Kinky and Queer: Identity, Orientation, and the Politics of Desire

Is BDSM who you are or what you do? Exploring kinky identity as orientation, the coming out process, intersectionality with race and gender, living authentically in hostile world, and the radical politics of claiming transgressive desire as fundamental to selfhood.

Here is the question that keeps people up at night, the question that generates more anxiety than any technical concern about safety or technique: “Am I kinky, or do I just like kinky things? Is this who I am, or is it something I choose to do? And does the answer to that question matter?”

For some people, BDSM feels like orientation. As fundamental to their identity as being gay, straight, or bisexual. As immutable as eye color. They did not choose kink any more than they chose their native language or which hand is dominant. They discovered it, the way you discover you are left-handed by picking up a crayon and realizing this hand feels right.

For others, BDSM is preference. Something they enjoy, sometimes intensely, but not core to identity. They could take it or leave it. If circumstances made BDSM impractical, they would miss it the way you might miss a favorite hobby, not the way you would grieve losing essential part of yourself.

And for many people, the answer shifts over time. What began as curiosity becomes orientation. What felt like orientation at 25 becomes optional preference at 45. The categories themselves prove inadequate to capture the messy, evolving reality of human sexuality.

Why does this matter? Because identity shapes everything. It determines how you think about your desires, whether you feel entitled to pursue them, how you handle incompatibility with partners, what you are willing to sacrifice to maintain your practice, and whether you view BDSM as core selfhood requiring protection or recreational activity you can abandon if convenient.

It matters for coming out decisions. Do you tell family, friends, coworkers? The answer often depends on whether you view kink as identity requiring authenticity or private preference requiring no disclosure. It matters for relationships. If BDSM is orientation, then kinky/vanilla incompatibility is as fundamental as gay/straight incompatibility. If it is preference, maybe compromise is possible.

It matters politically. The fight for BDSM acceptance often borrows language and strategies from LGBTQ+ rights movements. “We were born this way. We cannot change. We deserve protection from discrimination.” But is this true? Should it matter if it is not?

This chapter examines BDSM as identity. We will explore the orientation versus preference debate, the process of discovering and claiming kinky identity, coming out strategies and considerations, the intersection of kink with other marginalized identities, living authentically in environments hostile to transgressive sexuality, and the political implications of how we conceptualize kinky desire.

Because here is the truth: There is no single correct answer to whether BDSM is identity or activity. But how you answer that question for yourself shapes the entire trajectory of your practice and the choices you make about disclosure, relationships, and authenticity.

Let us explore what it means to be kinky as fundamental aspect of who you are.

The Orientation Debate: Born This Way or Choosing This Path?

The question of whether BDSM constitutes sexual orientation generates passionate debate within the community and among researchers. The answer has profound implications for how we understand kinky desire, how we argue for acceptance, and how we conceptualize our own experiences.

The Case for BDSM as Orientation

Arguments supporting orientation model:

1. Early emergence and stability

Many people report kinky desires emerging very early, often before they had language to describe them or knew BDSM existed. Children who found playground games about capture exciting, who felt strange arousal at restraint, who were drawn to power dynamics long before sexuality developed.

These early-emerging desires often remain remarkably stable across lifespan. The person who found bondage arousing at first sexual awakening typically still finds it arousing decades later. This stability parallels sexual orientation, which also emerges early and remains generally consistent.

2. Attempts to change fail

People who have tried to suppress or eliminate kinky desires, often due to shame or incompatibility with partners, report that these attempts fail. You can abstain from BDSM activities, but you cannot make yourself stop wanting them. This parallels the failed “conversion therapy” attempts for sexual orientation.

The desires may go dormant but rarely disappear. Suppression often creates psychological distress: depression, anxiety, relationship dissatisfaction, or sense of living inauthentically.

3. Not chosen or controllable

Most people with kinky orientation report they did not choose these desires. They discovered them, often with confusion or shame, not through deliberate selection from menu of options. The desires simply existed, demanding acknowledgment regardless of whether the person wanted them.

This involuntary quality distinguishes orientation from preference. You can choose to prefer coffee over tea. You cannot choose to be aroused by dominance any more than you can choose to be aroused by particular gender.

