Because I think it’ll be archived soon: The New York Times magazine article about Peter Ackworth and Kink.com. I think I first heard about Kink.com a good decade ago, back in its formative days when it relied on old stockpiles of vintage porn. If I remember correctly, you could sign up for a free account and get the site’s bondage photo of the day. A small number of people in my circle of kink acquaintances really enjoyed the site’s offerings, bought memberships, and amassed collections of the photos, sharing them with those of us who hadn’t yet found Kink.com.
Good word of mouth, if you ask me, and kinksters who frequented the site appreciated its free and easy offerings.
Later, my Superior would point me to Hogtied.com, one of Kink’s sister sites. It was good, had the kind of intensity I like but ultimately, it largely lacked what I desired. Well, all that changed with Sex and Submission (.com, of course). Finally, someone combined rough and wild fucking with hot bondage (and bondage always goes better with bonking) and other expressions of S/M sex. It was exactly what I needed and it remains my favorite site to this day.
I appreciate Peter Ackworth’s work for two reasons. One, it accurately reflects S/M sex — its intensity, its thrill, but also the willingness of its participants to partake and enjoy. Twenty years ago, we were living in the wake of the Meese report on pornography,the result of a Reagan-era commission. The report castigated S/M and condemned it as sexual violence, making it tantamount to rape. By labeling it as obscene, the report effectively sealed a growing separation between S/M and fucking that pornographers employed to protect themselves. For a long time, you couldn’t find bondage and fucking together.
Which leads me to Reason Two: Ackworth has crossed that line, tested the limit, and he’s done it by using the S/M community’s standard of consent. His approach reflects how a community of practitioners go about it, using what should be the community standard for evaluating S/M pornography against obscenity law, not what social conservatives try to force it to be. It rejects old delineations, both those of the Meese commission and pornographers who were reluctant to cross the line, and projects an alternative that blasts those old delineations to smithereens.
Obviously, Ackworth and Kink.com have earned my respect. He’s accomplished what us kinksters have wanted as paying consumers for ages. But he’s also earned the loyalty of my libido; his sites have given me, the individual with certain sexual tastes and desires, exactly what I’ve desired. Which, of course, works just fine for me.
