The working class being more culturally conservative than the bourgeoisie is a fact of life in the West and Islamic worlds. Indeed, in the manifesto Marx criticized the bourgeoisie for doing adultery and whatnot. Socialist states like the USSR have been quite conservative in practice as well. And today there are internet leftists who support the idea that the degeneracy of the West is a capitalist thing, and the pride flags* and kink subcultures and all of that would disappear in a socialist state. From a Marxist POV it is dogma that cultures, including sexual subcultures, emerge from material conditions. So, with that in mind, 1. In a post capitalist world will the various sexual fetishes people have today (BDSM, femdom, etc) fade away? 2. Is it possible new fetishes and subcultures would emerge, and if so what would they be like? *This post is about heterosexual sexual “deviancy”, I don’t care about other groups for the purposes of this discussion.
I call myself a socialist but I basically reject the orthodox Marxist view that all the perversions and inequities of society at large (I suppose the correct term is the 'superstructure') are due to capitalism. That just feels like magical thinking, quite frankly.
I think you can look at Sade and such like and see that fetishistic sexual activities are not an intrinsically modern phenomenon. Why are they prevalent now? Well, clearly sexual liberalisation is a large factor, and then there is also what one might well call the 'toaster effect'... you know, that old greentext about wanting to fuck a toaster. The internet makes these sexual practices much more accessible, and provides them with a lexicon and a cultural framework that enables people to discuss them with their partners. Clearly that's not entirely a bad thing, either. Much of kink and BDSM seems pretty malign to me but at the same time I wouldn't want to live in a world where regular men and women don't share the cultural basis necessary to engage in mutually pleasurable sex acts like cunnilingus and so on.
What I'm saying is that the internet exists under socialism too, and so really if you want to suppress these practices then that would just boil down to state censorship. Certainly something we see in places like China, but surely not something that most leftists would regard as an element of Marxist thought.
This answer is not responsive to the class question (because Marxism holds no interest for me), but I am often struck at the somewhat-Aspergerish element in BDSM. The common meme on r/RedScarePod—the type of person you think is a swinger, what he is like in real life—springs to mind. Probably, if you are scared of actual romance with the other sex, BDSM offers boxed-up, pre-assembled roles into which one can easily slip, and so leave behind their selves (garish, overfed and ungracious). This is particularly so with those who dress themselves up completely in latex or the suchlike (involving the annihilation or abolition of the body).
It is also useful to distinguish different types of BDSM; it seems to me entirely anachronistic to call spanking a form of BDSM, when it is mentioned in the Kama Sutra as a way men can quicken women's desire and increase general sexual pleasure.
This article is worth a read: www.jsanilac.com/dominance/
BDSM often seems to me like the return of the repressed--the repressed being sexuation...the essential difference between men and women, the masculine principle being active and the feminine principle being passive--BDSM being a very gaudy and often tasteless recapitulation of lost truths--so long as man and woman go on like this, there may be physical connection, but there will not be love
To get something out of the way:
> the cultural basis necessary to engage in mutually pleasurable sex acts like cunnilingus
> to call spanking a form of BDSM
> BDSM ... the masculine principle being active and the feminine principle being passive
Certain practices that may or may not be considered kink can exist independently from the concept of kink, depending cultural conditions.
As for the concept of kink itself, as a subversive contrast to vanilla sex, how it depends on material conditions depends on what causes it occur.
1) Boredom. The conventional wisdom among certain, more liberal, groups is that kink arises out of boredom with vanilla sex. I don't think this is actually true, it would cause a much stronger correlation with age & experience that would be very apparent. If it were a significant cause, then a post-capitalist world could see an increase in kink.
2) Superiority. I think the primary motivator is people who feel that kink is high-brow sex. That it sets them apart as fashionable and of a more refined palette than the masses. So whether it would exist without capitalism depends on if you think sub cultures more broadly would exist. Does giving people more free time cause them to focus on social currency more? This boring substack article someone linked me a couple months ago says yes.
asteriskmag.substack.com/p/we-already-know-what-a-world-without
On the other hand, maybe without economic class, there would be less desire to achieve social class.
3) Privilege. The ruling class commits acts that are actually taboo. The Epsteins and Sades do these things because they can and everyone else can't. Any reasonably socialist & egalitarian society would not allow for this to occur.