Decolonizing Kink – with Caritia

After years of exploring alternative lifestyle spaces, it feels important to look beyond the play itself and ask some bigger questions. Where does our knowledge of kink and BDSM come from? Whose histories and perspectives shape what we know? And how do we decide which practices we embrace, how we engage with them, and why?

Join Caritia for an engaging, discussion-based workshop exploring kink and BDSM through the lenses of colonialism, power, race, and the carceral systems that shape how we understand bodies, desire, and pleasure. Drawing on an Afro-diasporic perspective and the work of Stephanie Simbo, whose research explores sex and sexuality, we’ll question familiar narratives, challenge assumptions, and make room for perspectives that are often overlooked.

This isn’t about finding the right way to do kink or policing anyone’s pleasure. It’s about getting curious, thinking critically, and exploring what becomes possible when we question what we’ve been taught.

What we’ll explore

• Unpacking our kink knowledge — Where do our ideas, language, and practices come from?
• Power, race & colonial histories — How have these shaped the ways we understand bodies, sexuality, and BDSM?
• Questioning the familiar — Whose perspectives are centred, and whose are missing?
• Reflecting on our own practices — What do we embrace, resist, or take for granted, and why?
• Imagining other possibilities — How might these perspectives expand the ways we approach kink, desire, and pleasure?

Come ready to question, challenge, disagree, share, and get curious. You don’t need to be an expert in kink history or decolonial theory—just bring an open mind and a willingness to look at familiar things differently.

Let’s get beneath the surface of our practices and see what else we might discover.