> The way leftists -- practitioners as well as supporters -- discuss and
> defend BDSM, though, it essentially reduces it to gentle, egalitarian
> desires that promote virtue within the limits of political liberalism:
> consensual play between mentally competent adults, good for
> intellectual enlightenment and community building. So, the paradox is
> that supposedly kinky sex, in discourse on the Left, becomes not so
> kinky after all. "Bad" becomes "good," which is to say, on the way to
> becoming boring. Such a defense suggests an anxiety that pleasure
> still isn't its own justification even for a harmless activity, a
> curiously un-hedonistic defense of hedonism, taming sex again.
People aren't into BDSM because it is "bad" although being "bad" can be part of the roleplaying.
Would it be a bad thing if BDSM and other kinky stuff became less kinky and transgressive? I don't see anything bad about sexual practices becoming more normalized if that ends the hostility, arrogance, persecution and worse perpetrated against people into kink. Normalization of kink may also increase the pool of sexual partners, which would be a good thing.
On the other hand, there is something to be sad about the yuppiefication and normalization of kink. Radical queers have complained and protested the mainstreaming of the queer community. Long time kinksters have complained about the influx of new "straight" people, which has led to situation where people do bad things because they don't know about safety and common practices in the scene.
Chuck