A pivotal story about kink going mainstream; wild if true

Fifty Shades of Grey wouldn’t have happened without 9/11?

I heard a wild story the other day: Fifty Shades of Grey wouldn’t have happened without 9/11.

At first, that sounds absurd. But follow the thread.

Gerard Way, a young artist, stood on a New York City street in September 2001 and watched the Twin Towers collapse. The moment cracked something open in him. It was a visceral jolt, the kind that forces people to confront mortality, meaning, and the sheer unpredictability of life. Way decided he couldn’t waste another day on the sidelines. So he started a band: My Chemical Romance.

Their music, raw and emotional, would go on to shape a generation, including a Mormon stay-at-home mom named Stephenie Meyer. She cited their songs as inspiration while writing her brooding, vampiric romance Twilight.

Then came E.L. James, a British TV executive and self-described superfan of Twilight, who started posting erotic fan fiction online. What if Edward and Bella had a BDSM relationship instead of all that abstinence? Her work gained traction, morphed into its own novel, and exploded into Fifty Shades of Grey, a book that sold over 100 million copies and became the fastest-selling paperback of all time.

It also did something no one predicted: it catapulted BDSM from the shadows into the spotlight. Before Fifty Shades, BDSM was a subculture; after it, it was dinner table conversation. To this day, people in kink communities speak of a “pre” and “post” Fifty Shades world.

Susan Wright, founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (more on her below), called the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey the kink world’s “Stonewall moment.”

I interviewed Susan for my upcoming book that explores whether BDSM could ever be considered a form of therapy. Here is our interview, edited lightly for clarity.

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Susan Wright is the founder and Executive Director of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), established in 1997 to advocate for the rights of individuals engaged in alternative sexual expressions, including BDSM, swinging, and polyamory.

Under her leadership, NCSF has developed programs like the Education Outreach Program and the Kink and Poly Aware Professionals Directory, supporting those facing discrimination due to their sexual preferences.

Susan has also directed significant projects, such as the DSM-5 Revision Project, which contributed to the depathologization of consensual BDSM behaviours in 2013.

Beyond her advocacy work, she is an accomplished author with over 30 published books spanning urban fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres.

Nicolle: Do you think that being kinky is similar to an orientation, as in, it's something that people are, rather than something that they do?

Susan: I think it varies for the individual. For some people, it’s their identity. For others, it’s just bedroom games—a part of their life, but not who they are. You tend to find that the people who are active in the community, like socially involved and volunteering to keep groups and events going, are the ones who consider it part of their identity.

There are a lot of people doing this who aren’t accessing the education they need. For them, it’s not a driver of who they look for in relationships. But for those within the community who see it as part of their identity, they do seek partners who also identify as kinky because it aligns with their lifestyle.

Nicolle: Before I move on, I want to follow up on something you said about the internet. You mentioned that kinksters were early adopters of the internet. Dr. Neil Cannon also talked about how people used to find events through newspaper ads. It makes sense that the internet helped kinksters connect. Would you say that’s accurate?

Susan: Absolutely. Because we’re a stigmatized population, we’ve kind of been in the shadows. I remember the Eulenspiegel Society in New York City used to advertise on the back of the Village Voice. There were a few print outlets, but we were also early adopters of group phone lines where people could connect locally.

People in the community were already using those to find others. The internet took that to another level. Now people access peer support online—especially those who wouldn’t attend a group in person due to time, money, or safety concerns. As a single woman, I was out there bouncing around and trying to tell people it was safe to go to these events. They were talking about consent long before the mainstream even considered the idea.

The term “BDSM” even came from an early online bondage group.

Nicolle: Part of BDSM’s appeal is its transgressive nature, but now we’re seeing more mainstream acceptance. What are your thoughts on the modern expression of BDSM?

Susan: I’m very encouraged that we’re talking more and more about consent. I think the worldwide discussion around Fifty Shades of Grey, starting in 2012, helped spark nuanced conversations about consent. Is this stalking? Is this control? I believe that helped fuel the resurgence of the Me-Too movement in 2018.

Fifty Shades of Grey was sort of our Stonewall moment. It wasn’t perfect, but it got journalists to cover our subculture differently. After that, FetLife blew up. So many more people started participating.

Me-Too also had a positive impact on the kink community. It created a feedback loop: “Now we really need to look at this more—naming names, accountability, how we police our spaces.” That’s a big focus of NCSF.

Making BDSM accessible helps break down the stigma, which is the most harmful thing. Our surveys still find that 80% of people are closeted, mostly to family and friends. One in five are even closeted to their own partners. The idea that it should stay mysterious and taboo pales in comparison to how urgently we need to fight stigma.

The fact that so many people are doing this without education is one reason why NCSF is working to decriminalize BDSM. Under case law, it’s still considered criminal behaviour. That keeps it in the shadows and prevents public health departments from issuing guidelines. It’s why things like the “rough sex defence” still happen, where someone says, “Oh, they were kinky, I thought they wanted to be choked.” That’s abhorrent and should not be happening.

Some people romanticize the idea of the secret society. I’ve been around over 30 years. It wasn’t better. There weren’t as many events or ways to talk to partners. That nostalgia is false. We heard the same thing from the LGB community in the ’90s: “If we make it okay, it won’t be exciting anymore.” But it’s not about making it exciting; it’s about removing stigma.