4. Fundamental to sexual satisfaction

For many people, BDSM is not optional enhancement to sexuality but fundamental requirement for satisfaction. Vanilla sex may be physically possible but emotionally and psychologically unsatisfying. Like trying to eat only with your non-dominant hand: technically doable but fundamentally wrong.

This centrality to sexual fulfillment parallels how sexual orientation functions. A gay man can technically have sex with women but cannot achieve genuine satisfaction that way.

5. Neurological evidence

While research is limited, some neurological studies suggest that people with kinky interests show different brain activation patterns in response to BDSM stimuli compared to those without such interests. This suggests neurological basis similar to other aspects of sexuality.

The pain-pleasure crossover discussed in earlier chapters, where pain activates reward centers, may represent hardwired neurological difference rather than learned response.

The Case Against BDSM as Orientation

Arguments supporting preference/activity model:

1. Many people develop kinky interests later in life

Not everyone discovers kink in childhood or adolescence. Some people have satisfying vanilla sexuality for years or decades before discovering BDSM, then find it appealing. This late emergence differs from sexual orientation, which typically manifests early.

Additionally, some people lose interest in BDSM after years of practice, or their desires shift dramatically. This fluidity seems inconsistent with immutable orientation model.

2. Learned and culturally shaped

Much of what we find arousing is learned through experience and cultural exposure. Someone who has never heard of rope bondage cannot be aroused by it until they encounter the concept. This suggests sexual interests are at least partially constructed rather than purely biological.

The enormous variation in what people find kinky across cultures and historical periods suggests social construction plays significant role. Practices considered transgressive in one context are mundane in another.

3. Can be satisfying without kink

Many people who identify as kinky report having satisfying vanilla relationships and sexuality at various points. They miss BDSM but are not fundamentally unsatisfied without it. This optionality differs from sexual orientation, where relationship with wrong gender typically cannot be satisfying.

4. Political strategy concerns

Some argue that framing BDSM as orientation is strategic mistake. It requires proving biological basis, which is difficult and may not exist. It also implies that only immutable characteristics deserve protection, which is ethically problematic.

Better argument might be: People deserve freedom to pursue consensual sexual practices regardless of whether those practices are biologically determined. The “born this way” defense, while politically effective for sexual orientation, may be unnecessary or even counterproductive for BDSM acceptance.

The Middle Ground: Orientation for Some, Preference for Others

The most sophisticated understanding recognizes that both models are correct for different people, and possibly for the same person at different times.

The spectrum model:

Kinky orientation:
BDSM is fundamental, early-emerging, stable, and necessary for sexual satisfaction. Cannot be changed through effort. Attempting to live without it creates significant distress. This describes some practitioners.

Kinky preference:
BDSM is enjoyed, sometimes intensely, but not required. Can have satisfying vanilla sexuality. Interest may develop later or fluctuate over time. This describes other practitioners.

Fluid kinky identity:
BDSM importance varies across lifespan. Might feel like orientation at some points, preference at others. This probably describes most practitioners honestly examining their experience.

Why the distinction matters personally:

Understanding where you fall on this spectrum affects crucial decisions:

Relationship compatibility: If kink is orientation, incompatibility may be dealbreaker. If preference, compromise may work.
Coming out decisions: Orientation-level kink may require disclosure for authentic living. Preference-level kink may remain private without psychological cost.
Self-understanding: Knowing whether your desires are fundamental or optional affects how you prioritize them against other life demands.
Grief and adaptation: If circumstances prevent BDSM practice, knowing whether you are suppressing orientation or forgoing preference determines psychological impact.

The critical insight: You get to decide how to conceptualize your own experience. No one else can tell you whether your kink is orientation or preference. If it feels fundamental to who you are, trust that. If it feels optional, trust that too. And if it feels different at different times, that is also valid.

“The question is not whether BDSM is objectively an orientation or a preference. The question is what conceptual framework serves you best. If thinking of your kink as orientation helps you advocate for your needs, honor your desires, and live authentically, then use that framework. If thinking of it as preference reduces pressure and allows flexibility, use that framework. The map is not the territory. Choose the map that helps you navigate.”

