Latest / Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas / Navigating Kinky Desire in India ft. Jaya Sharma

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Navigating Kinky Desire in India ft. Jaya Sharma · Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas

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I'm Lisa Mangeldas and this is Love Matters, a podcast about the relationship topics
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that matter to you and me, And today we're talking about kink. What
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does it mean to be daisy and kinky? What can we learn about consent
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from the kink community, and what unique possibilities for self expression and self discovery
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does kink afford its practitioners. We're going to be discussing all this and more
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with my wonderful guest, Jaya Sharma. Jaia is a kinky queer, feminist,
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activist, and writer who's worked on issues of gender and education for over
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twenty years. She's also a founding member of the Kinky Collective, an organization
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that seeks to raise awareness around kink and strengthen the kink community in India.
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Jaia, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me here.
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I would love to ask you to begin by telling us a little bit
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about your own personal journey and what drew you to king. So I'd like
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to rewind the bit. And so I've been a bit of a late bloomer
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in terms of sexuality, and so I think first boyfriend, first kiss,
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like at age twenty five and as late as that a lot of worry that
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my parents should not find out about him because I come from a traditional conservative
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family and I knew that there would be pressure to get married. Yeah,
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he was a well kept secret. When I was thirty five was when I
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fell in lust with a woman for the first time. Till then I thought
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I was straight. And then it was only at age forty seven I came
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upon the BBSM community. Yeah, I'm fifty nine. I turned sixteen next
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in. I love that with sexuality. I feel this so much in my
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own life as well, that the learning and self discover is infinite and ongoing.
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Yeah. Actually, the very first encounter with King that I can remember
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also links up to the age issue. Coincidentally. So, I was in
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England for a holiday with my girlfriend at the time, who was Chinese but
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who had a girlfriend who was English, so even though they were ex's they
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were very close like family. So anyway, we all decided to go out
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for a kink event. I had no idea what to expect, you know.
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I thought, if you go for a kinky event, you meant to
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wear leather and something latex, you know. And I was a poor Indian
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in England and I was hardly going to go out and invest in some kinky
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gear. So I remember I wore a sadi and what I did was that
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I wore the sadi without a blouse. Okay. And this is not like
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typical me or eating like that. This was me a bit desperate to sort
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of fit in with I don't even know what I was going to go for,
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so anyway, but I wore my pala like around my neck, so
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it was like a cross and the cross was like going below mine. So
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anyway, then I wore a coat on top of that, and it was
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it was a Christmas kinky ball. Okay. So it was like very very
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cold. This was in Brighton. It was in the basement and it was
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so cold they obviously hadn't put the heating on. It was like a very
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like you know, sort of not a fancy place. So my coat never
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came off. I am laughing at that story, laughing. I will be
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quiet as a good interviewer, but I am laughing this. I needn't have
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bothered with all the sort of creativity around the sariplu etc. Anyway, So
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I sat there and I was just looking around and you know, like somebody's
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sitting on a high like a bar stool, this woman, and there's a
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man kneeling in front of her and like, you know, massaging her feet
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and kissing her feet and something something. And then I noticed that there was
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a couple. They must have been I don't know, late eighties, you
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know, I'm just guessing, or maybe even early nineties, like old couple.
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And so they were wearing black, both of them, and the woman
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was wearing a short black skirt and she was quite delicate, like petite,
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and she looked a bit birdlike, and you know, he was quite tall
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and well built. And anyway, just seeing them together at that Kink event,
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I was like wow. I mean, I was like, if I
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ever get into king like, I wish I'd played till my dying day,
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you know, I love that. And they were like a total source of
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inspiration. That was one exposure. And then when I came back to India,
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I have a friend who met somebody on a dating app, like a
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regular dating app, and he turned out to be a dominant and she discovered
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this whole world of like BDSN through him, and through her I discovered the
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world of DSM because she would tell me, you know her experiences and and
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I was like mouth wide open leg listening with like wonder and amazement. So
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then I joined this online kinky space. I won't name it, even though
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you just need to google it and it's the first thing that you'll find.
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But we are still largely in underground community, so we try not to mention
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the name. So it's like a kinky Facebook. We can call it kinky
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Universe. It felt like I had fallen in love. I mean it was
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as dramatic as that, you know, like not with the person, but
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just like this whole new world that had opened up, and you know,
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before that, like nothing, like there was no inkling that there was a
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kinky side to me. I don't know. It was like tiggering something in
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me that felt new and exciting. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
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I love that. Yeah. I realized some of our viewers and listeners maybe
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less familiar with some of the terminology. I'd love to ask you how you
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like to explain what kink is? How would you define kink? You know,
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the dictionary says a twist in a straight line, and then it gets
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spoken of by people who aren't really well versed with what kink actually is is
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if it's like some pathological or stigmatized, unspeakably freaky thing or some trivial,
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frivolous, funny thing. You know, you try to spice up your love
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life. But after reading fifty Shades of Gray or something like that. So
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for me, king can be about power, it can be about pain,
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and it can be about fetishes. So for you know, it's a kind
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of an umbrella. Right. So when it comes to power, the desire
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to give up control or the desire to exercise control very simply is power play.
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Right. Then in terms of pain, being turned on by pain,
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like finding pleasure in pain is the sadism masochism part of king and not every
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into pain. I think one of the biggest myths around kink is that you
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know that everybody's into pain, and I guess it's also the images that we
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see around whips and floggers and all of that. Then there are fetishes,
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which I guess would be when people are turned on by any part of the
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body or by an object that is not normally thought of as being sexual in
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nature. Right, So like that the brighton kinky place, so like just
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the feet, you know, Like I don't think he was, at least
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my senses that he wasn't surrendering to all of who she was, like her
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feet at some special significance erotically for him. So B DSM, So there
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are double acronyms involved, right, So there's bondage and discipline that's one b
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D. Then there's DS, which is domination and submission and SM so S
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is about submission but also sadism and masochism. And then there are fetishes.
