A few posters have requested that I transfer this discussion of BDSM and patriarchy into its own thread (right now it’s taking place in the “root of all oppression” thread). So here are a couple of posts, to get this thread started; and then I’ll copy over a bunch of the comments, where appropriate.
Myca wrote:
What I mean by #2 is that . . . well . . . hmm . . . look, I don’t think that gay male relationships are sexist because they exclude women. In fact, I lose respect for people who make that argument. I don’t think that a relationship between two white people is racist because it excludes black people. Once again, I would lose respect for anyone who make that argument. For me, BDSM is the same thing.
“Excluding women” in the bedroom or in a romantic relationship isn’t the same thing as excluding women outside of it. “Excluding black people” in the bedroom or in a romantic relationship isn’t the same thing as excluding black people out of it. A deliberate choice to play out a power imbalance in the bedroom isn’t the same thing is perpetuating a power imbalance outside of it. Maybe it’s just that I think of sexual/romantic relationships as something “different.” It’s just how we are. We’re attracted to who we’re attracted to. We get off how we get off. Our kinks are our kinks.
Then, cicely wrote:
In any case, it is not impossible for an individual to work in a battered womens shelter, campaign for better childcare facilities, a more even distribution between the seccses of wealth in society, whatever – i.e make a significant practical contribution to the betterment of womens lives, then go home (or somewhere) and engage in consensual d/s sexual activity! These things are not mutually exclusive.
After that, Charles responded:
As a fellow pervert :), I have to strongly disagree with your rejection of the idea that BDSM practice should be subject to radical feminist analysis (cicely, your position seems more nuanced than Myca’s blanket rejection, but I still find it problematic).
The fact that sexual preference is largely not subject to conscious control does not mean it shouldn’t be examined critically. The fact that one can both be a feminist and have BDSM desires (and practices) does not mean that one’s BDSM practice and desire is positively compatible with one’s feminism (one can also be an asshole and a feminist, or a professional torturer and a feminist, so coexistence doesn’t equal validation).
Likewise, that BDSM does not consist of a trivial replication of men oppressing women does not mean that it is unconnected to patriarchy.
While it is possible to have specific meaningful discussions of the basis of the eroticization of power without referencing patriarchal domination, I think that refusing to talk about the relationship between eroticization of power and patriarchal domination (or rejecting such arguments as naive) is crippling to a full understanding of either.
I think treating sexuality as something that just is is a mistake, and I think that trying to understand sexuality under patriarchy while ignoring that the sexuality under discussion exists under patriarchy is a mistake. I also think that recognizing that BDSM sexuality is constructed under patriarchy is not a simply blanket condemnation of BDSM sexuality, particularly not in comparison to unconsidered vanilla sexuality, which is (obviously) also constructed under patriarchy. While it is possible to work to reconstruct one’s sexuality in a direction that is oppositional towards patriarchy (and I think that Safe/Sane/Consensual BDSM is to some extent such an effort), I think that to do so requires recognizing the relationships between one’s sexuality and patriarchal oppression.
Incidentally, my own views on my own sexuality are (strangely enough) strongly influenced by Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse (originally by osmosis in the late 80’s, but when I actually read it a few years back I was impressed with how strong the osmosis had been), so I feel strongly that radical feminism can provide useful tools for understanding BDSM sexuality in terms that are more complex than “BDSM is bad”.
cicely, I realize that you commented that you were not trying to start this conversation here, but I think it might be an interesting one. Perhaps it needs a top level post of its own? Amp expressed to me a willingness to have such a top level post, if you and Myca would be interested in going into these questions further.
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Oh, I don’t reject the idea that BDSM should be subject to RF analysis, Charles, it’s just that I’ve found some discussions on the subject difficult to participate or make any headway in. It seemed that the parameters were too restrictive, as I mentioned above. For another eggzample, when I suggested that as human social eccsperience in general involves relationships to power from different perspectives, and one way to take power over that fact itself, and the uncertainty that surrounds it – to incorporate it and deal with it – is to ‘play’ with it, the avenue was cut off before any furthur eccsploration by an accusation that it is patriachal thinking to suggest the inevitability of ‘power’, or ‘power over’ in the first place. Radical feminism wants to create a different reality. I’m thinking, well, ok, but don’t we have to start from where we are now? Can’t we at least eggzamine the question of actual harm vs healthy and harmless processing of a current and just possibly, though maybe not inevitably permanent reality of life? And who knows what other thoughts people might have…?
Anyway, you get the idea. It was a slippery eel of a conversation and I think people just got frustrated. I know I did. But, yes, I would be happy to go into these questionss furthur in this forum. Judging by what I’ve seen so far I think this would be a good place to respectfully hear different views and opinions.
Myca, you are essentially correct. I’m a switch to an extent, but I’m really a bottom, and specifically a submissive. In fact, I would top less, but my wife* also likes to bottom, and specifically requests that I do my fair share of topping.
Cicely, this resonated with me:
I agree with Charles that we ought not to just rule out examination of our sexuality. However, if the conversation starts with, “why are you doing what you’re doing when it’s wrong?” there is no room for dialog.
Cicely, I think you’re right that simply declaring that we’re trying to do away with all power differentials ignores the need to deal with the conditions we live with now. (Nobody but the French government thinks, for example, that the way to deal with racism is to refuse to talk about race). I think that, within a context where people can speak openly about power (and especially where the power imbalance is a temporary, artificial environment), having the power dynamic out in the open is a good thing. What’s more insidious; the open, consensual, temporary arrangement between my wife and I in a scene; or the long-term nonconsensual power struggles that go on among people in the workplace?
If the conversation starts with, “what do you get out of that and why is it erotic/intimate for you?” then there is plenty of room for examination and discussion. With some people, there’s room to discuss, and with some people there’s just no common ground.
I’m confident we have other folks from the BDSM community on this blog, too. We’re either the most vocal, or the ones that realize this issue has arisen on the thread. If Amp moves this to a separate thread, I think we’ll see a bunch of folks flying the flag.
*Every time I use this word, I’m aware of the privilege I have. That’s another thread, or more precisely, several threads on this blog.
When I brought this subject up in the “Is the oppression of women the original oppression?’ thread, it was in the conteccst of how the assertion, or similar , can have the effect of closing down or re-directing discussion on a given subject. Feeling no need to disassociate myself from BDSM, but I think I should say, in the interests of accuracy, that I’m not (yet?) a practioner of it myself. I would definitely describe my seccsuality as being within a range of d/s relating however, and I do think the discussion here might be more fruitful if we look at a spectrum of d/s seccsual relating – in relation to patriarchy.It would include many more of us, I feel sure… and possibly reduce the potential for polarisation…?
Yes, certainly.
To my mind, the traditional romantic-sexual model is also solidly within the range of d/s relating. Both the pursuer-pursued aspect and the supplicant-grantor dynamics seem to me to be about the eroticization of power dynamics.
The following is a brief description of my orientation and a very vague description of my sexual practice. I am somewhat cofortable with people knowing this about me, and figure it is necessary to make clear what position I speak from. I’ve tried to put this info behind a cut, in case some people would prefer to avoid reading it, but I don’t know if my minimal css skills are sufficient to the task.
I speak from the position of a male, predominantly heterosexual, sadist (and sometimes switch). Ideologically, I strongly favor egalitarian sex (which is not the same thing as vanilla sex), but my sexual orientation is not purely egalitarian. By chance or not, my wife is also a pervert (strongly switch) who ideologically strongly favors egalitarian sex. Neither of us was a BDSM practitioner before we became involved with each other, and we came out to each other gradually, predominantly through reading the usenet board alt.sex.bondage together. More detail than that I’d prefer not to give.
One of the advantages that I see in explicit BDSM practice is that it localizes the eroticization of power dynamics (of power-over, violence and pain) in a specific set of agreed upon activities, and also helps to distinguish and seperate those who significantly eroticize power dynamics, and those who don’t. Both of these steps are useful, as the implicit and generalized eroticization of power dynamics is something that I see as being frequently malign and damaging. Many of the warning signs of abusers seem to me to be hidden in part by an acceptance of unspoken eroticization of power dynamics. If someone having control over you is sexy, then you are less likely to notice and object when someone is taking control over your life.
Even without rising to the level of blatant abuse, I think that eroticizing power dynamics without developing a coherent and explicit BDSM framework (safe-sane-consensual) leads in bad directions sexually and interpersonally. Eroticizing actual power dynamics leads to a tolerance for power dynamics, and to an interest in seeking out the potential power dynamics contained within a given situation.
However, while BDSM practice may be useful in creating temporary, consensual sham power dynamics to erotically enjoy, and may therefore help to free one from pursuing actual, long-term, non-consensual power dynamics, there is no gaurantee that this second part will be the case.
I’d be interested to see what our resident radical feminists make of the topic.
I like the way Charles phrases this:
Even without rising to the level of blatant abuse, I think that eroticizing power dynamics without developing a coherent and explicit BDSM framework (safe-sane-consensual) leads in bad directions sexually and interpersonally. Eroticizing actual power dynamics leads to a tolerance for power dynamics, and to an interest in seeking out the potential power dynamics contained within a given situation.[emphasis mine]
One thing I’ve noticed about the eroticizing of male dominance is when you read a lot of anti-choice literature (and even laws), you get the strong impression that for a lot of anti-choice men there is a sadistic need for pregnancy to exist as a way for them to mark their property–that having a woman pregnant by you and go through that suffering is the pseudo-righteous version of what more enlightened folks get out of their system by playing around with leashes and other forms of bondage. But they don’t have an outlet for these urges and so instead of making it a “sadism gets me off, so let’s get that out of my system in a safe, consensual enviroment”, they project their desires onto everyone else and demand that the law force conformity.
Which is a long, roundabout way of saying that so-called vanilla sex roles can and often do have a sado-masochistic element to them. (Hyper-religious Christians who clearly get an erotic buzz off the process of keeping the wife perpetually pregnant is the first thing that comes to mind.) But because the people who are deeply into eroticized gendered power differientials slap a thick coat of moral self-righteousness onto their practices, there’s no way to contain or even discuss what is feeding into it. BDSM, however–and this is talking to people who are into it, which I’m not, so tell me if I’m off-base–makes power plays a sexual game, which leaves the option of containment.
Amanda -I think it’s likely to be be true that there are all sorts of ways to disguise sado-masochistic elements in relationships – even not acknowledge them to yourself. In contrast BDSM is very deliberate and obvious (as well as contained). Honesty and trust would both seem to be essential.
Yes. Truth be told I wonder what we’re left with if we take power dynamics right out of the equation. So Charles, when you say that ideologically you favour egalitarian seccs – what does that atually mean? Can you describe it? And then, why do you favour it?
cicely, this is driving me nuts and i just have to ask. why don’t you like the letter “x”?
Amanda, I’d argue that for most of those people, it’s not that they have no outlet for sadistic/dominant feelings that might otherwise be expressed in a healthy manner through consensual BDSM. It’s nonconsensual power and control that they crave.
What mythago said. The consensual part is essential to BDSM as I and the people I’ll have anything to do with practice it; we get off because of that, not despite it. It’s a package dynamic.
…That sounded wrong. I’m not saying that there are a bunch of would-be rapists running around play parties and such, and I’m _also_ not saying that bdsm communities are immune from people like that. I meant to say that I can only speak anecdotally, but from everything I’ve seen, it’s not like the negotiation and the boundary talks are safeguards, exactly. They can’t be extricated from the interaction itself.
Cicely,
Egalitarian sexual practice is characterized by a conscious rejection of eroticization of power dynamics but shares with good BDSM the recognition of the importance of verbal communication and repeatedly checking in with your partner. Ideally, the dynamics of communication between equals are eroticized. The oft mocked practice of repeatedly checking in with you sexual partner to see if they are enjoying whatever is going on currently and to see if they’d enjoy it if you did something more is (If done well) the eroticization of active consent. Obviously, the safe-sane-consensual ideal somewhat eroticizes active consent, but also eroticizes power dynamics and the semblance of non-consent.
