Kinky Trojans: Forming a bond(age)

There is a scene in the 2004 live-action film “Thunderbirds”: Lady Penelope is in danger. Dressed from head to toe in baby pink and sporting her windswept blonde hairdo, the British aristocrat-turned-agent screams for help, having been handcuffed by a criminal mastermind in the main vault of the Bank of London. She is a damsel in distress, waiting for her knight in shining armor.

For Harry, watching this scene 13 years ago marked the beginning of his journey into discovering his kinks — sexual desires considered outside of the norm.

“I found I enjoyed [the scene], and that didn’t make sense to me,” said Harry, a member of the Los Angeles kink community who is “out” about his persona. “I did some research, and I found out that bondage … a lot of people discover their kink through it, and that led me [through] research and self-discovery.”

When Harry, who asked that his last name be withheld, began his freshman year at USC in August 2013, he was eager to look for places throughout Los Angeles where he could express and apply his “interesting kink.” Luckily, a friend approached him about a panel of experts who were speaking on a kink-related topic, which helped him find the Trojan Munch Club — otherwise known as Kinky Trojans. He later became one of the club’s presidents for two years before graduating in 2017.

According to Harry, Kinky Trojans was founded in Fall 2013 and was originally housed under the USC Queer and Ally Student Assembly until it split the following year. Since then, the club has cultivated a tight-knit community of kink-oriented people by hosting meetings where members can have open discourse on kink-related topics such as power dynamics, rope bondage, consent and the phenomenology of pain.

“I was part of the club from the very beginning and, naturally, I began taking more and more leadership roles since I was out and could communicate with other members and reach out to the other members in the L.A. community,” Harry said.

BEING KINKY

When Harry first found out he was kinky, he did not know what it meant.

“When you hear the word ‘kinky,’ everyone immediately gets a vision of someone clad in latex wearing six-inch boots, whipping somebody with a 10-foot whip that is on fire,” he said. “And simply put, that is not always the case.”

Harry said psychologists like to define normal sex, otherwise known as the “Look Ma, No Hands” approach. According to him, during normal sex, one man and one woman are together in the missionary style, with the man on top and the woman’s head on a pillow. Both should be achieving orgasm at the same time.

Being kinky, he said, is any deviation from that definition.

“People like to imagine kink as some gigantic, extravagant thing that you need incredible skill with ropes for, but if you like to do rope play, or if you like to wear lingerie, if you like to do it in any position that is not strictly missionary, that is considered kinky,” Harry said.

According to Harry, kink is not a spectrum — whether someone is kinky or not is “very black or white.”

“Just because you only like to do one kind of role play does not mean that you are any more or less kinky than everybody else,” Harry said. “My kinks are not your kinks, and that’s OK.”

Since his time with Kinky Trojans, Harry said he has become a better educator within the kink community. Aside from teaching classes and performing regular demonstrations for the public, he also works as a dungeon monitor at Threshold Society, a sex dungeon in North Hollywood.

INSIDE THE TROJAN MUNCH CLUB

According to Harry, Trojan Munch Club hosts several events every year to increase awareness about kink and, more importantly, highlight the importance of consent. For example, Harry said the club has hosted several guest speakers and conducted lectures on proper negotiation, during which members are taught to go over what they want to do with their partners in a sexual context, define their limits and establish ground rules for their interactions.

“The difference between kink and abuse is consent,” Harry said. “There is a reason that boxing is legal because two people consented to be hit by somebody else. If … I get hit by somebody, and I have huge bruises, then that is potentially ground for a lawsuit, but because I can say that I consented to these activities, that makes it a bit more of a legal grey area whether or not there should be severe punishment for the person who did that to me.”

According to the club’s current president, who goes by G, one of the most popular meetings is “Sex Toy Day,” which is held once a semester. On Sex Toy Day, members bring in different kinky implements, including canes, paddles, rope and floggers, which are passed around the room. Members engage in discussions about how to use them and what to look out for when buying them.

Sex Toy Day even draws nonmembers who are eager to “get kicks” out of watching the members talk about their favorite sex toys.

