BDSM and Anarchism...

First of all, a link: Subversive Submissive finds a critique of BDSM on an anarchist website, and has something to say about it.

I happened upon this thread on an anarchist message board, flag.blackened.net.

It always makes me a little irritated when I see BDSM misrepresented in the mainstream media. It makes me sad to see feminists critiquing other women for their kinky sexual orientations/practices. But it breaks my fucking heart when I see anarchists doing it. Why? I suppose because “anarchist” is probably the closest I come to really embracing a label to define myself, and when I see people using that label as a justification to trash my sexuality, it hits pretty hard.

....I thought about signing up on the message board in question in order to respond to some of this bullshit, but decided against it for now. Here are some of the things I’d address, were I to bite the bullet and get involved in the argument:

[numbering off because I'm not quoting every point and the numbering is automatic]

1. Giving legitimacy to BDSM as a sexual practice is not the same as giving legitimacy to the idea of domination/submission as a model for human relationships. Period. Kinky people play with power and hierarchy. It’s like saying none of us should play Monopoly, because it imitates and thus legitimizes a capitalist economic system.
2. The idea that in a perfect anarchist society, people would be better able to dissuade kinky people from engaging in such “negative” behaviors begs the question of BDSM being inherently “negative.” It isn’t.
3. Playing with domination in a sexual relationship is not the same thing as an inegalitarian or hierarchical relationship. It is not inherently harmful or “addictive.”
4. BDSM is not only performed as a paid service, nor is it necessarily linked to pornography or any other kind of sex work. The vast majority of people who practice BDSM are not sex workers.
5. Finally: it’s not okay to treat another person’s sexuality or subculture as merely an “intellectual curiosity,” something to entertain you. If you’re curious about it, educate yourself, don’t simply start making ignorant comments on a message board.

First, I want to say that I think her points are excellent; I quote as many points from her list as I do because, well, it's awesome.

Second, though, I want to talk about 1 and 2 (at least as numbered in this post.) Because, while I see her point and think she argues well, I'm... well... weird, in not agreeing.

Because to me, even after all these years of "sex wars" bickering, I still am not clear on something big.

That is... in feminist or anarchist or a few other circles, "hierarchical" or "inegalitarian" seem to be used interchangeably to indicate forms of "domination and submission," which is in turn seen as across-the-board bad. BDSM is seen as an odd kind of exception, the little thing after the pesky asterisk. We didn't mean YOU/US.

This works in two major ways.

1) It assumes that BDSM is about scenes. The word "play" is a popular one here, as is the word "drama," "scene," erotic theater. BDSM is not "inegalitarian" because it is a sex game, something people play at, like playing at Monopoly. Just as I can play at robber-baron with my friends around the boardgame even if I'm the reddest Marxist there ever was, I can be totally devoted to nonhierarchical relationships and still play Nero in bed.

My issue with this is that not all SM is play. Some people dominate and submit not for a scene, but as part of a relationship. Still others see dominance and submission as personality traits that come out in their intimate lives, or as deep needs that they would be lost and unfulfilled without. While the players could simply throw these people under the bus, I don't see that as any kind of good strategy. And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of them.

I'm saying it because, well, people will always be aware that we're not all just playing. They'll accuse us, even the honest dramatists, of lying or hiding something. If we don't have an adequate way of explaining the people who do have power exchanges outside of bed, the "well, but that has to affect you SOMEHOW!" and "But THOSE people are Gorean!" and "Ever hear of TiH?" questions will never cease.

It is definitely true that some of us are playing and that's it, and there's no reason those people should have to defend a lifestyle they may well not share, not understand, and not even like. However, I'd like to think that we're all in this together, if not because we want to be, then because the theory laid out against us makes us be. We don't have to approve of one another to have a defense that doesn't rely on vast numbers of us not existing.

2) BDSM is in fact a lifestyle or relationship style for some people, but it's different because of consent. The word "hierarchy" covertly implies some sort of nonconsensual structure. Therefore, BDSM is one of a tiny handful of power dynamics that actually count as "egalitarian," because anything consensual does.

This is the one that confuses me most, which is unfortunate since I already reject 1).

The OED tells me that a "hierarchy" is, among other things which strike me as less relevant:

A body of persons or things ranked in grades, orders, or classes, one above another; spec. in Natural Science and Logic, a system or series of terms of successive rank (as classes, orders, genera, species, etc.), used in classification.

So it's a rank ordering. And apparently nothing else. Now what's "egalitarian", Mr. OED?

That asserts the equality of mankind.

Okay, sure... I guess, then, BDSM is "egalitarian," as it doesn't say anything one way or the other about any humans being better than any other humans (unless one is making the mistake of assuming the gender supremacists speak for all of us -- and here I feel a need to note that there are female supremacists out there too. They're not just Goreans and their ilk.)

