Dear Fans: Quit Kinkbashing

Dear Fandom X Friends,

I started out thinking that our little corner of the web was somewhat easier on the kinkily inclined than those corners dedicated to  Breaking Bad or Trek or any of the seventeen other fandoms I’ve been a part of over the decades (yes, decades) that I’ve been fangirling around.

See, people keep promulgating this idea. They keep saying “Fandom X is the best. It’s so chill and so accepting and I’ve met so many great friends here.”

But this idea has taken some hits of late.

Some weeks ago a friend, let’s call him Bob, said he was writing a blibbling fic.

[Or you know what? Let’s call “Fandom X”  Fallout 4 and “blibbling” lactation. Because I’m not so full of myself as to think everyone from Tumblr knows or cares that I produce original smut and can write in complete sentences. ]

Anyway, I enthused back, if author Bob, who I held in great esteem, were to write lactation fic, I would instantly become a passenger on a clit-shaped rocket to the seventh smut-moon of planet Porn Prime or something about as flailtacular.

Cue Bob: “sometimes I worry about you”

Uh, okay.

Author Bob, in his own words, likes helping people discover new kinks, is writing a lactation story, posted to advertise this fact, and engaged with me after I, an admitted fan of the kink, came out in support of it.

And my possible enjoyment of the story was creepy, somehow?

It got better when I slid on down into Bob’s DMs.

kepl3rian: why did you say you worry about me?

Bob: Because of your desire for lactation fic.

What the actual fuck?

Perhaps it didn’t occur to Bob that I was only just been able to admit this particular brand of pervaciousness  to my partner of 15 years. An individual, I might add, who is not only already kinky as blazes, but who loves me enough to role play using the costumes and props and mood-lighting of the moment because not only does he want to make me happy, but knows I’m also learning to participate in what he desires most.

All this and I still found a lactation kink too shameful to admit to my man until a month ago – too shameful to even write about when the main reason I’m a smut-smith is to come to terms with my kinks. To invent worlds in which they’re safely explored and to legitimize them for myself as well as for other people who might share them. I also porn for for enjoyment, and recognition, and all that, but my core motivation is to make it okay.

Can you imagine my relief at finally being able to admit this kink out loud?

Can you imagine my dismay at Bob’s comment?

Author Bob did apologize once he realized he was kinkshaming, although he then proceeded to say that he doesn’t kinkshame in any way. Facepalm.

He might even reblog this post.

tl;dr:

Folks, don’t hold yourselves up as paragons of inclusivity when you’re really just ordinary people with flaws and blind spots. We are all as subject as the next brain to groupthink and we all make mistakes. Like my mistake of thinking my little group was different.

*steps off of soapbox and promptly slips on the lube covering the floor*

 

Featured Image:  Book of Fallout by bryanfuel on DeviantArt