A Guest Post by Clarisse Thorn

This is an article about sexual assault at the Burning Man arts festival, and the issues that surround this topic at Burning Man. It includes accounts of a particular assault.

I am writing this post as a feminist, as someone with extensive experience in the BDSM community, and from the perspective of a 2-year Burner with many many Burner friends. If you’d like to know more about my background, or if you don’t know much about Burning Man, it might help to read my review of Burning Man 2012. You can find my previous work about BDSM and sexual communication at my blog or in my books.

I want to acknowledge up front that there are a number of social justice issues at the festival, some of which I summarized in my review, and some of which were recently highlighted when the “Cargo…