Kink is Political – Restraint

In this session, we’ll read bondage and restraint as sexual practices within the context of BDSM against a broader history of restraint. Turning towards the anti-psychiatric work of Franco Basaglia and the ubiquity of physical restraint as a tool of the medical establishment and carceral state, we’ll start to contend with what it means to take up and play with forms and techniques implicated in an almost unimaginable amount of violence and harm. We’ll ask: what logics of restraint in medical and carceral contexts end up reproduced in kink and sex-positive communities? How does the broader social and political practice of restraint shape who our spaces are accessible to and how? What are the impacts of legislation that criminalizes voluntary restraint? How do we take restraint more seriously?

Kink is Political is an online discussion with Addie Tahl, Georg Barkas, Andrea Rimon, and occasional special guests. Participants are invited to join a discussion during which we unite critique with an emphasis on the practical and day-to-day issues and challenges of kink, intimacy, and relationships.
Focusing on concepts central to BDSM, leather, rope, and sex-positive communities, it interrogates widely adopted approaches and commonly held notions. It aims to understand the politics of kink beyond the language of sexual liberation and politics of sexual liberalism, both frames that have proven insufficient in addressing widespread harm, a rising international tide of sex-negativity and reaction, or in guaranteeing that the most marginalized can sexually flourish.
Kink is Political is an examination of the contexts and consequences of how we talk about and understand gender and sexuality. It is a forum to think about how kink spaces and practices operate, what works, what doesn’t, and what we can use to build something better.