Growing up, I knew that I wanted to be tied up (or tie someone up — I wasn’t sure which), but I didn’t know that I was “kinky” or what that word even meant. I met my first Sir in college, on the gay dating app Scruff. His profile was straightforward: “I’m looking for ink, kink, and twink.” I was slim and had some tattoos, so I fit at least some of his criteria.
On our first meeting, he asked me if I knew what kink was. I must have given him a poor answer, because he promptly directed me to the internet. Although we lived in a small Georgia town, he happened to be a popular porn star at Kink.com in San Francisco. He took me to my first Folsom Street Fair, the largest leather event in the world, and bought me my first harness. I’ve been involved in the world of fisting and floggers ever since. I am so grateful for that introduction. He gave me the words and the ability to explore on my own.
I am a leather child of the internet. I never needed approval from a doorman to get into a BDSM club, and I never had to call a number in the back of a leather magazine, as kink-minded people once did in decades past. The internet was mine, and the incredible access and knowledge it provided me has changed kink culture, too. It has united us in ways we could have never achieved before, while ushering in new problems and challenges. As we depend increasingly on digital spaces, misguided censorship threatens to destroy it.
Below, we asked four queer people to discuss their experiences in digital kink and how the internet has changed the scene — for better and for worse.
Andrew Gurza, disability awareness consultant, Toronto (he/him)
I’m into leather and I eat ass like a champ. I’m also into pup play. And I’m disabled.
The internet has allowed me to bring together my disabled life and my kink life in new and awesome ways, but it also illuminates ableism in our community. I can sit in my wheelchair in leathers or a pup mask and express my kinky self online to people I would not have found otherwise, but because we’re on the internet, we always risk having someone ask ableist questions or write cruel comments with no consequence. For all its wonders, the internet is a bully’s playground.
That said, it’s still so important. I can’t often go to in-person kink events; many have an accessibility problem that rarely gets talked about. There are many disabled kinksters online who can very rarely access in-person kink and leather events. The internet allows them to be involved and connected in the community.
Lloyd Alexander-Winston MacDonald III, fisting top in San Diego (he/him)
When I was 19, I started going to bathhouses and sex clubs in LA. On one such trip, I went to a leather store and found a fisting video called “Acres of Ass.” It was so hot. Some years later, I met a Daddy who told me my hands were huge. He taught me how to fist him, and that was my first time. People today still discover fisting via porn, but not in video or leather stores. There are unlimited fisting videos freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
Before apps and websites, it feels like there was less of a “fisting community,” and if there was, I wasn’t connected to it. Fisting wasn't something I could go out looking for. I might get lucky and find a guy flagging red at the Slammer [a longstanding gay sex club in LA], but that was it.
Fisting is an extreme sex sport. It has risks. The internet has given us the ability to share experiences, build communities, and disseminate tips and methods to keep each other safe. The only downside is that we are now more susceptible to judgment and kink-shaming. I’ve had people who are terrified of fisting flag my content, and various social accounts have been suspended.
The tight-knit online fisting community exists thanks to social media. Many brick-and-mortar sex spaces have either shuttered or are close to doing so. We are at the mercy of internet censorship. If kink is to survive online, laws like FOSTA and SESTA must change, or we’ll simply have to make new spaces and stay under the radar of the massive corporations which now own most of the internet.
Tyesha Best, founder of the POCKLE Project and Social Media Coordinator for International Mr. Leather (They/Them, She/Her)
The internet has done great things for kink, but it hasn’t flipped the privilege pyramid. Cisgender gay men still make certain they feel comfortable in spaces and experiences before worrying about others. It’s like “queer colonialism.” Cis gay men have the ability to purchase and gentrify kink and leather spaces and make them inaccessible and too expensive for other minority populations.
Then again, the internet has given kinky people in rural areas the ability to connect to the larger scene. It has given Black people the ability to organize better, and the growth of Onyx and Onyx Pearls (leather organizations for people of color) have exploded. It has given us the ability to hold organizations, business, clubs, and titleholders accountable, since it is now harder to get away with racism, transphobia, misogyny, sexism, rape, and consent violations and still hold power.
We’ve gone from personal ads in Drummer Magazine — a popular gay leather magazine that ceased print in 1999 — to AOL chat rooms, then Fetlife, Facebook, Scruff, Grindr, and more.
But there are still problems. Racism and transphobia still exist, and the internet has given us the ability to gaslight, derail, dismiss, block, and troll each other. “Call-out culture,” a post-internet phenomenon, has emerged as a way to right these wrongs, but people of privilege —primarily cis, white people — tend to get very defensive when they are called out.
“Call-out culture” is when someone shines a light on a problem that has not been properly addressed despite repeated attempts by those with less privilege to do so. If we take away the “loudness” of this action (which is what happens when white people police our “tone”), we see privilege in action. The fact is, we need call-out culture, even and especially in kink, to push those with privilege to reassess themselves, gain self-awareness, and create necessary spaces for others.
Jack Thompson, International Mr. Leather 2019 (he/him).
I’ve been in the kink world since I was 15. I realized early on that the things that made me sexually excited were not “normal.” Between being trans and being into women — and, later, into men — my experience has been a roller coaster.
I was always into some forms of pup play and submission, but I didn’t know the words for this stuff until I started exploring, which I mostly did on my own. I started going to the International Ms. Leather and International Ms. Bootblack contests nine years ago, and that helped me learn the words and protocols of kink.
The internet has given people more ways to connect with each other. People of all ages are discovering that there are more people like them out there.
Still, there’s something important about realizing that you can turn a fantasy into a reality that happens in kink, and when you discover kink online, all you have is fantasy — especially if you connect with people who are very far away from you. There are many people who’ve never been to an in-person kink event who may have been messaging people in the scene for years. I’ve witnessed disappointment and expectations shattered when they finally experience kink and realize that it’s not as intense or amazing as they’ve been led to believe. When you learn by meeting people organically and in-person, you see all the messy and real parts of kink, and that’s something vital that I think we lose a little bit with online communities.
Sure, the internet has given some racist and transphobic people a megaphone, and I experienced some of that when I won International Mr. Leather. But my story should restore your faith in the leather scene, because the greater community — the one that exists because of the internet — instantly shut down the few folks who publicly said anything negative about me winning and being trans. The community said, pretty unanimously, that transphobia will not be tolerated. The trolls shut up after that.
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