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The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography
How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality.
The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women.
Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality.
The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women.
Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published October 4, 2016
39 people are currently reading
1010 people want to read
About the author
Ariane Cruz
4 books4 followersAriane Cruz is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 30, 2017
With a focus on black women in BDSM, Cruz takes us through a heavily researched theoretical adventure. This was particularly useful in providing a massive lit review on interracial porn and sex practices as well as theories of race and/as technology, in the Foucauldian sense, but also the digital/computer/machine sense. Awesome book. Requires a graduate reading level or perhaps an advanced undergrad could successfully take this on.
October 27, 2021
The book makes a case for a liberatory, erotic pleasure possibility today as the aftermath of chattel slavery (possibility is the key word here, as Ariane Cruz also illustrates why it in itself is not liberation nor reparations). In the author's own words, she tried to de-pathologize black women's non normative fantasies, dissecting different scenarios where these fantasies take place and complicating their development [beyond face value, stereotypes]. To be honest I did not infer that the book was specific to race play until I was well submerged, and expected a broader analysis including other kinks and dynamics. I also got here because of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism, so there's that.
It is reiterated on several instances through the chapters that the intent is to queer (to weird out, estrange) interracial play as a site for black women alterity. I agree this is achieved and rather than dense, I found this book very well researched and good on the references. I now need to read Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"..
Some of its interesting parts were the one about feminist critiques of interracial porn (critiques of porn in general too), what exactly means interracial in porn and what anxieties does it speak of, structures of interracial play in action -white man, black woman and lesbian dommes-, the cuckoldry section and the fucking machines as technologies of race; this last part gave enough material for a study on its own, I'm still very curious if any other authors may have touched on this and potentially linked intersecting kinks like medical. The section about pornography was interesting once Cruz got to the indie black women studio perspective and struggles, and partially on the male actors exploitation. There really is a bit of everything, and as a whole the book brings together one interesting, new lens to examine existing dynamics as a space for alternative fulfillment/rapture, maybe even hinting on achieving personhood.
The conclusion was the cherry on top: trauma and repetition, which I wanted the author to deepen back when she pointed feminist critiques of play/pornography.. But the wording here is clear and intentional, does not mark trauma and its reenactment as only reasoning behind the fantasy and does not completely put it aside as healing; calls it repetition to forget. It's poetic, brilliant.
It is reiterated on several instances through the chapters that the intent is to queer (to weird out, estrange) interracial play as a site for black women alterity. I agree this is achieved and rather than dense, I found this book very well researched and good on the references. I now need to read Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"..
Some of its interesting parts were the one about feminist critiques of interracial porn (critiques of porn in general too), what exactly means interracial in porn and what anxieties does it speak of, structures of interracial play in action -white man, black woman and lesbian dommes-, the cuckoldry section and the fucking machines as technologies of race; this last part gave enough material for a study on its own, I'm still very curious if any other authors may have touched on this and potentially linked intersecting kinks like medical. The section about pornography was interesting once Cruz got to the indie black women studio perspective and struggles, and partially on the male actors exploitation. There really is a bit of everything, and as a whole the book brings together one interesting, new lens to examine existing dynamics as a space for alternative fulfillment/rapture, maybe even hinting on achieving personhood.
The conclusion was the cherry on top: trauma and repetition, which I wanted the author to deepen back when she pointed feminist critiques of play/pornography.. But the wording here is clear and intentional, does not mark trauma and its reenactment as only reasoning behind the fantasy and does not completely put it aside as healing; calls it repetition to forget. It's poetic, brilliant.
November 18, 2018
*Spoiler alert*. Unless you plan to obtain a Doctorate in Psychology or Sociology in BDSM this book is not for you! The book Color of Kink repeatedly focus on BDSM of women of color perspective to the Slavery of Women of color in the past, Black Feminist, Black Women Sexuality, Lesbianism , White People's fetish of in slaving Black Women, Rape and the obsession of race play. Skin Diamond, Vanessa Blue and countless other within this book are professional porn stars that chose to perform in very aggressive BDSM films. This book make no reference as to why ordinary women of color may want to engage into BDSM.
April 28, 2023
Trigger Warning: Pornography, BDSM, sexual violence. This post is NOT for kids.