If going out on a date with someone new is hot because either you or your partner is courting, and your partner or you is probably going to “give in” and have sex later, then, even though the sex is vanilla, I think the actual d/s dynamics of the situation are eroticized. If such a date would feel gross and weird, and you’d be happier and hotter if your mutual potential sexual interest had been clearly (preferably verbally) established then the d/s dynamics of the situation have been defused, and the egalitarian dynamics have been eroticized.
If you are a BDSM practicioner, and you like playing around the edge of your established limits, so that a significant part of the experience is the fear that your partner will cross the line (intentionally, accidentally, or ‘accidentally’), then you are probably eroticizing the actual d/s dynamics. If you would only play near the edge with someone you are absolutely confident would never cross that line, or if you would never play near the edge at all, if it gets less hot the closer it gets to the edge, rather than more hot, then you are probably not eroticizing the actual power dynamics.
While safe-sane-consensual is the BDSM ideal, I think a lot of BDSM practice, particularly outside of play communities in isolated bedrooms, actually involves a lot of eroticization of actual power dynamics, and are just as ripe for abuse as vanilla sex, if not more so. Beating someone with a stick requires only a little ambiguity of desire on the part of that someone before it is abuse. If you have sex with your partner because you’d like to be kind to them, but aren’t hugely into it yourself, that is less than perfect. If you let them beat you to be kind to them, that easily becomes abusive (I think topping out of kindness or fairness is usually less bad, but could still be bad if your partners likes are actually upsetting to you).
OK, this is neither as intellectual nor as subtle as previous posts, but I’ve always thought that the rape fantasy (and the “oops, I’m tied up and helpless” fantasy) was really a version of Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch. “Oooh, please Br’er Fox, don’t throw me in the briar patch.” When, of course, that is exactly where Br’er Rabbit wants to be.
In other words, it is sex without responsibility or guilt–like somebody tying up the poor victims to force chocolate cake on ’em.
The initial discussion in the post reminds me of some reading I’ve done with regard to the corporal punishment of children. One frequent unintended consequence of spanking children is that the child will eroticize the violence done to them (partly I guess due to the fact that physical act of spanking actually stimulates the child’s sexual organs, and partly due to the psychological response of a child to the confusing and overwhelming fact that someone they love is violating them physically). I have read testimonials in which people who were spanked as children argue that their parents essentially inflicted a sexual kink on them that they fervently wish they didn’t have. See more at this site..
Obviously, I realize that not all spanked children are affected this way. I also realize that this dynamic is not at play for all members of the BDSM community. But I find it interesting that at least some people experience their BDSM sexuality as yet one more way in which they have been victimized. For these particular individuals, it’s almost as though the parents who abused them continue to exercise their power over them and there is no way to escape it.
Beth – The letter ‘eccs’ isn’t working on my keyboard. I’ll have to keep saying this in all my posts so I don’t drive folks crazy – sorry about that! I can’t get a new keyboard immediately – but will ASAP…
Charles – I get the good communication part. Would that suffice as a rejection of power dynamics, I wonder. Aren’t there power dynamics at work in the process of just seduction, even prior to seccs itself? I suppose I’m asking generally – ‘what is arousal made of?’ Or, how does anything become eroticised? If you eccstract conquest and/or surrender from a seccsual eccschange, what are you left with? Say even at the level of someone being attracted to someone, but thinking that for one reason or another these feelings should not be acted upon. If they then do act on them, they might consider this as a kind of surrender. Particularly if the other party has been actively attempting to seduce them. They surrender to both the feelings and the person, and there is pleasure in the surrendering of control. There may also have been pleasure in the attempt to stay ‘in’ control. It’s been said before that the most active human seccs organ is the brain. How does one change what goes on in the mind to eliminate power dynamics altogether, and still eccsperience arousal?
I’m interested in eccsploring this first, and then moving into the relationship between seccsual desire and eccspresion and power dynamics in the otherwise material world. I find the fact that the place one is most likely to find ‘powerless’ men, is in BDSM circles, very interesting. What can we make of that in terms of ‘connection’ to patriarchal society, or not, of seccsuality.
Barb – I think this too. And that responsibility and guilt free seccs is something that’s good for humans, as a pleasurable and positive relief or release from the stresses and pressures of life. We can get ‘lost’ in it, and no-one is hurt by it. Seccs does actually funtion that way in the Bonobo (pygmy chimp) society. They have a lot of it. Though I guess that would be without the element of fantasy.
I feel that between the religiously inspired repression of seccsuality, as a means of control, and the feminist opposition to it (or particular aspects of it) as a means of revolution, (and I think these two things overlap – even sub-consiously), there hasn’t been any space to consider seccs openly and without shame.
cicely,
You can (and I am also prone to doing so) read every human interaction as a relationship of power dynamics. You seem to read it as conquest and surrender, I tend to read it as applications of force (the difference is perhaps subtle and hard to tease out, so I’ll leave it at that unless you are interested in pursuing that distinction). I’d like to go through a few key comments of yours, and see if I can spin off of them a better description of what I mean by egalitarian erotics, and how they differ from vanilla erotics. I agree that vanilla erotics are packed full of d/s (with much less b&d or s-m), but I think there are several other ways of doing things.
Good communication is critical, and it is part of the rejection of the actual power dynamics, but it is not the same as rejection of the eroticization of power dynamics. If you find seeing things as conquest and surrender as a turn on, then you are eroticizing power dynamics, even if you communicate the fact that that is what you find hot, and that that is what you want to have in your relationships.
If you say to your partner, “I’d like you to take me out and seduce me, so we can have really hot sex later,” you are using good honest communication of your desires, but you are using it to establish that you’d like to do some d/s sex. Doing d/s sex that way is certainly far better (in my opinion) than acting distant so your partner decides they really need to turn on the charm and takes you out to seduce you, and you end the night having hot sex.
The first eroticizes power relations, but the second intentionally constructs real and destructive power relations so that they can be eroticized.
Does that make sense?
Here is what seduction means to me. Seduction is a specific method of initiating sexual interactions, or more broadly a specific way of imagining the initiation of sexual interactions, and it is certainly drenched in actual d/s power relations. It is also usually based in intentionally very poor communication. Seduction seems to me to be based on the idea that neither participant should ever admit that they are interested in having sex until they are actually having sex. The seducer caries out a long series of moves to position their victim so that they will simply fall into having sex, and the victim pretends that they aren’t interested and often that they don’t even realize what is going on, while simultaneously signaling that they are interested and that the seducer should continue positioning them. It seems like it would be hard to do that (without prior negotiation) while maintaining good communication.
Let me describe an alternative method. Telling someone that you are attracted to them (or even having an intermediary tell them that you are attracted to them) is not a technique of seduction. Responding by saying, “Yeah, I’m attracted to you too, want to head back to my place after this?” or “I’m attracted to you to, but I’d like to get to know you better, want to go out for coffee after this?” are not techniques of seduction, but they are techniques of initiating sexual interactions. If you exclusively eroticize d/s relations, then initiating sex like that (either as first or second speaker) is not sexy, and maybe doesn’t even work as a way to initiate sex. If you eroticize egalitarian relationships and communication, then an initiation like that can be exciting (“Wow,” you think, “she feels comfortable enough with me to ask if I’m attracted to her, that’s really hot!”).
Does that make sense?
Here’s the list that leaps immediately to my mind:
The sharing of intimacy, physical pleasure, trust, the experience of making oneself vulnerable and not being harmed (that one is crossing closer to d/s territory), the release of tension, validation as a desirable and complete person (that one is kinda creepy).
Oh, also, if you actually remove the aspect of conquest and surrender from the interaction, you may also gain the following:
The lack of stress and fear, the pleasure at creating a momentary island where everything isn’t seen in terms of power-over, the feeling that you are part of a radical transformation of sexuality into something that is no longer a weapon. :)
Does that make the idea of egalitarian eroticism make more sense?
That’s a hard one! :)
The scenario you describe as erotic reads to me as one of rejection and seduction and self-hating surrender (taking pleasure in ones failure to stay in control, taking pleasure in doing what one thinks is wrong has an aspect to my mind of exquisite self-hatred, an aspect that I understand). To you, this is an erotic scenario, with multiple aspects of conquest and surrender building the pleasure. To someone who hates being pestered, who hates loosing, who hates being put in a position where loosing and winning are the stakes, nothing in there looks erotic or exciting. In that sort of situation, their goals would be to ensure that the seducer loses, not to have the situation lead to hot sex.
What leads to people to see the same situation so differently, so that one person finds that hot, while the other is repulsed? Personal history? Cultural training? Patriarchy?
Well, for me, the answer to that is that I find that I mostly can’t stop seeing and eroticizing power dynamics, and that is my argument in defense of BDSM. Strip the actual power dynamics out of the situation so that the interaction can be based in equality and communication and mutuality, and restrict the eroticized power dynamics to artificial, negotiated, temporary constructs, where they still have sexual power, but where they no longer have real world power to injure. Actual power dynamics (of power-over, violence, and pain) seem contrary to healthy human relationships, in my experience.
At the same time, I think most people only marginally eroticize power dynamics, and I think that they are better off de-training that association, and emphasizing other aspects of sex and life that they find erotic.
Even for people who eroticize power dynamics, I think it is essential to learn to eroticize communication and equality and mutuality. I think sex needs to contain those things to be healthy, and I think one is better off eroticizing things that are necessary for healthy sex, rather than begrudging them. The question then is how to do that.
Lastly,
For me, feminism is the framework that creates that space for considering sex openly (and honestly) and without shame. And the framework for creating a sexuality without shame.
To me, seduction, traditional dating (boy with money + girl + dinner = girl gives boy sex), and most of the other mechanics of mainstream vanilla sexuality – the entire institution of romance – is a patriarchal blight that requires overthrowing in order to get to a sexuality without shame. But that requires a lot more explanation, and this is already a very long post, so I’ll leave it there for now.
A few years ago, I was on a mailing list for people who were into female domination. One thing that I find disconcerting now I look back on it is how much emphasis there was on “forced feminisation” – making the submissive wear high heels and walk like a woman, calling him by feminine names, penetrating him. Disconcerting because it seems to reinforce the idea that female=submissive more than a submissive woman could ever do. These guys wanted to be humiliated and they associated being made female with humiliation.
I have always thought that BDSM has the potential to be fundamentally a very democratic thing. I can think of very few other contexts where power dynamics are explicitly negotiated so that the needs and desires of both partners are met, regardless of gender, race, age, class, ability, body size, and so on (although of course these are always factors in the exchange and it’s impossible to know how/the extent to which they shape our desires).
In other words, it is sex without responsibility or guilt
Barbara, that’s kind of the pop-psych version but I don’t think it’s true of many (or perhaps even most). I know for many people it’s a way to play with issues of power and control without actual danger–a real rapist doesn’t care about physical damage or about stopping if you need things to stop.
I might not be being as precise with the words I choose as I need to be but I hope my whole or general meaning will come across.
This does make sense.
I haven’t made this clear, but, yes, I understand that intimacy and tenderness and all the other rewarding non-d/s aspects can be present, both during d/s relating and before or after it. I guess to be more specific though I would say that individuals often have seccsual preferences or boundaries which mean that they fall somwhere on a spectrum d to s, and are never comfortable crossing that line. So they would think of themselves as more or less dominant, or more or less submissive in some specific ways, without being necessarily inolved in BDSM. So, when I ask ‘what are we left with if we remove the power dynamic altogether?’, it’s this kind of thing I’m thinking of too. Egalitarian seccs, to some, has meant ‘you do me, then I’ll do you – 50/50.’ Which is not an eccsiting or even comfortable proposition for a lot of people, myself included.
I can understand that but feminism, particularly radical feminism and lesbian-feminism, has been very problematic also in the area of seccuality, and actually ‘created’ shame. I am a survivor of the infamous ‘Lesbian Sex Wars’ (my ‘eccs’ worked! but not twice….) and could talk your ear off about that, but I’m most interested here in finding out peoples views on what the connection actually is between the real world oppression and abuse of women, and patriarchy in general, and consensual d/s seccsual relating, from mild through to BDSM.