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So then king would be the umbrella which includes BDSM and and fetishes. How
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hard is it to be they see in kinky and OWL. I imagine the
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shame and stigma around I mean to be just to be a woman saying a
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half sex, any kind of sex is difficult here, right, let alone
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exploring kinky desires opening, Yeah, it's very difficult. So you know there
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is, and I'm glad you asked that. And you are, of course
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the queen of Instagram, so you know that. Like you know kids who
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are in their twenties on Instagram. For them, kink is the new cool.
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I also know younger people who are quite easily able to say, you
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know, to their friends or whatever, kinky subs wah is also like you
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know, what you put on maybe Tinder or hinge or whatever. You know,
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it's a very different for in the twelve years that I've been in the
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community, I've seen that huge shift. But it's important to remember that it's
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for that age group who are in the metros, who are on Instagram.
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Okay, it's a very specific kind of so kink is cool, but for
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a particular category of people. And often even for those people, there's almost
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a double life, which is your digital self pood and who you have to
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be in front of your parents, et cetera, et cetera. You know,
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so it's not even the cold young the people who seem to have relative
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freedom, even at the apex of the privileged germent, still often unable to
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be open to their family totally. And in fact, I was just thinking
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before I came for this that so as somebody who joined the LGBTQ scene.
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So that was when I was thirty five. Yeah, and I sort of
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had to come out to my mother the fact that I was involved with a
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woman, not because I wanted to, but it was the Zamana of landlines
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okay, not mobile phones, and she happened to hear a conversation which didn't
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leave much to the imagination, and so she figured anyway, it was really
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difficult, difficult for her, difficult for me. So but I think over
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time, people in my family, you know, sort of have guessed.
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I've had, just like last year, a very open conversation with my brother
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and sister kny in so many years down down the line, and with some
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you know, progressive cousins along the way. But I cannot imagine the way
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that I was able to tell at least a few of them about being queer.
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I cannot imagine having a conversation about King. I mean they probably you
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know, watched this or my watch this at some point that might be my
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grand outing. I mean, I don't care beyond the point, but I
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can't imagine sitting down and having that conversation. And I was even thinking about
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it before I came here. I had one thought, which is that somehow
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with queerness, even though queerness is not just about love, even though there's
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also an effort to you know, kind of in the whole thing about being
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respectable, you know, I think there's sometimes too much focus around love,
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especially now with the thing about marriage India and my own entry into the queer
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scene was lust and not love, So you know, I know, I
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know, and I value their distinction although lust turned into love. But I
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think with kink, I think I fear somewhere that the association would be only
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with sex and lust and not with love. And maybe that's not a bad
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thing, because I think it's important for erotic communities to also just be like,
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you know, who we are and challenging, you know, many sexual
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norms not needing the whole label of love or marriage. So in that sense,
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it's good. I think we're still in a good place in the BDSM
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community. But it also has its difficult side that you can't you're not seen
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as over each other, doesn't matter, you know, like they say not,
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they're okay, it's fine, even though there are two women you know,
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at least they love each other and they can't help it, and you
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know they can't help it. It's strange to me. Also, yes,
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in trying to legitimize what is considered non normative or it's historically been discriminated against,
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the pathologize, there's this tendency to either try and find a biological like
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you know what we wouldn't choose to be gay. We can't help it.
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Yeah, I feel that's why put someone in that position where they have to
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justify in that Why can't I choose? I mean, I think there's a
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tricky territory, a heart take. I can't, I can't, even in
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a politically correct space, make such a claim, you know, when people
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say, go on this way? But why is it less legitimate if I
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want to explore desire? Because I want to, you know, why does
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it have to be biology or marriage that is the only sort of vehicle within
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which to legitimately lay claim to an identity or a desire? I wish it
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was in that way, but I think there is this tendency for something to
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only be respectable once it has the same trappings as the normative, which already
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is so flawed, right, I mean, I think heterosexuality and marriage like
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the most elaborate form of drag ever, you know. I mean, we're
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contorting our selves to conform in this way where you don't even see that it's
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a performance, but it so is right. But sorry, thanks for coming
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to my ted talk. This is really about you. But I have feelings.
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I have feelings. That's so important. But I think that one of
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the reasons, okay, do things about why kink is in that sense different
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from EDGBT. Of course, it's an overlap. I mean, I myself
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am an overlap between the two, right, So I'm not. But in
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terms of communities, like a friend of mine in the Kinky Collective always says
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that the BDSM community now seems to be where the LGBT community was thirty years
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ago. You know, it really does feel like that. So for instance,
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even in terms of like being on this show, that nobody else from
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the Kinky Collective, even though we're an activist group, nobody else can come
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on the show because you know it's being recorded. And if this was a
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queer based conversation, I mean, you know, like I can think of
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like fifty people like who I personally know who I would happily say, you
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know, invite them for this conversation. So there's a wonderful feminist, kinky
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academic, Gail Rubin, who I love, and so she talks about the
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charmed circle. So she says that in the middle of the chance circle is
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the gender conforming, opposite sex, monogamous married couple. Okay, and then
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the further you move out of that charmed circle. The greater the stigma,
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the more people in those marginalized sexualities are punished, and the less privileges they
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have. In the Indian context, of course, it would look a bit
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different in the sense that we would have the same cast different go through if
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you're like in North India. Uh, you know, definitely it should be
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a son and not just you know, children, et cetera. But in
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order to uphold that that core you know of social power structures, whether it's
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patriarchy with it, it's cast, right, because you don't want things to
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get messed up. You don't want intercast marriages to be happening to dial you
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cast purity, or you don't want same sex couples because then what's going to
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happen to the division of labor between two people, What's going to happen about
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inheritance, you know, lineage? You know, So it's it's not in
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the air. These sexual norms are very much upheld, yeah, by by
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power and privilege, and so gain Rubin says that, uh, LGBT people
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are of course way out you know, sex workers maybe in her diagram like
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after that, and she puts, uh BDSM practitioners, uh sadists and masochists
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in the outer one of the most outer rings of the of the circle.