Dr. DJ Williams, Understanding BDSM

Coming Out Kinky: The Process, Politics, and Personal Costs

If kink is central to your identity, eventually you face the question: Do I tell people? Which people? How much? What are the risks, and are they worth it?

Coming out as kinky parallels coming out about sexual orientation in many ways. It involves vulnerability, risk of rejection, potential for liberation, and navigation of multiple audiences with different levels of acceptance. But it also differs significantly, in ways that complicate the decision.

Why Come Out? The Case for Disclosure

Benefits of coming out:

Psychological freedom:
Living openly rather than maintaining careful compartmentalization reduces cognitive load and psychological stress. You can be integrated self rather than different people in different contexts.

Deeper relationships:
Disclosure allows genuine intimacy. When people know significant aspects of your identity, connections become more authentic. Hiding creates distance even in close relationships.

Finding compatible partners:
Being open about kink attracts compatible partners and filters out incompatible ones early. Saves time and heartbreak compared to hiding until deep investment.

Reducing shame:
Secrecy reinforces internal message that your desires are shameful. Disclosure and acceptance from others helps internalize that your sexuality is legitimate.

Political visibility:
Each person who comes out makes kink slightly more normalized and acceptable. Your visibility may help others feel less alone or ashamed.

Practical convenience:
Not having to hide marks, explain absences for events, or maintain elaborate cover stories simplifies life logistics.

Why Stay Closeted? The Case for Privacy

Risks of coming out:

Employment consequences:
In many jurisdictions, BDSM is not protected class. You can be legally fired for kinky identity. Certain professions (teaching, childcare, law enforcement, medicine) carry heightened risk.

Family rejection:
Coming out may damage or destroy family relationships. Parents, siblings, extended family may respond with disgust, concern, or complete rejection.

Child custody risks:
In custody disputes, kinky identity can be weaponized. Courts have removed children from kinky parents based on assumption that BDSM indicates unfitness.

Social consequences:
Friends may distance themselves. Community standing may suffer. You may face gossip, judgment, or social exclusion.

Safety concerns:
In some contexts, being openly kinky creates physical safety risks. Harassment, violence, or targeting by hostile individuals or groups.

Legal vulnerabilities:
In some jurisdictions, BDSM activities are technically illegal (assault cannot be consented to). Public disclosure creates evidence that could theoretically be used for prosecution.

Lack of control:
Once you tell someone, you cannot control who else they tell. Information spreads beyond your control, potentially reaching audiences you never intended.

These risks are not hypothetical. People have lost jobs, custody, family relationships, and housing due to kinky identity disclosure. The decision to come out must account for these real consequences, not just idealized vision of liberation through authenticity.

Strategic Disclosure: The Layered Approach

Rather than binary out/closeted choice, most people practice strategic disclosure: revealing different amounts to different audiences based on risk assessment and relationship importance.

The concentric circles model:

Inner circle (BDSM community and kinky friends):
Complete openness. These people know everything about your practice, identity, and desires.

Second circle (close friends and selected family):
General disclosure without explicit details. They know you are kinky but not necessarily what activities you practice or how central it is to identity.

Third circle (broader social network):
Vague acknowledgment or strategic ambiguity. Might mention going to events without specifying they are BDSM events. Might display subtle signals kinky people recognize but vanilla people miss.

Outer circle (professional contacts, distant family, casual acquaintances):
Complete privacy. These people have no information about your kinky identity or activities.

Hostile territory (employers in vulnerable positions, hostile family members, people with power over you):
Active concealment. Take measures to ensure these people do not discover kinky identity.

This layered approach allows authenticity where safe while maintaining protection where necessary. It is not perfect solution (maintaining different presentations requires mental energy), but it balances competing needs for openness and safety.

How to Come Out: Practical Strategies

If you decide to disclose, doing so thoughtfully increases chances of positive response:

Choose your timing:
Not during crisis, argument, or high-stress period. Choose calm moment with adequate time for processing and questions.

