Kink is Political - Values

From accountability processes to convention presenter applications and all other sorts or organizational copy, “values alignment” has become an ever increasingly popular way to position kink institutions and personal practices. In our opening session for the season,  we’ll interrogate the fantasy of “values based community” and what it means to envision values as a place to start and a point of commonality. We’ll read such an approach to values against a broader more open ended concept of valuing and the kink scene’s strange antagonism to both judgement and taste, concepts that “values based thinking” often lets people dismiss all-too easily. 
About this series
Kink is Political is an online discussion with Addie Tahl, Georg Barkas, Andrea Rimon, and occasional special guests. Participants are invited to join a discussion during which we unite critique with an emphasis on the practical and day-to-day issues and challenges of kink, intimacy, and relationships.
Focusing on concepts central to BDSM, leather, rope, and sex-positive communities, it interrogates widely adopted approaches and commonly held notions. It aims to understand the politics of kink beyond the language of sexual liberation and politics of sexual liberalism, both frames that have proven insufficient in addressing widespread harm, a rising international tide of sex-negativity and reaction, or in guaranteeing that the most marginalized can sexually flourish.
Kink is Political is an examination of the contexts and consequences of how we talk about and understand gender and sexuality. It is a forum to think about how kink spaces and practices operate, what works, what doesn’t, and what we can use to build something better.