About Marginalization

What is Marginalization?

What ‘counts’ as ‘marginalized?’ It’s a very broad category on purpose. Marginalization can be defined as “the treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral.” Marginalized perspectives and topics therefore means that we try to discuss and learn about the perspectives of people, groups, or topics that are treated as insignificant or peripheral in the kink or BDSM community. Of course, what is considered ‘insignificant’ or ‘peripheral’ changes based on the social context. To name a basic example: people who speak Spanish as their first language are considered marginalized in many areas of the United States and Canada, but they wouldn’t be considered marginalized in Mexico or Spain. Marginalization depends on our cultural, social, historical, economic, temporal, political, religious, physical, mental, locational, and cognitive context. We take a wide-angle view of the concept of marginalization as much as possible and try to include perspectives and topics from many different areas. In addition, at KBtL we center marginalization within a kinky context specifically. For example, being a parent is generally not considered a marginalized identity within the world, but it is a marginalized identity within the kink community.

Marginalization Examples

Some of our more common topics include things like race, disability, neurodiversity, gender, sex, sexuality, and age, but these are just the beginning. We also consider things like socioeconomic status, religion, marital status, parental status, place of origin, nationality, ethnicity, and place of current residence. Culture, migration status, indigenous heritage, and language can also have a big impact. Health status can also interplay with marginalization and we think critically about the perspectives of people who have chronic illnesses, disabilities, STIs, HIV, or who are in recovery from addictions. Mental health is often a fairly large topic at KBtL and we include information on trauma, mental illness, mental disabilities, and neuro-cognitive conditions in this. Even our occupation, education, and the systems we are involved with from childhood through adulthood (the foster system, the criminal justice system, etc) can have a profound impact on how we navigate the world. KBtL regularly tackles themes of bias, discrimination, stigma, oppression, justice, mutual aid, consent, accountability, and community advocacy.

What is NOT Marginalization?

It’s important also to consider what marginalization is not as well. We use three primary metrics (though we also use others sometimes) when considering where to draw the line in terms of marginalization.

We consider historical, global, and social trends when we talk about marginalization. Not everything that is rare is marginalized. For something to meet our definition of marginalized, it must be so on a historical, global, and/or social scale. For example, demographic data from four years of KBtL conferences reveals that the vast majority of our attendees identify under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Does this mean that being straight is a marginalized perspective at our conference? The answer is no. When we look at historical, global, and social trends with regard to gender and sexuality we see that on the whole LGBTQ+ people are treated as ‘non-normative’, strange, rare, weird, or different at best and dangerous, disgusting, inhuman, obscene, and wrong at worst. Therefore LGBTQ+ people are considered marginalized in our history up until now. Perhaps in 100, 200, or 500 years they will no longer be considered as such!

When considering marginalization we also need to consider safety, consent, and legality. Some perspectives may be marginalized when it comes to the historical, global, and social trends, but may not be suitable for our conference because they are unsafe, illegal, or violate principals of consent. This is why, for example, topics such as religious or political extremism, pedophilia, cannibalism, or the use of certain substances (hard drugs) or objects (guns) may not be suitable for our conference. These perspectives may well be “marginalized” in the strict sense of the term, but they are not safe, consensual, or legal to entertain at KBtL. They key metric here is harm; we ask ourselves if centering this topic will cause active harm.

Accountability, Flexibility, and Growth Opportunity

Finally, we think about the presenter or speaker’s ability to discuss the topic matter when we think about what topics to include at KBtL. Some topics may fall into a grey area in which they are borderline in either of the two above aspects. They may cause discomfort for people and be challenging topics. An example of this could be a discussion on race play where some people might find it offensive and harmful and others could see it as an important reclamation moment. When these situations occur we think about not just the topic but how it is discussed. A good discussion is one that centers accountability (in that the participants take accountability for their perspectives and speak carefully), flexibility (in that participants understand that not everyone shares their perspective and they are not prescriptive or demanding in the discussion), and growth (in that the discussion encourages participants to grow and reflect as human beings).