But hierarchical? Well, relationship D/s sure seems like it creates ranks to me. What is a pattern of deference, service, command, control, sometimes even consensual slavery and mastery if not a rank order?

I suppose one could say that it's a rank ordering but no one is "above" anyone else, if one assumes that "above" means "worth more than" or "better than." So it's a rank ordering where everyone is equal. Paradoxical, but correct.

Except that it relies on defining "equal" as "equal in worth," and I'm still not convinced that saying something includes a rank-ordering means inequality of worth, really. I don't quite see why that should be. I taught students -- surely I outranked them, otherwise they wouldn't have needed a teacher. But I was in no way worth more than they. Why teach them if they're presumed worthless?

So... my brain scrambles when I see "hierarchy" used as an all-purpose curse in Left Bloglandia. It just plain makes no sense to me. Hierarchies are everywhere. Many are pernicious. Some are not. Many are nonconsensual. Some are consensual. Many are imposed. Some are negotiated. Many are fixed. Some are dynamic and fluid.

And if, as I think we should, we presume that at least some BDSM does involve real power dynamics and not just, well, playing Monopoly, it makes no sense at all for us to try to disavow words like "hierarchy" to me. For many of us, the hierarchy is neither illusion nor game, but part of the point.

Link: The Fetish Industry and Feminism

There is currently a discussion going on over in LiveJournal's community "feminist" about BDSM and feminism, particularly focusing on women working in the fetish industry. I thought you all might want the heads up.

If any of you are part of that community (I left ages ago, myself), you might want to point some of the people who are clueless that there ever have been feminist criticisms of BDSM over here... *hint hint*

:)

ETA: I particularly like this comment:

Marginalizing anything having to do with desire and with sexual relations is unfortunately, very common. Desire and arousal are complicated and very, very unconscious. It can all be deconstructed until the cows come home, but I think the people who need to deconstruct it are those who engage in it. It is dangerous for someone who desires one thing to tell someone who desires another that they are >>wrong<< and that it excludes them from a group as varied as feminists. The ONLY time this is at all o.k. is when it somehow trespasses on another's life without consent.

I actually disagree that "the only time this is OK" is trespassing. I do think that sometimes we can tell when close friends or lovers are getting into something that isn't good for them. If I noticed a good pal falling head over heels for a pushy, abusive ass of a "dom", you'd better believe I'd tell her I think she's making a mistake. But that's not because her desires make her unfeminist, that's because sometimes NRE makes smitten people do stupid shit. Or because some people really do have unrealistic outlooks about which of their fantasies they can really fulfill (Absolute, never-waning-ever, negotiated-once-and-that's-it TPE? Come ON.) that land them, as individual people with specific, individual lives, in unhappy messes. And I do think we can tell friends they're wrong, if they don't see it themselves.

But, well, that's got to do with friendship. It's not got shit to do with feminism, or gender, or social norms, or cultural expectations. Tell your friends they're making mistakes when you're in a situation to know this. Don't say anything in the name of feminist "theory" to anyone else.

Either way, you're behaving badly.

Some people have aske4d me what criticisms anti-SM feminists have of female dominance and male submission. I've talked about this before, but just to give another data point, here is Rebecca Whisnant giving a presentation um... last year, I think?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6840142731224140595&q=&hl=en

The comments on dominant women and submissive men are around 24:30 or so.

If anyone could transcribe them, I'd be very grateful.

EDIT: YES, WE CAN HAS TRANSCRIPT:

I’ll discuss just one more defining element of second-wave radical feminism here: namely, the notion of sexual politics. In the English language, the word “sex” is ambiguous: there’s sex in the sense of male and female, and also in the sense of sexuality. Second wave feminism named “sex” in both senses as an arena of politics, that is, an arena in which power is exercised. In short, patriarchy makes sex (as male/female) into an unjust power hierarchy, which then manifests itself in many mutually reinforcing ways, including in and through sex (as sexuality). Whatever supports and maintains that power hierarchy is, from a second-wave point of view, problematic and wrong. If this includes, as it is almost sure to, certain ways of understanding and practicing sex (as sexuality), then these understandings and practices should be resisted and transformed. Furthermore, in second-wave thinking, challenging the sex-based power hierarchy itself requires challenging the very definitions of manhood and womanhood, of masculinity and femininity, on which it it is premised: namely, masculinity as dominance and aggression, femininity as submission. These roles themselves are taken to be problematic, not just their coercive association with biological males and females respectively. Thus, on this view, for a woman to be sexually dominant (or a man submissive) does not constitute liberation, nor do instances of same necessarily count as resistance.

