Khan, Ummni
Associate Professor
- B.A. (Concordia), M.A., LL.B. (York), LL.M. (Michigan), S.J.D. (Toronto), of the Bar of Ontario
- Email Khan, Ummni
Current Research
Dr. Ummni Khan researches the socio-legal construction of deviant sexuality, with a focus on kink, sex work, and representations of hard core eroticism. Scrutinizing law alongside pop culture and progressive social movements, she considers how the policing of sexual risk discounts non-normative desires, and further entrenches other marginalities, particularly with regard to race, class, and disability. In addition to this intersectional analysis, Dr. Khan asks, how can we reframe deviancy through an epistemology of pleasure? Her work can be found in a variety of peer-reviewed and popular venues including: The Canadian Journal of Law and Society; The University of Toronto Law Journal; Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology; Feral Feminisms; and Ryerson’s Centre for Free Expression Blog.
Current Projects in Process
Office Hours
A novel that uses romance tropes to explore feminist theories of consent, agency, desire—and how to brew an authentic cup of chai.
The Kinky Brat: Speak Pleasure to Power
An essay collection that advocates for pleasure as both an inherent good and a source of knowledge, resistance, and survival.
Current Supervisions
- Keely Grossman: Critical Blindness Studies
- Rachel Jobson: Rethinking Care Outside the Nuclear Family: Non-Monogamous Families and Community-Oriented Care
Media and Blogs
2020 “Have We Lost The Plot With Polanski?” Centre for Free Expression Blog, Ryerson University
- “All Joking Aside? Taking Stock of Sexual Humour at Work” Centre for Free Expression Blog, Ryerson University
2017 “Cultural Appropriation In Coldplay’s “Hymn For The Weekend” Video: An Orgasmic Defence” Centre for Free Expression Blog, Ryerson University
2016 “The Rhetoric of Rape Culture,” Centre for Free Expression Blog, Ryerson University
2016 (Op-ed) Khan, Ummni. “Why we (still) can’t get enough of Ghomeshi” Ottawa Citizen (March 20)
2016 (Quotes) Beejoli Shah, “Inside the sexy, subversive world of cum tributes” Fusion (February 12)
2016 (Interview) David Hugill and Judy Deutsch, “When We Were Young: Radicals recount early experiences that shaped their political lives” Canadian Dimension (May 12)
2015 (Quotes) Brigitte Noël, “‘John Shaming’ Is Actually Putting Sex Workers at Risk” Vice News (September 29)
2015 (Quotes) Avery Zingel, “Sex experts condemn Joy Smith’s criticism of Fifty Shades of Grey” CBC News. (February 17)
2015 (Interview) Panelist, “Fifty Shades’ Of Misrepresentation” HuffPost Live (February 10)
2015 (Quotes) Mélanie Berliet, “Your Dominatrix Is So Bored by ’50 Shades” The Daily Beast. (February 6)
2014 “Grappling with Ghomeshi: Human Rights, BDSM identification & representation; employment law; edgy kink; sexual assault law” University of Toronto Press Publishing Blog (November 11)
2014 Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences ASPP highlight on Vicarious Kinks: “Are some topics too taboo to tackle for a researcher?”
