20 Nov 2014

Thinking Kink: The Book! Coming Soon

Update 1/5/15: US readers can NOW BUY "Thinking Kink..." here or here! UK readers can reserve their copy here.

I'm thrilled to be able to announce that I will be publishing my next book with McFarland Publishers in 2015. The title has been confirmed as "Thinking Kink: The Collision of BDSM, Feminism and Popular Culture" and the book is based on the "Thinking Kink" blog series that I wrote for Bitch magazine back in 2012.
While it will refer to the blog series and the discussions it spawned, the book is all new material and aims to explore the issues raised by the intersection of kink, popular culture and feminism: three concepts which collided heavily when certain cultural commentators interpreted the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey as evidence that feminism had somehow failed.
Looking at examples of popular culture ranging from episodes of "Friends" to The Story of O, from the lyrics of Alice Cooper to the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and from "The Trailer Park Boys" to "Orange is The New Black", the book  takes on the different tropes that kink is often reduced to, how these are represented in books, TV shows, music and the film industry, and the resulting issues raised for feminists.

Chapter list (provisionally titled):
  • Subversive or Complicit? The Female Dominant 
  • Brave or Pathetic? Masculinity’s Troubled Relationship with the Male Submissive
  • Who’s Vanilla, Who’s Edgy and Why It Matters: The Mainstreaming of Kink 
  • Billionaires, Bullies and Lost Boys: The Male Dominant 
  • Safe Words: BDSM and the Concept of Consent 
  • A Heavy Load to Bear: Feminism and the Submissive Female 
  • Dykes, Daddies and Drag Queens: How BDSM and LGBT people are Portrayed 
  • Consumerism, Switches and Abuse: Different Faces of BDSM
  • Blinding Whiteness? Race and BDSM
I will publicise the release date as soon as I have it, and am looking forward to sharing my latest work with you!

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