From the Throne: Dr. Carol Queen’s keynote address, Fetish: Working Out the Kinks Conference, Mar 14th 2008
Friday evening I had the pleasure of watching Dr. Carol Queen give an engaging, hilarious, and insightful keynote to the SDSSU’s inaugural conference. The turnout was great, the crowd was fairly diverse (though with many familiar faces), and everyone seemed enthralled. Dr. Queen casually talked about kink, fetish and BDSM (bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism and masochism) practice as it is manifested in, and shaped by, sex work. After defining her terms: kink, fetish, and sex work, she discussed how integral sex work is to cultural perceptions of fetishism, even stating that “kink and fetish have a place in culture only through sex work.” It creates a space in which we can think about , gain knowledge and understanding of, and form expectations… sex work is a ‘nexus of exploration’ for kink, fetish and BDSM.
As an introduction to the conference, it would turn out to be entirely very indicative– a mix of theory, humour, personal experience and observation, future directions. And mostly, a general celebration of sexuality of all stripes.
Speaking of diversity, I found Queen’s extensive listing of fetishes exciting (especially the idea that sexuality theory itself might be a fetish), and found her short mention of ‘fetish-inflected types’ really intriguing. I’ll come back to this in the next post, as the commonality of fetish has been something nagging at my mind, and ended up having a surprising answer by the end of the conference.
Queen did a wonderful job of stroking the egos of us Canadians, noting that a conference of this kind is a rare bird indeed, and also noting the need for more programs like the sponsoring Sexuality Diversity Studies Program. She tipped a hat to Canadian academic forerunners who had done research on sex work in Toronto and Vancouver, and applauded the crowd’s response to her humor and political inclinations. She also recalled a time when she was giving a talk in a dyke bar in Vancouver, and had been so used to ‘sneaking in’ sexuality theory by alternating it with smut excerpts… but at this bar, she said, the dykes kept yelling “more theory, more theory!” Ha! Only in Canada, possibly the only place where theory is a fetish of its own.
In seriousness though, I’d find myself repeating this chant in my head throughout the conference. The deep theory bits took a little longer to rise to the surface of the conference… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Longer post on the conference to follow shortly… suffice to say for now that it is almost impossible not to love Dr. Carol Queen, or to ignore the vast knowledge and insight her spritely personality brings to sexuality theory. The conference itself, as it would turn out, had the same appeal.
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