Now the third wave also has a take on sexual politics, that is, on the connections between power, sex as male and female, and sex as sexuality. They too believe that the power hierarchy placing men above women is unjust, but they have different ideas about what counts as challenging that hierarchy, particularly as it is expressed in sex-as-sexuality. On this view, for instance, a woman challenges the hierarchy when she plays a dominatrix role, or when she becomes a sexual consumer (for instance, using pornography or getting a lap dance at a strip club)—that is, when she adopts a standardly masculine set of sexual roles and activities. A woman also resists, on this view, when she uses the “power” of femininity—her beauty, her sex appeal and hotness, etc.—to her own perceived advantage. According to third-wave feminism, then, a woman can enact a liberatory and feminist sexual politics by adopting either a typically feminine or a typically masculine sexual role and persona, and running with it—as long as she does so freely and with the right attitudes and intentions.

....Some claims made on behalf of purportedly-feminist pornography sound reasonable enough as far as they go—for instance, that by making and/or consuming pornography one asserts that it’s OK for women to be sexual and to want sex, that women are not merely passive recipients of male sexual desire, but have sexual desires of our own. Furthermore, in “alt” or feminist pornography we do occasionally see women with something other than the Hollywood-prescribed body size and shape. (More often, the “alternative” appearance seems to consist mainly of tattoos and body piercings—but rarely does it involve having pubic hair, I’ve noticed.) But when we look at the statements of self-described feminist pornographers, the utterly liberal—even libertarian—politics at the core of this enterprise become unmistakeable. At bottom, as it turns out, this pornography is said to be feminist because it is made by women, who are freely choosing to make it. For instance, Joanna Angel, a self-described feminist pornographer, has said that “you could do a porn where a girl is getting choked and hit and spit on, the guy’s calling her a dirty slut and stuff and . . . that can still be feminist as long as everybody there is in control of what they're doing.”¹² (Remember: it’s not what you’re doing, but whether you’re doing it freely!)

Also clearly in evidence here is the idea that women can enact a liberatory sexual politics by embracing either standardly feminine or standardly masculine sexual roles and activities. Without an overriding critique of sexualized dominance, the perfectly reasonable claim that it’s OK for women to want and seek sexual satisfaction shades easily into claiming women’s right to be sexual dominators and consumers. And of course, at the core of the “feminist pornography” enterprise is the idea that women can and should redefine the feminized, pornographized sexual-object role as, itself, a form of power. (Again, when is it power? . . . when we freely choose it!) Thus it is that prominently featured on the website of “feminist pornographer” Nina Hartley is a new film entitled “O: The Power of Submission.”¹³ Perusing Hartley’s list of favorite links, one finds a site called Slave Next Door, which carries the tagline “real sexual slavery.” The portal page of this website reads, in part, “Slave Next Door is the graphic depiction of a female sex slave’s life and training for sexual slavery. It contains extreme bdsm situations and . . . sadistic training.” In clicking to enter the site, one is told , one affirms that one is “not here in the capacity of law enforcement or religious activist.”¹⁴

FUCK YES

Vanilla Privilege (personally, I think the term "privilege" is kind of overused, but I agree 1000x with the sentiments)

It exists, you know. And no, it is not as pressing or obvious as male privilege, het privilege, white privilege, class privilege, or other privileges out there, but it is there. And you may have not ever noticed it if you are a Vanilla Person, because well, it doesn’t affect you. And this is not a knock on Vanilla People, Vanilla People are okay in my book, but, if we’re examining and all, especially examining privilege, well, Vanilla’s time has come.

There have been some very interesting posts and threads here as of late which have caused me to come back to something I once mentioned half jokingly, the whole idea of Vanilla Privilege, but the tone of those posts as threads have me looking at it far more seriously now. I do, in fact, think it’s a very real thing, and like most other “privileges”, I think, while it can and does impact men, it impacts women to a more negative degree. After all, we still live in a society where many people honestly think that women cannot or should not enjoy sex, and if they dare to, they better only do it in certain contexts, for certain reasons, and with their husbands. Ah yes, the old virgin/whore dichotomy, alive and well and at work…and at lending it’s efforts to V.P.

So what is V.P. anyway? Well, simply put, it is the thought or assumption that those who engage in vanilla sex are somehow better than those who do not. And if you think that people who are not vanilla are not treated differently, please, do look at some of the links I’ve provided, and then, why yes, examine. What do you think of a woman sitting next to you on the subway at night if she is wearing a collar? What do you think of the guy in the locker room with heavily pierced genitals? What do you think of the woman who does gangbangs on the weekend? What do you think of the man who pays a dominatrix? What do you think of people who get off on pain, giving or receiving? The woman who likes to be choked, the man who likes to be flogged? The kinky people and the rough sex people and the non-vanilla people? If you are a vanilla person…don’t you other them, just a little bit? Well, if you don’t, good for you. You are among the few.

....And that’s the less malicious aspects! You want concrete examples of V.P.?