Nicolle: You mentioned the depathologizing of sadism and masochism by the American Psychological Association in 2013. What evidence helped convince them to remove S & M?

Susan: When I met Dr. Richard Krueger, who was on the paraphilias sub-workgroup, we had already been gathering data. He was the expert on sexual sadism. I told him about all the parents losing custody of their kids.

In 2008, 124 parents reported custody issues to us. Judges were flipping open the DSM and saying, “If you have one paraphilia, you have another—so if you’re a sadist, you might be a pedophile. I have to take your kids away.”

I had 30 seconds to pitch it to Dr. Krueger. I said, “Did you know parents are being harmed by this?” He was shocked. He said, “That’s not who we’re talking about.”

That’s when the distinction became clear: People in community networks are mentally healthy on the whole. They’re learning about consent and responsibility. They’re not the same as forensic populations, like people who’ve been arrested for non-consensual acts.

We provided our incident reports, our 1998 and 2008 surveys, and professional testimony. Our survey showed people were being discriminated against by employers, schools, even therapists. And we could get thousands of people to respond because we’re a grassroots organization. We asked the right questions. We also had help from professionals like Charles Moser, who had been working to remove paraphilias from the DSM entirely.

In the end, the APA saw it more as clarifying than changing. And we’ve seen the results. Last year, only seven kinky parents came to us for help. That’s a dramatic drop. And we’d already seen that drop begin even before the DSM change was finalized.

Nicolle: Were you also able to make the case for the societal benefits of depathologizing kink?

Susan: Exactly. If you’re a parent, the worst thing is losing your kids. We had volunteers supporting these parents, finding expert witnesses. Our Kink and Poly Professionals List became essential. We expanded it to include psychologists and psychiatrists willing to do evaluations without judgment.

This was a long-term project that was started in 1997, with big milestones in 1998, and culminating in 2013. The same process happened with the American Law Institute. We started working on the revised Model Penal Code in 2008. It’s finally going to be published next year. These are decade-long projects. We have to show data, collect reports, and ensure the research reflects the reality of our communities.

Nicolle: Do societal shifts drive change in definitions, or do the new definitions create space for societal change?

Susan: It’s a constant reverberation. People talk in small groups, then they write to media outlets. That affects coverage, which brings more people out. Then those groups evolve. Even our language has changed over time. It’s a community-wide effort that feeds back into the mainstream, and vice versa.

For example, the revised Model Penal Code now includes a section on explicit prior permission for force or restraint. If states adopt that, it will push more mainstream conversations, which will in turn affect our community.

We’re part of the larger society, so there’s always a dialogue happening.

Nicolle: What do you foresee for BDSM over the next five years?

Susan: I think our work on decriminalization will have a huge impact. Right now, being criminalized means people who experience sexual assault in a kink context can’t get justice. Society has become more accepting, but the legal system hasn’t caught up. That puts us in a harsher legal gray area.

We used to get calls about domestic violence arrests when someone heard a scene.

Now, police often don’t even want to look into it. If one person says they were kinky, it’s like, “Okay, no one’s getting arrested.” Unless someone is seriously injured or killed, there’s no accountability.

We now get more reports about people being assaulted or sexually assaulted in a kink context, and many are sexual assaults. So I think legal reform will dominate the conversation.

Some states don’t even have a definition of consent for sex, let alone for BDSM. We’re trying to raise awareness: if you’re using force or restraint, you need a super heightened level of consent.

I see us leading that conversation.

Nicolle: One of the themes coming up in research for my book is that some people say BDSM has helped them move through, or even heal from, sexual trauma. Do you think BDSM could ever be considered a form of therapy?

Susan: Not in and of itself. If you’re going to do role-play or reenactment, you should have the guidance of a mental health professional.

NCSF’s position is: access a mental health professional. If you want to work through trauma using kink—power exchange, role-play—that’s your choice. But it helps tremendously to have someone trained, neutral, and centered in your healing.

You can’t look to a play partner to also be your therapist. That’s a boundary issue. They have their own desires. They’re not focused on your healing in the way a therapist is. Especially a trauma therapist. That’s why we ask professionals on our Kink and Poly Aware list to indicate if they’ve dealt with trauma. It’s incredibly helpful for people walking that path.

Nicolle: What advice would you give to therapists who encounter a kinky client?

Susan: It’s extremely traumatizing for someone to disclose their kink and have a therapist respond with a look of distaste—or worse, shame them. So many people I’ve talked to say they would never tell their therapist about their kink.

We saw this in our 2008 Violence and Discrimination Survey. We even created a document called In Their Own Words. People reported what mental health professionals said to them, and how damaging it was.

My advice to therapists: Check out the Kink Clinical Guidelines. They were developed by people who’ve seen the harm caused by uneducated professionals.

Educate yourself outside of your sessions.

Don’t rely on your client to teach you about kink. It’s deeply personal and unique, like a fingerprint. Everyone’s motivations and desires are different.

If you’re uncomfortable, refer them out. But don’t stigmatize someone who’s sitting in front of you. You’re not being asked to do these things. Just to listen and be neutral and professional.

Being judgmental won’t stop someone from being kinky. If they’re wired that way, expressing disapproval won’t change that. Your job is to support them.

Find reputable resources, guide them, and help them safely integrate this into their life.