I wonder what people think seccs would be or look like in an ideal world. I wonder what people think the ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ or ‘usefulness’ of seccs is – for the individual perhaps as opposed to those things for ‘society’.
Yes, Nick, just like in the male prison system. Just like in a school playground. Just like in the world. That’s a ‘view’. A core patriarchal value, even. Whatever ‘thing’ that would be recognised as related to women that attaches to a boy or a man makes him less of a boy or man and more one of the despised and ‘othered’ group – girls and women. No surprises there. But when it becomes impossible to say that women, as a group, have less power in the real world than men as a group, when young boys are aspiring to feats and achievements more equally divided between adult men and women, in all fields of endeavour, it will beome much more difficult to ‘other’ or to apportion dominance and submision in that way too. A crucial thing to deal with is male on female violence, of course, but I’m not convinced that consensual d/s seccs between individuals is an appropriate target in that battle.
I have to agree with mythago that the analysis of rape fantasy above is at best pop-pysch. It may be true of some, but not nearly all.
I have a shame free sex life, and I do have rape fantasies and worse, fantasies involving castration, beating, you name it. Much of it doesn’t even involve me as a character. None of it do I want to come true, and in fact the outrageous unreality of it is part of the allure. Every so often, I read a news story about something I fantasized about and that kills the fantasy forever. It doesn’t mean that I need the helpless element in order to give myself permission to orgasm which seems to be what your analysis is saying about rape fantasies.
It may be that a rape fantasy no matter how realistic in detail has its power from the deep down feeling that this could never really happen. I don’t know why the flush of humiliation in a fantasy may cause a corresponding erotic rush in the one having the fantasy, only it sometimes does. I think many fantasies are just stories that work to bring one closer to orgasm and don’t need to make sense or represent anything more complex. For all we know, it means that the bits of the brain that house these images is just close enough the the part that causes arousal to stimulate it, and that is just coincidental.
I think looking at rape and male on female violence as a method of societal control would be a lot more fruitful than looking at consensual d/s sex.
I agree with some of your points Bean (the term sex-positive drives me nuts anyway). But I think one of the problems is that we’re talking about a topic where one group has far more knowledge and information than the other.
For instance, Happy Feminist’s argument about the connection between childhood punishments is hotly argued, and usually rejected, among spanking communities that I’ve known. Likewise Barb’s analysis is, at best, simplistic. I’m not sure what useful analysis is going to come from a discussion which has to start at the level of basic misconceptions (although getting rid of those misconceptions is always useful, of course).
Something else bothers me about this as well, and that’s the idea that kinky people need to meet non-kinky people on equal footing, to discuss and define their experience. I’m not sure that I’d accept that process for analysis anywhere else.
The idea that people into BDSM, and radical feminists, are two sides that have a view on BDSM sexuality disturbs me. Not least because it imples that those who are into BDSM are, by definition, not radical feminists
I believe that a feminist analysis of BDSM is useful, but I’m not convinced that it can’t be done by practitioners of BDSM, and still less that they need to meet another ‘side’.
I think that all the talk about “Good D/S” is an interesting way to conceal the way in which the vast majority of BDSM is “Bad D/S”. In particular, the way that, as Nick put it, “submission” and “femaleness” are so tightly bound (heh) together. The way that female dominants are scarcer than hen’s teeth.
BDSM apologists disclaim any violence done by BDSM practioners by asserting that those people — the ones doing violence in the name of BDSM — aren’t doing real BDSM, they are doing something else.
I went looking for stories of BDSM survivors — people who been in the scene and managed to get out. What I found, instead, was a description of the problem, how dominants came / come to believe that being a dominant is a free pass to abuse others —
Submissives Need To Take A Stand On Abuse
If a dominant has entered BDSM to get their “free pass”, and they’ve found a submissive who doesn’t have that self-respect, then what? Then the apologists come and tell us that “Real BDSM” involves dominants who are respectful and submisives who have self-esteem?
There is no “real” BDSM in that sense, any more than there is “real” vanilla sex, “real” marriage, or “real” transsexuality. The point people who practice BDSM with safeguards and evolving consent are making is that BDSM is not incompatible with either of the above, and that there are in fact BDSM communities who consider them absolutely necessary.
Gosh, I dunno, maybe the person who doesn’t believe they have any right to refuse abuse gets abused? That’s what happens in non-BDSM relationships, right?
The “apologists” are the people working to prevent this kind of situation by enforcing standards for self-respect. They’re the people writing about what is and is not abuse. They’re the people working to inform dominants that there is no free pass, and to inform submissives that they have as much right to bodily sovreignity as they did before they entered whatever club or playgroup or listserve.
Piny,
I think that my being able to find the article I quoted in the short time I found it (about 5 minutes), which is from a BDSM-positive writer, not some angry, sex-negative, pro-vanilla side-by-side-cuddling-only radical feminist says, to me, that there is a very real problem with non-consensual violence.
Futhermore, I think that the defensive posture taken by BDSM apologist serves to silence critique of the abuses which occur in the name of BDSM. That abuses occur in large numbers seems to be well understood outside the lifestyle. If you want to say that BDSM is incompatible with the things that lead to abuse, you’re free to do so. However, people are abusing in the name of BDSM and I don’t see that being addressed.
(And so I’m very clear, because my snarky, sarcastic posting style may not be familiar to many of my readers on this blog, I’m not suggesting that radical feminsts really are “vanilla only, side-by-side, cuddling only, sex-negative” people, rather, I’m attempting to rebut what is a common assertion about people who object to BDSM because it seems to harm women a lot more than it harms men.)
And if you want to keep putting up those strawmen, you go right ahead.
Piny,
I don’t think I’ve presented a strawman. You’re free to rebut my statement that abuse is common in BDSM communities by claiming it doesn’t occur, but claiming that abuse within the BDSM community doesn’t “count” because it goes against the principles of BDSM is intellectually dishonest. It would be like saying that Catholic priests don’t molest children because molestation is un-Catholic. Sure, it’s un-Catholic, but that doesn’t seem to stop it from happening.
Keep in mind — I’m not saying that someone who makes a fully-informed decision to be flogged, understands the physical risks, is able to manage those risks, and is being flogged by someone who respects the person being flogged’s boundaries, is being abused. That would be a strawman. Rather, I’m saying that if we accept the text of the article I referenced as “true”, there is a big problem. The article came from a website sympathetic to BDSM, and I’ve read the same thing elsewhere over the last 20-some years of my life, so I’m inclined to believe them.
Do you have a response other than “It doesn’t happen, because if it did it wouldn’t be BDSM”, because I’ve heard that response for 20-some years now and I’m still not buying it.
There has been enough men sexually physically abusing women in my activist community for it to be a problem that is addressed, both in writing. In doing this they look at the problem specific to the activist community, and how the activist community can deal with it.
It doesn’t follow that the problem is the activism.
I have no doubt that there is abuse within BDSM communities, and that abusers operate differently based on the community they’re in (like they did in the activism movement).
The fact that people are acknowledging the problem is a pretty solid sign that something is going, there’s abuse in every community, and the most dangerous are the ones that don’t acknowledge it.
Short version.
FurryCatHearder, I think you are refighting old arguments even though no one here is arguing the other side of it. I think the discussion as a whole (and your contribution to it) would be a lot better off if you would engage the actual positions of the people you are arguing with here. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I think you are arguing with ghosts.
Long version.
Piny writes:
and you reply dismissively:
But that isn’t the position Piny just articulated. Piny is arguing that there isn’t a monolithic BDSM, and that the advocates of safe-sane-consensual BDSM (the people you presumably mean by the apologists) are specifically the people who work to help BDSM practitioners and enthusiasts do BDSM within an egalitarian framework. Without the BDSM communities, without the apologists, there would still be plenty of people tying each other up and beating each other, plenty of people humiliating each other, all of it for the sexual thrill, but they would be doing it in isolation, and there would be (in my guess) even more abuse and violation involved.
People abuse in the name of BDSM, people abuse in the name of romance, people abuse in the name of love. Now, you might say that isn’t love, someone else (but not anyone here) might say that isn’t BDSM, and far too many people would say that isn’t romance (I think they are wrong on that one, I think the institution of romance is fundamentally an instrument of abuse, but I digress), but the important thing is to try to disentangle the one from the other. Safe-sane-consensual and the self-policing BDSM communities are specifically an attempt to separate the BDSM practice from the abuse it can be used for or involved in. Are they perfectly successful? Absolutely not.
You also said:
Is this my comments you are characterizing here? I can’t tell since you don’t quote anything anyone wrote.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in what I wrote before when I was talking about the difference between bad d/s that plays off of actual power dynamics, and non-malign d/s that uses temporary artificial power dynamics (did I actually ever call it good d/s, or are your quotes there scare quotes on a position you see implicit in what I wrote? Personally, when I start scare quoting someone else’s implicit position, I find that I have entered straw man territory. YMMV).
As ciceley and I agreed, open and honest communication is essential to non-fucked up relationships. Whether or not you are doing D/S scening, if you are not doing open and honest communication, you are in fucked up territory. I am not convinced that (lacking good egalitarian context) formal D/S is necessarily worse than informal D/S, but I’m not going to argue that it isn’t. No way in hell am I going to argue that it is better. I will argue that formal D/S scening within a framework of egalitarian communication and active consent is better than the other (D/S) options, as it has the least degree of bleed over of malign power dynamics into the rest of the relationship.
There is another related question (is BDSM better than, equal to, or worse than non-BDSM, given that both are done in a safe-sane-consensual, active consent manner, with egalitarian good communication) , which bean (indirectly) raised, so I’ll reply to it separately.
bean,
I completely agree with your position in comment 22.
I feel that your post raises the question that I mentioned at the end of my reply to FurryCatHearder: is BDSM better, equal-to, or worse than non-BDSM sexuality. Actually, that is a crappy way of phrasing it, and much less productive and nuanced than the way you actually phrased it. Your point was much more complex than that, but I think I can say something useful with this simplified version, so here goes.
I think that BDSM sexuality, independent of any other criteria, is a more harmful sexuality than non-BDSM sexuality. Specifically, I think that an eroticization of mutuality is a better and healthier sexuality than an eroticization of power dynamics (power-over, powerlessness, violence and pain). Furthermore, while I can see other sources for an eroticization of power dynamics, I think the overwhelming source of the eroticization of power dynamics in this culture is patriarchy (actually, I think the triple alliance of sex oppression, class oppression and race oppression are heavily implicated, but sex oppression is most heavily implicated). I think that if you have, or are able to develop, a sexuality of mutuality, then you should value it highly. I think taking up BDSM practice because it is cool is a bad mistake if you have or are capable of developing a truly mutual sexuality. I think in the ideal world, there would be no eroticization of power dynamics, and no BDSM sexuality. I think in a moderately ideal world (one where people still suffer through a childhood of relative powerlessness (but not abuse), where people still suffer from painful diseases, where people still fear death and loss, but where sex, class, and race oppression is banished) that eroticization of power dynamics would be far more rare.
I think that the best safe-sane-consensual, active-consent, egalitarian-based BDSM sexuality is still a product of a sick culture, and I think anything less than that ideal is probably harmful to its participants.
That said, I think safe-sane-consensual BDSM practice is vastly better than the current alternative. If I eroticize power dynamics, I am going to play with them for sexual gratification. If I deny this desire, all I end up doing is pushing it underground. I’m still going to play those games, I’m just going to lie to myself and my partner and pretend that’s not what I’m doing. As a result, I’m going to have to play with the real thing, rather than being able to play with the fake thing. If I want a D/S experience, I will have to actually dominate or submit to someone. If I want a S/M experience, I will have to actually torture someone, or find someone to torture me (D/S is much more common in this culture, I think, but there are way too many sadists too, coming up with some excuse to inflict pain).
To my mind, this is what most people in this culture do. Most of them aren’t extreme in their practice, but I see the basic cultural construct of romance as implicit D/S, and I think most people who do romance do it in large part because they eroticize D/S.
I had a friend long ago who explained to me that it offended her that her boyfriend (a better friend of mine) explicitly refused to be possessive, and while he was perfectly happy to be faithful if that was her preference, refused to request that she be monogamous. She explained to me that she actually usually cheated on her boyfriends, but that a non-possessive boyfriend was both insulting and meant that the cheating sex wouldn’t be nearly as a hot. While she was impressively honest, I really don’t believe her desires were at all strange for this culture.
