Kink-shaming and outing in tech
Written in collaboration with Ava Ex Machina.
Last week a notable contributor to the Drupal community was ejected for what Drupal’s creators considered “unacceptable personal beliefs” that were in violation of the spirit of this collaborative community. The ejection was both immediate and harsh, and something that came as a surprise to the open source community at large.
This contributor, if you went by their initial response, allegedly believes as part of a kink BDSM lifestyle that “women are evolutionarily predisposed to serve men and that the natural order is for men to dominate and lead.” And so, he was removed so as not to promote or have Drupal appear to condone this belief system.
Wow. Sounds pretty intense, right? Or at least it sounds like a decision that has broader implications for what is or isn’t okay to practice in the tech community. After all, people have to earn a living, so it would suck quite a lot if they were subjected to someone who was promoting a belief system that they found personally harmful or upsetting.
It’s a pretty good thing then that this entire “male dominant” framework is something that you must opt-in to: Goreanism.
As kinksters in tech, Ava Ex Machina and I find this to be a troubling overreaction and misuse of codes of conduct. We’ll go over the dangers of kink-shaming, risks of being a kinky person in the workforce, and how to improve your code of conduct so that this doesn’t happen in your community.
What even is a Gorean?
Goreanism is a kind of arbitrary nerd belief system, much like Klingon culture, that is based on a fictional franchise of science fiction. It seems to be a male-dominated belief system that purports that men are “naturally” dominant and women are subservient.
As distinctly nerdy kinkstresses, we can tell you that people will base their kink on all kinds of media. But whether you’re into Harry Potter or Star Trek roleplay, it shouldn’t matter as long as everyone is what we like to refer to as “safe, sane, and consensual.”
Kink is based on informed and active consent. All physical play spaces have a strict code of conduct as well as dungeon monitors that actively watch all interactions. Active consent is a huge part of kink, which is why it’s baffling to us that anyone would think that Goreanism would affect anyone outside of the Gor subculture. Anyone involved in Goreanism should be explicitly consenting adults. Anyone who isn’t an explicitly consenting adult should not be affected.
But are Goreans abusers?
Some thinkpieces have stated it’s impossible to separate the person from their kink. We can tell you from experience that it’s entirely possible to go throughout one’s day without flogging another person, however irritated we may be with them.
A healthy kinky individual can and should be able to practice restraint in their everyday lives, just as anyone should be able to have dinner with a member of the opposite sex without engaging in coitus with them on the table between courses (looking at you Mike Pence).
We all have to wear pants in public. It sucks, but we want to be contributing members of society, so we do it. We also make sure that we don’t force non-consensual activity on anyone. If you’re vanilla, that’s totally fine! We can respect your boundaries. You do you.
Since we don’t know the full story behind this contributor’s kink, we’re hesitant to cry abuse here. It’s entirely possible that there was non-consensual activity, but we don’t know for sure. We do object to associating the Gorean philosophy itself with abuse.
This seems to us like a classic example of kink-shaming. Someone finds out that a person is into something they find weird and outside the bounds of heteronormative sex. This is then used to delegitimize the kinky person, destroy their reputation, or take their children away.
Who has the most to lose in kink-shaming?
Both Ava and I are intimately familiar with the dichotomy of feeling both empowered to seek the kind of authentic relationships that complete us, and the very real concern for our personal and professional safety while dating in the kink scene. It is not unusual for individuals that are active in the community to utilize “scene names,” or even face masks, to try to obscure their identities from those they believe might try to shame them for it.
Being outed as kinky carries risk given the importance of reputation in tech. Tech likes to think of itself as being “progressive”, but the Drupal controversy shows that the industry is still not accepting of alternative lifestyles that fall outside the cishet vanilla white male experience.
It’s a common experience for women in the kink scene to meet a male partner who uses more precaution than she does to protect his identity because he feels he has a lot to lose. While the Drupal controversy demonstrates that men are certainly at risk of destroying their personal or professional reputations once they are outed at kinky, men generally are not the ones who have the most to lose.
Women, queer individuals, trans people, and people of color all face higher risks for retaliation and/or violence for their sexual preference. There’s a reason why Ava and I write under a pseudonym. Homophobia is the driving factor in much of kink-shaming. Black gay men face a particularly potent stigma and trans women of color continue to experience the highest rate of violence of all the aforementioned groups.
Since kinky individuals face an additional level of “otherness” that could be used to undermine their legitimate work in the community, it’s especially important to address the very real implications of being outed in the workplace.