“Some people have some crazy stuff, so it’s fun to just tell everyone, ‘Yo, come show off your crazy stuff!’” G said. “A lot of people show up, especially because we sometimes get sponsors from sex shops, and so they send us gift baskets to give away. Starter stuff like a little mini paddle, some rope, miniature vibrators, and we just give it out.”  

Members also go on unofficial field trips to local toy shops and sex dungeons. Some destinations include Threshold; the Pleasure Chest, a sex toy store in West Hollywood; and Sanctuary LAX, an adult entertainment club in Lennox.

“Having a setup to do the more extravagant displays or acts are very expensive, and for people living in L.A. apartments, it’s hard to find space to do them,” G said. “[Dungeons] have all sorts of machinery and rigging … but also [for] people who are more situational-based in their kink, there’s a classroom, doctor’s office, so you can really get yourself in the headspace.”

During the field trips, members can only “survey” the dungeons, meaning that there is no exposure of genitals and no penetration allowed at the location. This allows members to focus on the bondage and pain aspects. However, G said customers can rent out the rooms and “do whatever [they] want.”

But according to Harry, experimenting with kink does not have to be costly. Members have taken trips to department stores like Target and Home Depot to find everyday objects they can use for their kink.

“Whenever I buy something for the kitchen, I normally buy two — one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom,” he said.

Even though Kinky Trojans has been a recognized student organization for years, G said most of the USC community still has misconceptions about how the club operates. While there is a difference between what is taboo and what is “just weird,” G does not think kink needs to be normalized; however, he said he wishes students could talk about kink-related topics like BDSM without finding them inherently funny.

“They think that it’s some orgy that we’re throwing, which is like no, we’re just talking,” G said. “Would I just get together with a bunch of random people at USC and have sex? No, of course not … Some people do come in as a survey, and they just want to laugh at how weird it is, [but] we’re totally down to do that because it actually lets those people understand that these things aren’t evil.”

KINK IN POP CULTURE

During his senior year, Harry wrote his thesis on a topic he said needed to be properly addressed: kinkphobia, which often results in discriminating against someone because they are kinky.

“It is much like homophobia or racism or sexism,” Harry said. “That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but … kinky people have faced some form of discrimination — loss of housing, loss of jobs, loss of custody of children, there have been huge instances within the community where someone was found out for being kinky, and then a week later they were kicked out of their home.”

Harry said that according to his research, there have been several cases where couples have gone through divorces and brought up kink in legal disputes. He added that during custody battles, ex-spouses can lose their cases if they are revealed to be kinky.

For example, a research article by Dr. Marty Klein and Dr. Charles Moser delves into a 2003 child custody case for Ed, an 11-year-old. When it was revealed that his mother Ann was involved in a sadomasochistic relationship with her boyfriend, the court limited her visitation and custody agreements and ended her alimony.

Kinkphobia has become more recognized with the box-office success of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy. The films, which delve into the erotic, sadomasochistic relationship between college graduate Anastasia Steele and business magnate Christian Grey, have served as a “huge contention” in the kink community, according to Harry.

Using highlighters and sticky notes, Harry once analyzed all three novels the films were based on for a side project. He found that every 12 pages, there was something that “would be frowned upon or break some sort of rule in the kink community.” As such, the novels and films have started an ongoing cultural conversation about consent and proper kink practices.

Harry said that while everyone accepts that the relationship between Anastasia and Christian is a “recipe for disaster,” the films have also brought kink into the limelight.

“It did increase the number of people who are going out and exploring now,” he said. “And that’s important because if you think that you are the only person who is kinky, you are going to stay at home, you are not going to do research and you are going to hurt somebody or yourself. If you see … there are other people who are also into this, then you are more likely to engage with the community.”

In light of “Fifty Shades,” Harry mentioned two phrases everyone in the kink community should learn. First: One must never say that they have no limits.

“If you say, ‘I have no limits,’ there are people who will abuse that,” Harry said. “As much as the kinky community is open, loving and sensual, there are people who hide inside of it … That’s the same with anything.”

And the “happier” of the two phrases is Harry’s three favorite words that he said everyone outside of the kinky community should also know: “At this time.”

“I’m not into rope at this time,” he said. “I do not consent to be spanked at this time. I am very, very into fire play at this time. Everyone is always evolving, and people are always discovering new things.”