Look at rape trials. If it is learned that the victim was into BDSM, rough sex, or was “overly promiscuous” or dressed "slutty" there is the assumption that she/he consented, or, in some cases, due to her/his proclivities, cannot be raped.

Look at employment. People have been fired/ passed over for being kinky even if it had no bearing on their jobs or ability to do them. They also face strife in places of higher education.

Look at parenthood. People have lost custody of their children or fear that for being not vanilla, even when there is no evidence whatsoever that anything the parents might do impacted their children at all.

People have been dragged into court for obscene conduct in their own homes.

“Safe Spaces” for kinky people, such as BDSM clubs, private residences, and swinger clubs are often subject to harassment from legal authorities and civil groups.

Very rarely do Vanilla People have to deal with this sort of thing due to their sex lives. Hell, a great deal of non-vanilla hetero sex is still considered both a sin & mental illness by a whole lot of folk.

And non-vanilla people can point this out, over and over, and still get told to examine, that they are the bad for other people people, that they are wrong, are oppressive, are “normalized”…

Yeah, right.

DEAR REN: YOU WIN AT EVERYTHING. I DON'T CARE WHAT IT IS; YOU WIN AT IT.

Getting off on power exchange is BadWrong, let me tell you it.

(Hi, it's been a loooong while since I've posted here; sorry if it's a bit 101, but easing back into it)

Yeah, it's That Time again, apparently. I'm sort of going off a general overview of the thread, any number of previous threads which sounded a -lot- like this one, and the understanding that I agree with RE's rant here, and have taken pretty much that tone in previous go-rounds. Because for whatever reason (the heat, maybe, or the sheer number of times I feel like all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again), I'm not even feeling Ze Rage this time. So, I thought I'd take advantage of my relative, well, it ain't Zen, but it's something, and say a little something. Again.

I'll just say that I am -very- suspicious whenever anyone starts to hold forth about how they -used- to like act X, but now, praise Jesus/Dworkin/Nicolosi/Cthulhu, I have SEEN the LIGHT! and my sexuality has -totally changed,- and -yours can and SHOULD, too- (is the implicit and/or even explicit addedendum).

First of all, I don't think sexuality works like that: yes, it can be malleable and change over the years, but ime and in everything I've come to understand, it is -not- particularly amenable to change because one -wills- it so, because one's newfound political/religious/otherwise ideological -belief- decrees that it -must- be so in order for one to be a whole and good person. You don't get rid of the shadow by stuffing it down.

Secondly, in my experience...people like this, often enough, especially when it comes to kink, are...rather selective, quite possibly not consciously, when it comes to deciding what does and doesn't now qualify as the Bad Bad Thing.

f'r instance: w/in feminism, to take one example I recall seeing a while back: the idea that BDSM is a Bad Bad Thing, meaning a) leather and whips b) particularly, maledom/femsub anything, including any sort of non-implement-including getting off on penetration; -but- c) donning a strap-on and doing one's male partner and getting enjoyment -specifically- out of "whoo, I'm penetrating -him-, what a rush!- is totally fine and not at all suggestive of power!sex; it's just, you know, this...thing I happen to like. O.K.

As it happens, personally, I am turned on by certain kinds of femtop!malebottom much more than I do the reverse; always have, since long before I read any theory or even knew what the terms meant. I don't doubt that my kinks, such as they are, were formed in the same long-ago not-really-consciously-articulate cauldron that all my other erotic general themes were formed, more or less; and that sure, these particular let's say bents at least may well have at least partly to do with stuff I was unconsciously picking up about social messages about what was or wasn't taboo. But that doesn't make me a better feminist, or mean that if for whatever reason I decided tomorrow that you know, I really shouldn't get off on this stuff, I should stop enjoying thus and so and learn to enjoy this other thing, it would be any more successful than when I was trying to be a good little heterosexual, because -that's- what I thought I was -supposed- to be -then.-

Because, see, if there's one thing sexuality doesn't generally do, it's lie down and act like it's "supposed to." Regardless of where the directive is coming from. It's deeper and quirkier and more complicated than that. It's not that one (o the overused term) "examine" what it all MEANS, dear, but ultimately: it will not lie down and fit into your Procrustean bed. It needs, like the rest of the squidgier bits of the unconscious, to be taken on its own terms. Fuck, that's what "examination" -is-, it seems to me. The theory is shaped by What Is Found There, not the other way around. And, well, One Size Does Not Fit All.

And at the end of the day, also, frankly, again, what she said.

x-posted at Fetch My My Axe

I think you got some sadomasochism in your feminism there...

(First, to the anon commenter on the last post: I didn't see your post until today. A response is up now, and I hope it helps you.)

I was just rereading what I think is the most fair anti SM piece I have ever read.