Selected Scholarly Publications
2025 In ‘Paying For It,’ ex-lovers reimagine friendship, family and the meaning of sex work” The Conversation
2025 “Rethinking The “Rough Sex Defence” in Canada: Replies To Sheehy Et Al” (co-authored with Kyler Chittick and Brenda Cossman) Alberta Law Review
2024 “The Kinky Brat: Speak Pleasure to Power” in Enticements: Queer Legal Studies (University of Chicago Press)
2022 50 Shades of a Moral Panic (From the Progressive Left to the Conservative Right) in Binding and Unbinding Kink: Pain, Pleasure, and Empowerment in Theory and Practice (Springer)
2021 “A Guilty Pleasure: The Verdict Against Hip Hop & Rap Lyrics in Law, Social Science and Feminism” Theoretical Criminology
2021 “Porn and/as Pedagogy, Sexual Representation in the Classroom: A Curated Roundtable Discussion” (co-contributor with Kyler Chittick, Peter Alilunas, Laura Helen Marks and Thomas Waugh) Synoptique – An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image
2020 “Homosexuality and Prostitution: A Tale of Two Deviancies” University of Toronto Law Journal (Cited in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision 2022 SCC 33)
2020 “Kinky Identity and Practice in relation to the Law” in Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality and Law (Edward Elgar Publishing)
2019 “Rape as Play: Yellow Peril Panic and a Defence of Fantasy” (co-authored with Dr. Jean Ketterling) Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian law
2019 “Chester Brown and the Queerness of Johns” Critical Analysis of the Law, An International & Interdisciplinary Law Review
2019 “Torn: A Social Media Drama over the Aziz Ansari Scandal” (co-authored with Dr. Rena Bivens) Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology
2018 “Fifty Shades of Ambivalence: BDSM representation in pop culture” in The Routledge companion to media, sex and sexuality
2018 “From Average Joe to Deviant John: The Changing Construction of Sex Trade Clients in Canada” in Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance
2017 “Fetishizing Music as Rape Culture” Studies in Gender and Sexuality.
2016 “Hot for Kink, Bothered by the Law: BDSM and the Right to Autonomy” Canadian Bar Association – Law Matters (Republished in 2020 for their retrospective issue on influential articles)
2016 “An Incitement to Rapey Discourse: Blurred Lines and the Erotics of Protest” in Synesthetic Legalities: Sensory Dimensions of Law and Jurisprudence (Ashgate Press).
2016 “Taking Her Breath Away: Competing Contexts Between Domestic Violence, Kink and The Criminal Justice System in R. v. J.A.” Oñati Socio-legal Series
2016 “Let’s Get It on: Some Reflections on Sex-Positive Feminism” Women’s Rights Law Reporter (2016)
2015 ““Johns” in the Spotlight: Anti-prostitution Efforts and the Surveillance of Clients” Canadian Journal of Law and Society
2015 “Sadomasochism in Sickness and in Health: Competing Claims from Science, Social Science, and Culture” Current Sexual Health Reports
2015 “Antiprostitution Feminism And The Surveillance Of Sex Industry Clients” in Feminist Surveillance Studies (Duke University Press)
2014 Vicarious Kinks: S/m in the Socio-Legal Imaginary (University of Toronto Press)
2013 “Kissing Cousins: Racism, homophobia and compulsory able-bodiedness in the controversy over Inter-Cousin Marriage” Jindal Global Law Review
2012 “Policing the Border Between Self and Other: How Canadian Television Differentiates American and Canadian Styles of Justice” in Law and Justice on the Small Screen (Hart Publishing”
2009 “Having your Porn and Condemning it Too: A Case Study of a ‘Kiddie Porn’ Expose”. Law, Culture and the Humanities
2009 “Putting a Dominatrix in Her Place” The Canadian Journal of Women and the Law
2009 “A Woman’s Right to be Spanked: Testing the Limits of Tolerance of S/M in the Socio-Legal Imaginary” The Journal of Sexuality and the Law
Other Publications
2025 “Treading lightly: Why we tiptoe around women’s rape fantasies” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2025 “I like being called exotic. Does that make me a bad feminist of colour?” Feminine Collective
2021 “Don’t Throw Rosemary’s Baby Out with the Bathwater” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2020 “Have We Lost the Plot with Polanski?” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2018 “We do have nice tits; Thank you for noticing! (Or, An Intersectional Pleasure-Positive Defence of Catcalling)” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2018 “All Joking Aside? Taking Stock of Sexual Humour at Work” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2016 “The Rhetoric of Rape Culture,” Centre for Free Expression, TMU
2016 “When We Were Young: Radicals recount early experiences that shaped their political lives” vignette, compiled by David Hugill and Judy Deutsch (Volume 50, Issue 2 2016)
2014 “Grappling with Ghomeshi: Human Rights & BDSM” University of Toronto Press Publishing Blog
2014 “Are some topics too taboo to tackle for a researcher?” Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences ASPP highlight on Vicarious Kinks