The Marginalization of Kink: Kinkphobia, Vanilla-Normativity and Kink-Normativity

A recent wave of academic research has highlighted the wide-ranging and negative impacts that stigma against kink has on kinksters. As scholarship continues to explore prejudice and discrimination around kink, this article argues that fresh insight can be found by drawing on adjacent work around other stigmatized sexualities. Over the previous decades, scholars in sexuality studies and queer studies have developed a powerful conceptual framework of "phobias" and "normativities" for thinking about the marginalization of sexual differences. This framework has its origins in the concepts of homophobia, heteronormativity and homonormativity, but its naming conventions and analytical insights have since been extended to address reproduction, romantic love, monogamy, gender identity, etc. This article argues that this conceptual framework should be expanded once again, this time to encompass kink. Building on the nascent use of this conceptual framework within kink scholarship, this article defines and expands on the concepts of kinkphobia and vanilla-normativity, and introduces the new concept of kink-normativity. This article demonstrates how these concepts can help us better talk about and think through the marginalization of kink.