Just a recap: Type-1 privilege, I said, was privilege that was "the way in which society adapts to suit the needs of the privileged". Type-2 is "those benefits that are invisible to oneself because they are assumed to belong to everyone, even though that isn't true", and Type-3 is "the ways in which people afford preference to a person based on that person's perceived status."
The observant reader will be aware that in that article, I suggested that female privilege (more on which in a later post, probably using the same analytic tools) was probably only types 2 and 3, and that type 1 is reserved for male privilege. Is the same sort of thing true of the privilege that vanilla folks enjoy (that it only occurs in one or two types), or is vanilla privilege found at all levels of privilege?
Renegade Evolution's post is very helpful to us in this investigation. We can start with the list of "kinky" things she identifies as affected by the phenomenon:
A woman wearing a collar
The guy with heavily pierced genitals
The woman who does gangbangs on the weekend
The man who pays a dominatrix
People who get off on pain, giving or receiving
The woman who likes to be choked, the man who likes to be flogged
...if you’re into knife play, forced fantasy, speculums, use and or be used, serious power dynamic, hardcore heavy duty anal/bondage/humiliation- degradation/ sensory dep/ 24-7 lifestyle/throat fucking/multiple simultaneous penetration/large objects/ extreme acts/swinging/fisting, etc…well then…you’re weird.
Some of these things are more visible than others in society, and so different types of privilege affect different things. A collar is an obvious display of a kink (or possibly of being a goth), and Ren points out that a man with pierced genitals may very well find them visible to his peers at the communal showers after sports. Other things are not obvious, but are also hard to keep completely secret - after all, there's a lot of people involved in a gangbang!
I think one of the most important factors about being kinky, like being gay, is that it isn't immediately obvious (unless we choose to make it so), which means that for most kinky folks, the main way in which privilege is experienced is in that kinky folks must always fear what will happen if we are found out.
I read recently (in the last month or two) about gay folks (lesbians, in the particular instances I read about) having to be cautious about "public displays of affection", about the quick glance around to see who is watching, what their reactions might be to seeing two people of the same sex kissing in public. This is clearly at once a type-3 and a type-2 privilege; straight folks in a couple never question the possibility of having a quick snog in the street, and I am sure we just assume that the same is true of gay couples, and I bet there are those who would respond, "but why not just get on and do it, you don't need to check, surely?" Something similar attaches itself to kinky displays of affection. Sure, a straight couple can kiss, maybe even give a firm buttock-squeeze. There are ways for a straight kinky couple to have PDAs that are okay, but you still have to be aware of what type. Being into BDSM, I think the most natural display of affection is a firm slap to the rump, or even a firm tweak of the nipple, putting one's submissive partner in her/his place, accompanied with a smile. The natural way for me to kiss her is to hold her wrists firmly behind her back, or else to pull her mouth to mine by her collar. Maybe the wrists thing would go unremarked by passers-by. The collar thing? Probably not. Imagine if you're a woman Top with her "boy", and doing the wrists thing, and I think you can see instantly how kinky PDA is not really easy to manage.
Kinky folks tend to be well-socialised (this is not always true of online discussions, but there's more a correlation with the "online" than with the "kink" there!) and we know that what we like to do is not easily accepted. That means, just like our gay predecessors in the campaign for acceptance, we are constantly monitoring our interactions in public. It is less of a problem for those whose kink resides only in the bedroom, but for those of us who live a less "scene-delineated" version of BDSM, this is always present. Just like those lesbians checking if it's okay to kiss, we have to be somewhat aware of the mood and tenor of our surroundings to judge how far we can go with just being ourselves, and how much we have to keep under wraps, just because of the ways other people might respond.
That's why Ren writes, "What do you think of a woman sitting next to you on the subway at night if she is wearing a collar? What do you think of the guy in the locker room with heavily pierced genitals?" and so on. For an extreme example of the Type-3 privilege situation, there is the story of the "human pet" and her "owner" who were thrown off a bus by the driver. (It's Type-3 privilege rather than Type-1, because it isn't a reaction by the whole company, but by one man, and it isn't Type-2 because I think even goths and kinky folks expect to be allowed to board a bus regardless of their orientation).
