An Invitation to Be Radically Inclusive

In 2004 Larry Harvey (co-founder of the world-famous annual arts festival Burning Man) wrote down a set of ten principles to reflect the ethos of a newly-formed global network of Burners. They are some excellent rules to live your life by. You can read them in full here.

It’s the first of these ten guidelines that I find the most interesting, and that I think could best be applied to the kink scene. It is the principle of “Radical Inclusion”.

Sound like hippy bullshit so far? That’s fair. Let’s unpack the concept a little. Under the heading of this rule, Harvey wrote: “We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.”

Does this work when it comes to the kink scene? Most people, if pressed, would say that there obviously are prerequisites for participation in our community. The most notable of these is that you are, in some fashion, kinky.

But why not remove that prerequisite? I’d argue that it doesn’t do us a lot of good – especially since there are no set criteria for what makes a person kinky or not kinky.

Having the idea that one must be predisposed to kinky fun before they can join the community only opens the door to people outgrouping and arguing and very much not welcoming one another.

Why not, instead, make the kink community a place that anyone can feel at home in, whether they’re a hardcore kinkster or as vanilla as they come. Why not make the one and only requirement for being part of the community that you want to be there.

This means not dismissing people because they are different, less kinky, less cool. It means deciding consciously that nobody has any more right to be a part of the scene than anyone else, and behaving accordingly.

I think that could lead to a kinky community that’s rather beautiful. Don’t you?