Quote Spotlight:
“Just as some women practice race play as a mode of processing and pleasuring racial trauma, women use the dildo as a tool for reframing and renegotiating experiences of sexual violence. For example, Minge and Zimmerman argue for an urgent “re¬signification” of the dildo “as a tool of sexual agency” that recognizes its potential as an instrument for “rescripting” the trauma of violent sexual penetration. Dildos are another site where the technologies of pleasure, gender, race, and sexuality intersect.”
Summary
The Color of Kink is about black women’s representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM. Cruz argues that BDSM and pornography can be critical sites to think about how society has connected Black women’s sexuality to violence. In thinking about how Black women can access pleasure through these mediums, she explores how violence becomes a vehicle of pleasure and a mode of accessing and contesting power.
In chapter 1, Cruz explains why many feminists think Black women participating in race play is alwaysproblematic. She quotes famous feminists like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, who have stated that using violent power over another in the bedroom is an extension of this type of relationship in real life. For those who live in American culture, we live in a society where aggression is socially valued. To praise race play in the bedroom is to assert that it is empowering for people on both ends of the relationship. It reproduces derogatory, stereotypical images of Black women, and they shouldn’t be enjoying it and much less wanting it. Furthermore, Lorde and Walker question whether black women can indeed consent to racialized sexual play. But Black women BDSMers suggest that this consent is not only possible but also pleasurable and effectively empowering.
For some part of the book Cruz focuses in on a subsection of Black women BDSMers who participate in race play. In short, race play is a BDSM practice that explicitly uses race to script power exchange between doms and subs. Through these activities, Cruz argues that Black women can critique heteropatriarchy and its naturalization of gendered hierarchies where men are dominant, and women are submissive. Rather than thinking of race play an escape from racism, it can be a way to parody and make fun of its relationships. Race play for Cruz then is a way to fuck and fuck with racism: a potential parody that demonstrates how we play the race and even how race plays us. She argues that exploring activities like race play allows some Black women to assess the dynamic, sociohistorical, political, and culturally evolving processes of creating racial difference. For many in society, people imagine race as an unchanging, sovereign truth when it is a dynamic and fluid demarcation site and these scenes allow them to explore that.
Note: It is also important to note that Cruz emphasizes that “Kink can be therapeutic, but it isn’t therapy.” Trying to argue that this type of play is therapy asserts that BDSMers need healing and that once you are “cured,” you will stop participating in it. Therefore, in this book, readers will be focusing on how porn producers represent Black women, how Black women experience pleasure, and what we can learn from it.
For the rest of the book, Cruz goes into interviews and more in-depth descriptions of race play scenes to support her theory. I will only go through two that I found interesting and hopefully inspire you to put in on your TBR.
One film Cruz describes comes from the golden-age pornography, the film classic Behind the Green Doormade in 1971. For context, the 1970s was the golden age of pornography because of a Supreme Court ruling, Miller v. California, where the court made it less likely to deem works with “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” obscene. Though Miller restated that the First Amendment did not protect indecent material, it effectively redefined obscenity, which opened loopholes for the production of pornography. Therefore, pornography producers began making feature-length films with developed plots, original musical scores, special effects, and so forth in an attempt to imbue the films with “redeeming social value.”
In Behind the Green Door, Johnny Keyes, a renowned black male performer, and Marilyn Chambers, a white performer, reenact a stereotypical scene where a Black man preys upon a white woman. When commenting on this scene in real life, both performers recognized their scene as highly political. Whereas Chambers seemed to acknowledge and welcome the power of its shock value to both her father and nation, Keyes imagined himself as engaged in some sort of quest for reparations for the institutionalized rape of black women. Keyes imagined white men’s rape of black women to be atoned by another sexual crime: a black man’s ravishment of a white woman.
If you don’t know much about interracial pornography like I did when reading this book, you will come to know that Black male-white female interracial porn is more common than Black female-white male scenes. While this is only one interracial scene out of many, I would like to comment here.
I do not know of ANY Black woman who wants Black men to enact some kind of “revenge porn” on white women for rape that happened during slavery. PLEASE DON’T PUT THAT ON BLACK WOMEN. NO ONE IS ASKING FOR THAT. Even if it’s for a BDSM scene that both partners consent to, please think of another motivation. Furthermore, I questioned whether Keyes’s actual reason to do this film because it also launched him into stardom in the porn scene.