Another example of Type-3 vanilla privilege is given by Ren when she writes, "V.P. opens the door for anyone and everyone who isn’t odd like you to ask you all sorts of personal questions with no respect for boundaries, make all kinds of assumptions about you, your past, 'what made you that way', your relationships out of the bedroom, your sanity, and why yes, even your criminal status or potential to earn such a thing!" The experience of being treated as almost "public property" is genuine, and something that happens to anyone whose sexuality deviates from the straight, vanilla, norm. Some people who choose to be out, do so because i thelps them to challenge these prejudices and assumptions, and answer questions in the hope of maybe normalising the kinky lifestyle a little and thus maybe erode the privilege felt by the vanilla world.
For another example of "Type-3" privilege, look at how my parents responded to my being out to them about my kink.
What about Type-2? So far we've pointed to the concern about PDA as an example, and the fear of discovery that can go with being a kinky person, or "deviant" in one's sexual behaviour. That doesn't strike me as being a significant amount at Type-2 (even though that fear can permeate everything if we let it). Are there any other things denied to kinky folks that are assumed by vanilla folks to be open to everyone? Well, perhaps the most obvious example is that of dating. You're a vanilla person, chatting someone up/going out on the pull, or just getting romantically attached, is in theory pretty simple. You're attracted to a person of your favoured gender, you make signals to suggest you're interested, and either they respond or they turn you down. You go on your date/hook up for the rest of the evening, talk about interests, who you both are, and if it goes well, maybe you get a second date. But if you're kinky, if kink is your sexuality, as it were, then how on earth do you even test the water for whether the other person is kinky too? How can you tell how they'll respond if you even hint at it? Normal routes of finding a partner are almost impossible to follow, simply because if you put just one foot wrong, you never know what could happen. There are those who manage to make it work, but they are in the minority (either by being gutsier than most, or luckier).
Inasmuch as kink is not immediately obvious about a person, type-2 is harder to identify because it is harder to tell when it happens. However, some other examples are that kink is not recognised as a sexual orientation, in the way that homosexuality is. This has effects from the merely "othering" right up to a lack of legal protection. And that legal position is what brings us to Type-1 privilege.
The default assumption in law is that sexual intercourse (that is vanilla sexuality) is consensual; in rape cases it is for the prosecution to demonstrate otherwise. However, in law, when someone strikes another person, it is assumed to be non-consensual and a crime. In many instances, even proving that it is consensual is not a defence. For people whose kink particularly extends to SM or corporal punishment, far from having legal protection, we actually have to fear the law itself! And then there is the issue of domestic violence. As a feminist, I believe that it is right that every effort must be made to stamp out DV and make sure its perpetrators are brought to justice, and punished properly (as deterrent, reform and as protection). Nevertheless, the definitions used by the law to identify cases, can easily be used against consensual D/s practitioners. Since the Crown Prosecution Service will now prosecute even when the alleged victim refuses to testify, there is no protection via "oh, but the Sub would never testify against the Dom, so there would be no case".
But "deviant" sexuality, as long as it isn't about the gender of person you choose to fuck, is no protected whatever your chosen kink (even if it's outside of BDSM). You can still stand to lose your job, and there is no chance of suing for wrongful dismissal or discrimination ("bringing the company into disrepute" is a common line). The assumptions made about me by my father in the story I linked to above, is also made on a larger scale by society in general, and in particular by the law. This is a huge example of Type-1 privilege. It leads to all the examples given by Renegade Evolution in her post, about rape trials, parenthood, even local authorities' attitudes towards BDSM/fetish clubs.
And I don't think it would change very quickly either, even if the law were changed to protect the rights of kinky folks, because it is an endemic attitude of society. People being outed in the papers would still face a general social response that, by the accumulation of Type-3 responses, could still lead to them being hounded from their jobs, and even their homes, even if the law does nothing to attack them.
Kinkphobia is real, and is as fully-functional as a source of "vanilla privilege" as homophobia is of straight privilege, and to some extent as the Patriarchy is of male privilege. (Note that the Patriachy does not generate a fully-functioning female privilege, because there is very little to no Type-1 privilege for women).
Damn, NOW THAT is an examination of VP!
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