‘There are a lot of bad dominants, mostly men, where it’s basically abuse dressed up as a kink’: Victim-survivors’ everyday navigation of BDSM, kink and fetish

Concerns about the legal landscape of BDSM are being reinvigorated today through public attention to the issue of ‘rough sex’ defences for homicide and abuse. Victim-survivors have orientated around the language of ‘rough sex’ to express concerns about practices across a variety of contexts, from established BDSM relationships to casual heterosex. As such, this paper provides victim-survivors’ everyday navigation of activities and languages around BDSM, kink and fetish. It finds the following key themes as being crucial to participants’ understandings of safe and satisfying practice: (a) communication and recognition of agentic others; (b) community learning and accountability; and (c) being playful and bounded, but not too bounded. This paper presents these as a call to understand how some ‘rough sex’ defences not only excuse or obscure abusive practices but also stigmatise and marginalise certain BDSM, kink and fetish practitioners and communities.