Conclusion: Kink and the Way Forward

At the end of every story can be found the beginnings of the next, and the end of our volume, similarly, circles back to the beginning. As my coeditor Kylo-Patrick Hart noted in the introduction to this volume, at the end of the event each of us felt as if a shift had happened. Some of us had participated in life-changing interactions, some had been introduced to people or events or ideas we had never before contemplated, and all of us felt renewed in our desire to explore both the concept and the everyday experience of kink in its myriad permutations. As scholars and/or practitioners, long before this event we had determined that not only was kink important to those whose lives were somehow tied up with it but also for those who only experience it vicariously, through image or literature or cultural reference. Our research and writing since that event, culminating in this book, has made this even more clear.