He looked shocked; I wondered if he'd expected me to say no. "What?!" he cried, and took a moment to regain his composure. "Well, that's American culture," he said finally. "It's not African culture.” I took a deep breath and pressed my lips together. I'd be in big trouble with my employer if I kicked up a storm at the Post Office, but oh, man -- in that moment, I really, really wanted to. "How much do I owe you?" I asked instead, and went home to lose myself in a nice sex-positive book. Personally, what I find most intriguing about these assertions of cultural imperialism is how they compare to similar assertions in the West. I'm a kinkster and pro-BDSM activist, but I'm also a feminist, which can make for some serious anxiety. A lot of my coming-out process involved both a difficult internal struggle and my observations of arguments between kinksters and anti-BDSM feminists, who often make very similar allegations to these African speakers on "cultural imperialism." The very articulate BDSM blogger Trinity (who, of late, has sadly decreased her involvement in the blogosphere) has spent lots of time analyzing and participating in those arguments. One of my favorite Trinity posts, titled "Why BDSM?", hosts a radical feminist commenter who writes: If we lived in a healthy society, the idea of BDSM would not even come up in the first place. BDSM is here, as a manifestation of that unhealthiness, but to try to ‘stop’ the people who aren't being coerced into it would do more harm than the thing itself... Iam not saying tolerance of BDSM directly causes our sick society, but that it is a very strong Symptom of a society were hierarchy, inequality and degradation are seen as the norm of human relations. Accepting BDSM is accepting this status quo. ... by challenging all inequality, including that in BDSM, we are putting forward the idea that other possibilities are available. In other words: the Patriarchy made me kinky, and if I don't challenge kink then I'm supporting t