This article focuses on the conflation of racism and race play, arguing that this problematic understanding of race play is caused by two sets of conceptual issues: the representationalist relationship between collective identities and personal (sexual) agency and the perceived fantasy/reality dichotomy. 2 In this article therefore, I will rely on my two case studies more than on secondary literature, except when links to other topics of research prove productive for my own argumentation. Academic work on race play is just starting to emerge, with Ariane Cruz’s The Color of Kink (2016) being the first monograph on the subject. We will see this with the ManyVids incident but also in academic work on race play and personal narratives of race play participants. Furthermore, race play is an issue that inspires strong responses due to its being closely linked to personal and collective (partial) identities. However, in academic research this phenomenon has mainly been overlooked, with notable exceptions that will be discussed in this article. Race play-which is a sexual practice where the either imagined or real racial background of one or more of the participants is used to create this power-imbalance in a BDSM-scene, through the use of slurs, narratives and objects laden with racial history-lies on the intersection between highly contested racial and sexual minorities, which allows for valuable investigations into the ways we negotiate these concepts. In a general BDSM setting, there will be at least one person taking on the Dominant (or Sadist/Master) role and at least one person taking the submissive (or masochist/slave) 1 role, to create an eroticized power dynamic.
Race play is a form of BDSM (Bondage, Dominance/Discipline, Submission/Sadism and Masochism), which is an umbrella term used for forms of sexual and erotic practices that are considered “edgy” or “kinky” and usually involve playing with power dynamics. The result was again a heated discussion on Twitter about personal rights, racism and discrimination against specific fetishes. A day later, ManyVids removed all “race play” videos from the site, accompanied by a public statement that conflated race play and racism. This caused a public outrage over racist content on the website.
On the ninth of February 2017, erotic video platform ManyVids (MV) caused a scandal among their followers on Twitter when a “racist woman” was given the MV Social Media Slayer of the Year Award.
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