Image: Nina Hill

Okay, hold onto your hat, because ima get a bit ranty.

There’s a thing I’m seeing in the kink scene these days that’s making me a bit mental. Specifically, I’m seeing a shift away from “your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay” to “I am the guardian of what practices are acceptable, even between consenting adults, and those who engage in play I personally don’t enjoy are not only bad and wrong, but actively sick”…as often as not accompanied by heaping servings of projection and mind-reading, with an extra-large order of gaslighting on the side.

Anyone who’s read me over the past few years/decades knows that I am a champion of personal autonomy and agency. I’ve talked extensively about this before. I enjoy engaging in kink where I consent to things in such a way that I can’t withdraw consent, and yes, I understand that’s not a lotta people’s cuppa, which is fine. Different folks have different tastes, yeah?

Thing is, I’ve seen a backlash brewing in the kink scene against folks who enjoy playing with shelf-stable or irrevocable consent, in a weird sort of “people who do this are eeeevil” way.

This has especially been the case with the fetish called “somnophilia,” or sleep sex. This is, as it turns out, a kink I quite like, though more and more I’m seeing claims that it’s always bad, always toxic, whatever.

One of these anti-somnophilia screeds, which I read with some small measure of frustration and, I have to say, a bit of amusement as well, is here: Somnophilia: More a Crime Than a Kink. Gaslighting, mind-reading, projection, this one has it all.

I invite you to read the entire essay. I’ll be picking apart specific arguments that jumped out at me, starting with this one:

There are three things are taken from the victim when they’re tranquilized: their speech, their sight and their movement. Historical patriarchy required the silence of women and allowed them to speak only when they were furthering its cause. Domestication symbolized the lack of movement. Sight, the precious awareness that life could be any different.

Now, there are women and girls with movement, voices and vision. As the patriarchy fights its loss of power, its most ancient beneficiaries feel it the most.

To silence, to blind, to imprison women in their bodies, is to enact patriarchal principles within one’s cosy domain, safe from scrutiny. It is the inability to perceive woman as a whole being. Roofieing is an act of opportunistic cowardice, an offshoot of a dying patriarchy. It’s how men fight back.

Did you feel it? A disturbance in the Force?

I could point out the obvious, surface flaw in this argument: that it equates somnophilia with “roofieing,” a little linguistic Three Card Monte that you aren’t supposed to notice or react to, but I’ll say the bit you’re not supposed to say: sleep sex doesn’t have to involve drugging someone, and most often doesn’t.

But this is a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation argument. You’re supposed to get so hung up on the surface flaw in the argument that you start debating whether it’s “really” somnophilia if no drugs are involved that you don’t notice the deep flaw in the argument:

Rather bold to assume that somnophilia always involves a heterosexual couple in which a man has sex with a sleeping woman, eh? 🤣

I’m a man who likes somnophilia. It fascinates me that the people who argue about how evil this kink is assume that must go only one direction, that it must mean I only like it if I’m having sex with a sleeping (female) partner. In fact, I have female lovers who like having sex with me in my sleep; two of my lovers have standing, shelf-stable consent to do as they please to me whilst I sleep.

Remember, folks: when someone tells you you what you’re thinking and feeling, when someone claims to speak to what motivates you without listening to you…that’s the very essence of gaslighting.

This reminds me of the second-wave, sex-negative feminist argument that bondage and domination are always degrading to women, because they’re inevitably a male in the dominant role tying or dominating a woman in the submissive role. (When this was pointed out, one famous sex-negative feminist said something along the lines of “if men play a submissive role, it’s because they get something out of it, so the man is still in control.” Weird that she could imagine a man getting something out of being bound or bossed about, but couldn’t imagine a woman getting something out of it.)

This is a type of projection we see all the time. “I am a woman; I cannot imagine enjoying this; therefore, no woman would ever enjoy this. Women who say they enjoy it are, therefore, either lying or brainwashed by the Patriarchy.” The same form of argument has long been used to assert that gay men and lesbians must be mentally ill: “I cannot imagine wanting to shag someone of the same sex; therefore, nobody would want to shag someone of the same sex; therefore, someone who says they want to shag someone of the same sex is mentally defective in some way.”

The lyrics change but the tune remains the same.

And the thing is, the person who wrote this essay is so close to getting it.

The essay also says:

I’m an advocate for sleep as a panacea for most ills. It’s about the most vulnerable state one’s body can be in, a semi-death state, one’s sensory perception reduced to the bare minimum, one’s cells in desperate need of rejuvenation, the shutting down of a tired brain. It’s also a state that requires complete trust in one’s environment, the letting down of one’s guard.

Yes! Yes, exactly! This! 👆This, right here! That’s what makes somnophilia hot! You’re allowing someone in to that most vulnerable, most unguarded space. That’s the point, at least for me. It’s hot because it’s so incredibly, unbelievably vulnerable. To allow someone else access to you in that way, to know that you can do that and still be safe…it’s exquisite.

Image: IgorVetushko

I get that some people don’t like being made that vulnerable. I really, really do. That’s why I don’t practice this kink lightly. That’s why I do this only with intimate partners I feel safe with, and who I trust implicitly, and who have also expressed an interest in the same sort of play.

I also understand that we draw personal lines in different places. Many years ago, when I still lived in Florida, I met a Black woman at a play party whose thing was plantation owner/plantation slave rape play. On a purely intellectual level, I can sorta see why someone might find that super-hot. I also told her there’s no way I could go there. I just…I get the difference between consensual and non-consensual play, I understand CNC, but I just absolutely can”t do that. (She told me she has trouble finding lovers who will explore that kink with her and you know what? I believed her.)

But here’s the thing:

I don’t tell people this kind of kink is intrinsically wrong. I don’t say that those who do it are immoral or criminal. I don’t tell people with this kink that they’re feeding into white supremacy. And I sure as hell don’t presume to know what goes on in their minds, or project my own feelings, onto people who do it. It’s not my kink—in fact, I have a visceral reaction against doing it—and that’s okay.[1]

That’s the thing that gets me. It’s the idea that if you do something that I find uncomfortable, my discomfort, and my inner monologue about what makes it hot for you, entitles me to tell you that you’re wrong for doing it.

I am, as I said, a huge advocate for personal agency. If I choose to allow my partner to have sex with me whilst I’m asleep, as a grown-ass adult with moral agency and bodily autonomy, I believe I have the right to make that choice. It might not be the right choice for you, but it is for me.

Are the people involved adults? Are they doing this freely, uncoerced, because they enjoy it? Are they taking measures to assure that nobody is harmed and that the people involved get what they want from the experience? Then fill yer boots.

I’ve heard about BDSM communities where engaging in this practice, even outside the context of group events like play parties, will render you excommunicado, branded a bad person nobody should play with, and I cannot express how deeply fucked up that is.

There’s a certain aura of smug purity culture that’s taken hold in a lot of sexual subcommunities that I believe is harmful to everyone. It’s hard to look at these arguments and not see old-fashioned sex-negative moral Puritanism with the serial numbers filed off.

Maybe you’re not into somnophilia. That’s cool. But consider this: If this kink is in fact relegated to the dark dungeon of the unacceptable in your community, what kink do you think people will go after next? Purity culture is never satisfied. There is never a time when people say “okay, we’re pure enough now, thank you all for coming, go about your business.”

If this isn’t your kink, what will you do when they come for a kink that is?

[1] Side note: A lot of folks in the kink scene talk a great deal about consent and boundaries from a submissive person’s point of view. People who play dominant roles also have limits and boundaries, something I feel doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.