Feature Image by Bromberger Hoover Photography/via Getty Images

In some ways it feels like we have a ‘does kink belong at pride’ debate every year – in other ways, though, it feels like this year was something unique. Was it the tension of quarantine making people feel like the stakes were higher than usual? Was it the wave of moral panic sweeping through both our communities and Congress? Vox thinks it’s an inevitable battleground of our community’s concern over respectability politics; it’s also become interwoven with more topical community conversations around consent and interpersonal harm and what constitutes a “safe space,” if one even exists.

Our stance on this at Autostraddle is (hopefully) not hard to parse – KaeLyn has already written beautifully about why she feels kink- and body-positive Pride spaces are safer for her kids than ones that depict bodies and adult sexuality as shameful; the series we’re beginning today explores everything that kink has to offer people who practice it and their communities, including and also beyond sex. Kink has never been separate from Pride or any other part of anti-assimilationist queer community – Brenda Howard, mother of Pride, was a leatherwoman!

To explore more of these connections and layers of meaning in a mediated space defined by community and good faith, and away from the knee-jerk reactivity of the larger internet, we invited some of our team members and our favorite writers on kink and BDSM to share their personal connections between kink and pride, whether that’s the event or the community value. We’d love to hear yours in the comments!

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