Red Flags in Leather: Identifying Coercive Control in Kink Dynamics

Power exchange can be deeply fulfilling, but the same structures that make BDSM work—trust, authority, devotion, and protocol—can also be manipulated by someone with abusive intent. When you're inside a dynamic, it can be incredibly difficult to tell the difference between consensual dominance and coercive control. Love bombing can look like devotion, isolation can be framed as protocol, and financial control can be disguised as service. This class explores why those lines are so easy to miss and how abuse can hide behind the language of kink.

Participants will learn to recognize the specific patterns that appear when abuse shows up inside BDSM dynamics. We’ll break down concepts such as DARVO, the cycle of abuse adapted for power exchange relationships, and how control can escalate into coercion over time. The class also examines how manipulation can distort your judgment and make it harder to evaluate what’s really happening in a…