The term ‘kink’ evokes a variety of cultural responses ranging from curiosity and arousal to disgust and fear. Many of these responses are based on assumptions about its practices and participants, due to often inaccurate and ever-more-frequent representations in popular culture.
These selected authors challenge those assumptions and emphasize how a number of non-normative sexual activities and ways of being can be empowering and liberating rather than deleterious or ‘deviant’, helping to bring the world of kink out of the shadows. They illuminate past and present kinky phenomena by exploring BDSM, experimentation, fetishism, gender bending, performativity, and sexual role-playing, as experienced in a variety of domains and represented in literature, film, and television.
Contributing to revised notions of inclusivity and acceptance, this interdisciplinary work deftly identifies both historical and current approaches to understanding and analyzing kink, and pinpoints avenues for future research. It is an important addition to the emergent areas of BDSM and kink studies.
Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: Kink and Our Everyday Lives; Kylo-Patrick R. Hart
REFLECTIONS ON PRACTICE: FROM SUSPENSION HOOKS TO COLLEGE HOOKUPS
Chapter 2. Kink-Space and the Body: Transforming the Liminal; Teresa Cutler-Broyles
Chapter 3. Creating Spaces, Maintaining Places for Male-on-Male Kink; Nick J. Mulé
Chapter 4. United Collars of BDSM: Critical Exploration of Changes in the New BDSM Scene in a Post-Communist Environment; Lucie Drdová and Adéla Mölzer Hrabáková
Chapter 5. There Has to Be a Better Way: Kink-ifying Campus Hookup Culture to Overcome Communication Challenges; Noelle Summers
REFLECTIONS ON PORTRAYAL: FROM VICTORIAN PORN TO CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
Chapter 6. Kink in the Time of Sexology: An Interdisciplinary Approach to “Abnormal Sexuality” in Victorian Culture; Lorraine Rumson
Chapter 7. Ooh, Shiny! From Catwoman and Mrs. Peel to the Latex Submissive; Jeremy Vaughan
Chapter 8. Kinky Sex Lives and Groundbreaking (Exploitation) Cinema; Kylo-Patrick R. Hart
Chapter 9. Healing the Image: A Conceptual Investigation of the Healing Narrative in Cultural Representations of BDSM; M. Susanne Schotanus
Chapter 10. CONCLUSION: Kink and the Way Forward; Teresa Cutler-Broyles
Kylo-Patrick R. Hart is Chair of the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at Texas Christian University (USA), where he teaches courses in film and television history, theory, and criticism and queer media studies.
Teresa Cutler-Broyles teaches courses in film and cultural analysis at the University of New Mexico (USA), is Director of Opportunities and Research at Progressive Connexions (UK) and is the resident director for a study abroad program in Perugia (Italy).