PROUDLY PERVERTED – Perspectives on the WomenLesbianTrans*Inter* BDSM Community (074)
The WomenLesbianTrans*Inter* BDSM community is fun, boisterous, open, warm-hearted and caring. It is also filthy, direct, blunt, and rough. It gets down to business, since people clearly state what they want and put it into practice consensually.
The first exhibition of its kind in Germany and maybe even in all of Europe, PROUDLY PERVERTED – Perspectives on the WomenLesbianTrans*Inter* BDSM Community offers an opportunity to look into this internationally connected scene.
As part of the Year of the Women*, the exhibition offers insight into the part of the community that was founded by women/lesbian SMers in the 1990s and which exists in that fashion until today. The exhibition PROUDLY PERVERTED was developed in cooperation with women, lesbians, trans* people and inter* people who are part of this community. They show their perspective of the community and share what BDSM means to them. Joy and enthusiasm as well as the knowledge and values of the community are conveyed, while also addressing debates and disputes within the community. 33 WLT*I* BDSMers are individually portrayed, and more than 70 presented via objects and interviews. They come from Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Portugal, the USA and various other countries.
The practices, etiquette and types of events of the WLT*I* BDSM community differ in many aspects from those in other BDSM scenes. Desire is lived beyond traditional expectations and gender norms, subverting sexist and heteronormative ideas of lust. Consent in the most intimate contacts is negotiated together and continually reaffirmed. Respecting one’s own boundaries, as well as the boundaries of others, is the focal point that makes a kind of sexuality possible, which is self-determined and still open to relishing new experiences. The community has perfected to learn and teach just that – through workshops, events and, of course, playing.
Very few people outside of the WLT*I* BDSM community know what happens inside of it. That’s why a part of this world is presented in the exhibition PROUDLY PERVERTED at the Schwules Museum.
The exhibition PROUDLY PERVERTED isn’t exclusively for BDSMers or WLT*I* people, but for anyone who is interested in an open, feminist and consensual kind of sexuality. The WLT*I* BDSM community shows how much pleasure is possible when it isn’t tempered with by outer or inner shaming but communicated and negotiated. The etiquette and techniques that the community has developed for that purpose are exciting, regardless of sexual orientation. The exhibition wants to showcase a culture of consent and calls for better-sex-for-all!
