Panel: The Real Sex Lives of BDSM

Panel- 18+ and older.

Mainstream culture loves BDSM as an aesthetic — leather, restraints, a flash of explicit — but rarely as a practice with its own ethics, history, and community structures. What gets lost in translation between kink as it's lived and kink as it's sold? This panel looks at what happens when practitioners themselves take the reins: BIPOC kink communities reclaiming space in a scene that has historically centered whiteness, queer BDSM spaces functioning as sites of social justice rather than just play, and sex workers (ranging from performers to professional dominants) navigating the gap between how their work is practiced and how it's consumed. What would society and media get right if they actually listened to the people doing the work?

With

Jet Setting Jasmine - (IG: @jetsettingjasmine) Jet Setting Jasmine is a licensed psychotherapist, sex educator, filmmaker, performer, and co-owner of Royal Fetish Films. Her work explores sexual freedom, race, power, kink, pornography, and sex work through a culturally informed, trauma-aware, and liberation-focused lens. She is the founder of Blue Pearl Therapy and brings clinical practice into conversation with erotic media, education, and advocacy. Jasmine’s work challenges stigma while centering Black sexuality, pleasure, bodily autonomy, and the lived expertise of sex workers. Through film, research, teaching, and public speaking, she creates space for more honest, expansive conversations about desire, representation, intimacy, and sexual culture.

King Noire - (IG: @therealkingnoire) King Noire is an accomplished and award-winning writer, porn performer, artist, Master Fetish Trainer, MC and global activist using the proceeds of his album ‘Music Is My Weapon’ to build a school, fresh water well and medical clinic in Guinea Bissau, West Africa. King has taken the Adult Entertainment Industry by storm, partnering with Jet Setting Jasmine to form Royal Fetish Films. The company has celebrated three industry Fetish Awards for Orally Yours (2016), Collared in Shadows (2017), and Sacred Sex (2018); and King winning the esteemed award of Male Fetish Performer of The Year (2022) & Best Male Cam Model (2022). King has also added Best Pansexual Performer for UrbanX (2023 & 2024). King brings his directorial and editing skills to each set creating art and beauty in the XXX world.

Olivia Troy - (IG: @oliviatroy) As a BDSM consultant for film, TV, and theater and with two decades of experience practicing BDSM professionally, Olivia Troy, known as Troy (she/her), is on a mission to evolve how we see, think, and talk about kink. Her credits include Showtime’s Billions and season two of Netflix’s Bonding, which she also co-wrote. She is a certified intimacy coordinator — and among the first to be listed on SAG-AFTRA’s registry of qualified intimacy coordinators. Troy is also the founder of Reps On Set, a consultancy dedicated to building safer creative spaces through intimacy coordination, cultural coordination, and on set mental health support.

Darius Rex - he/they · (IG: @your_pleasure_matters) – Darius Rex is a queer Dominus* at BDSM Studio LUX, a systemic counsellor*, cultural studies researcher* and trans* rights activist* based in Berlin. In all of this work, one question keeps coming back: how do people pushed to the margins survive the systems they live in, and what role can kink play in that? Darius treats the body as a political site and vulnerability as a resource rather than a weakness. As a core organiser of BDSM Beyond Binary, Darius builds solidarities and practises sexual and social justice through kink and consent. Currently researching the history of HIV/AIDS in East Germany.