That piece is Sandra Bartky's "Feminine Masochism and the Politics of Personal Transformation." In it, Bartky tries to reach some common ground between anti SM feminists and pro SM feminists.

Basically, she accepts the idea that SM people how fixed sexual desires, and that we cannot change to have a more egalitarian, proper feminist sexuality. However, she agrees with more orthodox anti SM feminists that this is a bad state of affairs, suggesting that the (hypothetical) feminist masochist she discusses is irreparably psychologically scarred by patriarchal sexual norms. (58)

Which is something that will, and should, raise the ire of anyone who reads this particular blog. However, I strongly recommend the piece if you're looking to read opposing points of view. It's far more humane, and far more well reasoned, than many of the anti SM arguments I have read.

Which makes what I'm about to quote a little misleading. The following excerpt is actually the worst part of the article. I quote it just to show that even when our opponents are in fine form, reasoning about as well as they ever will, interesting hypocrisies seep into their arguments.

For context, Bartky is here discussing were the way in which masculine dominance and feminine submission stem from cultural norms. She discusses romance novels and the famous "staircase/rape" scene in Gone With The Wind, saying that women like them because they've bought into the idea that male dominance is sexually exciting (46). She returns to Rhett Butler later, saying:

The right, staunchly defended by liberals, to desire what and whom we please and, under certain circumstances, to act on our desire, is not at issue here; the point is that women would be better off if we learn when to refrain from the exercise of this right. A thorough overhaul of desire is clearly on the feminist agenda: the fantasy that we are overwhelmed by Rhett Butler should be traded in for one in which we seize state power and reeducate him. (51)

I could describe, in a boring, conversational, nonfiction tone just what's wrong with feminists who are concerned about doing away with the sexiness of dominance describing a fantasy of seizing state power. However, creative writing has always been my first love.

"Calm yourself, Mr. Butler. The injection will not harm you. It is merely designed to inhibit the body's production of endorphins."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I already told you, we were drunk and she woke up happy. Now let me go, doll. I've gotta tend to the horses."

"The treatment dampens the body's ability to produce natural painkillers in response to stimuli. Pain is an integral tool in your re-education, and we must ensure you experience it to the fullest."

"Jesus! That needle is huge! You're crazy! How could you need that for one shot?"

"Pain is an integral tool in your re-education. Men like you believe women enjoy pain and violation; before anything else, we must teach you that there is nothing enjoyable about them."

;)

Kink Week: The Brutal Honesty Edition

(xposted from my personal blog)

Since Ren christened this week kink week, I wanted to talk a little bit about my own. I've spent a lot of time over the past few years getting deeply involved with feminism and writing academically, and a lot of that has involved defending BDSM as healthy and harmless. But I'm going to talk about stuff that, well, might just "come from patriarchy," and holy shit! Not care.

For as long as I can remember, the kind of sex that attracted me the most is the kind that felt like use. I want to penetrate people because I want to get inside them, possess them, claim them from the inside out. And there's plenty of theory that says that seeing penetration that way is all about patriarchy. Maybe it is. I have to say I really don't know, even after years of "examination", of reading MacKinnon and Dworkin, of listening to other female tops, like Bitchy Jones, talk about how penetration of the submissive partner is sold to us as the one true way of doing dominance, and how that's not "really" what "women" want.

But, and this is where I'm going to get in trouble with the people who don't like people who go with what feels "natural" rather than examining why things feel "natural" in fucked up cultures (or the people who think fucked up dynamics feel natural to survivors because they associate abuse with love):

I never really experienced it that way. I experienced the idea of me penetrating people as what seemed natural, what seemed right, what flowed easiest for my personal feelings. To try and think of myself getting penetrated meant thinking of myself distantly, disconnected from my body. It meant thinking abstractly, using my mind to reason about what certain bodies were "intended for."

And I'm a geek, but puzzling out body-purpose-thingies? SO NOT HOT.

It's not even that being penetrated is unpleasant for me. When done right it feels GOOD. It just also feels like being turned inside out -- like wearing your shirt backwards all day because that particular shirt looks cool that way, strangely enough, and then having people notice and get rabid about telling you you're supposed to do this all the time, because you have the sort of skin that goes with backward shirts, and everyone knows it. Even though wearing your shirt backwards feels wrongish because the damn thing is ON BACKWARDS.

It's not really that I'm uncomfortable with being female. It's that my clit's not big enough to fuck people with, and I don't like that. I don't care that it's a clit. I care that it's TINY. Autoandrophilia? Penis envy?

Sure, but I'm getting tired of almost all of the words for that sort of thing being demeaning ones.

I've wondered for a long time whether it had to do with something like testosterone levels. I remember in some years ago about freemartins, and having the thought "Everything makes sense now. Some female organisms are just like this. I'm not a mistake."

