Too Many Shades of Blah

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In case you missed it, Amazon.com now has 50 Shades of Grey-themed sub-store in its “sexual wellness” products. I’m not entirely sure how to take this; on the one hand, I think it shows the progress the kink community has made that Amazon is willing to make such a sub-store, complete with its own promotional images, for something that’s still considered deeply taboo by so many Americans. On the other hand, for another resurgence of kink in popular culture to be tied to a work of questionable quality, and for Amazon to be promoting some of the same sub-standard “kinky toys” you’ve always been able to get at the mall at Spencer Gifts or Victoria’s Secret as a result of this resurgence, hardly fills me with joy.

Some of you have probably been waiting for me to make comments about the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so until I’ve had a chance to really sit down with the novels and read them thoroughly. That time will come soon, but I have to get through War and Peace first. (That’s not a joke; I actually started reading it last month.) I have reservations about the books from what I’ve read of them, but it’s kind of hard for me to be too critical of them when their growing success will probably make it much easier for me to find a publisher for The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon when that time comes. There’s also the whole question of what the success of a series that started as Twilight fanfiction means for the future of writing, if we may see more of this new kind of roman à clef being put out by publishers, and what that means for the creation of new characters and worlds. For now I’d like to focus on something I can speak authoritatively about without having fully read 50 Shades of Grey, the “re-trending” of kink in popular culture.

It was in the aftermath of the success of Secretary — the first mainstream film to portray kink as something conceivably healthy for some people — that I began teaching safer kink classes ten years ago. Having gone back to college the previous year, where I was exposed to the safer sex education that was going on there (which took on greater importance once Bush 43 started shoving his abstinence-only agenda down everyone’s throats), I began to realize the need for some basic education on kink. Nearly a decade earlier, when kink entered popular culture thanks to Madonna appropriating it in the early 1990s, one of the pieces of merchandise in my local video store when Body of Evidence was released on VHS was a “kit” to help others recreate the iconic scene from that film, where Madonna’s character drips hot wax over the naked chest of Willem DaFoe’s character, complete with a candle. Here was something nearly anyone could buy at the stores (I couldn’t because there was also a bottle of booze in the kit and I wasn’t 21 yet), encouraging people to drip hot wax over one another, without offering any warnings on how to do so in a safer manner. At the time I didn’t think that much about it, but by 2002 I’d realized all the potential dangers out there for people who want to experiment with kink without widespread knowledge of its safety protocols and procedures.

It’s hard to find reliable numbers on how many people experiment with, or regularly practice, kinky activities, in part because “kink” can be a relatively subjective word. Does using a blindfold during sex every once in a while make you kinky? What about lightly smacking your partner’s haunches during intercourse? Where that line is between kink and “vanilla” (an awful word to use for non-kinky things/people since, as Jill Tracy points out, vanilla can be very complex and exotic) is a difficult question. It doesn’t help that the kink community, like other communities, has some people who claim you can’t be “really” kinky unless you do some pretty extreme stuff. I blame my generation, as the “can you top this” mentality of the “extreme sports” boom of the 1990s has influenced the kink community in recent years. Still, I’ve read before that as many of 50% of American adults experiment with kink at some point in their lives.

That, to me, suggests a strong need for education on how to do kinky stuff in as safe a manner as possible. (Just like sex, the only 100% safe way to practice kink is to not practice it at all.) Even if you only try kink once, a lot can go wrong in that one time. That silk scarf that feels so delicious on your face as a blindfold could be ruined if you don’t know the right knot to use, because silk has an annoying tendency to turn many common knots into unreleaseable rocks when they’re tightened. If you buy those cheap “sex cuffs” at the mall and one of them falls apart when you pull on it in a moment of passion, your arm will start flying at full speed, and if your partner’s face is in the way then the situation (and your partner) could get ugly in a hurry. If you buy a cheaply-made pair of handcuffs and the key breaks off when the smoke detectors in your house start beeping … enough said.

Basic safety for most “starter” kink activities only takes an hour or two to teach. There’s definitely much more reliable kink safety education online than there was when I first started teaching it, especially since the boom in online video means you can see in real time how to perform an activity, but I think you really need to be physically present when learning to do something so physical. I’m far too busy with other things right now to do kink education, but one of my friends here in Toledo presents kink classes in several states; at one of her recent events she actually had to teach a second impromptu class for the overflow crowd that couldn’t get into her first class. (Unlike me, she’s petite and pretty and her enthusiasm is infectious.) I’d like to think, as kink becomes more acceptable to discuss in more “mainstream” venues, that people will take advantage of all the educators out there who can teach you kink safety.

That’s what bothers me so much about this Amazon store, because the commercial stuff that’s sold there isn’t as high-quality as the stuff that members of the community make. (The commercial stuff is often more expensive, too.) More people are likely to buy their kinky toys from Amazon, though, not just because they’re a big retail behemoth, but also because everything will be shipped to them in those Amazon boxes that neighbours will assume contain books or movies or what have you. Maybe, if their 50 Shades of Grey “sexual wellness” section does enough business, Amazon will expand its offerings and include higher-quality equipment, but in the meantime I can’t help thinking about all the people who might buy their lower-quality offerings and try them out without learning the basics of how to use them in safer ways.

I know it usually gets big laughs when you suggest that the way to solve our problems is to take the warning labels off of everything and let evolution sort things out, but the educator in me bristles when I think of the potential harm that can be done when people act in reckless ways. As old taboos about kink and sexuality go away, I want to think that the basics of safer kink will become as well-known as the basics of safer sex, but until then it’s hard not to worry about the potential harm that could be done by those wanting to recreate something from 50 Shades of Grey without first learning how to do it in a safer manner.

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