Paul Reynolds, Edge Hill University
With Fifty Shades of Grey, kinkiness has been mainstreamed and normalised within heteronormativity, stripped of its heightened sense of risk and painful, pleasurable danger. Instead, as with homonormativity and the assimilation of non-heterosexuality over the last 20 years, we have the appropriation of ‘good kink’ and the continued pathology of those darker, crueller caresses. A product of this distinction is that BDSM beyond a bit of Ann Summers whipping, a good hard masculine/feminine fuck and a happy ever after patriarchal monogamous coupling remains on the cusp of discretionary policing, pathology, prejudice and discrimination.
Yet in this session, I want to talk about the way in which the sexual dynamics of BDSM sex combine imagination, stimulation and ethical sex (which is more than can be said for some hetero/homonormative experiences). Indeed, it is precisely in kink that sexual ethics are exercised and developed beyond mainstream experience (though this should not be the case and such ethics should apply to the mainstream). This is not, then, an advocacy of kinky sex through an appeal to ethics (though there is nothing wrong with that!), but an appeal for ethical sex through what kink lays bare.
Paul Reynolds is Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy at Edge Hill University. He is co-convenor of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics and co-editor in chief of its Journal. He researchers and writes on intellectuals, radical theory (particularly Marxism) and mainly on sexual ethics. His recent work has focused on sexual consent, literacy and well-being, with particular reference to its impact of sexual politics and ethics. He tends to give quiet reserved talks to sedate audiences...