Granted, as far as I know freemartins are only interested in females, so it's not a one to one mapping, but it's, well… "Hey, that's me!" I'm not a "woman" in Bitchy's sense, so even if she's right about them (and I'd say she isn't, anyway) whatever they want has nothing to do with me anyway, even though my gender identity isn't "man" either.

Culture? Sure, the culture has told me what males are "supposed" to do in sex. But I really don't think it's the culture that told me I was supposed to be what a girl isn't. I always thought I was crazy, because I knew what girls were supposed to do: get fucked. Submit. Be sweet and soft.

And it really is something that can easily conform to that stereotypical idea of masculine and feminine roles in sex, just with the genders reversed. I strongly suspect that one reason I'm more attracted to men than to women is just because it's more exciting to dominate (including to feminize; yes, weepingcock members, I am that supposedly mythical person who likes the word "boycunt") a man.

It may also be I'm just genetically "more straight" (if straight even has any meaning given how weird I am anyway…), but it may be just that it's more like use. It's taking someone who, given the culture, claims that I'm a usurper and I don't belong, and turning that on its head in a sexy, forceful, emotional and obvious way. It's more humiliating. It's more intense. It turns more on its head.

Tell that to the people who think women are desperate to please men.

If I'm a woman in any robust sense at all, that is.

But I like that. I like physically overpowering someone. I like ramming into them. I like digging into their skin with nails and teeth until it hurts. I like feeling their body open, hearing them gasp because I'm hurting them and they like it.

Funny how, while I totally see how that looks like patriarchy to some, it looks different from the dynamic they always pick on to fuss about.

And I like other things too, that don't make nearly as much sense. I like knives. I like hurting people with sharp things because, well, the blood is the life. I like the idea of digging in their body for treasure, bringing what they are out of the depths of them and into the light. Seeing it, claiming it, tasting it -- I don't much do these things in the era of HIV (though Monkey and I have been together a while so perhaps we will), but I certainly do things that mean the same thing to me symbolically.

And that's the idea. Digging through the prison of the body for the spirit, and making it mine.

No, it's not fair. It's not supposed to be.

People keep being totally awesome...

...so I keep linking them here:

It has been said, by some feminists-- and particularly, some feminists of my acquaintance of late-- that people who believe they can be kinky and feminists at the same time are simply dupes of the "sex-positive" turn in third-wave feminism. That we are mindless trend-followers. That asserting that feminism and BDSM are compatible-- just because we want them to be; just because we choose both-- is depoliticized "choice feminism" of the worst sort. That we are blithely, purposely ignorant of the ways in which the personal is political, and we don't want to examine the ways in which systems of oppression affect our sex practices, because then (obviously, of course) we would have to give up our precious kink.

None of this is true.

It may surprise some feminists to discover that I am actually quite critical of any argument that declares an act "feminist" just because a woman chooses it. A couple of years back, I was a member of an LJ community called feminist_sub, which is precisely what it sounds like: a community of submissives-- predominantly women; predominantly, it seemed to me, heterosexual women-- asserting that their feminism and their kink were compatible. Actually, it was more like they were trying to reconcile the two, because there's not a lot of space for them in feminist communities, or in society at large, for them to try to do that. Time after time, women would post in the community, asking how they might reconcile their kink with their politics. And time after time, people would post comments to the effect of, "because you chose both."

I always disagreed. It is, and has always been, patently obvious to me that an act is never feminist just because a woman chooses it. One has to look at the context surrounding those choices: did she have a meaningful set of choices to consider in the first place? Does her decision benefit only her, does it actually curtail the choices of other minorities, or does it help open up the possible range of choices for other people? Clearly, the simple act of choice is not inherently feminist. But this does not mean that BDSM and feminism are incompatible.

When it comes to feminism and kink, I always come to two conclusions. First, BDSM is not inherently feminist, but it can only stand to benefit from feminist critique. I am not an anarchist; I don't believe that hierarchy and power are always already oppressive. But I do believe that some forms of hierarchy are abusive and oppressive, while others may not be. As such, I believe that feminist critique is an imporant tool in BDSM communities and relationships, because it can help community members distinguish between workable power dynamics, and oppressive ones.

Secondly, it has been my experience that BDSM, at its best, can help widen women's (and queers', and other sexual and gender minorities') range of possible choices in a systematic and meaningful way. Above all, what I have learned from my involvement with kink is how to negotiate my desires and limits in the context of play. All good scenes begin with negotiation. I think most vanilla people are, by now, familiar with the concept of the safeword. But it goes beyond that: it's a constant process of negotiation. I talk with potential play partners before scenes-- perhaps by e-mail, perhaps at coffee before a play date, perhaps briefly at a play party-- to make sure I feel safe around them, and so that we can talk out what we're willing to try, and what we absolutely won't do. And in most of the really good scenes I've been in, the safeword has been the absolute last resort: one that I generally haven't had to use, because our pre-scene negotiations were adequately thorough, and because most of the really good tops I've been with have been really good about checking in at fairly regular intervals and making sure the experience is still good for me.