To my mind, she would have been better off if she hadn’t found betrayal and being a possession hot, but I think those structures of desire are hard to reconstruct. If she wasn’t able to reconstruct them, I think she would have been much better off accepting those desires as hers, accepting them as malign, and finding ways to funnel and restrict them, so that she could extract their hotness without getting as badly burned (and without burning her boyfriend). I think that safe-sane-consensual BDSM is a way of doing that.
I have met (to a little extent, I have been one) BDSM supremacists, who believe that BDSM sexuality is more honest than non-BDSM sexuality, because everyone’s sexuality is actually an eroticization of power dynamics. I think they have a point (I think most people in this culture do eroticize power to some degree), but I think they are basically wrong. I think honest egalitarian sexuality, for those who can reach it, is better than power dynamics sexuality. But I think safe-sane-consensual BDSM practice is a better, less harmful expression of eroticizing power dynamics than either non-SSC BDSM or implicit BDSM. And, for those who strongly eroticize power dynamics, I think that SSC BDSM may be either a useful end point, or a useful way point on the way to an egalitarian eroticization of mutuality.
This last point is one that both Thomas and mythago have expressed here and previously. Good SSC BDSM culture emphasizes the critical point that active consent and communication are themselves hot, and that sex that moves away from both of those is bad sex, and is not at all hot. When BDSM practitioners reach the point where they eroticize active consent and communication, they are actually moving into an egalitarian sexuality.
I’m going on way too long, so I’ll stop.
And that right there is your strawman, because that’s not what I’m saying.
Nick, what you raise is exactly the sort of thing that the BDSM community (such as it is) ought to be willing to talk about without getting defensive. Basically, I agree with you, but I want to parse the dynamic a little because I think it’s more complicated than it looks at first blush.
I think a large portion of the forced feminization (FF) dynamic is simply misogynist. However, you lump in penetration with female clothes and names. I’m sure you recognize that receptive anal sex is very different from feminization, though it may be bundled with it in some folks’ fantasies. Gay men all over the world (and straight and bi men, straight, lesbian and bi women and other folks) like receptive anal sex just because it feels good.
Also, there are kinds of FF fantasies that are not about replicating, but rather about commenting on, the subordination of women. I have done a lot of thinking about this because, although FF isn’t really something I’ve done, I have had fantasies about it. (I apologize for going on, but this requires backstory.) When that started, about ten years ago, I was very distressed because my first reaction was that deep down I bought the patriarchal sex roles that I had been fighting. I talked it though with some friends who knew my kinks and my worldview, and I realized that it was a part of something else. Much of what I do as a bottom involves humiliation and violation of social norms such as rules of cleanliness and social roles. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I wasn’t willing to deal with those issues, and preferred bondage and painplay — the more macho, the better. I realized after the fact that I was really putting myself in a position to tell myself that BDSM was, for me, an extreme sport. It was an adrenaline rush, but it wasn’t something that called my privileged position into question. As I got more comfortable with my partners and myself, I found that I became more submissive and less a straight pain bottom. That was also a period when I was becoming very publicly an “out” leatherperson. Now, athletic young guys in leather uniform look like a caricature of machismo, and that provides a lot of protection against the ridicule that kinky folks are sometimes subject to. A guy in a motorcycle jacket and engineer’s boots with a flogger may be disliked, but he’s generally not the but of a joke.
Here’s where the FF comes in. A guy in women’s clothing is, in popular culture, the butt of a joke. That was true in “some like it hot” and when Milton Berle did it, and it was still true when Rudy Giuliani did it. All the more so when that man is doing it for sexual gratification — he’s not just a disagreeable kind of pervert; he’s the kind of pervert people laugh at.
I find that I get aroused walking around with a completely shaved pubic area, because that’s also adopting a visual symbol of the kind of kink that people ridicule. Same thing wiht drinking piss — the sort of thing that people laugh at. When I have the occasional FF fantasy, it isn’t about trying to be a woman, or having a woman’s experience (as a man in this culture, that’s something I can’t really ever have). I think about the violation of the social norm about crossdressing; being the guy who puts on women’s underwear for sexual gratification.
In my view, that’s a very different dynamic. The difference is so great, in fact, that I think a few minutes of dealing with a guy about FF fantasies ought to make it clear what they’re about.
I don’t think that’s the norm, BTW. As I said, I think there’s plenty of unenlightened misogyny in the BDSM community.
FCH, there are lots of people doing BDSM out there who do not belong to BDSM organizations or network with other folks to participate in a community, and they may not even particularly think about what it is they are doing. They have internalized lots of the patriarchal culture, and their attitudes are going to mirror the general population to a large degree. They don’t become instantly enlightened by picking up a flogger. It is no surprise to me that there are people doing BDSM who are doing things that horrify me.
However, for those of us that do participate in a larger community and/or think about BDSM as it relates to the world outside our bedrooms, we’re very aware of power dynamics. See, e.g., Charles. So we’ve got fairly sensitive antennae for abuse in the community. I don’t think that this means that BDSMers are overrepresented among abusers, just that most of the world feels little need to speak out against abuse but we do.
Sure, BDSM attracts it’s share of psychos and abusers, but the folks you call “apologists” (a term that pretty much stakes out your position — of all the things I’ll apologize for in my life, BDSM is not one) are the ones trying to stop abuse within our corner of the world, by telling people how to spot it, telling abusers they have no right to abuse, and telling victims they have a right not to be abused. There are plenty of feminist women doing this for the general population, but what men do you see speaking out against abuse in the general population? Other than a few feminist and pro-feminist men’s groups, who? Promise Keepers?
Bean, I agree entirely. If either side refuses to listen, there’s no conversation to be had. I’m willing to think about what it is that I do, and self-evaluate as honestly as I can. But I can only do that with people who are not driven by an unspoken and unshakable conviction that BDSM is “icky.”
Some folks above have taken issue with the term “sex-negative.” I’ve said before that I think it’s unfair to use that to refer to anti-porn feminists. Opposing porn is not the same as opposing sex. It’s also not necessarily the case that folks who oppose BDSM are sex-negative. However, I do think the term has a meaning outside of unfair insults. There is such a thing as sex-negative. There are folks who think sex is in and of itself sort of bad, and ought to be confined in narrow boundaries. We all know some finger-wagging moralist who looks askance at pleasures of the flesh first and thinks up a reason to disapprove later. Opposition to BDSM is not necessarily sex-negative, but some folks who oppose BDSM are sex-negative.
Charles, I’m not sure you’re right. On my account, power imbalance is not inherently bad, and in fact is a part of all human interaction; and it’s only when the power imbalances become sustained inequalities that they begin to turn into oppressive systems that pervade society and persist across generations.
In my view, some folks are probably going to find temporary, erotic power exchange intimate and exciting even in a world that is so much more egalitarian that we wouldn’t recognize it. I’m not sure there’s a sample group to look at to test either hypothesis, though.
I think the argument that BDSM is inherently better sex can easily be overstated, but I do think that on balance a community that promotes explicit negotiation and open communication is probably having better sex than the general population. And, as I said, I don’t think that all eroticization of power exchange is eroticization of oppressive power structures.
Thomas,
I understand the arguments, and have participated in the arguments many times over the years.
For me it comes down to the way in which what I think is presented as “good BDSM” creates space for “bad BDSM” and the ways in which apologists make statements about how BDSM communities are policed, without addressing how there is no official “BDSM Policing Agency” to make sure “bad BDSM” isn’t practiced. The problems with BDSM have been known for as long as I’ve known about BDSM (about 25 years — I’m 40-something these days) and I’ve seen no evidence that “bad BDSM” is declining, or that the “good BDSM” folks are making progress within their own community, as evidenced by that article I referenced earlier.
Perhaps a large part of the problem is that many forms of BDSM are illegal in most juridictions, so there’s no way for BDSM communities to create public service announcements reminding everyone to be “safe, sane and consensual” and report violators to some sort of community policing board. I know that none of the four women who wanted to tie me up ever discussed “safe words”, and the one who convinced me that I’d “enjoy” being tied up engaged in behavior that’s “officially” considered to be inappropriate. So, yes, I have my biases.
As regards eroticization of power exchanges, I think that BDSM is great in theory, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The model I’ve seen continues to primarily be about masculine people dominating feminine people, which is what patriarchy is all about. Even the practice of “forced feminization” without a corresponding “forced masculinization” is highly suspicious to me. The notion that one can be a feminist and embrace creating more of the same is something I struggle with a lot. Perhaps if we were living in the post-patriarchy there might be room for The Society for Anachronistic Sex, but we’re not living in the post-patriarchy. Nor are we living in a world in which the overwhelming majority of men view women as being fully-equal human beings.
FCH, I want to respond to several things you said:
In practice, it depends where you are. I can cite New York law for the proposition that painplay is illegal, but I can also tell you that activists have done awareness programs for law enforcement here. People can and do report criminal acts in a BSDM scene, and I’m aware of at least one prosecution of an abusive top. As for public service announcements, that is essentially what the community tries to do with groups like The Eulenspeigel Society and others. Sure, we can all fill in our favorite complaint about the politics of activist organizations in any political or cultural group, but they’re doing what you say the community isn’t doing: reaching out to the folks in the hinterlands. There are similar groups on campuses across America, where we’re no persecuted. There are workshops and conferences across the country, and even if you like in Provo, Utah, bookseller will ship you books about how to do safe, sane, consensual BDSM.
In practice, there are places where prosecution is a real danger for BDSM practitioners. In places like that, people can’t report abuse in a scene. If the BDSM community was not persecuted by patriarchal authorities, this would not be the case.
Actually, the article you referenced earlier was (1) an anecdotal personal meditation; and (2) was as much concerned with lack of technical skills (such as a top who doesn’t know better hitting kidneys) as with abuse. The article was not really evidence of anything. I asked you before if you had any evidence that BDSMers are overrepresented in abuse, and you’ve shown none. Got any?
I do agree in part with the article, especially how it starts: well before my time, the leather community was a tight subculture where people lived by their reputation and knew each other’s play styles. That’s been lost in a world where folks can find partners more impersonally. The mentoring function of the community has to adapt to that. That’s what the people you call “apologists” are doing.
The model you’ve seen is a small part of the universe I see. Male submissives and bottoms, gay, straight or bi, are not hard to find. Who is it that you think watches all those “fem-dom” videos? Buys all the cock-and-ball toys? There are discussion boards hosted by female professional dominants, and the participants are bunches and bunches of het male subs and bottoms. (I’m not trying to sidetrack the discussion into sex work, which I generally think is exploitive. I’m merely raising the issue to note that there are plenty of male subs.) Checking Craigslist for men seeking women with the keyword “submissive,” there’s no shortage online either.
There may be an imbalance in how BDSM is reflected in commercial porn and in mainstream media depictions — but that’s largely attributable to the same old patriarchal dynamics: the patriarchy likes women to be sex objects, and it’s easier to present a bottom as an object without agency. We did not ask the patriarchy to misrepresent us, it just does that.
As you may have noticed from my response to Nick, above, this part I agree with. The BDSM community is not free of misogyny; there are places where the patriarchy is replicated within it. I said above that there are some circumstances where I think FF is more complicated; but on the whole I agree with the obvious conclusion that it is usually just men buying into the patriarchally approved subordinate position of women. But whether a subculture is completely free of patriarchal tendencies and heirarchies cannot be the test — otherwise virtually no subculture passes. The test has to be whether the subculture is, on the whole, moving in the right direction or not. It seems to me that your conclusion is that BDSM is inherently moving in the wrong direction. You can of course draw whatever conclusion you like, but I see no evidence to support that one.
FurryCatHerder – I’m a little confused. If BDSM had no abuse, no practitioners who ignored the “safe, sane…”, and all that, then everyone should be running out to do BDSM right now, because it would make that lifestyle far and away the best thing going in sexual dynamics.