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So I think the other stigma is like even even higher. Like I was
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saying, you don't even have the respectability that some now LGBT people are aspiring
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too. You don't even have that to fall back on. Maybe, like
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I was saying, maybe that's not a bad thing. But so so one
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can see why why king related practices are not accepted, you know, because
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they're not fitting in with that with that norm, right, So forget about
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pinovaginal sex for reproduction in king if what matters is power and or pain.
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Actually, penetration or sex as we know it is perhaps the least interesting thing
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that happens, you know, And I can say that from personal experience,
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it's really I mean, of course, you can even have penetative sex in
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kinky ways that add to the power play, you know, but that's different.
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It's not the centerpiece, right, So one can imagine why it would
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be. It's such a slap in the face of like you know, many
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sexual gnoms. It's turning upside down so many things, right, it's even
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turning upside down, not just that sex equals penetration. It's also questioning like
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sex equals pleasure, because when you bring in pain into the picture, then
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it's not just those nice, pleasant sensations that we're talking about, right then
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something seemingly ugly like like pain. You have to contend with the fact that
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that can be erotically extremely fulfilling. And yet I think if people are honest
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about how they experience desire and pleasure, even you know, with a little
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bit of introspection, these ideas that perhaps pleasure and pain melt together in ways
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that are less distinct than we're allowed to generally think. Or you know,
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safety and adventure, or desire and disgust, or any number of different binaries
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that were kind of geared socially to think of as an either or situation can
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actually be a both and situation. I love your phrase yummy yucky, and
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I think that that's something we don't get encouraged to interrogate, but once we
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do, no matter how and I don't know how you feel about the term
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vanilla, but no matter how vanilla someone might see themselves as I think you
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can to some extent empathize or recognize that there are aspects of even you know,
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everyday experiences or more traditional sex that does blur these lines. Right when
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you just think of an act like oral sex, I mean, it's kind
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of yummy yucky in a strange sort of way. You don't want to look
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just anyone's genitals, and yet with the right person can be the most sexy
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thing in the world. Right, So I'd love to hear a bit more
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about about how kink sort of unravels these easy binaries and actually how revelatory that
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is. So it's it's all around us, it's it's within us, the
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yummy yuckiness. And so it's like even when I'm eating golga pus, which
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I love, which I miss very much in Goa, the one thing I
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miss about Delhi. Sometimes I just land in Delhi and I go straight to
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golg pas. But you know that whole thing of like it's spicy and your
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mouth is burning and your eyes are watering, your nose might be running,
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you know, but it's delicious and it's addictive, and it's like, you
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know, right there, you have yummy yuckiness. Or people who love running.
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I mean, I hate any cardio, but you know, but people
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who love running, you know that kind of state that you get into where
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you are exhausted and you know your heart is beating fast and that's uncomfortable,
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but you want to run and you want to run a mariage on or whatever.
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Or you know, there's so many examples where it's not just pleasure or
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or pain. And I think that is the stuff of life. I think
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life is kinky, you know, whether we like it or not, or
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whether we call it that or not. And so life is kinky, and
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I think we are all kinky, you know, it is Uh, it's
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very easy to uh to say, Okay, here is one community, you
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know, like it's the BDSM community, like, and they are far away
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from us, but we are very liberal and we are very progressive, and
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we will also support you. And you know you must not be stigmatized and
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one day things will change. But but you know, you want to be
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allies from a safe distance, right. I've seen this in the LGBT context
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as well. People want to be very supportive, but almost because they want
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to so distance themselves from desire. And it's happening very much now in terms
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of king. But if if we go back to what I was saying earlier,
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the basics that if king is about power play, then how can we
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all not be kinky? Because powerplay and control, playing with control, a
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little bit, giving up little taking control. It's the stuff of sex and
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the erotic. Right, So you take something as simple as two people having
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sex and one person holding down the arms of the other person on the bed
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just that much. I mean, that's powerplay right there, right because the
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person who is holding the arms down is exercising control, the one who is
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being held is relinquishing control, And right there you have power play. Or
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then, in terms of pain as pleasure, love bites really not so exotic,
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you know, or out of the ordinary. Uh, in that experience,
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we know, we know that that pain can be pleasurable. Right So
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so really it is a spectrum, and we are on that spectrum somewhere.
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But for I think some of us, uh, kink, like you were
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saying, is to spice up the sex life. That is that that's kind
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of one end of the spectrum. And I'm not judging that that's that's fine.
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Why not? I mean, regular sex can get terribly boring. And
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at the other end of the spectrum are those of us who feel that kink
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is our sexual orientation, that it's really important to who we are. And
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for instance, somebody for whom kink is a sexual orientation. Uh. And
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I know friends like that who live in dread that they might have to get
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married to somebody from a different sexual orientation, not so different from lesbian and
24:11
gay friends, you know. So that's how important it is for many of
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us. It's central to our lives and who we are. And so but
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this danger of wanting to distance oneself from from kink, you know. So
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I'll just give you an example that recently, you know, we had a
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workshop with mental health professionals because as the Kinky Collective, one of our fantasies,
24:45
if you like, is to have a national sort of network of kink
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aware mental health professionals because it is a real problem. You know, you
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go to a therapist, you don't the last thing you want to encoun I
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mean anyway, uh, you know, had to suffer silence and internalized shame
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and stigma and guilt, et cetera. The last thing that you want to
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go is to a therapist who doesn't understand or who is judgmental. So so
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we run workshops and sessions with mental health professionals so we had the good fortune
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of having a two day workshop, we decided that we would really bring to
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the table this danger of othering, you know, because the way that they
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were, in a very well intentioned way, they were like, you know,
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we want to understand and we want to be able to help clients who
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are from the BDSM community, you know, which we understood and appreciated,
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but we also wanted to challenge the kind of sharp distinction that they were making
25:55
between themselves as as progressive therapists into help and those kinky clients out there.