In other words, BDSM has enabled me to assert my sexuality more-- to communicate what I do and don't want. It's taught me how to be verbally open about my desires. I think that true sexual negotiation and consent is more than just a matter of "no means no". It means being able to, and feeling comfortable, talking about what your limits are-- preferably before the proverbial heat of passion, before things get volatile and difficult. More than that, it means learning how to say "yes"-- how to communicate what you do want. I think that a lot of people-- perhaps especially women-- don't feel comfortable asserting their desires, and that learning to do so is at least as important, if not more so, then learning to say no. BDSM, then, is not inherently feminist, but certainly a lot of its tools and techniques can be adapted for feminist purposes.

Having actually thought about these things (QED), I hope it should be pretty understandable why I get blood-boilingly angry when I am told that I am only kinky-- and a kink apologist-- because I'm a brainless urban hipster unthinkingly pushing the sex-positive orthodoxy (is this an orthodoxy? and if it is, why do I know so damned many kinky feminists who feel the need to defend themselves?). Furthermore, it makes me angry when I am told that my interest in BDSM is part and parcel of my being a patriarchal dupe who has been tricked into glorifying violence, or that I must be an abuse victim who can't think of any constructive (read: vanilla) ways to work out my victimization....

[snip]

....I would like to conclude here by asserting that I am not trying to argue that kinky people are sexually, politically, or in any other sense better than people whose tastes run to the strictly vanilla. I have no interest whatsoever in making those kinds of judgments; my only hope is that whatever you enjoy, you feel comfortable articulating your limits and desires, and that you have success in finding a lover (or lovers) who respect your limits and are more than happy to fulfill your fantasies-- whether your tastes are kinky, vanilla, asexual, or something else entirely. However, the reason I feel the need to conclude my post this way is because I am, in part, reacting to others' tendency to declare something oppressive simply because it has been problematic for them in the past. The second-wave feminist adage that the personal is political may be true (and I believe that it is), but this does not give any single feminist carte blanche to dismiss everything s/he doesn't like as oppressive. Certainly, it doesn't grant any one person the right to unilaterally decide what sex acts will and will not be okay from a feminist perspective. Choice feminism is just as problematic when it is used to prohibit, as it is when one employs it to justify one's own acts. That my tastes are different from yours, and that I assert the right to express them, does not make me an oppressor, insofar as I do not assume that all people should adopt my own desires. Asserting that I am an oppressor for those tastes, however, and arguing for a feminist utopia in which no one has such desires, might well be. From a feminist perspective, "utopian" solutions are always suspect, as they generally rely on the unilateral, one might even say magical, disappearance of all dissenters.

I lust after Harper Jean's spicy brains...

Not as relevant to feminism as to D/s in general, but I give you

Totally amazing musings on D/s from Harper Jean:

As Trin's post suggests, however, neither [the concept of play nor that of ritual] is quite adequate to describe D/s relationships where the power exchange permeates much or all of the relationship. I suggested the analogy of a religious order, but here's another way of thinking about it: positive cognitive dissonance.

(Leon Festinger coined the term "cognitive dissonance" in 1957 to describe how members of an apocalyptic sect reconciled their belief system with the failure of the world to "end on time," creatively reconciling logically incompatible information. As in that case, the term is generally used to describe a kind of active, irrational denial that is ultimately maladaptive. But I recall noting that in some modern mystical traditions the idea has been given a positive spin -- embracing paradox -- and that suggested my thinking here. Or for those who prefer to appropriate a different fancy phrase and use it way out of context and with a positive spin, we could redeploy Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness.")

It seems to me that by necessity individuals in D/s relationships view themselves and their relationship to one another through two very different, and seemingly opposed, lenses at the very same time: one in which the dominant partner has control and the submissive is not autonomous; and one in which both are fully autonomous individuals. The D/s reality depends, of course, upon the autonomous reality, which both circumscribes it and gives it life. And yet both partners must inhabit both realities at once for the relationship to work, must believe both that the submissive is free (to disobey, to renegotiate) and that he is bound. (One might say something similar about the tension between "one-ness" and "two-ness" in vanilla marriage, though obviously there are differences.)

In this way, D/s relationships neither "just" play (an explanation that many D/s folks would find inadequate and possibly insulting) nor "real" abuse (as is sometimes thought by outsiders). Rather, the power exchange is in a sense very real for the participants, even as they retain their autonomy.

Save the drama for your llama...