Control the narrative:
Better to disclose on your terms than be outed. If you sense someone is discovering information, sometimes proactive disclosure gives you control over framing.

Prepare for questions:
Have answers ready for predictable questions: “Why do you like this?” “Were you abused?” “Is this my fault?” “Are you safe?” Calm, thoughtful responses help.

Provide education:
Offer resources (books, articles, websites) that explain BDSM from healthy perspective. This allows them to learn without you having to explain everything.

Set boundaries:
You do not owe anyone details about your sex life. General disclosure (“I am part of the BDSM community”) does not require explaining specific activities or preferences.

Allow processing time:
Initial response may not be final response. Give people time to adjust before assuming their first reaction is permanent.

Have support ready:
Before difficult disclosures, ensure you have support network available if response is negative. Do not leave yourself emotionally isolated if disclosure goes badly.

When Disclosure Goes Wrong: Damage Control

Sometimes disclosure produces exactly the negative consequences you feared. Having strategies for managing fallout is essential.

If facing employment consequences:

Document everything in writing
Consult employment lawyer immediately
Contact National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) which maintains list of kink-aware attorneys
Consider whether discrimination claim is viable in your jurisdiction
Assess whether fighting is strategically wise or if finding new employment is better path

If facing family rejection:

Give them time and space to process
Maintain boundaries while remaining open to eventual reconciliation
Build chosen family through kinky community
Seek therapy to process grief and rejection
Remember their response reflects their limitations, not your worth

If facing custody threats:

Immediately consult family law attorney with BDSM awareness
Document that children have never been exposed to BDSM activities
Gather character witnesses and evidence of good parenting
Consider temporary reduction of visible BDSM activity if necessary for custody protection
Know that many custody cases involving kinky parents have been won with proper legal strategy

“Coming out is not moral imperative. You do not owe the world your authenticity at the cost of your safety, livelihood, or wellbeing. Strategic privacy is not shame or cowardice. It is survival in hostile environment. Come out if and when it serves you. Stay closeted if that protects you. And do not let anyone shame you for either choice. Your first obligation is to yourself, not to political visibility or movement building.”

Raven Kaldera, Power Circuits

Intersectionality: When Kink Meets Race, Gender, Disability, and Class

Kinky identity does not exist in isolation. It intersects with every other aspect of identity: race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, class, age, body type, and more. These intersections create unique challenges and opportunities that single-axis identity models cannot capture.

Race and BDSM: Navigating Loaded Dynamics

Race profoundly affects BDSM experience in ways the predominantly white community often fails to acknowledge. Power dynamics that are abstract play for white practitioners can echo real historical and ongoing oppression for people of color.

Specific challenges:

For Black practitioners:
Slavery reenactment and servitude dynamics can be triggering or impossible given historical context. Marks from impact play raise concerns about police interactions. Being submissive can feel like perpetuating stereotypes. Dominance can be read as threatening in ways white dominance is not.

For Asian practitioners:
Fetishization as “submissive” or “exotic.” Hypersexualization or desexualization based on racist stereotypes. Pressure to fulfill racial fantasies rather than authentic desires.

For Latinx practitioners:
Stereotypes about passionate, hot-blooded sexuality create expectations. Assumptions about gender roles and sexual availability.

For Indigenous practitioners:
Historical trauma around colonization making certain power dynamics impossible. Fetishization of Indigenous identity. Erasure in predominantly white BDSM spaces.

For all people of color:
Predominantly white spaces where racial dynamics are ignored. Partners who cannot understand how race affects your experience of power exchange. Racism in community spaces. Limited representation in education and leadership.

What helps:

Seeking communities and events specifically for kinky people of color
Choosing partners who understand racial dynamics and do not fetishize or exoticize
Setting hard boundaries around activities that echo racial trauma
Finding educators and mentors who share your racial background
Demanding that white-dominated spaces address racism rather than ignoring it
Creating your own spaces when existing ones do not serve you

Gender and BDSM: Beyond Binary Dynamics

Traditional BDSM often defaults to binary gender assumptions. Male dominant, female submissive dynamics are treated as natural or normal. This erases experiences of transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming practitioners.