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Yeah, So at the end of the first day, after all our different
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sessions and activities and all that, so we said, why don't we do
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one thing that everybody should go home and write down are fantasy of ours which
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we have, you know, not really been able to share with anyone.
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And then we'll come back the next morning and you don't even have to read
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out your own fantasy and nobody will see your handwriting, and like one of
26:33
us will, we'll read out the fantasy for you to help people feel safe
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in terms of anonymity. So next morning, when we did that, lo
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and behold, the kinkiest fantasy is ever Okay, I mean everything was there,
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like everything from a kidnapping fantasy to like non consent fantasy to humiliation to
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whatever you know. And and then we talked about it and we said,
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like, you know, like this is wonderful because we are all on a
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on a spectrum and uh and it was so sweet and so touching. There
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was this one therapist who was a tall, quite a tough looking guy,
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and he said that when uh, my friend from the Kinky Collective was reading
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out the the fantasies, he said, he said, I was holding my
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breath. He said, I could not breathe because I was so nervous.
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This is a therapist, This is somebody like nobody would know whose fantasies is
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which one, you know, but that that level of of nervousness about even
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our our fantasies, you know. So so this is a therapist kind of
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context. Hm. I think as as a feminist, as as somebody who's
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now now, I keep losing track of ears as I grew so, like,
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you know, maybe forty years or something into the women's movement in India.
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As feminists, I think, and I see now as an epidemic.
28:10
Okay, And now I've talked about this enough. I've made enough presentations,
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I've run enough workshops, I've written enough articles and got responses. I can
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now say I'm not a researcher like that, I'm not a statistician, but
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I can say with a great deal of sadness and confidence, then it's like
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an epidemic feminists thinking that they have fantasies that run counter to their feminism,
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that they are having the wrong kind of fantasies, that you know, these
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are not fantasies that they should be having. So it's really it's just breaks
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my heart. You know, I get what you're saying. I mean,
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I guess, particularly if you are a woman and you may find yourself aroused
28:56
by the idea of being hit by a man, or the idea of a
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non consent fantasy, can seem irreconcilable with your feminism. But in fact,
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the realm of consensual erotic play should not be a place where we judge ourselves.
29:08
Right. I have heard you quote in the past, Patrick Calafia who
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says, you know, the things that we think should get us wet and
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the things that actually get us wet aren't always the same. And that's okay,
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right, I'd love for you to expound on that idea, because I
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think it's an assumption many people make that BDSM and feminism are incompatible or somehow
29:27
in conflict with each other, when in fact, kingk and BDSM established non
29:32
feminist principles, and actually we can all learn a lot about consent from the
29:36
king community. Yeah. So, I think that very counter to this idea
29:41
that kink reinforces patriarchy, that there are so many ways in which kink actually
29:48
challenges patriarchy. Yeah. So, just think about the woman dominant totally in
29:52
control, I mean like totally in control of not just her own sexuality in
29:59
whoever she is playing with at that moment, totally in control of that other
30:03
person's sexuality as well, of course consensually. So then there's that kind of
30:10
challenging of how women are meant to be. You know, you're not meant
30:14
to have agency, you're not meant to be in control, you're not even
30:17
meant to voice what you want, and here you are like you're running the
30:21
show when you're a woman dominant, right, or then if you're a male
30:25
submissive. You know, again, it's like if I can use HINDI like
30:29
an anguta. They cannot to patriarchy because you know, men are meant to
30:34
be in control. They're meant to be in charge, you know, they're
30:37
not meant to be all like vulnerable and like so. And as a male
30:41
submissive, you have men surrendering control, you know, just like mistress,
30:47
like tell me what to do. It's like a complete reversal of what a
30:51
patriarchy would like. Yeah, and then you have transfolk who are also able
30:56
to be in a non judgmental space, who are also able to use consent
31:03
to establish boundaries. You can touch me here, you can't touch me there.
31:07
If you get my gender wrong, twenty we'replashes for you. And I
31:11
know friends who've had that experience. So you know, for all genders,
31:15
it's a space where typical sexual norms are turned on their head, even for
31:21
a female submissive, you know, because everybody's imagination is like male dominant,
31:26
woman submissive. Tellone like the most hideous form of patriarchy ever. But even
31:32
for a female submissive, it's a cliche in the VDSM community. But the
31:36
power does lie in the hand of the submissive, right And I can speak
31:41
as a submissive because if whenever I want, whatever is happening to come to
31:47
an end. As a submissive, all I have to do is to use
31:51
the safe word and instantly, instantaneously, unconditionally, whatever is happening will come
31:57
to an end. And if I am not surrendering power, like nobody will
32:02
be able to exercise that power. So without a submissive, actually there is
32:07
no dominant and I had that experience. If I may share during a session,
32:12
So a session is time bound period before which the people who are engaging
32:17
in BDSM or kin play before the session starts. Depending on you know,
32:22
some people like to talk a lot, negotiate a lot, talk a lot
32:25
about this is what I want, this is what you want? You know.
32:29
It can be a very elaborate process. It can even go to the
32:32
extent of some people like to use Excel sheets. Yeah, so excel sheets
32:37
have like hundreds of different possibilities. And then the submissive is meant to say,
32:43
you know, like this is my hard limit, like this I definitely
32:45
don't want to do, like never ever, like don't even go there.