(xposted from my personal blog)

What I'm working on right now has to do with traditional defenses of SM as play. One of them is the idea that we can understand (some, at least; 24/7 isn't going to fit this model at all) SM in terms of drama. People are setting up scenes, creating roles, and acting them out. While they may be mimicking things that it would be bad to actually do, the pleasure they get out of it is some sort of pleasure intrinsic to simulation, not a pleasure that somehow flows from the reality of the action being mimicked.

So I can want to, for example, play the role of a kidnapper and rapist, but at the same time have no interest whatsoever in actually doing either of those things. If I did them, I would hate them, because I'm not actually interested in committing the violation. I'm interested in some sort of scripted dominance game that makes use of rape as a symbol.

Of course, I do think this is true. A lot of what SM people do is the fun of playing with being bad, being extremely powerful, being in subjection, being at the whim of the capricious and cruel authority.

But I also think there's something missing when we just talk about the pleasure of simulation. Whenever we simulate something, we choose what to simulate. If I'm going to play make-believe now, I can pretend to be the rapist, or I can pretend to be some gentle, skilled master of sexual technique who would never hurt anyone. There must be some reason that I choose the first (if I do.)

And I think we're frightened of allowing that to be the case. If that is the case, the people who don't like us have an opening. They can ask very real questions about why we choose to mimic what we choose to mimic. They can say that there's potentially something wrong with someone who chooses this role rather than that other, more innocuous one.

And I do think that we open ourselves to a vulnerability if we don't just say that what we're doing is getting some sort of freestanding "Pleasure in make-believe." But I think that we're selling ourselves short if we don't allow for sinister motivations, and actually argue that we can use those sinister motivations in the service of something good.

Let me now tell a personal story. Those of you who've read my personal blog know that I experienced some abusive treatment at the hands of a physical therapist when I was very young. You also might know that my parents didn't believe anything untoward was happening. I myself had been told so many times that it was for my own good and I should trust the adults around me that I didn't understand that I could stop it, or that she was not actually giving me the proper treatment anyway.

So, I was very angry at the abuse, but I didn't realize that I had reason to be angry. So far as I knew, someone was helping me out of the goodness of her own heart, and it happened to be painful, and my foolish brain was getting mad at the pain and taking it out on this angelic wonderful person who just happened to do things that I, because of emotional weakness, couldn't be strong enough to not experience as hurting me, humiliating me, and treating me badly.

So like many survivors, I had strong anger but felt my anger was inappropriate. Because I held it in and no one really understood that seriously bad things were happening to me, my temper seemed explosive sometimes. I never let myself rebel against her, because to do that would mean to stand up for myself, and I knew that I wasn't supposed to do that. So I just found myself free-floatingly angry. I felt like I had a black pit of rage at the center of me, like I was some warped version of a human, seething, a time bomb at the center of me. I didn't know why it was there, and that frightened not only me, but others around me who couldn't understand why this generally friendly girl would sometimes explode. My own mother told me many times during my adolescence that she outright feared my anger, and had never seen anything like it. Of course not -- she hadn't been as close to any survivor as she was to me.

And I know, just from the way it feels, that some of my sadism is about that anger. Some of what I'm doing is letting that part of me, the part I kept inside because I thought it was wrong, out of me. I know the part of the thrill of doing SM for me is letting that rageful part of me interact with someone, and reveling in the fact that rather than running away from me in fear, they exult in it, enjoy it, get off on it, love it. It's a place to feel, for the first time in my life, that I can still be a good person, a lovable person, even a fun person, and have that part of me exist. It lets me feel like there wasn't anything wrong with me for getting angry with being abused. Like I don't have to feel guilty, like I don't have to feel like a bad woman, female, child for being justifiably angry.

(This is, not incidentally, why one of the most wonderful things Monkey's ever said to me was "You can be angry with me.")

And just to say that what I like is pretending to be aggressive, some sort of specific pleasure in the aggression simulation, is not accurate. Yes, I'm taking pleasure in simulating something I would never do if I'm playing the role of a torturer and rapist, for example. But part of what the pleasure is, part of the cleansing, part of the delight is about allowing myself to access aggression. And yes, that aggression is morally neutral. But that aggression is not a facsimile of aggression. If I'm doing drama, the drama is the structure in which I engage the aggressive feelings. The pleasure is not just the pleasure of make-believe, but the pleasure of discharging feelings that I've learned to distrust and keep inside. It's the pleasure of knowing that it's all right for me to express myself fully within the safe framework in which I'm not actually going to do real harm. It's also the pleasure of knowing that that expression is welcomed, rather than shunned.

So while I think the reason why do SM scenes is in fact morally justified, I don't think it's morally justified because my feelings are the feelings of pleasure in make-believe. While that is part of it, I'm not actually big on role-playing, and usually find it silly. A major source of pleasure for me is the ability to access and act on emotions that I would otherwise fear would terrify others.