Mind you, I’m speaking as someone who does not do BDSM, nor is ever likely to. My sex life is about as vanilla as it gets (my fantasies are my own).
But every kind of sexual relationship human beings have ever had, has been turned by someone into a means of abuse. That it happens in BDSM is not only not surprising, it would be downright shocking if it didn’t happen.
I am glad there are people working to get rid of the abuse, just like I’m glad there are DV hotlines and shelters. But unless the rates of abuse in BDSM are significantly higher than in more vanilla relationships, I don’t see how BDSM itself is the problem.
i am intrigued by the conflation of BDSM and sex that is happening here. while some people who are into BDSM are into it for the erotic aspects of BDSM practice, some have BDSM interactions/relationships that are not sexual, and in fact are based in something different entirely. i’m not sure what is meant by “BDSM sex,” and so i’m not sure if it’s useful to talk about BDSM vs. non-BDSM sex.
Also, let’s remember that the Top/Dom is not implicitly the one with more power in a D/s relationship, right?
i’m interested in Charles’ comments on egalitarian sexual relationships.
i think you’re suggesting that communicating your desires removes the ambiguity and potential for misuse/abuse/manipulation, which i am all in favor of. However, i would argue that the outcome of the second scenario might meet both partners’ needs just as well, if not better than the first. This thought process leads me to think about consent and what that means, as it is ESSENTIAL to everything that is being discussed here. Consent comes in many forms, and it’s not always verbal. I think, Charles, that what you are advocating is consistent consensual behavior, which is better practiced through verbal communication. I wonder what people think about this. It’s a tricky line, as one of the aspects of BDSM that is so attractive to me is that, in the way i have practiced, it’s not all verbally prenegotiated. my partner knows, though, if im consenting or not, and i might be consenting while i have tears dripping down my face, or i might be consenting while smiling. im not advocating that we all stop talking, im just pointing out that consent and/or revocation of consent does not always mean that words are exchanged. just as i can consent no matter what my behavior, i can be revoking that consent and not saying a word. that doesn’t mean it’s not rape or abuse.
Bean I think what I’m uncomfortable with is the idea that “BDSM practice should be subject to radical feminist analysis”, becomes a debate in which there are two sides, practitioners of BDSM and radical feminists. Those seem to me two completely different things, quite frankly.
Bostontransplant, I find it tough to get into the “is BDSM sex?” area unless it’s with folks that I know already speak the language. Because my only play partner these days is my wife and she’s also my vanilla sex partner, my play tends to be clearly sexual … but of course that’s not the case for everyone.
In my view, however, the erotic dynamics of BDSM are such that it never gets all that far from sex (broadly defined). My scenes often do not involve penetration or climax, but they are intimate in a way that, for me, is essentially a sexual intimacy.
Tapetum writes:
Right, but BDSM is explicitly about things that are often considered “abusive”. I admit to being less than 100% informed, but is there any form of BDSM that would not be considered “abuse” if done outside of a scene (and assuming that non-violent, egalitarian, consensual relationships are the model for “non-abusive”, for this sake of this question)?
I wouldn’t consider getting spanked to be a prelude to hot sex, but within the BDSM scene getting spanked is, for some, a prelude to hot sex. If we could make, unimpeded by BDSM apologists, the statement “hitting never leads to hot sex” I think we’d be further on the road to ending the non- “safe, sane, consensual” forms of abuse.
Sex as well as any kind of sexual touch, which are frequently part of scenes and which constitute play only because they take place within a scene.
Is there any romantic or sexual behavior which, outside the framework of evolving consent, is not abusive and does not constitute either assault or harassment?
Somehow, I don’t think that’s a major contributing factor to the persistence of abuse in non-BDSM intimate relationships. The fact of consensual intercourse hasn’t made it any more difficult for activists to clearly define rape. Plus, BDSM exists, and so the statement, “hitting never leads to hot sex,” is not true and won’t ever be true. It is possible to “hit” someone during a safe, respectful, completely consensual interaction completely removed from the abuse we all want to prevent. If writers and activists can’t deal with that reality, and refine their arguments accordingly, they’re not very good communicators.
FCH, your argument is circular: you assume your conclusion in your definition. You say that you want to define “non-abusive” as non-violent and egalitarian (by which you apparently mean the absence of power dynamics). If my wife says to me, “I want you to fuck me, but don’t climax without permission,” that is very hot for me, and I don’t think most people would consider it abuse. If my wife fondles my penis to near-climax for several days in a row and instructs me not to masturbate, that’s very hot for me. I don’t think most folks would call that “abuse” either. It is, however, a consensual power exchange and therefore, I guess, “abusive” as you’ve defined it.
Moreover, it’s not at all clear that “violence”, as you’re using the term, has anything to do with abuse. I’ve been hit far harder and hurt far worse playing sports than doing BDSM, but few people consider sports abusive: participation in sports, for adults, generally is undertaken with informed consent.
Finally, you keep referring to “apologists,” but I’m not sure there are any apologists here. I’m a sadomasochist, and I’m not offering any apologies.
Thomas writes:
I said masculine, not male. There is a difference.
And while we both are in agreement that sex work is exploitive, that the category “professional dominatrix” exists tells me that there is an underrepresentation of dominant females in the community.
FCH,
There are also professional Doms who are male – it’s not about incentive to get Doms of a particular sex, but a willingness to pay someone who has a lot of experience in topping (and a good way to know what you’re getting, in theory) and, possibly, a lot of expensive toys that a “hobby” practitioner might not have.
Thomas,
That isn’t what apologist means.
While it does have connotations of both apologizing for, and also of arguing dishonestly, it actually means someone who engages in apologetics. Apologetics is the process of mounting a formal defense or proof of a position.
So what I have been doing is apologetics of a particular interpretation of safe-sane-consensual BDSM, and that makes me an apologist for that position.
Prostitution, just like rape, is not a problem of sex, remember? Its existence has nothing to do with sex being unavailable or too available in the non-commercial sense. This doesn’t follow any more than a lack of eligible, interested heterosexual women follows from the predominance of non-BDSM female sex workers. There are plenty of female sex workers whose “specialty” is taking, rather than dishing out, abuse; isn’t that status quo?
Trying to argue against abuse by saying hitting doesn’t lead to hot sex is a crappy way of arguing against abuse. For one thing, it makes it impossible to distinguish between abusive hitting and non-abusive hitting (so people who like hitting have no mental vocabulary to distinguish the two very different things). Likewise, it does nothing to argue against psychological forms of abuse. In fact, it provides psychological abuse protective cover: “I never hit!”
The things Thomas describes as not abusive in his sex life are (to my mind) only non-abusive because they are within the context of an egalitarian, active consent relationship. If the mechanism of enforcing those commands were anything other than Thomas’s pleasure at having those commands given to him (or at having those commands enforced upon him), then that would be extreme abuse of the sort that can lead to disassociation. To force someone to accept that their sexuality is not their own is a monsterous thing. The mechanisms of enforcement would not need to involve physical violence. There is no hitting there, and a no hitting rule says nothing about that situation.
Never do anything that will physically injure another person, never do anything that will damage another person psychologically, and never do anything to someone that the other person doesn’t ask you to do them (or that they wouldn’t ask you to do them).
These are the basic rules of egalitarian and healthy interaction.
There is a shorter form for them: safe-sane-consensual.
People who like doing fucked up shit to other people, or who like having it done to them, have an even greater need for these rules than anyone else does, but everyone would benefit from learning and internalizing these rules. These rules are not the prevalent rules of our society, particularly in relation to sexuality.
The apologists for safe-sane-consensual BDSM are not most importantly apologists for BDSM. They are most importantly apologists for safe-sane-consensual.
Apologists for BDSM on any other basis are a problem. Libertine apologists for BDSM, adventurousness apologists for BDSM, BDSM supremecist apologists, if they aren’t specifically safe-sane-consensual apologists, are all the problem.
FurryCatHeader’s partners who tried to convince her that being tied up would be fun, FurryCatHearder’s partner who convinced her of this and then used it as an opportunity to engage in abuse, were engaging in BDSM, but they were not engaging in safe-sane-consensual BDSM. However, proponents of safe-sane-consensual BDSM aren’t the cause of people like that. Instead safe-sane-consensual BDSM apologists provide the language that makes it easier to describe what was wrong with what those people were doing, that makes it possible to distinguish being tied up because it is something you want from being tied up because it is something you have been brow-beaten into, that makes it possible to distinguish asking to be tied up from asking someone to abuse you however they wish.
The Joy of Sex advocated light BDSM play back in the 70’s, but it didn’t (as far as I remember) talk about it in a specifically safe-sane-consensual context. The idea that light bondage and sexual horse play (in the normal sense, not in the “pony play” sense – sheesh!) are a respectible part of sexual practice is very wide spread in the culture, and they aren’t seen as part of that creepy BDSM stuff. But the people who recommend light bondage and sexual horse play (but would be repelled by the idea of flogging) are even less likely to talk in safe-sane-consensual terms. Holding your partner down during sex is generally seen as something that it is okay to do without prior discussion and active consent, and a no hitting rule says nothing about it, but holding down your partner during sex without their consent is obviously abusive.
Furthermore, standard romance and seduction are full of potentially abusive elements that aren’t covered by a no hitting rule. They are, however, covered by a safe-sane-consensual rule.
Charles, I’m familiar with the root of the word, but in modern political discourse it is usually used for its connotations.
FCH, I of course realize that masculine /= male. However, I’ve demonstrated that there are plenty of male subs and bottoms. Are you now claiming that they are predominantly not masculine?
Also, in my experience there is a shortage of tops of all kinds. In fact, the article you linked began with the complaint that a good top is hard to find. That’s because topping takes a great deal of concentration and comes with lots of responsibility.
Bean,
Thanks for putting forward your own example.
I don’t think any of us can possibly speak from anything other than anecdote on this subject.
I think the biggest difference between your experience and mine is that you were drawn into a BDSM relationship out of love for your partner, rather than out of specifically BDSM desire. I personally think that in a relationship between a BDSMer and a non-BDSMer, the BDSM should either accept non-BDSM sexuality, or accept that the relationship isn’t going to work out. I think that it is very rare that a non-BDSMer in a BDSM relationship is not being abused (subtly, unintentionally perhaps, but abused none-the-less).
Nobody should be forced (even by their own love of their partner) to engage in sex that they don’t want or don’t like (and not wanting and not liking have forms far more subtle than obvious rape).
Thomas,
I understand, and I’ve been bristling at FCH use of apologist as well, particularly since I don’t think there are any true apologists for BDSM (as oposed to safe-sane-consensual BDSM) participating in this discussion.
cicely,
Way back up there, you wrote:
and I meant to respond, but got distracted by other issues.
Just as I replied to bean, so too in your case: no one should ever be forced (by social or psychological pressure, or even by their love for their partner) to do things sexually that they don’t actively desire. My deepest sympathies if you have been, or if you have been made to feel wrong and immoral because there were things you weren’t or aren’t confortable doing.
The whole “sex-positive” (intimating that anyone who doesn’t like porn and prostitution are “sex-negative”) thing really grates on my nerves. Where is the whole porn thing going anyway? Now the big thing is “gonzo porn” where there are multiple penetrations, anal sex (which a lot of women find painful), bukkake..how is all that crap good for women? How is all that “sex-positive” when it is teaching men, young men and boys (yes, young boys do see this on the interenet) that women are objects to be used, filled and discarded?
Why am I called “sex-negative” because I think that treating women in this way is a disgusting, sexist, foul thing?
That really irritates me. And you know, a lot of the people calling women like me “sex-negative” are men. What, because I don’t love oppression, I am not a sexual being?
All I want is for sex to be an equal thing, where both parties receive pleasure and one isn’t paid to be treated like garbage. What’s so negative about that????
Gosh, there are so many good comments and so many things to comment on. So, I’ll start with the title of this post – sort of.
Power dynamics and imbalance of power in any given situation are not necessarily patriarchal. Power dynamics seem to be inherent in human relationships, even in egalitarian human relationships. There will always be situations in which you would either desire to be in charge (have power) or desire somebody else to be in charge (cede power). The mere fact of power imbalance in BDSM, etc. does not make BDSM antithetical to feminism or to radical feminism – unless I am badly misunderstanding the meaning of the term “patriarchy.”