32:49
And then there are soft limits that you can indicate like this I'm happy to
32:52
try or not so happy, but I can try. You know, I
32:58
assume that there are no rules in kinky sex, but actually there are many
33:01
very elaborate rules which almost allow for a sense of safety within a very adventurous
33:08
playground. Yeah, totally. And the wonderful thing is and as it should
33:13
be. You know, kink should never be like a party line situation of
33:16
just one way. Even the way people do consent, and I'm saying do
33:21
consent because it's a process, it's not a thing. The way that people
33:24
do consent is so different. So you'll have people who like excel sheets who
33:30
will do it like a elaborate thing, and negotiation. I learn a lot
33:34
of like, you know, what are you into and what am I into?
33:37
And a lot of talking beforehand. And then at the other end of
33:40
the spectrum are people like me who hate talking beforehand. Okay, for me,
33:45
it's like a turn off, and I just want to be taken on
33:49
a journey, and if I want the journey to end or to pause at
33:52
some point, I will safeguard, you know, I say read if I
33:55
wanted to stop altogether. I say orange if I wanted to slow down.
33:59
You know, But I hate talking much beforehand. I hate even more talking
34:05
during what we call playing because I feel like it interrupts the erotic energy for
34:10
me. You know, if somebody is like checking in how you is it
34:14
okay? And all that. I mean, I know it's coming from a
34:15
place of concern. It's also sometimes coming from a fear of not violating consent,
34:20
which is a good fear, but you know, for me, it's
34:22
something that interrupts. Would you say the safe world though, it's such an
34:25
effective and powerful tool, but extremely a powerful tool which allows for you to
34:31
go with the flow instead of having to prescript how things are going to go
34:35
in advance. Yes, could you elaborate on that a bit. I just
34:37
feel like it's such a valuable tool. Grateful to the safe word because then
34:42
it allows me to be able to immerse in that experience. Like yeah,
34:47
for me, it's like meditation. So safe word is a predecided word.
34:53
So the understanding, very clear understanding, is that if the person, anybody,
35:00
either person uses the safe word, whatever is happening has to come to
35:04
an end. Okay, there's no confusion. There's nothing about reading the body
35:07
language or like I thought this is how you're feeling and this is how I
35:12
thought your body was reacting, and you know, or I didn't hear something
35:15
like very clearly. If you are saying the safe word, it means no.
35:22
That is the indication of no. Of course, it doesn't have to
35:24
be a word. It can also be a gesture. You know, if
35:28
you're unable to speak, maybe biologically unable to speak, or if you are
35:31
if you have your mouth covered or gagged, then you know, you can
35:37
maybe drop something pre agreed, reagreed whatever. It can be, okay,
35:40
but it has to be simple. It can't stan asked, yeah, play
35:44
and something that you can remember, right. It can't be some sort of
35:47
like you know, silver birch tree or something which you like, but at
35:52
that moment you'll forget to say silver bird, you know, so you just
35:57
might as well just say read for the sake of simplicity, and like,
36:00
you know, you'll remember it readily. But of course it's up to the
36:04
people. They can figure out whatever safer they want to. And it's such
36:07
a wonderful way to do consent. And I really, like, you know,
36:12
with some sort of missionary zeal, like the next thing I want to
36:15
do in life is and maybe we can collaborate on that is, you know,
36:17
just to say that safe wood is something that everybody can and should use.
36:22
It's not something that's specific to the BDSM community. Of course, it's
36:27
emerged from because consent is at the heart of what we do, right.
36:31
If we don't do it with consent, it's abuse. So you know,
36:35
we are in that sense have some if I might sound a bit grand,
36:38
but some kind of expertise around consent. Yeah, over the years, not
36:43
just as individuals, as a community, so there is that collective kind of
36:46
you know, wisdom around consent. And I just like, I really wish
36:52
it's something that everyone would try out. I will, yeah, because when
36:55
you think about it, I mean the safe word practices like after care,
37:00
I think even just I know you said you don't like talking about things beforehand,
37:04
but the ability to be comfortable talking about sex is something most people do
37:08
not even entertain as a possibility, even if they're having sex where there's so
37:13
little spoken of that then when you do say something is taken as an affront,
37:15
you know. I mean, people are notoriously horrible at hearing a not
37:20
yea if I'm honest, and a lot of my women friends would I think
37:22
say the same. We've gone through sex that we didn't want to go through.
37:25
With because going through with it seemed like the safer way than saying stop.
37:30
How horrible is that? And when you think of even in the law,
37:34
the fact that maddyl rape is legal, you know, I mean a
37:37
consent is overridden legally too within marriage, which is the most traditional, most
37:43
sort of normative sexual paradigm to exist in right, And so I think we
37:46
really would do ourselves a huge service no matter where we stand, to take
37:51
a guard out of the BDSM book when it comes to consent totally. And
37:55
you know, like I was saying that I don't like talking much before and
38:00
not during, but I really need to talk after. How is it for
38:05
me? How is it for you? What might we do differently? And
38:08
this thing about safety and adventure? You know, I just feel it.
38:12
It's such a valuable way to look at not just turking, but just life,
38:15
you know itself. So Esteberel the very popular therapist who's worked with couples
38:22
around the world. And there's a psychoanalyst called Stephen Mitchell who talks about safety
38:27
an adventure. So he's written that, you know, see, if you
38:30
take people who've win in a serious relationship with each other over a long period
38:35
of time. So he talks about how there is safety in that relationship right
38:38
there is the warmth, there is a familiarity, all of that, and
38:43
how sometimes the adventure then lies in the affair, or even in a polyameterus
38:50
kind of a setting, it could be with the non primary partner, you
38:52
know, sometimes the adventures are happening outside of that primary relationship. So he
38:59
talks about how there's a kind of a splitting between safety and adventure, and
39:04
he says, of course it needn't be like that. You know, safety
39:06
and adventure can come together. In fact, even for that couple who's been
39:09
in a relationship for ten years or whatever, you know, there can be
39:14
But he also talks about how we have internal fears that we ourselves maybe don't
39:19
want to feel to have adventures with the person who we are safe with because
39:23
what if we lose that person? What if the price that people pay for
39:27
adventure is to lose our source of safety. You know, I said,
39:31
wow, I mean, it's such an important term and sounds so real.
