We The
(Kinky)
People

In 1984, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, an alliance of gay rights and housing activists launched Folsom Street Fair. What started as a fundraiser for San Francisco’s gay Leather bars has since been duplicated in cities throughout Europe and the U.S., becoming a flagship event for Leather, Kink, and LGBTQIA+ communities worldwide. Outside of Folsom, though, the terms “Kink,” “Leather,” and “LGBTQIA+” represent separate, and sometimes incompatible, groups. Their incompatibility is a key factor in the Kink community’s marginalization. 

More than 19.4 million adult Americans—an estimated 7.6 percent of the country’s total population—identify on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, according to a 2023 Gallup telephone survey: 57.3 percent of them as bisexual, 19.2 percent as gay/lesbian, 11.8 percent as transgender, and 4.1 percent as pansexual/asexual/queer/other. “Kinky” didn’t make that list. The LGBTQIA+ spectrum encompasses sexual orientations, gender identities, and intersex variations diverging from the normative heterosexual and cisgender norm, while “kink” is “a set of nonnormative sexual desires, fantasies, behaviors and practices” that is “not defined by any specific sexual act or behavior” (Connolly et al, Journal of Sex, 2019). This seemingly academic distinction effectively severs the kink community from the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Though they often overlap through individuals’ specific sexual orientations, kinky people by definition are a stand-alone group. 

Going by many names, the Kink, BDSM, Fetish, Leather, Sex-Positive, Alt-Sex (and/or combinations of the above) communities make up at least 4.5 million in the U.S. According to recent statistics culled from Fetlife, the Kink communities’ primary social network, 48.7 percent of the people in these communities identify as straight. The remaining 2,308,500 nonheterosexual identities—constituting that important overlap between the Kink and LGBTQIA+ communities—include bisexual (20.3 percent), pansexual (5.7 percent), fluid (3.7 percent), gay (2.0 percent), queer (1.5 percent), lesbian (1.1 percent) and asexual (0.3 percent).  

Being glaringly nonnormative—and, as such, vulnerable to discrimination—kinksters of all sexual orientations look to the LGBTQIA+ community for protection and representation. But both the hetero and nonheterosexual kinksters attending Folsom Street East described the connection between the two communities as “discordant.”

“There’s a broad gap [between the LGBTQIA and Kink communities] that sadly doesn’t show many signs of uniting anytime soon,” said Steve V. Rodriguez, host of the progressive TAGS (Talk About Gay Sex) podcast, in an email interview following the event. “Many in the LGBTQ community still see the Kink/Leather/BDSM community as ‘the other,’ whose only component is being overly sexual.”

“That’s where you see that discord of ‘No Kink at Pride’ that comes up every year,” noted Jason Fluegge. Fluegge, a gay man in his 30s, was manning the booth of Cycle for the Cause, a biking group that has been raising funds for local LGBT Centers since the ’90s. He’s captain of  Team Eagle NYC, representing  New York’s most veteran Leather bar. Active in both the gay and Leather communities, Fluegge often experiences tension between them in the form of awkward social interactions. “I think some of that has to do with leather and kink, even nowadays, there’s still a part of that where it’s like behind the wall, behind-the-scenes type of experiences.”

Pup Bard, a young gay man in his 20s manning the Philly Pet Night booth, feels the gap between the gay and Kink communities stems from ignorance. “We’re always fighting a backwards-sliding battle,” he noted. “You have a lot of discourse from people who want to be on the normative side of things, who feel that kink shouldn’t be part of the broader LGBTQ expression. Because there’s a lot of younger queer people who don’t get to learn the important history of how kink has been at the forefront of fighting for queer liberation and rights… it’s a shame that some people just kind of forget that part, and just want to push us aside and like commercialize it, commercialize queerness.”

Daddy Sage is president of the New York Northeast chapter of ONYX, a “Leather Fraternity for Gay and Bisexual Men of Color.”(onyxnynortheast.org)  In the early ’80s, he was instrumental in addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis in his community—which, for its duration, largely united nonhetero factions. Sage attributed the tension between the Kink and LGBTQIA+ communities to both personal tastes and current “identity politics.” “When we first started this stuff in the ’70s, I was in organizations that just had the word ‘gay’ in them. Then it became ‘gay men’, ‘gay men and women,’ ‘gay men and lesbians,’ “gay, lesbians, and bisexuals,’ then ‘transgender’ was added to the mix…but we are all one community,” he said in a pre-event Zoom interview. Sage counted the Kink community’s inherent salaciousness as another source of contention: “There are folks…[who] see us all as one melting pot, but there are other people who think that we are flaunting our sexuality too much. People don’t always want things put in their face. Kink and Leather are about putting stuff in folks' faces, and they resent that.” 