So whether or not you believe in the Gorean lifestyle or really like to be caned with a wand, your sexual preferences should not be used against you in a work environment. You have a right to be in a place that will do something about it.
Kink-shaming is sexual harassment in the workforce
Sexual harassment training requirements are often the butt of jokes within all companies, even in the more “progressive” tech sector, and the information contained within them is often misunderstood. While the standard used by courts to determine what behavior counts as sexual harassment is that the actions must be “pervasive and severe,” a company’s internal policy for their employees should hold them to a higher standard than the law.
The rule of thumb for whether or not something is considered sexual harassment is: Is the behavior in question something that a reasonable person would consider inappropriate, persistent, and something someone should have the right to say no to in a workplace?
Being subjected to persistent requests for a date, sexual talk, jokes, commentary, posted images, gossip about an employee’s sexual preferences and appearance can all constitute harassment, as they contribute to a hostile work environment.
For example: gossip about someone giving blowjobs is obviously sexual harassment. Talking about someone’s kink or fetish preferences is no different. While being kinky is not a protected class, often the titillation factor of kink emboldens people to discuss sexual behaviors or preferences (which is still textbook sexual harassment) which can disproportionately impact someone who is member of a protected class.
In the workplace, you can help protect yourself or others by speaking up and ensuring that no sexual harassment is considered acceptable. If you stand up for the vanilla woman who’s been slut shamed by your coworkers, this will help create a safe environment, should a kink-shaming event ever occur.
But open source doesn’t have HR
Open source projects differ from your typical work environment because they don’t have the same policies that are provided by HR. Instead, we have codes of conduct that vary from project to project and cause a completely different set of problems.
One of the major flaws in this Drupal situation is that the Drupal Code of Conduct does not define what classes of people are protected from harassment. A code of conduct is only as good as the specific guidelines it covers and the extent that the maintainers are willing to enforce it. A vague code of conduct opens a project up to the subjective opinions of the maintainers. This allowed Drupal maintainers to oust Larry Garfield based on an incomplete understanding of his particular kink.
A great example of an open source code of conduct is the Contributor Covenant. The Contributor Covenant does an excellent job of defining:
- Acceptable behavior
- Unacceptable behavior and
- Types of people’s identities that are protected, namely “age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation”.
By being explicit about what is and is not acceptable behavior, and what types of identities are off-limits, both community members and maintainers can be held to the same transparent set of rules.
If the Drupal Code of Conduct was explicitly against discrimination against sexual identity or orientation, kink-shaming would have never been acceptable means to remove a community member.
Furthermore, members of open source communities should be held accountable for their actions, not their beliefs or personal lives. At no point has anyone come forward and said that Larry was inappropriate to them and forced them to engage in Gorean kink in person or online. While we understand that it may be unsafe for marginalized folks to come forward and accuse a prominent member of a community of wrongdoing, we remain hopeful that this is simply a matter of kink-shaming by ignorant third parties.
By focusing on disruptive behaviors, rather than intangible belief systems, community maintainers can create clear and actionable betterments for their members. Name-calling on a forum can be quickly rectified. Changing someone’s sexual preference for kink cannot.
This is why it’s dangerous to start ostracizing people for beliefs or private practices that you don’t personally believe agree with. This is a classic example of the paradox of tolerance — tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance. In this case, intolerance of a person’s private sexual roleplay is kink-shaming. By having a more explicit code of conduct, we could have avoided this problem altogether.
Concluding thoughts
Kink is still a widely misunderstood and stigmatized way of life. It carries huge risks for those who engage in the lifestyle, but can also lead to lifelong, fulfilling relationships. It’s why those of us who are in it invest heavily in promoting, and supporting self-regulated communities. This way we know we can socialize safely without hurting those who aren’t members of it. Whether it’s a party, an online forum, or a gathering of friends, we know that it’s possible to encourage the kind of behaviors and best practices that make sure that we can engage in our own roleplay while still ensuring we don’t involve bystanders who did not consent to participate.
The importance of this kind of self-regulation of communities is why we can, and should, continue to utilize explicit codes of conduct to help ensure everyone is welcome to both be themselves and feel safe participating in projects. It’s important to remember that if someone’s private sexual roleplay isn’t for you, then that’s totally okay. As long as everyone is safe, sane, and consensual then you have nothing to worry about.
If you are concerned about how someone else’s lifestyle might impact your space, then make sure your project’s code of conduct spells out explicit behaviors that you want to watch out for. As for the rest of us, we’ll be sure to leave our wands at home for the next tech conference.