39:36
The seldom in our lives do safety and adventure actually come together. But I
39:40
feel that in BDSM, I feel so grateful that the two do come together,
39:46
you know, and because we feel safe enough. We feel safe enough
39:51
because of the strong culture of consent, because there's a community. And so
39:55
how large would you say the sort of can commune unity in a formal structured
40:01
way is in India where even if it's underground and people aren't able to be
40:05
out at least together, would you say that, Since you've been a founding
40:08
member of the Kinky collective and it's been how many years sometimes twelve twelve years?
40:12
Now, how have things evolved? How large is the community? And
40:15
also how is the Indian king community perhaps unique in some ways as compared to
40:20
kink communities in let's say the global nod So about the BDSM community. So
40:25
on this kinky Facebook pace. So I am terrible at numbers, but there
40:31
might be like as many as a million in India, and there are people
40:36
from all over the world, but just the Indians. But the people in
40:39
the community who are able to meet each other in person as are much smaller.
40:45
Unfortunately, it's only in the bigger cities. So we organize what are
40:49
called munch. Munch is a global term. So it's basically a safe space
40:53
to get together, to hang out, to chat. It could be at
40:55
a coffee shop. It could be at a bar or a restaurant where public
41:00
space lovely space to like get to meet people. There are many experiences of
41:07
just the joy and wonder of finally meeting in person somebody who shares your kind
41:15
of you know, desires or yeah. So it's often like that kind of
41:19
magical moment of like, I'm not the only one with desires like this,
41:23
you know, very similar to what I've heard queer friends talk about that fee
41:30
first first through the internet and then but the magic of then meeting the other
41:34
people like in flesh and blood is quite something else. And I wanted to
41:38
tell you that. In April and Goa. In fact, this year,
41:43
we had the most amazing coming together of people from the vdas and community for
41:49
the first time the Kinky Collective organized something like this and there were eighty of
41:53
us from eleven different states for three days, staying in a resort which we
42:00
took over entirely, and we had to because that was, you know,
42:02
the only way people would feel safe. But the kind of nervousness that people
42:07
felt before they came, you know. So there's this one person who's from
42:13
Hyderabad and now moved to go a trans person. They wrote an article about
42:17
their experience at King Kon and they said that before they left home they changed
42:22
the sheets, the bed sheets, because they didn't know what that experience would
42:29
be like and they wanted to come back to a nice, clean bed for
42:34
just the comfort of you know that. I mean, it's a small detail,
42:37
but that's a kind of fear, in trepidation and excitement with which people
42:42
came together. And it was so funny because you know, on this kinky
42:46
universe, people are posting, you know, including women. It's wonderful to
42:51
see photos, sexy photos of themselves and like, I haven't posted in a
42:54
while, but you know, I also like enjoyed it so much, and
42:58
you know, as a feminist, I had someone learning to do also once
43:01
I started. It's like a trippy thing to you know, post your own
43:06
photos. So it's funny that people were joking and saying, oh, like,
43:08
we recognize each other from our asses, but not a not our faces,
43:15
you know. And so people who've been online friends for like ten years,
43:20
you know, meeting for the first time. So we had demonstrations,
43:23
We had panels, including on feminism and king for which you also sent the
43:28
video clip and we had a fashion show, the most fabulous fashion show,
43:34
like no designer could ever have put together a fashion show like that, and
43:37
people were so creative. You know, we had no expectations either you know,
43:42
somebody were a collar and they'll come along, or somebody carryer. Weave
43:45
such high levels of creativity. I mean, I think that it's also because
43:49
kink allows you to access that erotic creativity that it expressed me. That's why
43:53
people take such good photographs, and maybe that's why the fashion show was so
43:58
fabulous. You know, as somebody was in a sadi and a corset,
44:00
a leather corset, I mean, what a great combination. Somebody came like
44:05
a Bengali like Babu with like auti and a kurta a female body person,
44:12
a very dear friend of mine, and with the dilu underneath the cura.
44:15
It was just wild. And in fact, I know, disrespect to the
44:21
two people who are wearing latex. I mean, you know, maybe they
44:23
watched this, they shouldn't feel bad, but to me, that was like
44:27
the least interesting part of the fashion throw. I think they must have felt
44:31
very very hot. I bet and go in the in that latext fitted kind
44:37
of kink where you know, at the end of it, just that feeling
44:40
of community. It was like people who are on a high. You know,
44:45
it was like a life transforming experience. And again what I know from
44:51
LGBT context, you know, used to happen like that for years ago.
44:53
When you come together, especially in large numbers, it's like is powerful.
45:00
Oh really? But so would you say that in India that I think you've
45:06
hinted at it already, that it tends to be in urban spaces that tends
45:09
to be a certain amount of privilege around who gets to access this type of
45:15
community as of now. But we also discussed that to some extent everyone is
45:19
kinky, and so of course there are people who might want access to this
45:22
sort of thing all over the country and rural areas with varying socioeconomic power.
45:28
And also, I would imagine language can be a barrier because so much of
45:30
the formal vocabulary and terminology both around queerness and okin actually tend to be this
45:37
English vocabulary that we now all use in the activist sort of space. But
45:42
there is to some extent the reality that it is not accessible to everyone.