For transgender practitioners:

Dysphoria considerations: BDSM activities might trigger or alleviate gender dysphoria depending on how they interact with your body and identity
Disclosure decisions: When and how to disclose trans identity to potential partners carries unique risks
Fetishization: Being sought out specifically for being trans rather than as complete person with trans experience
Gendered assumptions: Partners or community members who assume your role based on assigned sex rather than actual identity
Body boundaries: Need for clear communication about which body parts are available for play and what language to use

For non-binary practitioners:

Role confusion: Community often assumes dominant/submissive maps onto male/female, leaving unclear where non-binary people fit
Erasure: Events, writing, and community discourse that assumes binary genders
Finding affirming partners: People who can engage with your non-binary identity authentically rather than defaulting to binary expectations
Creating new frameworks: Existing BDSM language and dynamics may not fit. May need to create your own approaches

Disability and BDSM: Access and Accommodation

Disabled practitioners face unique challenges in communities built around assumptions of able bodies. Yet disability and BDSM can be beautifully compatible when creativity and accommodation are prioritized.

Common challenges:

Inaccessible venues (stairs, no wheelchair access, no accessible bathrooms)
Equipment designed only for able bodies
Assumptions that disabled people are not sexual or cannot participate in BDSM
Fetishization of disability rather than seeing whole person
Difficulty finding partners who do not see disability as dealbreaker
Activities that require mobility or sensation you do not have
Communication barriers for deaf or non-verbal practitioners

What helps:

Demanding accessibility from event organizers
Adaptive equipment and creative modifications
Partners who view accommodation as collaboration rather than burden
Focusing on capabilities rather than limitations
Connecting with other disabled kinky people for shared strategies
Educating community about access needs
Creating disability-centered spaces when mainstream spaces remain inaccessible

Class and BDSM: The Economics of Kink

BDSM often requires resources: equipment, clothing, venue access, event fees, travel to communities if locally unavailable. Class significantly affects access to BDSM culture and practice.

Class barriers:

Expensive equipment and fetish wear
Event fees and dungeon rental costs
Time and money for travel to conferences or community events
Housing situations that do not allow for privacy or equipment storage
Work schedules that conflict with event timing
Lack of disposable income for non-essential activities

BDSM can be practiced on any budget, but community participation often reflects middle class and above. This creates cultural assumptions and exclusions that working class practitioners must navigate.

Conclusion: The Radical Act of Claiming Desire

At the end of all this exploration, we return to the fundamental question: What does it mean to claim kinky identity as core aspect of who you are?

It means refusing to be ashamed. Society tells you that your desires are sick, dangerous, or indicative of damage. Claiming kinky identity says: My desires are legitimate expressions of my sexuality. I am not broken. I am not defective. I am not sick.

It means demanding space. In relationships, in communities, in public discourse. Your needs matter. Your experiences deserve recognition. You are not required to hide or minimize who you are to make others comfortable.

It means accepting complexity. Identity is not simple. You contain multitudes. Your kinky identity intersects with every other aspect of who you are. Sometimes these intersections create conflicts. Sometimes they create beautiful synergies. All of it is you.

It means choosing authenticity. Even when authenticity is risky. Even when it costs something. Even when staying closeted would be easier. Because the alternative is spending your life pretending to be someone you are not.

But it also means honoring your need for safety. Coming out is not moral requirement. Disclosure is personal choice, not political obligation. You get to decide who knows what, when, and how much.

Whether your kink is orientation or preference, whether you are out or closeted, whether you practice intensely or occasionally, you get to decide what kinky identity means for you.

There is no single right way to be kinky. No correct level of identity integration. No required degree of community involvement or political activism. You are kinky enough exactly as you are.

The radical act is not performing kink in particular way or achieving particular level of visibility. The radical act is knowing yourself, accepting yourself, and building a life that honors who you actually are rather than who you think you should be.

Your kinky identity is yours to define, yours to claim, yours to protect, and yours to evolve. No one else gets a vote. Not society. Not community. Not even other kinky people. This is your selfhood. Own it on your terms.

You are not what you do.
You are not what others think.
You are who you know yourself to be.
That is enough.