What makes power imbalance a bad thing, IMO, is when there is a lack of consensuality. True consent removes the harm of power imbalance as much as true consent can remove the harm from anything.
I’d get into FCH’s absurd statement about spanking, etc., but Charles has responded very well. I’ll just add that FCH is a distraction from an otherwise interesting discussion – one that doesn’t consist of “BDSM is BAAAAAD,” and “BDSM is gooooood.”
BDSM, like most other human activities, can be harmful to some people in and of itself. Like most other human activities, BDSM can be helpful to some people. Just because it helps or hurts you doesn’t make it universally good or bad. As Thomas has pointed out, so much depends on the participants.
I think, at this point, that I am tired to death of the terms “sex-positive” and “sex-negative.” I don’t think that either one is accurate or particularly meaningful in the context of real discussion.
I am interested in hearing more about egalitarian sexual relationships, whether or not BDSM can be an ESR and what, specifically, makes BDSM compatible or incompatible with feminism. For the last, I especially look forward to hearing from folks who are much more knowledgeable about feminism than I am.
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I was talking, many years ago, to another survivor of childhood sexual assault. We were identifying the “top 5 sex scenes designed to make survivors of abuse both hot and want to barf”. Because we both had an *unwanted* *gross* sexual response to humiliation, rape, and violence since our bodies had been trained up that way. Awfully, neither of us ever got hot to any other sexual stimulation. Only to the bad stuff – and for us it was bad, because it was response physically without our explicit emotional permission, inside our own little noggins.
Unfortunately, both of us had partners who were eager to explore mild versions of these scenarios. I wasn’t ready, and didn’t have the language or experience to figure out why: that partnership left sexual scars on my psyche; vanilla sex was bad, but BD sex was worse, because I actually did get turned on, but the turned-on-ness was related to my abuse.
Fast forward. I did a lot of work in the trenches of my mind and suddenly was able to achieve hot-diggity-dog sex that didn’t shame, humiliate, or hurt. Wow! Great! After playing around with all sorts of sex (the world was suddenly my boudoir’s oyster), I determined that I like some light power games and SM utterly icks me out. (For me. No judgement.) But, I like a little bondage and some spanking. Oddly, this isn’t much different from the sorts of things I was consenting to in that previous relationship that did leave scars.
Now, certainly, power dynamics come into play in the sack; they’re fun, because they don’t relate to the first “way bad no-yes” reaction. However, I also purely enjoy the physical sensations of surprise, shock, and the tiniest hint of pain that is the yin to the yang of pleasure. I imagine for folks who are wired differently, there’d be more enjoyment of greater amounts of pain. After all, I only like a little spice in my chili, and there are some who enjoy having their faces singed off. To each, their own. Given how myself and other female friends differ wildly simply on how our body parts respond, I imagine that physiology actually does have something to do with it.
So there are tons of factors: where you are; what culture’s reflecting to you; whether your partner is an asshat; what your body likes; what your politics are, etc.
I think, sure, BDSM can happen and be painful – perhaps even when the partners are attempting to be egalitarian… Way back when, I didn’t know how to be egalitarian because I was carrying abuse (personal and cultural), around in myself. I couldn’t be egalitarian. Ever. In any dynamic, really; I was abused-submissive, even to someone who was trying as hard as they could to give me room.
However, here’s the thing for me, at least – that dynamic was everywhere. Sex, work, relationships, everything. So avoiding BDSM and working towards egalitarianism wasn’t making a huge difference because the abuser of me was now me, and I took me everywhere I went. The hotness of the thing that hurt was something that I did need to confront, eventually, to get better; and on the other side, I found a hotness that looked the same but has nothing what-so-ever otherwise in emotional truth.
I think Charles explained very well something that is often difficult to explain. There are some people who really do eroticise power differentials, and others who do not. These people can be found both in the BSDM scene and having what from a superficial point of view looks like very vanilla sex. You can’t tell what bucket someone falls into without really talking to them in some detail.
The question of whether or not actual eroticising of power differentials is “acceptable” from a feminist point of view is a tricky one. My gut instinct is to say “no”, but then my brain cuts in and reminds me that dictating to another woman what her desires “should” be is deeply anti-feminist. So, I’m confused.
Here’s my story. I used to be VERY involed in the BSDM scene in my late teens/early twenties. When I was involved I was always a top. I tried to switch, with very little success – the most memorable attempt to do so involved me freaking out and throwing my boyfriend out of my apartment at 3 AM. In February, in London, in the rain…not good.
The thing is though, I think that what freaked me out wasn’t so much bottoming per se as a disconnect between the pretend eroticisation of power differentials and the ACTUAL eroticisation of power differentials. I always saw BSDM as a form of play, and as something that I wasn’t at all interested in outside the bedroom, ie as a purely sexual thing. In other words, my basic impulses are entirely egalitarian, I just like to play. My ex, on the other hand, really does eroticise powere differences, which very quickly became apparent when we started to play, and which scared the crap out of me. He went off on an “I can do anything I want to you, I can make you pregnant” tangent, knowing that I am a woman who NEVER wants to have a child, and I freaked, big time.
So, it’s more complicated than just “BSDM is good” or “BSDM is bad”. In fact, I think that the real division isn’t between people who do BSDM and people who have vanilla sex, it’s between those who genuinely find power differentials sexy and those who don’t (I found Charles’s comment about being either turned off or turned on when one’s boundaries are being pushed very enlightening here).
Another idea I’d like to throw out there, since we have quite a few BSDM people here…I have a strong preference for somewhat femmey men (ie pretty faces, wear eyeliner, kind of skinny…it’s hard to explain, but if anyone is familiar with the Japanese term “bishonen” that pretty much sums it up). It has been suggested to me that this preference is in itself a BSDM thing, in that the men appear to be somewhat “feminised”. I disagree – to me a man wearing makeup, or “girly” clothes etc is still a man, not a woman. In other words, I don’t think that it’s about an actual power dynamic so much as it’s about the idea of playing with what gender roles mean, and that they can be fluid. Does this make sense to anyone else? I’ve run across the idea that other people percieve this as a power thing often enough to wonder why they percieve it that way.
Also, as an addendum to the last comment, I think that the idea that men dressing in “feminine” ways is somehow degrading is inherantly anti-feminist and kind of fucked up. It interests me that so many people percieve it that way, though.
“The way that female dominants are scarcer than hen’s teeth.”
I don’t mean to be rude, but this has not been my experience at all. In the scene I was involved with it was female submissives who were rare. Female doms were a dime a dozen and entirely unremarkeable.
One frequent unintended consequence of spanking children is that the child will eroticize the violence done to them (partly I guess due to the fact that physical act of spanking actually stimulates the child’s sexual organs, and partly due to the psychological response of a child to the confusing and overwhelming fact that someone they love is violating them physically). I have read testimonials in which people who were spanked as children argue that their parents essentially inflicted a sexual kink on them that they fervently wish they didn’t have
That’s pretty much my situation., although I wouldn’t say fervently wish in my case. It can be an inconvenience, one more factor that makes it hard to find anybody compatible.
I’ve been doing some reading that suggests this may be an eccsample of a more general pattern of how people handle trauma. People who eccsperience something difficult in childhood may repress it, putting it away to deal with later. Therapy can involve talking about it, telling one’s story in a narrative way so the experience becomes shared by supportive others. And can involve acting out what happened, in a setting that feels safe and secure and in control. Sometimes this results in a cure, so that the memory is no longer troubling. Other times, people can get locked into a compulsion to reenact the disturbing event. People (ok, usually men) who commit horrible crimes with a distinct m.o., modus operandi, are sometimes found to be acting out things they experienced or witnessed. For me it’s been somewhere in between – learning that adults can play with these themes in safe negotiated scenes was liberating and helpful, but hasn’t made the interest go away – it’s probably become stronger through reinforcement.
Oh, and i think i recognize one of the people in this tread from the thyst-l list way back when.
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Charles, that’s a broad statement, and much different than this from the previous sentence:
“you were drawn into a BDSM relationship out of love for your partner, rather than out of specifically BDSM desire.”
Plenty of people have an interest in BDSM as soon as they are exposed to it, but don’t begin experimenting until they have a partner to explore with. If what you’re saying is that BDSMers shouldn’t try to “convert” partners who are initially uninterested in BDSM, I think that idea has a lot of merit. If, on the other hand, you’re saying, “don’t do BDSM except with someone who is already experienced when you meet,” I disagree.
My wife had no BDSM experience when we met, but on our first date I told her I was a sadomasochist. I told her she didn’t have to explore that with me, but that she ought to know that was a key component of my sexuality. She was interested right away, but if she hadn’t met a partner who offered the chance to explore BDSM, she’s not sure she would have.
I’ve read at least one survey that women who self-identify as BDSMers often start by meeting a kinky partner, while men often learn about BDSM on their own and activly seek a partner interested in BDSM. In a patriarchal culture where women are actively discouraged from being sexual people with agency (as opposed to sex objects on which male sexuality is enacted), to insist that BDSMers not have relationships with people who are not already actively doing BDSM is to cut off avenues for women to explore what they want.
Reply to Sanna of The safest sex (also posted over there):
Bleed-through is totally the key.
Positive bleed-through makes BDSM play a potentially interesting way of exploring issues of power. Exploring issues of power gives you a mental vocabulary for thinking about power in other situations. Mostly, everybody gets way too much real-life bad power dynamics forced on them anyway, so they can explore power dynamics just fine without ever touching BDSM. I don’t think (for instance) that someone who never does BDSM is going to be a less effective feminist, but I think doing BDSM as conscious power dynamics exploration can be a way of becoming a better feminist.
Negative bleed through is why, if I were totally free to rewrite my sexuality any way I pleased, I’d still be adventuresome and exploratory, but I wouldn’t eroticize power dynamics. I think I could have fantastic and fantastically varried sex even if I didn’t eroticize power dynamics. I’ve never thought that my failure to eroticize household objects (brooms or ice-cube trays, say) has really limited my sexuality or my sexual practice. I don’t know that I’d like the bleed through from eroticizing ice cube trays, and I think the potential effects of bleed-through from eroticizing violence is much worse.
Given that I don’t have any magic bunnies that can completely reshape my sexual desire on my whim, I think doing safe-sane-consensual BDSM is a good solution.
I think I was the one advocating explicit BDSM as being something like a purgative of implicit BDSM, but I don’t really mean it that way. If you eroticize power dynamics (power-over, powerlessness, violence, pain), I think you are very likely to seek them out. If you are going to be seaking them out, I think you are better off doing that in a safe-sane-consensual way than you are doing it through romantic seduction or cheating->violent argument-> make-up sex. Doing safe-sane-consensual BDSM doesn’t ensure that you aren’t doing romantic seduction and violence -> make-up sex too, but it may make it less attractive, and may even give you a vocabulary for rethinking it if you are doing it.
Does that make sense?
>Anomie Naomi –
How about some other thread? This one is about BDSM and feminism. Not porn.
Let’s assune that you’re claiming that porn and BDSM are essentialy the same thing. After all, is there really all that much differnce between sying someone up and beating the crap out of them, and ejaculating on their face?
First off, BDSM is no more about doing this to women then it is about men. No one, especialy not you, knows the ratio of male doms and tops to female doms and tops.
Secondly I’m, a man, and I enjoy getting spanked, flogged, tied up, threatened, scratched ’till I bleed, bit, choked, even set on fucking FIRE By MEN.
That part of my sex life has jack shit to do with any images of women.
I also like having these things done to me by women. Sometimes, I like being the sadist as well. With both men and women. Mostly not. I find it emotionaly exhausting.
That really irritates me. And you know, a lot of the people calling women like me “sex-negative” are men. What, because I don’t love oppression, I am not a sexual being?
No, it’s because you call us disgusting and anti-feminist because of our sex lives. It’s because you make the claim that your sex is pure and good, and ours is evil and opressive.
Quite frankly, you sound like a feminist version of the promise keepers.