45:45
Right, But correct me if I'm wrong are There have been some things initiatives
45:51
that you've tried to as the Kinky Collective kind of also reach people to whom
45:54
it might not be as accessible. And there's evidence for the fact that there
45:58
are kingsters literally every Yeah. So in two ways. One is that like
46:02
when we do workshops with mental health professionals, so some of these therapists have
46:08
clients that are not just in the metros or not just in urban areas.
46:13
Right Like we did a workshop with I call actor tists in Bombay and I
46:20
still call it Bombay, and they said that they get phone calls from people
46:23
in small towns talking about their desires, whether it's of wanting to control or
46:30
be controlled, or wanting to inflict pain. I inflict is a loaded word,
46:35
but you know, I guess like you're saying when one doesn't have the
46:37
language for it. In the videos and community, we would call it impact
46:39
play, which is not loaded. But I guess if somebody is calling from
46:44
a small town in vast it's like, you know, quite likely that they
46:46
will say that they like to inflict or to receive pain. So that's one
46:51
way that the more we work with with therapists who have a larger outreach.
46:55
That's one way. The other is that we had a workshop with sex workers
47:01
and sex workers who work in small towns and who have their clients coming from
47:06
small towns, maybe even villages, and it's very apparent that clients are coming
47:13
to them with all kinds of kinky desires, right so right there, and
47:19
there you have if evidence was required. I mean, Kamasutra gives enough evidence
47:23
from thousands of years ago, but even in a contemporary context, if evidence
47:29
was required, it's right there, you know. And of course, unfortunately
47:31
it's only men who are coming to or trance male assigned at birth people who
47:37
are coming to sex workers, not women, and they're being able to pay
47:42
for these services. And the sex workers are just wonderful about it in the
47:45
sense that completely non judgmental. So in fact, it was so beautiful members
47:50
of the Kinky Collective and the sex workers. I mean, it was so
47:53
wonderful actually for these two kinds of stigmatized communities to come together and just laugh
48:00
and just like you know, just to be in that space of complete like
48:04
non judgment and so then many funny stories to tell about clients and what they
48:09
wanted, and you know, they were like very matter of fact, like
48:13
if you get enough money and if you're safe enough, we want those clients,
48:16
and we want repeat clients. And you know, we were also thinking
48:20
that maybe in the future we can do some workshops with them and how they
48:22
can improve their skills. In fact, it's a likelihood issue as well,
48:27
like if you can flog better, like why not, maybe you can charge
48:30
more for it. We didn't get around talking about the kinky desires of the
48:35
sex workers themselves, and that's a conversation for the future. But I suspect
48:38
that's going to be a more difficult conversation because these women and transgender sex workers,
48:45
of course, have experienced a lot of violence, both from families,
48:49
community, from clients. And one thing that is very real and true about
48:54
King is that you have to have just a little bit of this time to
49:00
be able to play with that energy. Right, if you have experienced that
49:05
much violence, it won't come to you so easily to play with some of
49:08
that that energy, which you know can look like violence but is not violence.
49:14
But you know what I mean, to play with that sort of intensity,
49:17
which can involve control, which can involve physical pain. I think it's
49:22
difficult for some of the sex workers because they've suffered it so much. So
49:28
what I'm trying to say is that to play with something, you need just
49:30
a little bit of chink between reality and what you are trying to play with.
49:37
You know. So like a friend of mine who's also in the Thinky
49:39
Collective, he says he's a white man, but he's lived in India for
49:43
many, many years. So he says that if you are racist, you
49:46
can't do race play. You know, race play means you play with these
49:51
racial stereotypes. So you could have a black person, you know, calling
49:54
the white person who they are playing with, you know, some very racially
49:59
load like you know Vali's like and vice versa. But he said, you
50:04
can't do that if you're actually racist, because then there's no play. What
50:08
is a play? Then you're just being racist. So similarly, if you
50:12
are a patriarchal, horrible person, man, you can't play with um sleep
50:19
it's yeah, just because it's wearing some bells and whistles, right, And
50:23
I think that's such an important point actually, because that's a big misunderstanding.
50:28
There'll be these celebrity scandals around, you know, some abuse perpetuator in the
50:31
name of BDSM or something. And then, unfortunately, when it comes to
50:35
any stigmatized minority group, what happens is that something going wrong, which can
50:40
happen anywhere, anytime, becomes seen as an indication of the whole group.
50:45
Whereas when a you know, when a normal man does something normal does something
50:47
wrong, which is all the time, he's just one, right, Oh
50:51
he killed his wife. Oh you know, okay, fashion, time of
50:55
fashion, you know. And just because something is a minority communeus experience as
51:00
stigmatized in that way. I think the language itself is so problematic. But
51:05
you know what I mean doesn't mean that there is this burden to be perfect,
51:07
right, I mean you can have a great kinky sex, underwhelming kinky
51:12
sex, kinky sex that didn't go so well, just like you can have
51:15
any kind of experience in all of those categories, right, and we should
51:19
be allowed to of course. And I want to just pick up on one
51:22
thing, like when you're seeing minority community and what you're describing is a moral
51:27
panic exactly, Sorry, thank you. Yeah, but it's very good that
51:30
you said the word minority. But I think the point is exactly because it's
51:36
not a minority phenomenon exactly. It's because we all have kinky desires. Hence
51:40
the moral panic is even more you know, like what's the word, like
51:46
an explosion of it, because it's touching something inside you at an unconscious level
51:52
that you don't want to go there. And if you're seeing any kind of
51:55
jeluk, any glimpse of it around you, you want to clamp down on
51:59
it really hard and fast, like less it, you know, come too
52:02
close to home. So in fact, even this minority majority thing is like
52:07
these a very safe binary category exactly, and at least actually the minor Yeah,
52:14
we have to stay with the reality that everybody is kinky, you know.