With that said, this dynamic between Black men and white women in pornography is highly influenced by slavery, as shown in the previous scene and others that Cruz describes. Interracial pornography depends on an explicit awareness of racial taboo driven by fear: it is “the fear once generated by white masters to keep white women and black men apart—that gives erotic tension to interracial sex acts.” Cruz also explains that this type of interracial pornography can also be a platform for white men to play out their fantasies of gay Black-white sex. The homoerotic desire is central to these films as we can see when white men are shown in these types of scenes watching and being humiliated. Thus, experiencing the shame white men may experience when they think about desiring Black men.
From this example, you may be wondering where are Black women in pornography. To learn about that, we have to go back to the 1930s. During this time, the stag era was prevalent, where porn producers made films secretly. They were brief (about 12 minutes at most), were silent, depicted explicit or graphic sexual behavior intended to appeal to all-male audiences; observers exchanged sexual banter and could achieve sexual arousal. Even though interracial dating, marriage, intercourse, etc., was illegal during this time, Black women played out sexual stereotypes that reinforced ideas that Black women were edible, excessively sexual, and accessible for the white man’s appetite. These tropes remain today, even outside pornography and much of the book also acknowledges that while Black women can experience pleasure in BDSM, they are still excessively stereotyped. However, Cruz gives us some hope by also describing porn made by a Black queer woman, Shine Louise Houston, showing the possibilities for Black women outside of stereotypical tropes.
Thoughts After Finishing
This book was a rollercoaster to say the least. I know this can be an uncomfortable subject, but it is crazy to think about how many white people consume Black people for sexual entertainment but do little else for Black people’s liberation. It reminds me of how Black people, like myself, are viewed in pieces, people taking what they like, discarding the rest.
On another train of thought, I was interested in the book because I have only heard negative things about race play. I am honestly unconcerned in this book review about exploring white people’s motivations to participate in the activity and more interested in Cruz’s exploration of why Black women do it. I find it refreshing how Cruz resisted policing or marginalizing Black women BDSMers and even exploring why they may find it pleasurable. Cruz’s explanations was fascinating for me because white people are usually freely able to explore their sexuality without bearing the weight of their whole race on their shoulders. Cruz didn’t want to push “good” representations of Black women to make them more palatable for her readers but rather showed them as they are and didn’t pass any moral judgments. Reading about Black women in this way made me happy. It gave me hope in broader society that we can just let Black women exist and experience pleasure without any expectations for the wider community.
In conclusion, don’t let the academic language intimidate you. Cruz exposes her readers to a world of BDSM that is usually dismissed but can grant you a deeper understanding of some Black women’s experiences. Happy reading!!!
Quote Spotlight:
“Just as some women practice race play as a mode of processing and pleasuring racial trauma, women use the dildo as a tool for reframing and renegotiating experiences of sexual violence. For example, Minge and Zimmerman argue for an urgent “re¬signification” of the dildo “as a tool of sexual agency” that recognizes its potential as an instrument for “rescripting” the trauma of violent sexual penetration. Dildos are another site where the technologies of pleasure, gender, race, and sexuality intersect.”
Summary
The Color of Kink is about black women’s representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM. Cruz argues that BDSM and pornography can be critical sites to think about how society has connected Black women’s sexuality to violence. In thinking about how Black women can access pleasure through these mediums, she explores how violence becomes a vehicle of pleasure and a mode of accessing and contesting power.
In chapter 1, Cruz explains why many feminists think Black women participating in race play is alwaysproblematic. She quotes famous feminists like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, who have stated that using violent power over another in the bedroom is an extension of this type of relationship in real life. For those who live in American culture, we live in a society where aggression is socially valued. To praise race play in the bedroom is to assert that it is empowering for people on both ends of the relationship. It reproduces derogatory, stereotypical images of Black women, and they shouldn’t be enjoying it and much less wanting it. Furthermore, Lorde and Walker question whether black women can indeed consent to racialized sexual play. But Black women BDSMers suggest that this consent is not only possible but also pleasurable and effectively empowering.