Of course, if you were jsut taking this space to rant about porn, you can ignore all of that. I’m not interested in debating porn and feminism. BDSM and feminism, yes. Porn and feminsim, no.
Thomas,
I meant the former, don’t convert, don’t cajole, don’t “oh come on, don’t be so hung-up.”
Sorry, I’m kind of making up my terminology as I go along here, and that hurt my clarity in the passage you quoted.
By non-BDSMers, I mean people who do not particularly eroticize power dynamics, not people who have never tried formally negotiated scene-ing.
BritGirlSF,
I’m glad that you like my explaination!
My view (and it is probably obvious already what my view is, but here is the very short form):
acceptable yes, admirable no.
I think we shouldn’t eroticize power dynamics, and I think we should (if we can figure out how) try to change the culture so people grow up eroticizing power dynamics less, but I think spending a lot of energy (or any shame or guilt) trying to not eroticize power dynamics is probably a bad idea. Figuring out how to eroticize power dynamics without doing harm to oneself or others is a much better individual solution.
BritGirlSF,
I think that people who think liking femmy men is D/s play (where presumably the men are the submissives, since their femme-ness is chosen, while your femmeness (and I have no clue if you are actually at all femme) is inherent in your being female bodied) would be shocked by the suggestion that women liking men who wear generic macho identifiers are liking actual power dynamics. Women who are attracted to generically macho men may not always be attracted to the power dynamics, but such a preference certainly shows more signs of it than liking your preferred form of gender play. Liking people who are bigger, stronger, and show signs of actively buying into a sytem of fixed power-over, in which your own group is the oppressed group is chock full of actual D/s possibilities. Not that men who do light gender play aren’t prefectly capable of being bigger, stronger, and totally bought in to the patriarchy, but I think there is still a point there.
People who are willing to do gender play are visibly marking themselves as people who have at least a little bit of an idea of gender as a fluid thing (note- visibly marking- people who don’t do gender play, or whose gender play is not counter to sex-gender expectations, may also be fully conscious of gender fluidity, but they aren’t wearing labels that suggest it), so I can see that being attractive completely independent of any sort of D/s thing (in fact, somewhat in opposition to vanilla het implicit D/s).
But I don’t mean any of that in a gender-play supremecist way.
Charles, you’ve made your point eloquently, but I’m still not sure that in a post-patriarchy world nobody would eroticize temporarily-constructed, consensually negotiated power exchange. In fact, on my account, there is no such thing as a world without power dynamics, and the best we can do is a world where all power dynamics are transitory and don’t end up becoming pervasive inequalities.
So, starting from that premise, I don’t think it’s important to eschew the eroticization of power dynamics. On my account, it is important to keep power dynamics limited to their proper scope. I don’t tell my junior associates to pick up my dry cleaning. I do tell them what arguments to make when we’re working on a brief. That relationship is one of unequal power, but it is a functional one, guided by strong norms of professional appropriateness and oriented towards achieving a common goal. Likewise, if I ever climb Mount Rainier, I’ll go with a guide. The guide will have more expereince on mountains than I do, and I’ll respect her or his authority on the mountain and do what I’m told. That, too, is a power imbalance which is temporary, confined to its purpose and functional towards a goal.
Now, those are not a sexual power dynamic, but they serve as examples of functional power imbalances. On my account, in a post-patriarchy world, if folks are still climbing Mount Rainier, many of them will still go with guides, and they’ll respect the authority of the guides, and that will be a temporary power imbalance, confined to its purpose and functional towards a goal.
So, to return to eroticizing power dynamics, I think the problem with partriarchy and BDSM is not that BDSM eroticizes power dynamics, but that patriarchy causes purely erotic exchanges of power to get caught up in patriarchal structural inequalities. What BritGirl said really highlights this, in my view: she was just fine with consensual exchanges of power, but then she had an experience where someone tried to inject a patriarchal, oppressive, systematic inequality into her consensually negotiated scene. She blew her stack (rightly) the threw the bum out (good for her).
On balance, then, since I don’t think it is the creation of artificial power dynamics in and of itself that’s a problem, I don’t think there’s an inherent flaw in BDSM and I don’t think it will disappear in the absence of patriarchy. If I could magically reorder my own desires, I would not eliminate my own eroticization of power dynamics.
On the subject of bleed-thorough, I don’t experience that. I can bottom to my wife and five minutes later I can make parenting and financial decisions on equal footing. In my life, at least, there has always been a clear line between “in scene” and “not in scene.”
I hope not.
Anyway, arbitraryaardvark, this is nice. I don’t feel so alone.. ( but the ‘gg’s’ work better for ‘eggzample’…..:)
Thanks Charles, for all your words there, and for all your detailed and thoughtful posts in this thread as well. In fact this whole discussion has far eccseeded my eccspectations.
I think ‘actively desire’ are definitely key words. Because secsuality involves the level of emotional intensity, sensitivity and vulnerability that it does, where there is only an ‘absence’ of desire’, and someone is being pressured to do something they don’t actively desire to do, however ‘small’ it might seem to the asker, I think it verges on abuse to insist, for any reason. And possibly self-abuse to give in to such pressure. Lesbians have at last begun to develop a seccsual language so that compatibility issues can be discussed without the awkwardness that many of us have eccsperienced in the past, and which was elevated to a higher level of shame in the lesbian- feminist political climate of the late seventies and through the eighties.
Maybe the safe-sane-consensual BDSM community is the best at this kind of open and ‘without shame’ kind of communiation and respect. Ironic isn’t it…
I’m also keen to read more views on the compatibilty or incompatibilty of d/s, BDSM with feminism. Especially maybe the balancing of feminist goals with the deeply personal eccsperience of seccsuality in our current lifetimes. Dignity, self-respect, (and respect for others), self -eccspression, political goals. Shake and stir.
A few posts have come in since I last looked – Thomas, I find myself in agreement with you at this point – almost word for word.
Is there an analogy with competitive sport? I’ve heard statements in opposition to it on the grounds that it glorifies power dynamics, win/lose, and that it is a substitute for war. But I think any attempt to ‘stamp it out’ would be futile. It has its rewards and I believe humans will probably always be attracted to play or watch it. Sorry if this is a diversion and way off beam – it just occured to me….
cicely, no analogy is perfect, but I find the sports analogies useful in several respects. Sure, there are folks that think competetive sports are bad and will disappear in a post-patriarchal world. I completely disagree. Moreover, I think that to suggest there be no “winners” and “losers” is wooly-headed and misdirected utopianism. I’ve done various sports in my life, both individual and team. Some I was good at and some I was not. I’ve won a lot and lost a lot; but I’ve always gotten more out of participation than out of the result. The problems with sports are not intrinsic to competition, but baggage that people bring to the competition: imposing their race and class issues, using sports as a proxy for folks’ struggles within oppressive systems; pouring money into childrens’ sports to replicate class-based ascribed status; etc.
Charles – precisely. I’ve always found it funny that people who tend towards the extreme Tarzan and Jane stereotypes don’t realise that in fact they are involved in a kind of gender play, albeit an unconcious one. If a woman is attracted to, say, big hulking football players instead of pretty femmey boys, doesn’t that also say something about how she views gender? And if the guy gets a huge kick out of the woman’s relative frailness and fragility, are we really going to pretend that the gender and power dynamics aren’t strongly in play?
The fact is, in reality we can never fully escape some form of power imbalances in our current society, and it’s not surprising that it seeps into so many people’s sex lives. I’m closer to Thomas’s position than yours – I’m not sure that it’s really necessary or desireable to eliminate the attraction towards power plays completely BUT when I say that I’m thinking mainly of intelligent, self-aware people who play with power dynamics in a very conscious way. The people I worry about are the ones who are playing around with the same dynamics without really being conscious of what they’re doing. People get hurt that way, and in that scenario women do in fact usually end up being the ones getting hurt.
Another thought to throw into the mix in terms of gender play – I’m a goth, or at least I was (work requires me to look more “normal” now – no more purple hair for me, sadly). Over the last year or so I’ve found myself in a number of arguments with other feminists about the question of whether goth (and BSDM by extension/implication) contains the potential for undermining the current social system because of the obvious gender-fuck elements, or whether it should be considered anti-feminist because it causes women to wear uncomfortable clothing and be visually objectified. I always point out that within the scene men are highly objectied too, but I seem to be very much in the minority among my feminist sisters on this issue, and it kind of bothers me.
Slight topic drift there, but I thought it was worth therowing into the mix as in many ways goth is even more obviously inclined to mess with conventional notions of gender than BSDM is.
that should be “within the scene men are highly OBJECTIFIED”. Apparently I can’t type today.
anonymity wrote
I understand that this may happen in practice, but it doesn’t need to, and I think there are plenty of good examples of this not happening on this thread.
Exactly, so why the problem? Just because they are different doesn’t mean the don’t interact. Neither does the interaction invalidate one or the other. I agree with Thomas about the sports analogy, but I also second (or, well, third or fourth) the opinion that it’s not possible for misogyny and BDSM to not interact while we live in a patriarchy. With that in mind, BDSM should be subject to feminist analysis just like everything else.
Britgirl – maybe the “femme” men is a feminist thing? ’cause whenever anyone says “sexy” I think of Christian Bale all glammed up in Velvet Golmine ;)
Seriously, though, it does make sense that feminists might both be more accepting of less “masculine” men and more interested in playing with gender roles than the average person.
I agree that I haven’t presented particularly strong arguments for why I think eroticization of power dynamics would be less common in the near ideal world. I need to think on it a bit more, and actually, I think I need to come at it from a different angle.
To my mind, eroticization of power dynamics is a near constant in our culture, including D/s gender play (particularly for hets), D/s Romance seduction, dating as a form of barter prostitution, sexual fetishization of military and uniforms, s/m valorization of penile-vaginal penetrative sex, and light B&D as the basic form of sexual exploration. I think these forms of insane,unsafe, non-consensual unthinking BDSM sexuality (most of which are much the definition of mainstream vanilla het sexuality) are directly harmful to the participants (disproportionately so to female participants), and indirectly harmful to everyone else, participant or not. I think the culture-wide eroticization of entrenched power dynamics is a major tool in the maintenance of patriarchy.
I think that the underlying cultural sexualization of power dynamics needs to be challenged and at least transformed as part of working against patriarchy.
I think there might well be a fair number of people in the near utopia who would still be fascinated by seeing the world in terms of power dynamics, and who would still want to emphasize that in their sexuality (although I think a culture less rich in entrenched power dynamics would provide less fodder for doing so), but I think the basic vanilla sexuality of the near utopia would be based in an egalitarian erotics.
I know none of that is actually an argument for what I believe, but only an explanation of what it is that I believe. I hope to get to working up the arguments for some of that some time soon.
I also have been very impressed with this thread and with everyone in this thread. I think a lot of very good and very honest stuff has been said here.
[FurryCatHearder, by the way, I disagree with Jake Squid. While I have mostly disagreed with you in this thread, I am grateful for your participation, and things you’ve said have definitely helped my thinking on all this.]
I find it interesting that there is very little discussion on the S/M side of BDSM. Personally, I can’t do the D/S thing (I tried, and kept cracking up.), but yesterday I came from somone cropping my cunt. To me it is like being gay – I am turned on by pain, and I don;t seem to be able to do anything about it.
However, i do think that there is room for Rad Fem discussion about this. Why is my sexuality so bound up with pain play? (I have a male partner and we both switch – does this make it more feminist?) I was never abused as a child – where does it come from? Does it make me less of a feminist?
These are questions because my own thoughts on this are muddled – that it may be sexual to me by the fetishisation of violence in our society, and this is a safe way for me to participate. If I was a man, perhaps I would be violent in non consensual ways, I don;t know, perhaps it is just a physical thing.
Any thoughts?
My thoughts on D/S is that if this gets you off, then you have a duty to look at the attitudes behind this and insure that it doesn’t ‘bleed’ into your vanilla life, but what you do behind closed doors, if it is SSC, is your own business.
I also wanted to thank FurryCat Herder for being honest and contributing to this, as it helped me to examine my attitudes to BDSM.
