Not a moment too soon: A juncture of BDSM and race. (September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cruz, Ariane
• Other Names: Simula Brandy Lin guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Sexualities. Volume 24:Number 5/6(2021)
• Page Start: 819
• Page End: 824
• Publication Date: 2021-09
• Subjects: BDSM -- race -- blackness -- racialized sexuality -- black sexuality; Sex -- Periodicals; Sex customs -- Periodicals; Sex (Psychology) -- Periodicals; 306.705
• DOI: 10.1177/1363460720979309
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-4607

Abstract

This piece reflects on the contemporary scholarly juncture of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM) and race. After a period largely marked by the invisibility and marginalization of racialized sexuality in the study of kink, scholars have recently taken up race, specifically blackness, as central not periphery to the study of BDSM. Intervening in and building upon a black feminist tradition that has historically exhibited an ambivalent relationship to topics of BDSM, pornography, and sex work in the context of black female sexuality specifically as well as an investment in politics of respectability, this work illuminates the racialized erotics of pleasure and power at the core of sexuality.