Sex-Ed and BDSM

Last spring I went to see the musical Spring Awakening with some friends. The actors were from a theater troupe at a local university. They were talented, had clearly worked hard, and I definitely enjoyed the performance in an aesthetic way. But watching Spring Awakening also brought to the surface some questions I’ve been sitting on for a while. Particularly, what role does BDSM have in teen sex-education?

Spring Awakening is a coming of age story based on a German play from the late 1800s. The characters deal with the dark elements of sexuality in a controlling and repressive society; the play includes death, abortion, suicide, masturbation and allusion to kink, among other things. Not for the faint of heart. Watching it both made me thankful for those corners of the world where teens get decent sexual health information and anxious about the ways our sex-ed still falls terribly short.

In some small ways, I am sure this conversation is happening; but never in a form that is big enough. In all of the time I have spent interacting with the BDSM scene, or reading other’s accounts, I have yet to find anyone address if or how BDSM ought figure into teenage sexual health resources. It’s utter absence can make me feel crazy for even wondering. I teach sex-ed right now in an environment so progressive that a mother once specifically thanked me for teaching her daughter about using lube for anal sex. But I would never dream of mentioning BDSM without my teens bringing it up first, because I would be terrified of crossing boundaries, alienating the kids, or possibly losing my job.

My own teenage years were rather tortured with regards to the kink elements of my sexuality. In high school I went through a repression and severe self-loathing stage where I denied myself any erotica, and accused myself of being sick and supporting violence. Not knowing about consent language meant not knowing how to find the consent-language porn. I spent years misled into thinking that being kinky was tantamount to loving rape. No one was there to correct this horrifying error.

At 17 I went through an InternetMan phase where I would talk to any stranger online who wanted to discuss kink. I found some terribly creepy people who said some truly awful things, and it was never less than a hair shy of being genuinely dangerous. After high school it took me over three years to figure out where to find the kind of kink community I now take for granted. My first sexual partner, who was a honest, loving, feminist man, explored kink with me, but we were unsafe. I have some scary memories of moments that were almost assault with a man who really, actually and truly, had no intention of committing violations. We were uneducated and confused.

When I was a teenager, FetLife didn’t exist. If it had, I would have had to violate the TOS to join. AOL had stopped carry Usenet. I had never heard of the alt.* hierarchy and knew not what a newsreader was. This was typical for kids my age. The porn I found was mostly awful and depicted rape with no TW and no indication of safewords or negotiation. I knew exactly one other friend my age who was into kink and was terrified to let him know I shared his interests. I was kinky, but didn’t know what that meant or how to deal with it, where the kinky people were or what they could do safely once they were together.

I know I can’t be the only person with stories like mine. There are people now who count down until they are 18 to join us kinksters on Fet (spoiler alert: once you get here, it can still be confusing and rapey) and there must be that many more who don’t even know sites like Fetlife exists. For a teenager who has kinky desires—or who questions monogamy—or has any sexuality that isn’t normative enough for their school’s GSA (if they are even lucky enough to have one) where are the resources? Do they exist? What do we owe our young people, and how can we possibly give it to them? When I think about sitting teens down for a chat about BDSM or polyamory, it seems like such a great way to be banned from ever working with children that it is almost laughably absurd. So what to do?

These questions bother me because I am a sex-educator, and I want my education to be honest. They bother me because even if I can’t be honest, I want to at least know what honest is. They bother me because I have combed the internet for people talking about BDSM and adolescent education and have found almost no content that doesn’t stigmatize kink in some way, invalidate it in a political sense, or maintain that underage teenagers are incapable of consenting to kink with each other. That is such a short shrift, it makes me feel all cray in a Feminine Mystiquey kinda way.

I spent my youth being internet stalked by pedophiles and hating myself and was nearly raped by the first important lover I had in my life, and all things considered, I’m actually lucky. It shouldn’t have to be this way, and short of sheer luck, I have no idea how it could have been any different. Google doesn’t help if you don’t know what to search for. You can’t find consent-erotica if no one has told you that such a thing is possible. But how do we make sure that the teens know what to search for?

My writing as Snarksy isn’t largely going to be dedicated to teen health, but it is dedicated to fighting sexual assault. The adults who rape or are raped in the kink community were all teens once, and kinky teens themselves are often violated. I am seeing a one-to-one connection between proper sexual education and the ability to protect oneself from violence.

So for now, I will be thinking about how to teach teens about the true multiplicities of sexuality, and what it means to be safe, sane and consensual in those contexts. If I come up with answers I’ll tell you, and please, do share your thoughts with me.