Consent is the cornerstone of kink. Even things that seem non-consensual, such as CNC, are negotiated beforehand. You should never make people who don’t know they’re part of your scene into part of your scene. This is why you don’t go around public places such as parks or malls with one person leading the other by a leash, and things like that: those other people didn’t consent to experience or observe your kink.

I was on Reddit recently and someone was posting pictures of how she left Polaroids of her genitalia in various public places — this was part of her kink, apparently. In this post she was doing it at Home Depot; she left one in a grill and one on a shelf (I knew it was Home Depot because of the shelf tags). I don’t know how many others she left around. While this certainly seems harmless at first blush — after all, what harm can a photo do, especially one that she took herself and chose to leave in a public place? — it still by its very nature involves other people in her kink. She’ll never know who saw the picture (unless they take a picture of where they found it and post about it somewhere she happens to see it). She doesn’t know if the person who finds the picture will be offended or disgusted. She doesn’t know if they’re an adult or not. She’s only thinking about herself.

I’m a little torn because about fifty percent of people on the planet have female genitalia, and the human body shouldn’t be censored for no reason. But there’s a time and a place to show your genitalia, and Home Depot isn’t it. People don’t go to Home Depot to see nudity; they go to buy things to improve or fix their homes. If I were to find one of those pictures, I’d probably throw it away; I didn’t consent to seeing her genitalia. Nor did any other Home Depot shopper.

Don’t do kinky things without consent — including without consent of the people around you. (Attending a kink event implies you consent to seeing these things.) It’s not cool, and it might actually be illegal in some aspects.