink Being Normalized or Is It Just Going Viral?
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This week, we look at some of the most recent viral trends that borrow from kink and ask, “Is kink becoming mainstream?”
In this episode:
- Kinkery is having a Labor Day sale! Use code LABORDAY25 to save 15 percent off your order thru September 5
- It started when Kayla saw both a “choking prevention is being added to UK sex ed” and the normalization of spitting without consent during sex article within a couple of weeks.
- Is kink being normalized or is it being co-opted for other reasons?
- The conversation about the normalization of kink isn’t new. It tends to pop up whenever something kinky goes mainstream.
- The popularity of the 50 Shades of Grey books and then release of the movies is a prime example.
- Today’s “normalization” tends to happen on TikTok and then trickles down to other platforms or gets picked up by news media.
- Spitting
- Choking
- Free Use
- Princess Treatment
- The question of whether tradwives are D/s
- Tradwives wearing “day collars” – Kayla learned about this from Evie Lupine’s recent video
- Evie said a brilliant thing in her tradwives wearing day collars video that sums it up really well: “[They] take the collar out of kink and strip it of its context.”
- Sums up all of these TikTok trends
- 2023 Vice article on the trend of free use stated that the “trendiness” of these concepts often comes from OF creators promoting their page in a “TikTok friendly” way that then goes viral
- A 2023 study by Jenny Sunden looked at a Swedish digital platform for BDSM – which is not on the topic – but they also said something about the study that encapsulates this idea to some degree: “this study looks at digital kink expressions at a moment when kink communities are both marginalized and seemingly mainstream, navigating a tricky balance between visibility and invisibility, intelligibility and unintelligibility.”
- Whether kink is being “normalized” is up for debate
- Erotic writers publish kink smut because it’s profitable and people want to read it
- It seems like more movies and series have a kink theme – is that actually true or does the digital age just make information more accessible and in the past the only kink media that caught “everybody’s” attention was what was popular and we missed out on other content because there was no Google yet?
- Is kink so widespread that it inevitably goes viral or are non-kink creators going viral for appearing “edgy”?
- Kinky sex – stripped of context and consent – is certainly creeping into young people’s expectations of sex but that’s due in large part to young people’s unfettered access to porn while also being denied access to comprehensive sex education.
Links from the episode:
Shop at the Kinkery | Use code LABORDAY25 to save 15 percent
Evie’s video on tradwives wearing collars
Evie’s video on the normalization of kink (in context of vanilla and kink shaming)
Vice article on kink taking over social media
Normalize BDSM (2024 article)
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