Kink isn’t new. In fact — as the academic Esmé Louise James has found — what we now call ‘kinky sex’ has been a part of human life as far back as history books can take us. There is historical evidence of Kinky Desire from the ancient Romans and Greeks, to our favourite modern philosophers and writers — so why is kink still shrouded in shame? And can social platforms like TikTok help?
Esmé Louise James is best known for her irreverent lecture series on TikTok, Kinky History, which boasts a following of over 2 million people from around the world. She has produced a range of poetry, short-stories, and non-fiction articles and in 2020, she was listed in the Top 30 Emerging Writers by SBS Australia. A PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, her thesis investigates the emerging genre of the pornographic novel in the eighteenth-century. Esmé Louise James is @esme.louisee on TikTok and Instagram
