How the Kink Scene Made Me Immoral

Yesterday, an alt-med practitioner posted a request to our local community board: Would someone please send him the details of the member who’d shared about her depression yesterday? He wanted to send her a month’s worth of free <insert random unproven herb here> but she’d posted anonymously. He needed her name. Thus followed 500 words of marketing screed about the benefits of <insert random unproven herb here> because this wasn’t an advert for <insert random unproven herb here> at all. It was a donation. Ya know, to be helpful. </sarcasm>

Two users promptly gave up her name in the public thread.

I was the only person who was offended.

I know, I know, my offense makes me a Karen, but I want to speak to the manager, please. If someone didn’t consent to having her identity linked to her mental health status, her desire should be respected. Surely this is something we can all agree on?

Well, nope. The manager was not impressed with my complaint. By evening, two of my comments had been removed for “attacking someone’s livelihood.” If the man wanted to write marketing screed that exploited depression patients, it was okay because he needed to turn a profit to draw a salary. This is the nature of our morality in the vanilla world. Profits before consent.

And they call kinky people immoral.

Vanilla society has yet to catch up with the kink scene’s understanding of consent and ethics. If I’d happened upon the thread about <insert random unproven herb here> eight years ago, I probably wouldn’t have asked to speak to the manager, please.

I didn’t understand the importance of consent in those days. I had some grasp of the “don’t rape people” side of the continuum, but I had never grasped how much a person can lose from smaller violations. The kink scene taught me that. You taught me that. Vanilla society doesn’t sit around all day arguing about what constitutes limits or boundaries, but we do.

The vanilla world likes to think of us kinky folk as the crazy ones. Whips and chains make you immoral. Polycules and swinging do the same. If you mix with masochists, your values are scrambled. That’s what they say...

... while casually violating the consent of a vulnerable depression patient.

We might hurt people, but we don't harm them, especially without consent.

Maybe vanilla society has got this the wrong way around, so I’d like to stop speaking to the manager, please. She’s just never going to understand.