52:16
And I just want to add to that that it's not only the mainstream
52:21
society. Okay, I want to come back to the point about feminism and
52:24
our fear that that if you're good feminists, we shouldn't have desires like for
52:30
non consent, for humiliation, for the predomination, et cetera. And what
52:34
I was saying is like an epidemic, this kind of feeling that the two
52:37
are in conflict with each other, or that we are lesser feminists or bad
52:40
feminists for feeling like this. I mean, for me, what really I
52:45
think needs to come into the picture. Is a psychoanalysis. I mean,
52:49
doesn't psychoanalyst sounds very heavy duty, you know, it sounds like, oh,
52:52
some very academic thing. All I mean is that we need to remember
52:55
that everything is not happening at the level of the conscious mind, the brain,
53:00
and what we know is happening and what we can say in words very
53:04
easily. That's one part of life. There's also the unconscious at play,
53:07
right, there's also the psyche at play. But to ignore that we are
53:13
doing it at our peril because we have to recognize that fantasies stem from the
53:17
unconscious. Right, It's like dreams. If I'm murdering my mother in my
53:23
dream, it doesn't mean I really wanted to kill my mother, obviously saying
53:27
something about my relationship with my mother, but it doesn't mean that. So
53:31
fantasies can never be read in this one to one way. There is never
53:36
a literal interpretation of fantasies, and we should really spare ourselves going down that
53:42
route because that's not how fantasies work, just like that's not how dreams work.
53:47
The other thing is, I think too, Remember, I think the
53:50
two most valuable words I've ever heard, I think in my life bio psychoanalyst
53:54
called Bruce Fink. So he says, prohibition eroticizes. Okay, it is
54:00
precisely that which is taboo that will turn us on. And they link it
54:06
in a very powerful, simple way with infancy because as babies like we had
54:10
access you know what Freud called we were polymorphously perverse, means we had access
54:19
to all kinds of pleasures, right, or to do with our own body,
54:22
shitting, being, touching wherever the mother was, our mother's breast of
54:28
course, only existed for us, you know, when we were babies,
54:30
and we thought the whole world and certainly our mother's or mother, because in
54:35
patriarchy it's the mother could be any primary caregiver. So there was this kind
54:38
of fantasy that we are all powerful, and there was the permission to be
54:44
as perverse as we wanted to be as infants. But then as we grow
54:47
up, that's when prohibitions come in. Right, you cannot touch certain parts
54:52
of your body. You certainly cannot play with shit and pee, and the
54:55
mother is certainly not only yours, you know, in a hetero said context,
55:00
as the father, you know, there's a job there's like many other
55:02
demands on her time, and she is not only yours. And then there
55:07
are restrictions on your access to your mother. So prohibitions start, right,
55:10
So that is why all the prohibitions, that all the news that are said
55:15
to us, whether it's by a teacher, by a parent, by a
55:17
boss, by a colleague, by fellow feminists, whatever it is, every
55:22
time we encounter a taboo or a prohibition in our adult lives is an unconscious
55:28
reminder of what happened when we were kids and infants. Right, that doesn't
55:34
go away from because the unconscious is like a storehouse of memories and experiences.
55:37
Right. So that's why every time in our adult lives we encounter a taboo
55:43
or a prohibition, there is such an erotic charge around it. We know
55:46
that even from bunking school, right, bunking classes or maybe finding our best
55:52
friends partner, you know, anything such a harby whatever, you know,
55:57
that whole thing, it's like whatever you're not meant to desire. Of course
56:00
you wouldn't desire it. So of course it's precisely that which is not okay
56:06
is going to turn us on. Yeah, so even in a feminist context,
56:10
right, So like I'll just say for myself, So, feminism runs
56:14
in my blood. That's how I feel, right, I mean, it's
56:16
like in my blood. It's not just like over some ideology I'm subscribing to.
56:22
So and I give a damn about mainstream sexual norms, right, I've
56:24
broken enough of them. But I think that a breaking feminist sexual norms,
56:30
I think for me, if I were to be honest, carries like an
56:34
additional kind of erotic charge because feminism is what I respect, right, So
56:38
mutuality, dignity, respect, consent, like all these are pillars, right
56:44
and so precious. And so when I'm playing, when I'm playing with that,
56:49
it's super hot because it is feminist aboose that I'm playing with, and
56:53
I see zero contradiction. I mean, i could have a rape fantasy,
56:57
but I'm also going out on the streets and I'm protesting against repe Where's the
57:02
contradiction. So as we wrap up, I would love for you to share
57:07
some tips for perhaps any listeners who might really resonate with this but not know
57:13
where to begin. Say, you're someone who acknowledges your own desires is skinky,
57:16
but I've never had a community or a form of a space to navigate
57:20
this where can they go? So, since I'm a member of the Kinky
57:23
Collective and that's why we exist, so we would love to hear from people,
57:28
and you can you know, find us easily on Instagram, on Twitter,
57:32
Facebook, So just reach out. So whether it's just in terms of
57:37
wanting to talk, or whether people want to explore joining the community, coming
57:42
for workshops, all that can be figured out. You know, there's no
57:45
one answer for every body, but it'll be lovely to hear from people.
57:52
And yeah, hope the tribe grows. Thank you, thank you, it's
57:57
been such a joy talking to you. Yeah, thank you so much.
58:00
Thank you, and thank you to everyone who's tuned in to Love Matters today.
58:04
Love Matters is produced by Indian Express and DW, Germany's international broadcaster,
58:08
and we would love it if you rated and reviewed this podcast wherever you're consuming
58:14
it. Of course, I'd also be thrilled if you shared it with your
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friends, so please do consider sharing it on social media and if you'd like
58:21
to write into us, you can do so at love Matters at DW dot
58:24
com. Until next time, This is Lisa Mangeldas and I believe that Love Matters