The very concept of outing someone is rooted in LGBTQ history. Save for when someone is as out as they can be (as I am), is socially read as trans* (as I often am), or when a person is caught in the act of a homoerotic/queer encounter (as I unfortunately am not very often), LGBTQs are not socially visible as LGBTQs, and thus not readily identifiable upon visual inspection alone as members of a systemically oppressed and marginalized group of people — unlike visibly racialized individuals. This conceptualization is the entire root of how one is at risk of being outed as a lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans* person, or queer.

But kinksters, especially straight white cisgendered middle class kinksters who make up the majority of the public kink scene these days, you are not systematically oppressed by virtue of your interest in kink, and I am sick and fucking tired of watching you — especially the straight white cisgendered middle class individuals among you — co-opt the experience of sexuality-and gender-diversity-based oppression to complain about violations to your expectations of privacy and discretion. The effect of you diluting the very concept of outing in this manner, is both trivializing the oppressions experienced by LGBTQs throughout history and into the present day, and taking the power out of your own words! For what is it to “out” a straight white cisgendered male kinkster, assuming that’s even possible, if not to compare the consequences he faces by virtue of having his privacy violated, to the very serious threats and repercussions sanctioned against LGBTQs for being dragged against their will out of the closet and exposed to the light of day?! And what meaning could that comparison possibly bear if by making the comparison in the first place, you’ve just dramatically reduced the scale and magnitude of its social impact?!

Cut that shit out, and stop pretending it’s your right to co-opt this language, and this concept, and redefine it to further your own privileged goals. Stop coming up with excuses for amplifying your privilege at every available opportunity. Stop trying to declare status as an oppressed group when the evidence is pervasive that your First World Problems are simply not a form of systemic oppression, but the direct consequences of collectively ignoring virtually every way in which the majority of you are privileged. You’ve already collectively co-opted Old Guard protocol and language from the gay leather community, and misappropriated the hanky code (you don’t see the irony here?), and co-opted the very idea of a leather family, from LGBTQs; and this is all after you appropriated everything kink was to LGBTQs, to serve a majority of cisgendered white heterosexuals who needed something to do on a Saturday night. Haven’t you stolen enough?

An Open Letter To All Kinksters: Please Stop Co-Opting LGBTQ Oppression, by HaifischGeweint

TL;DR: Pretty much everything that makes the BDSM subculture a societal institution supporting white supremacist patriarchy has its roots when straight people involved themselves. So in other words, if you hate the BDSM Scene or found it wanting in some capacity, it’s straight people’s fault. Now watch the comments from straight people trying to claim it’s not their fault.

Which I’m actually really looking forward to because, so far, it’s taken Herculean efforts just to get the het BDSM’er shitbags to even admit there are problems. See also: my entire blog.