I met Catherine twice. The first time was at the Lube and laptop sex bloggers meetup in Birmingham in June 2017. This was a warm midsummer day just after Theresa May’s general election gamble had backfired, so the mood was generally cheerful. Close to the venue a gathering of far right pondlife couldn’t spoil the mood. Some of us imagined that this would be the first of regular meetups, but this turned out not to be the case. There were the practical difficulties of getting people together, there was Covid, there was, later, the fragmentation of the sex blogging community. It would be lovely to meet people again but, in the absence of further Eroticons, this is, I fear, unlikely to happen, or, at least, not in a group. I may well continue to meet up with people on an individual basis, but the discussions sparked by a group dynamic will be missed.
The second time I met Catherine was at Birmingham’s Bizarre Bazaar, the famous fetish market cum munch, the BBB. Catherine had a stall at the market hat day, to sell her book, Thinking Kink. I bought a copy. She signed it, touched up her lippy and pressed the title page of my book to her lips, leaving a bright, red print. Something of Catherine remains, here on my bookshelves.
I was never to see Catherine again. She died in May 2018 after a long battle with depression, let down, as many others have been, by failings of NHS mental health services.
I only ever knew Catherine fleetingly, some of you reading this will never have known her at all. Yet her passing was a loss because there was, surely, much that she had to contribute. Thinking Kink is a thought provoking book, taking on the idea that kink, or BDSM is incompatible with feminism, that BDSM is abuse. Of course BDSM can be abusive, or rather abusers try to use BDSM as a post hoc justification for their abuse. BDSM takes place in a culture that is patriarchal, and some practices may be over determined by patriarchy. Nonetheless, Catherine makes the case for BDSM as something that can be liberating and empowering, something both rooted in culture and yet also counter cultural. These are things that those of us who practise BDSM now instinctively, for example, the way in which cultural practices ae recreated as parody in the context of a scene for the mutual pleasure and, not infrequently, emotional catharsis of the participants. Nonetheless, Catherine’s intervention, arguing from intellectual conviction in a book aimed at a wider audience than the kink community was important. It helped me to develop my thinking.
Shortly before her death, Catherine published her second book, To Deprave and Corrupt, her contribution to the battle against those seeking to censor sexual free expression in the “war on obscenity” which was raging with particular ferocity. She was also an ally of trans people, an ally of sex workers. She would surely have a lot of worthwhile things to say on these issues, and no doubt some observations on the rise of the self-styled Gender Critical movement which hardly existed in 2018.
Catherine left us too soon, much too soon and, as with all people who die young, there is that aching feeling of what might have been. But I am going to celebrate, the things she gave me through her writing, the fact that I knew her, even if briefly and fleetingly. I will also commit myself to carrying on writing about sexuality, about kink, about sex work. I urge all of you who share my passions to do the same. This can be a lonely and seemingly unrewarding furrow to plough, but we need to do it.
And, finally, Catherine, I will raise a glass to your memory. Rest in power!
