We’ve got a long way to go, but things are getting better for minority groups.

In the recession, twice as many women held their jobs as men; suggesting employers finally recognized their value. Likewise, LGBT advocates made great strides lifting Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

But some people argue they’re still part of a group suffering from inequality and prejudice: Not because they belong to any particular minority, but because their lifestyle doesn’t fit the acceptable ‘standard’ by which ‘regular society’ chooses to live.

In other words: Kinky people—who express their sexuality differently to how ‘polite’ society says is acceptable.

One example? My friend Pamela; fired from her job at private school in England for what she did ‘after hours.’

Pamela was a physical education teacher—producing promising results from the school swim team. But after school, she abandoned being an authoritative teacher and became an eager little submissive instead.

She lived full time with Dave, her ‘master’, and was regularly on the receiving end of his cane and flogger.

“Corporal punishment was something I always found intensely erotic,” she explained. “Not just the physical pain, but also the power dynamic.”

Pamela believed her professional and personal lives were completely compartmentalized, but an incident at school soon proved otherwise: One swim practice, Pamela was wearing a demure one-piece swimsuit; but it didn’t hide the welts she’d received three days earlier as ‘punishment’ for burning the shepherd’s pie. A student saw them and told her teacher.

“I’m normally cognizant of that sort of thing,” Pamela told me later. “If Dave and I are going to play that intensely, we do it on Friday; so I’ll have two days to recover.”

But for some reason, Pamela still had marks three days later—and was called to the headmaster’s office to explain them.

“They thought my boyfriend was beating me,” she laughed. “They couldn’t have been more sweet and supportive.” Until, that is, Pamela awkwardly explained how she really received the bruises: “It instantly got chillier in the headmaster’s office.”

Two days later, she was fired.

“I was still in my probational period,” Pamela explained, “so they didn’t need a reason - but it’s pretty clear why they did it. My ‘lifestyle’ was incompatible with their ‘values’.”

“I was pissed off—it’s not like my personal life had ever interfered with my job. In fact, up until then, they’d constantly been telling me what a great job I did.”

So the question: Did the school have a legitimate reason for firing Pamela? Or were they just discriminating against her because of her lifestyle?

Her spanking had never interfered with her ability to do her job (aside from a few unexplained bruises) so you have to wonder if there was ever an objective justification for firing her.

I heard a similar story in a bar on Long Island:
After a dozen whiskey sours, an attractive older lady confessed she had an eye for big, black men—and her enthusiastic husband regularly invited ‘bulls’ to spend the weekend with them, enjoying no ‘holes’ barred gangbangs.

All was well until a neighbor got suspicious about the young, black men traipsing in and out of the condo next door—and called the HOA. The next day, the landlord told the couple to have their stuff packed and out by the end of the month.

They were a lovely couple, always paid the rent on time and kept their lawn immaculate; but the HOA didn’t like what they’d heard (or thought they’d heard) about their naughty nocturnal activities.

Was that right? I don’t know—but I do know that, according to the rules of the HOA, it was legal.

Another example? How about in Wisconsin—where a swinger’s club attempted to organize a ‘hotel takeover’ in Steven’s Point, booking an entire hotel for 200 couples for during a weekend of debauchery.
Despite being a private event, the local Police Chief vowed to use every city ordinance written to get the event canceled: Even holding the hotel hostage by threatening its liquor license.

“There’s a line in the sand when it comes to sexually promiscuous activity,” the Mayor of Steven’s Point complained. “It’s just not acceptable in Steven’s Point—and we have ordinances behind us to ensure it doesn’t take place.”

Is that discrimination too? Another example of kinky people being treated like second-class citizens?

Well, I’m concerned about using word ‘discrimination.’

‘Discrimination’ carries some pretty hefty connotations—including a fundamental difference between the ‘discrimination’ faced by those living a kinky lifestyle and the more traditional victims of social inequality: Choice.

If you’re a person of color, or a woman, or homosexual, you’re the victim of discrimination because of something you have no choice in—the way that you were born. Such discrimination is a violation of the principle that ‘all men are created equal’ (a principle supposedly sacred to American society).

But whether it’s spanking, wife sharing or swinging, a kinkster always has a choice about the form and venue their sexual expression takes—and that gives them freedom the others lack.
The kinky couple who organized those interracial orgies? They could have held them in a motel room, instead of their sleepy condo complex.

Likewise, the swinger’s group that organized the ‘hotel takeover’ in Wisconsin had held similar events all over the state. Why did they have to fight to hold their event where it clearly wasn’t wanted?
That tells me there’s a tightrope between acceptance and discrimination—and kinky people are balanced precariously on top of it.

I can understand kinksters’ frustration when they run into prejudice—but I also think there’s a point at which forcing other people to accept your ‘lifestyle’ goes too far, and becomes a somewhat offensive proposition in itself.

Kink, by it’s very definition, is outside of mainstream acceptability: So it’s self-defeating, not to mention unrealistic, to expect mainstream society to accept it in the same way they have done differences in race, gender and sexuality.