Laura, I’m actually not surprised that there has not been much discussion of painplay, and it’s not because we don’t do it. Charles is a sadist, I’m a masochist. Painplay just doesn’t raise the same thorny issues. Pain is just sensation, and it’s effects are well understood. Endorphins and Enkephalids feel good. Geoff Mains covered this pretty well in Urban Aboriginals, IIRC, and it has sort of seeped into popular culture. I think it is easy to accept other folks’ mutually agreed-upon exchange of sensation, even if the sensation is not something one would personally enjoy.
(Hot.)
I do genitorture, too, as a bottom and sometimes as a top. I get very, very aroused when I am kicked or slapped on the testicles, and once under rather unusual circumstances I came from ball torture alone. Again, sensation is easy to understand, and it doesn’t import issues of control the way restraint and D/s do.
I switch, though with a bias towards bottoming. Maybe this isn’t fair, but I have something of a bias against exclusive tops. I’m willing to give women who play exclusively with men a pass on this because, as BritGirl pointed out, a woman who bottoms to a man may find that the patriarchal power dynamics are getting reenacted in her scene. Lots of folks who really prefer topping also bottom sometimes because they find the learning experience valuable.
Now this is a sub-issue within S/M. Lots of hard S/M can be characterized as painful, but not really violent: not an expression of anger of loss of control, but an application of sensation, however, extreme. Some folks are turned on by violence, however. Some folks like an angry top, and like shoving and slapping, etc. That dynamic raises more issues than the pain, IMO. A lot of that can be explained by the adrenaline: this stuff generally triggers the fight-or-flight response, which some people find fun. But I think that’s not the whole of the dynamic, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Charles, Laura,
Thanks for the thanks O.o
Also, Thomas, thanks for the remarks about “bleed-through”. I think you touched on one of the problems I have with BDSM, which is that unless someone is meticulous in their comprehension of “power dynamics” and fully recognizes that they can be harmful when inappropriately used, BDSM can — in my opinion — create situations in which women and other disadvantaged folks (racial minorites, religious minorities, queers …) are harmed. Y’all are, of course, free to disagree (as many of you have, and so politely, I must acknowledge), but I’ll note that we’re on a feminist blog where most of us have a better than average working knowledge of “power” and it’s ill-effects.
I haven’t made this clear, but, yes, I understand that intimacy and tenderness and all the other rewarding non-d/s aspects can be present, both during d/s relating and before or after it. I guess to be more specific though I would say that individuals often have seccsual preferences or boundaries which mean that they fall somwhere on a spectrum d to s, and are never comfortable crossing that line. So they would think of themselves as more or less dominant, or more or less submissive in some specific ways, without being necessarily inolved in BDSM. So, when I ask ‘what are we left with if we remove the power dynamic altogether?’, it’s this kind of thing I’m thinking of too. Egalitarian seccs, to some, has meant ‘you do me, then I’ll do you – 50/50.’ Which is not an eccsiting or even comfortable proposition for a lot of people, myself included.
Nataly, you are quoting me verbatim up there – ‘I haven’t made this clear etc…. ‘. Is that because you second what I wrote? Followed by an accident of ommision by you or the system (quoting me as the source)?
Anyways, I was about to repeat it kind of myself so it fits in quite well…:)
Thomas, when you say that out of a sense of ‘fairness’, you will switch from a bottom to a top, I have a little bit of a bristle. I identify as a Diamond Stone Femme Lesbian, which means that I don’t switch from the non- BDSM ‘bottom’ position, if you like. I have attempted to do so, and had it demanded of me in the interests of ‘fairness’, by lovers who are not perfectly compatible for me .-.My starting point for compatibility is my opposite – a Stone Butch – in lesbian language. I have achieved succesful long term relationships around this, with non-stone lovers, one a polyamorous relationship where my partner had multiple lovers (I didn’t and didn’t want to), the other was one in which we negotiated wordlessly and found a comfortable place. When we broke up, this aspect of our relationship had no part in the reasons for the break-up.
I imagine there are many couples of all persuasions who deal with this issue, but don’t get to talk about it and may feel some shame around it. It’s hard to hear the wordss ‘selfish’ or ‘lazy’ applied to you about something so sensitive. And if you’re not being ‘fair’, you must be being selfish – right? It’s about physical and emotional seccsual boundaries, and these are different for different people. I know now that I am a member of a significant minority within a minority, and I am able to communicate with others like me via the net. This was a long time coming. (I am 51.)
About twelve years ago, I actually went to a seccs therapist because I’d become single again in a time when my seccsuality was being challenged politically, and feminist women had no qualms or sensitiivties around it. (This was after a good few years of singledom in that climate.) I thought it might be necessary to change, though I had no faith that I could. I haven’t, and won’t, but at least now I can be upfront about it were I seeking a relationship, from a place of open-ness, strength and clarity.
Cicely, I hear what you’re saying. The only comment I made about “fairness” was that maybe my bias was unfair, and that I was talking about I think is really particular to explicit power exchanges. I don’t take any issue with folks whose non-BDSM sex practices have a strong pattern. I’m not suspicious, for example, of gay or bisexual men who are exclusive tops in the non-BDSM sense — in matters of taste, there’s no disputing. What I was talking about was, really, het male exclusive BDSM tops. I’m generally suspicious that they think that men topping women is the way the world should be, and are using BDSM as pro-patriarchal wish-fulfillment. These folks wouldn’t last long around the BDSM intelligentsia, I think, but they are certainly out there.
Also, the more technical aspects of BDSM raise skill issues for folks that top exclusively, and that’s why I said some tops bottom just for the learning experience: how physically taxing is it to be in certain bondage positions? How harsh is that cane? It’s much more difficult to extrapolate these things from bottoms’ reactions if one has no experience on the business end of them.
Cicely,
Also, fulfilling your partners desires, if it isn’t at all onerous, is courtesy. Being required to do things for your partner that you don’t like doing is abuse.
Thomas strongly prefers to bottom, but he doesn’t seem to dislike topping (correct me if I’m wrong, Thomas), so he tops because his wife likes to bottom sometimes. That is very different from one of your partners demanding that you switch. Asking you to switch would be like asking a non-BDSM interested partner to do pain-play. Not okay.
Thanks Thomas, (for hearing me). I think the combination of Nataly’s post and just the word ‘fair’ in yours took me back up to this quote of yours from much earlier in this thread.
I see the conteccst in your last post now. I posted huuriedly this morning , that’s my eccuse for the error..;) Stream of sub-consciousness perhaps.
quoting myself,
Just wanted to announce that this is not a general feminist bash. I had some eccsperienes with a number of particular feminist women over time, some of which were personal interactions, some more distant but which affected me, in a political climate that granted those women permission to be less sensitive than they might otherwise have been. I used to consider myself a radical feminist during the 70’s and into the late eighties, before this issue impacted on me. (Somehow I ‘missed’ seeing these issues unfolding in that time.) My own break from RF began because I wanted to distance myself specifically from particular RF and lesbian-feminist politics around seccs and seccsual identity, including transeccsuality. Some might still consider me ‘a’ relaltively radical feminist. I’m probably radical/liberal/cultural/thirdwave feminist soup.
We almost cross-posted, Charles.
Agreed. This is why good communication is so important. There is a very big difference between ‘won’t’ as in ‘I can’t be bothered’, and ‘can’t’ as in ‘without feeling ecstremely uncomfortable’.
Charles,
This confuses me:
That is very different from one of your partners demanding that you switch. Asking you to switch would be like asking a non-BDSM interested partner to do pain-play. Not okay.
I agree that demanding is not okay. But asking is not okay? Why? How would one know that one’s partner would be willing to switch if you don’t ask? Isn’t that part of communication?
Am I misreading?
Jake,
If your partner knows you are not comfortable with something, asking you to do it is not okay. If they don’t know that, asking is certainly okay. Cajoling, however, probably isn’t. I was over-broad in my language.
I thought that was probably what you meant, but I wanted to be sure.
Tangentially:
But, extending that idea outside of the sexual realm… does that always hold true? If not, why is it more valid outside of sex?
My eight cents are that, first, sex is a physical interaction and needs to be subgrouped with other physical actions/interactions (as opposed to, say, asking your partner to pick up the take out order) where significant pleasure or injury is a possibility. Secondly, sex is an area full of significant emotions & tension & embarrasment in our culture, whereas picking up take-out food is not. But I really need to think more about that.
Also, division of responsibility is simply a completely different question. If neither person likes to clean toilets, but both people like to have a clean toilet, then someone is going to have to do something they don’t like.
But yes, there are lots of issues with sex that there aren’t with, say, visiting the relatives. Asking your partner who doesn’t like dealing with your parents to please come visit them anyway is very different than asking someone to do things sexually that they don’t like to do.
This is a great thread. I think understanding the eroticization of power dynamics is an area where feminist analysis really shines.
I totally agree. To expand on these point: many types of “normal” heterosexual flirting actually have D/s dynamics (though some don’t, such as the “I think you’re cute” …”I think you are cute too!” dynamic, which is an example of the eroticization of mutual attraction that you are talking about, rather than the eroticization of power dynamics). The most common example of D/s flirting I know of is teasing and “verbal sparring.” Teasing someone is often a way of establishing yourself as higher status than someone else (comedians and improvisors often talk about “status-based humor,” which is based on one person putting down another in some way). When the other person teases back, you end up with what is often called “verbal sparring.” Note also the metaphorical violence of the term “verbal sparring.”
In romance, this kind of verbal sparring becomes a symbolic “fight” that the male must win to prove his worth and masculinity (which are defined here by establishing dominance over the female), culminating in the surrender and arousal of the female. It is the verbal analog of physically play-fighting and horsing around before sex. Those behaviors should not be put on the same continuum as actual violence, but like violence, they are based on power dynamics and power struggles which can often be unhealthy, especially when people do not understand what is going on.
This kind of romance isn’t limited to our culture. I recently watched some Bollywood movies (Indian cinema), and I saw the same verbal sparring, female-fights-back-but-loses-in-the-end-and-surrenders-to-male scripts being run. I wonder to what extent these scripts were originally part of Indian culture, or to what extent they were acquired from Western romance and melded with Indian gender structure already in place.
I’ve been noticing these D/s dynamics in supposedly “normal” or “natural” heterosexual interaction since around 7th grade. I wouldn’t be surprised if you, and many other people here, noticed the same thing (and that is one of the reasons why we are all here: feminist analysis offers one of the only vocabularies to even talk about this issue and suggest that there may be problems with it). I think that these dynamics became glaringly obvious to me because I don’t really have any strong sexually dominant desires (I actually have a lot of submissive tendencies, and I may have some masochistic ones, though I don’t know if I had these in 7th grade or developed them later).
Since the rules for male-female interaction are based on male dominance and female submission, my lack of dominant desires left me unable to join in or comprehend the game that the majority of people seemed to be playing. Any kind of dominant behavior felt extremely unnatural to me, because I didn’t have the “right” desires to motivate it. So I was constantly wondering “why are the guys treating girls this way, and why do so many of the girls seem to be liking it???”
I do actually think that BDSM has made me more equal in relationships – in that i have learned to negotiate about sex with my partner, and expect that level of communication, whereas before i have had some pretty terrible and dispiriting sex due to me not knowing how to talk about it without hurting my partner. this has flowed into other areas of my life- the opposite of the ‘negative bleed’ that was mentioned earlier.
I also wonder whether there are sub culture groups that are more feminist friendly and some that think that men = DOM (usually with beards, big belt buckles and black leather trousers) and women = sub. For example, i have had several older men tell me that either i would be happy if i would just accept that i a sub (i am not), or better, that i am not a true sub because i wouldn’;t play or have sex with him (i never claimed i was!). whereas the people i play with, there is no hard rules re. women and men’s tendancies. I also think that this seems to be more common in the US, but i am totally basing this on my experiences on one particular web board, so this is not a survey!
Also, there seems to be a major fantasy / reality problem with some people – for example in my mind some 24/7 is deluded and needs therapy, as well as being disrespectful to those around the couple (as they are basically being included in their sex life, without consent).
But then, i think i can be judgement based on my own preferances for S/M (i.e. My kink is OK, your kink is not ok.).