It’s true. I do worry about people experimenting who are not connected to a supportive network. But my concern doesn’t end with the kink-curious who have yet to make their way to a munch. I worry about our kink communities. In fact, I worry that we call them communities at all.

I’m not alone in this. Kinksters have been rattling this cage almost since the beginning. We create these gathering places so that we can commune with Others Like Us. We pass the hours on the clock in intimate interactions with each other. We share our knowledge, our skills, our bodies with each other. We seek each other out among vanilla crowds, and when we find each other, it's like finding someone who speaks your native tongue in a foreign land.

But we fail to be more than a collective of people with similar interests and goals. We fail to hold each other accountable, we fail in supporting each other, and in creating an environment where people feel safe enough to be authentic.