By Dan Savage - Apr. 10, 2025

I am a proud kinkster in a city with a vibrant kink community, but I am worried that my community doesn’t know how quickly it could find itself at risk. I see friends grandstanding online about crackdowns on poppers, while ignoring broader attacks by the Trump administration on fundamental rights. 

I understand the former makes for a better social media post, but with the government deporting legal residents who were not accused of crimes, performing armed takeovers of private entities and scapegoating trans people, we have more to worry about than poppers. How long before Folsom attendees face legal jeopardy for public indecency? 

Democrats can barely stand up for Social Security. What makes us think they'll go to bat for kinksters? Am I wrong in thinking queer and kink organizations need to be sounding the alarm?

— Rights Under More Pressure

Both houses of Congress, private universities, powerful law firms, professional baseball — the list of groups that have caved to Trump grows longer every day. 

So, I don’t think the organizers of gay fetish events like Folsom or Darklands (or straight ones like DomCon or RopeCraft for that matter) have the power to stop Trump. If there’s a silver lining here, RUMP, it may be the huge numbers of kinky people who didn’t feel like they needed to hide over the last couple of decades. If you can’t hide, you have to fight… and with the receipts already out there — social media posts, personal ads, gear purchases) — there’s no hiding now.

Here's the single most important thing organizers of kink events can do: Keep organizing great events that bring even more people out. Events help create community — which is a good thing unto itself — but they also create opportunities for activists to inform, organize, and activate people they might not be able to reach otherwise, which is absolutely crucial at a moment like this. (A tip for activists: DO NOT treat people having fun at fetish events or parties like they’re doing something wrong. If you want people to show up at your demonstration — or call their members of Congress or raise money for abortion funds or defend their undocumented neighbors — don’t tell them they have to pick between the party where you found them and demo where you want them. Scolds drive people away from movements, they don’t bring them in.)

Speaking of protests: The protests at Tesla dealerships have been fun, effective and cathartic —as Tesla’s cratering stock price and Trump’s pathetic Tesla infomercial at the White House both demonstrate. But please don’t vandalize Teslas. Trump’s DOJ is throwing the book at people who vandalize Teslas — and it turns out Elon Musk’s shitty cars are self-vandalizing, as we learned when every single Tesla Cybertruck ever sold was recalled after pieces of them kept falling off.

So, there’s no need to risk being sent to a prison in El Salvador when you see Incel Caminos parked on your block. Give Elon’s shitty cars a minute, and they’ll fall apart on their own.

Email your question for the column to [email protected] or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan. Read more Savage Love

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