The Need for Erotic Affinity Spaces

Sometimes certain subsets of sexuality and kink communities need to commune and play with only those people who best understand them.

Occasionally an academic paper reveals results to which I simply nod my head in immediate agreement because it so closely aligns with my own experience. A recent paper by Lindsey Gaston and Laura Dixon, “Calling All Mares: Community, Identity, and Group Sex at the San Francisco Horse Market,” had me nodding in agreement a lot.

The focus of the paper is a unique gay men’s sex event. It’s an event I’ve attended and in which I’ve participated on both sides of the sex act equation. It’s entirely unique. It’s a celebration of so much about what I love regarding the gay men’s adventurous erotic community.

What I’d like to point out is not so much the specifics of this gay men’s event, but rather to highlight that it speaks to the important need for the entire swath of sexuality and kink adventurers to have spaces in which to commune and play amid people who fully understand the details of their niche identities and subculture.

Let me start with this snippet from the paper’s abstract that nicely summarizes the paper’s contents.

The key findings reveal that participants experience a sense of enhanced community identity and unity through engaging in group sex that allows them the freedom to explore sexual boundaries in a way that is permitted, paradoxically, by occurring within an environment that is simultaneously highly regulated and controlled.

Why is this important? It’s important because there are often calls to homogenize our sexuality and kink communities into a single blended whole. That may not be what certain people say, but that’s essentially what they are often asking to have happen. My contention is that this is folly and runs entirely counter to what I thought was the goal of progressive sexuality communities, especially those in the  queer and marginalized realms.

Let me be clear that the voices that I run across attempting this complete homogenization are not the majority. I think most people support the necessity of people having affinity spaces in which they feel like they’re fully understood and accepted for exactly who they are and how that subset of people function, both socially and sexually.

I wrote about the need for affinity spaces in “Why We Need Affinity Spaces” on my other Substack page prior to creating this one.

The article then identifies the ingredients of the “magic sauce” that make affinity spaces beneficial for those who seek them out. I’ll let you read the article for full explanations, but the ingredients listed are:

- Safety – Safety beyond just physical safety.
- Feeling the feels – Fully expressing our emotions.
- Healing – Addressing community oppression and trauma.
- Connection – Communing with others like us.
- Role models and mentors – Finding guides.
- Less intimidation – Escaping the toxicity of societal judgment.
- Exploring our multidimensional selves – Discovering other facets to our identity.
- Unpacking our own shit – Acknowledging we’re all complex humans.
- Decentering dominant identities – Experiencing presence without dominant element influence.
- Radical imagination – Creating solutions together.

I think that’s a damn good list of what comprises the magic of affinity spaces.

The point of my post then, and this one now that leans specifically into the need for gay men’s spaces, is that affinity spaces serve an important need for marginalized groups.

Let me be clear that I am not a proponent of hyper exclusion with every orientation, sexuality, and demographic neatly compartmentalized only in their own spaces. That’s not at all what I’m proposing But, there is a time and a place. There are times and there are places that are and should be frequented entirely by people who closely resonate with the cultural norms, attractions, erotic practices, and sexual mindset of those most like them.

This section of the academic paper resonated with me. As a gay man, I frequently hear about other gay men feeling as if their spaces are no longer theirs. I know this is a nuanced conversation and there are no perfect solutions or perspectives on this topic, but when it comes to erotic spaces in particular, I think the call for blending all walks of sexuality and kink into the same spaces only works in limited settings.

As heterosexuals frequent gay spaces (bars, clubs, and Pride events) and traditional forms of queer culture (drag) are commercialized and consumed by non-queer audiences, the Horse Market provides a protected space only for gay men doing what makes them gay; participating, that is, in sex with other men. To these participants, the Horse Market provides a performance space for homosexuality and a rejection of the need to be accepted by heterosexual society. The Horse Market, in other words, in embracing, celebrating and re-claiming a specific form of “self-assigned deviancy” associated with being gay, actually simultaneously allows for greater levels of sexual adventurism. The Horse Market permits gay men to perform and bond over their shared sexual desire, allowing for a reconnection to rebellious/socially transgressive behavior and at the same time, confers participants with a renewed sense of community and belonging, as they do so.

I am probably somewhat unique among kinkster gay men in that I have for decades often deeply embedded myself in various heterosexual, pansexual, bisexual, and women’s sexuality and kink environments including a handful of play events at which I was welcome. They were lovely. They were welcoming. They were fun. When they invited me into their spaces I was honored and always tried to be respectful. But rarely could any of them reach the height of erotic turn on and communal connection I need as a gay men who needs to occasionally be in erotic environments that are entirely comprised of other gay men.

The gist of what I’m getting at here is that I will never state that I understand at a deeply visceral level non-gay men who navigate in the range of sexuality and kink communities. I can’t entirely step into the mind of people who have different sexual orientations or cultural norms, including sexual norms. No one can. We can simply listen to others and when a consensus forms based on that listening to others, accept it.

The flip side of that is that I hope people outside of the gay men’s communities don’t claim a full understanding of us, especially those of us who traverse the more adventurous and kinky sides of erotic life. Listen to us. Just like I hope we listen to you. Understand that we sometimes need our space and realize that you sometimes need yours. We’ll commune and perhaps sometimes play together, but there is a time and a place.

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