For some part of the book Cruz focuses in on a subsection of Black women BDSMers who participate in race play. In short, race play is a BDSM practice that explicitly uses race to script power exchange between doms and subs. Through these activities, Cruz argues that Black women can critique heteropatriarchy and its naturalization of gendered hierarchies where men are dominant, and women are submissive. Rather than thinking of race play an escape from racism, it can be a way to parody and make fun of its relationships. Race play for Cruz then is a way to fuck and fuck with racism: a potential parody that demonstrates how we play the race and even how race plays us. She argues that exploring activities like race play allows some Black women to assess the dynamic, sociohistorical, political, and culturally evolving processes of creating racial difference. For many in society, people imagine race as an unchanging, sovereign truth when it is a dynamic and fluid demarcation site and these scenes allow them to explore that.
Note: It is also important to note that Cruz emphasizes that “Kink can be therapeutic, but it isn’t therapy.” Trying to argue that this type of play is therapy asserts that BDSMers need healing and that once you are “cured,” you will stop participating in it. Therefore, in this book, readers will be focusing on how porn producers represent Black women, how Black women experience pleasure, and what we can learn from it.
For the rest of the book, Cruz goes into interviews and more in-depth descriptions of race play scenes to support her theory. I will only go through two that I found interesting and hopefully inspire you to put in on your TBR.
One film Cruz describes comes from the golden-age pornography, the film classic Behind the Green Doormade in 1971. For context, the 1970s was the golden age of pornography because of a Supreme Court ruling, Miller v. California, where the court made it less likely to deem works with “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” obscene. Though Miller restated that the First Amendment did not protect indecent material, it effectively redefined obscenity, which opened loopholes for the production of pornography. Therefore, pornography producers began making feature-length films with developed plots, original musical scores, special effects, and so forth in an attempt to imbue the films with “redeeming social value.”
In Behind the Green Door, Johnny Keyes, a renowned black male performer, and Marilyn Chambers, a white performer, reenact a stereotypical scene where a Black man preys upon a white woman. When commenting on this scene in real life, both performers recognized their scene as highly political. Whereas Chambers seemed to acknowledge and welcome the power of its shock value to both her father and nation, Keyes imagined himself as engaged in some sort of quest for reparations for the institutionalized rape of black women. Keyes imagined white men’s rape of black women to be atoned by another sexual crime: a black man’s ravishment of a white woman.
If you don’t know much about interracial pornography like I did when reading this book, you will come to know that Black male-white female interracial porn is more common than Black female-white male scenes. While this is only one interracial scene out of many, I would like to comment here.
I do not know of ANY Black woman who wants Black men to enact some kind of “revenge porn” on white women for rape that happened during slavery. PLEASE DON’T PUT THAT ON BLACK WOMEN. NO ONE IS ASKING FOR THAT. Even if it’s for a BDSM scene that both partners consent to, please think of another motivation. Furthermore, I questioned whether Keyes’s actual reason to do this film because it also launched him into stardom in the porn scene.
With that said, this dynamic between Black men and white women in pornography is highly influenced by slavery, as shown in the previous scene and others that Cruz describes. Interracial pornography depends on an explicit awareness of racial taboo driven by fear: it is “the fear once generated by white masters to keep white women and black men apart—that gives erotic tension to interracial sex acts.” Cruz also explains that this type of interracial pornography can also be a platform for white men to play out their fantasies of gay Black-white sex. The homoerotic desire is central to these films as we can see when white men are shown in these types of scenes watching and being humiliated. Thus, experiencing the shame white men may experience when they think about desiring Black men.
From this example, you may be wondering where are Black women in pornography. To learn about that, we have to go back to the 1930s. During this time, the stag era was prevalent, where porn producers made films secretly. They were brief (about 12 minutes at most), were silent, depicted explicit or graphic sexual behavior intended to appeal to all-male audiences; observers exchanged sexual banter and could achieve sexual arousal. Even though interracial dating, marriage, intercourse, etc., was illegal during this time, Black women played out sexual stereotypes that reinforced ideas that Black women were edible, excessively sexual, and accessible for the white man’s appetite. These tropes remain today, even outside pornography and much of the book also acknowledges that while Black women can experience pleasure in BDSM, they are still excessively stereotyped. However, Cruz gives us some hope by also describing porn made by a Black queer woman, Shine Louise Houston, showing the possibilities for Black women outside of stereotypical tropes.
