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Pride Sex

Why We Should Keep Kink in Pride In the Post #MeToo Era

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Josef F. Fischel writes at the Boston Review: “Arguments that kink has no place in a post-#MeToo Pride may appear reasonable, but celebrating public sexuality is an important step toward a future free of racism and homophobia.”

Those who recall the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s may find themselves unsure of how to interpret many of today’s criticisms of naughty Pride paraders, which no longer truck in the language of morality and Christian decency. Rather, this new raft of critiques comes mainly from ostensibly woke, politically left, often gay folks who claim that overt displays of (kinky) sexuality at Pride violate the consent of other attendees and endanger children. These sorts of allegations hit a nerve with queer scholars and activists not because they are outrageous but rather because they are not entirely unpersuasive.

Nevertheless, I assert that these anti-sex, anti-kink complaints are not only wrong but also racist and bad for children. In what follows, I tour through a series of legal arguments about the risks and rewards of public sex before considering how these arguments dovetail with historical concerns about the overpolicing and hypersexualizing of Black communities.

In the wake of #MeToo, it requires some care to explain why it is not always assaultive to see another’s exposed genitals without having explicitly consented. For what distinguishes Louis C.K.’s jerking off at women in his hotel room from exposed buttocks at Pride?

Read the full essay here.

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