“One melting pot” and “our broader community” were how most nonheterosexual kinksters related to the LGBTQIA+ community. To them, the disconnect between their identity groups was a matter of siloing and factional in-fighting. For heterosexual kinksters, who are not rooted in the LGBTQIA+ community through their sexual orientations or gender identities, the connection is questionable to begin with. 

“I kind of snark around it by saying I live in the ‘Q’ and play in the ‘+’,” said Evie Amore, a global marketing strategist and divorced mother of two. “The ‘+’ is where the kink falls, as well as the polyamory, the gender fluidity…anything that doesn’t hit one of those first letters.” 

 “I am not sure there IS a relationship between the Kink community and communities that are based on sexual orientation or gender identity issues,” said Cat Orme, cofounder of the educational group The Kink Collective.  “It is my experience that kink isn’t recognized under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.… The Kink community isn’t recognized almost anywhere.”

In some cases, the lack of recognition translates into covert discrimination. “An organization I was working with was hosting a kink event. When some of their gay donors heard about it, they withdrew their donations, because they didn’t want to be affiliated with kink,” recalled Joshua Rodriguez, (aka Master Joshua) the Kink Collective’s other cofounder. Rodriguez attributed the occurrence, which he described as common, to the “shame and stigma” still surrounding the practice of BDSM. “These acts are still seen as unnatural or immoral,” just as homosexuality once was perceived, he said. “If they’re not in it themselves, the idea of open-mindedness and acceptance is there, but the practice isn’t, which is ironic.”

The practice of BDSM (a compound acronym standing for bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics) is one of the Kink community’s defining traits. Of all the different groups and cultures associated with BDSM, the Leather subculture is probably the most famous. It’s so well-known that the terms “Leather community” and “Kink community” are sometimes used interchangeably. But they are not the same, and the confusion between them is another factor complicating the Kink community’s path to normalization. 

“Leather” is an aesthetic, a historical movement, a sexual culture, and an organized value system. It started out as a strictly gay secret order in the ’40s, a time when all nonhetero expressions were considered “unnatural and immoral acts,” punishable by imprisonment. Emerging as an ultramasculine counter to the effeminate gay stereotypes of the time, Leather culture appealed to gay members of biker gangs and WWII veterans, who shaped it into an interpersonal framework combining elements from both their worlds. In his book Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States, author Stephen K. Stein describes how, over the next few decades, the subculture fed into mainstream culture through films (like The Wild Ones, starring Marlon Brandon) and art (like the works of Tom of Finland), growing to encompass fashion (leather, Levis, western), sex (rough, raunchy and/or kinky) and community (motorcycle clubs, preferred bars, and other hangouts). 

The Kink/BDSM component was not Leather’s focal point. Sadomasochism (the derivation of pleasure from acts inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation) had existed independently since the dawn of history; but without established, socially recognized parameters for consent, it was viewed as a dangerous mental disease and a threat to social order. Such parameters were defined during the ’70s, by the first S/M  groups. Prior to their existence, sadomasochists—those who practiced sadomasochism for its own sake—did so in shame, fear, and extreme isolation. 

Gaining popularity through the next decades, the Leather subculture spread from Los Angeles to San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago. Dovetailing with the movement for gay and lesbian rights, Leather bars proliferated, seeding communities, organizations, literature, art, public recognition, and, ultimately, social reform. The subculture’s success inspired sadomasochists to build their own social networks, initially under the cover of “Leather factions.”  The  first S/M organizations—TES (The Eulenspiegel Society) in New York, The Chicago Hellfire Club, and San Francisco’s Society of Janus, all from the early 70s—avoided any public reference to their sadomasochism. Later endeavors, like the National Leather Association or the Leather Leadership Conference, rooted their identity in Leather, while focusing almost exclusively on BDSM and its practitioners. 

The outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s turned the tables on the Leather and BDSM communities. Nearly eradicated by the disease and largely blamed for it, the embattled Leather community withdrew from public view. The BDSM community, on the other hand, flourished. Distancing themselves from the Leather community’s renegade/outlaw stance, sadomasochists forged their own discourse and culture around the concept of consent, embodied in the formative principle (coined by TES) of “safe, sane, and consensual.”

In 1984, an alliance of gay, human rights, and housing activists launched Folsom Street Fair, a fundraiser aiming to protect the gay Leather bars in San Francisco’s SOMA (South of Market) district from closure. Today Folsom Street Fair has the world’s largest Leather and BDSM events, with offshoots in cities around the world, each pitching a big tent for all Kink subcultures. A tent so big, in fact, that this year, the term “Leather community” was entirely omitted from Folsom Street East’s description. Instead, the event billed itself as a celebration of the “Fetish, Kink, and LGBTQIA+ communities.”

Pup Kenzo, one of Folsom East’s 2024 board members, explained the description aimed “to promote inclusivity.” “Everyone knows Folsom is a Leather event,” he said with a shrug. “The board wanted to show that it’s for everyone else too.” But for leather devotees, the automatic inclusion of “everyone else” in what was a flagship Leather event signals a fatal dilution of the culture.

NYC’s Folsom Street East was launched in NYC in the mid-nineties, by the now disbanded group GMSMA (Gay Male S/M Activists), once “the most influential organization for gay male S/M practitioners in the Metro-New York City area (leatherhalloffame.com). Peter. B, a past president of the group, said that “Looking at it (the event) now, I can assure you this isn’t what we had in mind”.

 “I belong to what you would call the Leather old guard,” he explained. “That means that within the context of kink, I conduct myself according to established rules, traditions, and core principles of Leather culture. I expect the same from those I interact with. But from all the people out here today, few even know these core principles exist. So what are we doing here? If we are no longer Leather, then who are we?”

Leather and BDSM venues and gatherings—Leather bars such as The Eagle, title competitions like IML (International Mr. Leather) or BDSM conventions such as TesFest, Domcon and others—still serve as the backbone of the Kink communities today. New ones continue to emerge as the communities diversify, branching into ever more specific subgroups. The Pup community, for example, “started out with a specific type of sexual humiliation play within gay Leather culture,” explained Pup Bard. Over the years, practitioners who resonated with this type of play evolved it into its own subculture, one with pup-specific dress codes, customs, and hierarchies. Events and title competitions acknowledging this new subculture began cropping up less than a decade ago, allowing the Pup community to gain influence in broader Kink circles. Today, the Pup community is counted among Kink’s most active and fastest growing factions. The pups assent fueled the growth of the broader Petplay/Furries communities, who borrowed from the adjacent Cosplay community to weave other anthropomorphic elements into their sexual identities. A similar process formed The Littles community, a specific kink identity based on age-play, which in turn gave rise to the ABDL (Adult Baby Diaper Lovers) community, etc. This rapid process of diversification and fragmentation is seen as both a strength of the Kink community and its Achilles’ heel. 

“There are people who say this (diversification) is evolution,” said Daddy Sage, “on the other hand, we can’t always come together because of that.” 

Madam Smitten, owner of the Chelsea-based dungeon and BDSM play space Smitten’s Lair, said that Kink communities tended to naturally group around common kinks. “Every group kind of does their own thing, and that’s fine, but the communication between the groups isn’t always there. It’d be nice if we could all just adopt some simple, basic rules—nothing fancy, but have like, you know, a Leatherman’s Handbook version for kink overall.”

15 out of the 16 event-goers I interviewed at Folsom Street East agreed that kink—as a lifestyle and as a community—has a public-image problem. They attributed it to a lack of coordination, education, and resources, all which amounted to unclear messaging. 

“‘This is who we are, this is what we stand for, and this is what we want’: That’s what any community needs to be able to say in order to represent itself in the world,” said Master Joshua. “Our community hasn’t been able to formulate that for itself yet, not in broad enough terms that we can all agree on. Because of that, people still think we are just about weird sex.”

Sexual citizenship, a concept introduced in 1993 by sociologist David Evans (Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities), describes a sexual minority’s capacity to bridge the private and public spheres. In other words, the Kink community’s message and its ability to articulate it might be its ticket to earning its own respected spot on the map. “No matter how private the sexual acts,” Evan’s argued, “finding sexual partners is necessarily a public act, one that requires a level of public acceptance. It requires free sexual expression, the ability to publicly state one’s desires and seek those who share them.”  

Carrying a giant pink parasol, Dale Varga, a Leatherman in his 60s in a pink mohawk wig, patrolled Folsom Street East on stilts. He’s been greeting event-goers from this high perch for the past 15 years or so, simply because “I love the people who come here.” Dale was the one interviewee with no concerns about the community's public image problems: when I asked about them, he laughed. “I lived to see ‘gay’ go from shame to pride, ‘queer’ go from an insult to a sexual orientation, and ‘fluid’ become a gender,” he said. “After all that, for kink to go from ‘kinda weird’ to ‘kinda normal’ is such a small step, that it practically already happened.”

“What are your hopes for the Kink community? Imagining the future, a decade or so from now, what do you hope to see?” I asked him. Dale  leaned in close—not an easy feat on stilts—and turned the question back on me: “What do you hope for?” 

Instead of a future Kink community, the image that came to mind was of my children, who within a decade would be old enough to read Karma Said’s work. I hoped that by then I’d have the courage to share it with them. I hoped that, if they chose to read it, they would judge me for my writing, not my sexual choices. Because by then, I hoped, kink would be just another lifestyle, and we would be just another community. From the point of view of my private, day-to-day life, this moment is still unattainable. But looking at it from the viewpoint of a community, a historical movement, a continually evolving culture…

“You’re right,” I said, smiling. “It practically already happened.”