Thoughts After Finishing
This book was a rollercoaster to say the least. I know this can be an uncomfortable subject, but it is crazy to think about how many white people consume Black people for sexual entertainment but do little else for Black people’s liberation. It reminds me of how Black people, like myself, are viewed in pieces, people taking what they like, discarding the rest.
On another train of thought, I was interested in the book because I have only heard negative things about race play. I am honestly unconcerned in this book review about exploring white people’s motivations to participate in the activity and more interested in Cruz’s exploration of why Black women do it. I find it refreshing how Cruz resisted policing or marginalizing Black women BDSMers and even exploring why they may find it pleasurable. Cruz’s explanations was fascinating for me because white people are usually freely able to explore their sexuality without bearing the weight of their whole race on their shoulders. Cruz didn’t want to push “good” representations of Black women to make them more palatable for her readers but rather showed them as they are and didn’t pass any moral judgments. Reading about Black women in this way made me happy. It gave me hope in broader society that we can just let Black women exist and experience pleasure without any expectations for the wider community.
In conclusion, don’t let the academic language intimidate you. Cruz exposes her readers to a world of BDSM that is usually dismissed but can grant you a deeper understanding of some Black women’s experiences. Happy reading!!!
May 9, 2025
more of a synthesis of motivations that underpin why black people engage in racism roleplay and rape roleplay than an analysis/build up to a broader argument. i appreciated the book for giving me insight into people who participate in these types of activities, but the focus on porn actors who willingly entered the industry and not even a throwaway sentence mentioning how most of the industry is fueled by coercion obfuscates the true nature of the system.
there was also not enough detail on rape roleplay and how this might intersect with the inordinate amount of sexual violence inflicted on black women throughout the history of antebellum US/chattel slavery/reconstruction, and how that continues with black men's brutalization of our bodies.
i would've liked to see the author attempt to justify/explain/explore pedophilia roleplay (ddlg/mdlb/parent-child roleplay) outside the one or two times she mentions it in passing. perhaps it would've been too daunting of a challenge and revealed the contradictions in practitioners (of racism roleplay) arguments.
there was also not enough detail on rape roleplay and how this might intersect with the inordinate amount of sexual violence inflicted on black women throughout the history of antebellum US/chattel slavery/reconstruction, and how that continues with black men's brutalization of our bodies.
i would've liked to see the author attempt to justify/explain/explore pedophilia roleplay (ddlg/mdlb/parent-child roleplay) outside the one or two times she mentions it in passing. perhaps it would've been too daunting of a challenge and revealed the contradictions in practitioners (of racism roleplay) arguments.
December 20, 2021
Insightful and important
As a porn scholar and sex educator, this text is absolutely a key text. It is an incredibly important exploration of kink, pornography, and race. Cruz’s work is truly exceptional.
As a porn scholar and sex educator, this text is absolutely a key text. It is an incredibly important exploration of kink, pornography, and race. Cruz’s work is truly exceptional.
January 28, 2020
i read this for my short RACEPLAY THESIS-PROJECT-ESSAY... insightful
Read
February 28, 2020306.775 C9573 2016
to-read-actual
May 6, 2021Pub 2016
October 6, 2022
This is heavy on raceplay and chattel slavery. The author is also very proud of her vocabulary.
March 24, 2023
Fascinating read. An academic book, so very much written in the parlance of academia; not something I’m used to reading, and I had to re-read some passages a number of times to get to grips with what was being said. Think I understood most of it. Worth the challenge though; lots of information, analysis and further sources. I agree with other reviewers that the work reviews quite a narrow focus within the Black experience of BDSM; not necessarily a bad thing but certainly something to be aware of. Overall, the book provides fascinating insights, raises crucially important questions and offers aspirations for ever greater freedom of expression.
October 23, 2020
A great book about black female representation in BDSM and interracial pornography. The text and discussion is rather dense and does require a basic understanding of sociology and gender studies academia to follow along however it is highly recommended to readers interested in black female sexuality within the BDSM nexus.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews