There are detailed explanations for why that’s not true. Explanations that include studies that reveal the high rates of rape and abuse in the BDSM community. In other words, kink culture is a rape culture.
Just search these anti-BDSM, kink culture, and kink critical tags for more resources and information.
On top of that I’m going to publish this post (unlike my privately sent rushed responses to the 5 short consecutive messages that you sent me which were more expressive of my annoyance-tinged displeasure with your misunderstanding of Feminism and your repeated insistence that there’s absolutely nothing abusive about practicing a sexual or “kinky” ((that makes it sound quite innocuous, doesn’t it?)) Bondage, Domination, Sadist, masochist or Bondage, Dominant, slave/submissive, Master lifestyle, that “consent” is all that matters – that analysis and criticism of what factors into consent and what is being consented to be damned, that as a sub you’re the one with the power in a BDSM scene, or a sequence of BDSM scenes, or an extensive BDSM lifestyle, or Total-Power-Exchange, and the use of generic pro-BDSM sexually liberal slogans (e.g.: “BDSM IS NOT ABUSE!”). You shared something personal with me that I cannot answer to (I can only offer emotional support by way of more private messaging) but I can publicly answer to the pro-BDSM arguments you, and many who share your sexual politics, put forward to those, such as myself, who you say are “giving Feminism a bad name” (to paraphrase one of the statements you’ve made towards me).
The following is by C.K Egbert at FeministCurrent:
C.K. Egbert is a current graduate student in the Philosophy
Department at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on feminism
and equality.
Note: This post as well as the links and resources contained in this post may contain graphic descriptions of violence against women.
Inspired by Meghan’s post on burlesque
and the work of feminists and commentators on this site, I’ve outlined
responses, in three parts, to the most common objections presented when
feminists critique BDSM. My intention is not necessarily to convince
BDSM supporters or practitioners to change their beliefs or behaviour
(because I don’t believe most will), but rather to help articulate why
these objections are problematic/illogical. Another useful post
addressing BDSM can be found here, for your reference.
Throughout this post, I refer to the submissive as “she” — both as a
reflection of the actual sexual gender dynamics under patriarchy and
because I am concerned with how BDSM affects women in particular. It is
not because I think that all “submissives” in BDSM are women, and it is
not because I think sexual submission or masochism is an inherent or
natural feature of female sexuality.
“You shouldn’t judge others for their sexual preferences. You
are kink-shaming. This is just like homophobia. You are a prude,
pearl-clutching, moralizing, etc.”
This group of objections has the same origin: the presupposition that
insofar as an activity or institution involves “sex” it must be immune
from critique. Feminists are accused of “shaming” whenever they attempt
to analyze or critique any (male-oriented) sexual attitude, preference,
or behavior, and thus “shaming” is employed to shut down critical
thinking by painting critique as harmful. This perceived harm is considered by sex positivists as more important than the actual harm that occurs to women because of those attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.
If we were to take seriously the presupposition behind these
objections, namely, that we can never judge or apply moral standards to
sexual behaviors, we could never criticize sexual behaviors at all. In
fact, using “consent” as a justification for any and all sexual
practices and behaviours is a form of “moralizing” because consent is used to determine what is rightful versus wrongful behavior (even though consent is insufficient).
Thus, objections to critiques of BDSM cannot be said to be against
“moralizing” per se — this presupposes that whatever norms or “morals”
the sex-positivists endorse are the “right” ones whereas all other norms
or “morals” are paternalistic or oppressive.
The analogy to homophobia is a false equivalence. Since some
conservative, homophobic segments of society are known to criticize
sexual behaviors, the claim is that anyone who critiques any form of
sexuality or sexual practice is necessarily a conservative (this is also
often attached to other kinds of sexist and ageist name-calling, for
example, “pearl-clutching prudes”). With homophobia, the perceived harm
is that one is not having sexual relations with the “right” type of
person (and that the patriarchal, heterosexist family/social order will
be disrupted). With BDSM, the harm is the presence of violence,
coercion, and reinforcing sexual subordination.
“BDSM is subversive”
The sex-positivist idea is that in doing something (seemingly) taboo,
one “subverts” patriarchy by challenging our social norms. However, the
effectiveness of subversion depends on what norm one subverts. What
“norm” is really being challenged by BDSM?
By definition, BDSM eroticizes inequality, domination, pain, and
abuse; thus it doesn’t challenge any patriarchal norms. Patriarchy
exists because men enjoy hurting and dominating women. Men have
carefully constructed our social and legal institutions in order to
promote and ensure men’s ability to violate, abuse, and subjugate women.
The norm is men hurting women during sex, coercing women into
sex, dominating women during sex, and having non-mutual sex. BDSM says
the same thing about sexuality as patriarchy: hurting women is sexy. It
merely dresses it up in fancy leather outfits and increases the level of
acceptable sexualized violence from the “norm” (e.g., painful or
unwanted intercourse, compulsory intercourse) to more extreme
(sexualized torture, mutilation).
The only norm that is being “subverted” by BDSM is the “norm” against abuse and torture — but that should be a “norm” feminists want to promote.
“What about lesbians/female dominants?”
Some might argue that BDSM is “subversive” because it (sometimes)
places women in the “dominant” position. However, feminism’s goal has
never been to reverse roles of domination and subordination, but rather
to eliminate power inequalities and violence in sexual relations
altogether.
Lesbians, gays, and female dominants
can also internalize heterosexist and misogynist norms, just like
anyone else. An incident of a woman abusing a man doesn’t change the
gender dynamics of violence or sexual assault any more than an incident
wherein a minor abuses their parent indicates child abuse does not
exist.
In reality, BDSM is rather traditional in its gender dynamics
— submissiveness is still associated with females and denigrated in
males, and “submissives” often continue to be treated as subordinates
outside of the “scene.”
“You need to educate yourself about it first. You aren’t in the ‘scene’ therefore you cannot judge what we do.”
I’m calling this the “mystical experience” class of objections: they
presume the ignorance of the objector and also assert that there is
something about BDSM that cannot be understood without actually engaging
in the practice. In some cases, “you can’t know” is a legitimate
objection. For example, a woman or a non-white person can claim special
knowledge of what it is like to be oppressed. But this is not the case
in with regard to BDSM; the argument is comparable to saying that
childfree people cannot make claims about what constitutes child abuse.
Another flaw is that there’s no way to differentiate the “mystical
experience” from Stockholm Syndrome and trauma bonding. Human beings
adapt to make their experiences tolerable, and enthusiastically
supporting the conditions of their abuse (or not seeing it as abuse) is a
common survival strategy. In fact, many of the self-described
psychological elements of BDSM mirror that of survivors of severe abuse:
forming a positive self-concept around enduring torture and “craving”
abuse; the perpetrator gaining the victim’s trust and normalizing the
abuse; victims going into a trance-like state (or disassociating) during
the abuse; feeling bonded to the abuser (trauma-bonding); and the
abuser “rewarding” the victim by demonstrations of kindness or
comforting the victim after engaging in cruelty in order to further bond the victim to the abuser. The latter is actually formally integrated into BDSM practice as “aftercare.”
In fact, pro-BDSM writers even acknowledge that the cycle of violence and trauma-bonding doesn’t look much different from what they choose to consider “abusive” relationships —
the distinguishing element, though, is always the ethereal and magical
“consent.” This should not surprise us, as the practice of BDSM consists [of] the same acts of violence.
“That’s not real BDSM”
This is known as the “no true Scotsman” fallacy — in order to
differentiate oneself from an undesirable behavior of group members, one
claims that they are not “really” members of the group (in the same way
that men proclaim that “real” men don’t rape in an attempt to preclude
recognition that sexual violence is a gendered crime).
But what did they do wrong? Let’s take the case of the University of Illinois student who assaulted a young woman, afterwards claiming he was merely enacting Fifty Shades of Gray.
Did BDSM supporters believe it was wrong that he enjoyed hurting
her? No, that’s exactly what BDSM promotes. Was it that they felt it was
wrong that the victim was harmed and traumatized? No again.
The only thing that went “wrong” in this encounter, according to the
BDSM community, was that they didn’t follow the proper protocols — she
should have “agreed” to her abuse and had a “safe word.” The
sex-positivists spend their time either condoning or promoting men’s
desire to hurt women and then act surprised … when men hurt women.
Part 2.
“BDSM is not really abuse.”
BDSM proponents promote the illusion of fantasy using Orwellian-style
language manipulation. They discuss the eroticization of slavery and
abuse as a “kink” (and presented in opposition to the
derogatorily-termed “vanilla” sexuality); torture methods are described
as “play” (e.g., suffocation becomes “breath play,” etc.); actual abuse
is described as a “scene” (invoking the idea of a performance); and the
more extreme or dangerous practices are described as “heavy” or
“advanced” (as though the more torture involved, the more “skilled” at
sex one happens to be).
But while fantasy stays in your head; this actually happens
in real life, to real people. There is actual infliction of pain, actual
infliction of injury and torture, actual control and domination of
another human being. There is nothing about BDSM that is fake, and BDSM
proponents acknowledge that a lot of what occurs in abusive relationships also occurs in BDSM, including “head games.”
In order to side-step reality, BDSM advocates will instead claim that
nothing counts as abuse as long as it is “consensual.” There are two
problems with this: the first is that BDSM practitioners do not
eroticize consent. They eroticize pain, injury, harm, domination,
coercion, and control. The second is that the mere presence of rules
does not mean that there is no violence or subordination; with the
exception of war or anarchy, men’s violence against women has always
been regulated by certain norms (e.g., men can rape their wives or
girlfriends or daughters, but not the “property” of another male).
Similarly, consent in BDSM is used to legitimate and regulate violence,
not eliminate it. There’s a reason “she was asking for it” is used to
exculpate men from accusations of sexual violence: it exculpates men by virtue of their “good intentions”
and encourages women to blame themselves for the trauma they experience
at the hands of men (because, after all, they “consented”).
Let’s presuppose that we live in the world the BDSM people would like, where the “physical details really only matter in the contexts of safety [sic]…and consent…”
There are several problems with the idea that we should divorce harm
from wrong. The first is that there is no longer any way to
conceptualize bodily integrity (including the harm of pain or
suffering); consent by itself cannot differentiate between the harm of
rape and the harm of a stolen pencil. Any attempt at putting limits on
the violence, or adding in additional constraints, will be merely
arbitrary and ad hoc.
As a result, there are no limits to the abuse men can inflict upon
women (even to the point of murdering women through sexualized torture,
as happened in the Cindy Gladue case). It will be even more difficult
for women to prove assault or abuse (in addition to the inherent
problems with proving non-consent) because it will be presumed that a
woman could have consented to anything.
This also gaslights women into a double-bind. Actual harms become
unthinkable and unspeakable through the rhetoric of consent, rendering
them invisible and thus impossible to redress. The only harm that is
recognized is when the woman herself sees it as a harm, and yet she is
being told every day of her life (through pornography, socialization,
and through our social responses to violence) that she deserves to be
hurt, used, and violated. This is especially pernicious given that women
already minimize and deny their experiences of abuse. I have a
not-so-sneaking suspicion that pro-BDSM people would like to see all
legal protections against assault eliminated, which would ensure that
women are never shown that any form of male violence is abnormal, wrong,
or abusive.
We already know how “fantasy” plays out in real life. Many men would be willing to rape
using physical force or intimidation, if they think they could get away
with it (if we include emotional coercion, bullying, pressuring, and
manipulation, no doubt the numbers would be much higher). Thanks to
increasingly violent pornography and the mainstreaming of BDSM, men are coercing women into more painful, dangerous, and violent sex acts.
“The submissive has the real power because she can say no.”
This objection is actually simply another version of the old
misogynist trope that women have “power” over men by denying men sex.
Besides the fact that this is obviously false (men coercing women and
girls into sex is the norm, not the exception) women have to say “no”
because they are already in a position of vulnerability — of needing to
defend themselves — against male aggression.
The person who is vulnerable and powerless is the one who is tied up
and being beaten. The one who is in power is the person who is doing the
beating. There is no “real power” because the dominant can always
choose to ignore the “no” (and they often do), and putting the
responsibility on the submissive to actively resist her assault is
merely victim-blaming.
“But BDSM has such great standards of consent!”
Ongoing and affirmative consent involves explicit expression or
active participation throughout the entire encounter. Affirmative
consent means that there is no coercion, pressuring, or manipulation,
and that both partners are emotionally and physically able to
communicate (including their desire to stop, if that happens).
Importantly, affirmative consent helps us understand non-abusive sex as
sex that is wanted and not simply endured. But this is not the standard
of consent used in BDSM relationships. Consent in BDSM instead appears
to be based on the idea of contract agreement and lack of active
resistance.
First, affirmative and ongoing consent is precluded by the practice
itself of dominating or controlling another person. One cannot consent
to what happens unless one actually has input in the moment as to what
happens, and thus there is no ongoing consent when one person is
controlling the encounter and determining what happens. Consent before
the sex acts merely establishes limits; it does not in itself constitute
consent any more than claiming that I enjoy a certain sex act means
that I consent to that sex act. Nor does BDSM practices preclude, or
even condemn, various forms of coercion and manipulation. In one blog
post, a male BDSM practitioner related the story of a woman who was
raped with a knife. The author described the rapist’s grooming behavior
(subjecting his victim to other forms of penetration and lying about
what he was doing) thusly: “It’s not a bad way, this sort of mind game, to move towards opening up a limit.”
[emphasis mine]. Respecting a boundary is to take the boundary as an
absolute limitation on behavior; not something to be pushed, or worn
down, or (euphemisms again!) “opened up.” The author condones the
grooming because the victim “didn’t say no,” in spite of the fact that
the victim was uncomfortable with the perpetrator’s behavior. Insofar as
they condone grooming, manipulation, and coercion to violate boundaries
(and this author apparently does), BDSM practitioners cannot claim that
they respect consent.
On the same blog, this author dismisses unwanted torture and assault,
as well as resulting permanent trauma, as “shit happens” (which sounds
disturbingly like the oft-cited dismissal that various forms of sexual
violence or abuse are simply “bad sex”). Some of this, he claims, is due
to “miscommunication” and the fact that a “good top” is not going to do simply what has been explicitly discussed.
A very flimsy excuse — if there is the slightest ambiguity about
whether a partner is uncomfortable with a sexual activity, one can
always ask.
This leads to another problem. A submissive may be in such a state of
fear, pain, or disassociation she is unable to give or withdraw
consent: “Lots
of bottoms, especially subs, are not really in a state of mind
mid-scene to advocate for themselves… Some folks just can’t use safe
words at all because they can’t access them in scene: they have to
negotiate up front and then trust.” But if there is no consent if
someone is in such a state of pain, fear, or disassociation — or for any
reason feels unsafe expressing her feelings — that she cannot withdraw
consent or communicate (certainly no one could claim that someone in
such a state is actively giving consent). Deliberately putting someone
into a state where she may be unable to consent is predatory behavior,
just like getting someone drunk so that she cannot resist or make
informed decisions.
If we consider the pro-BDSM stance on abuse victims (claiming that it
is good and empowering for women who feel that they deserve to be
abused to continue to be subjected to violence in BDSM), social norms,
and economic coercion, the picture of consent promoted is even flimsier.
For example, the selfsame blogger quoted above supports the rights of men to torture a woman who is desperate for money in order to avoid losing custody of her children.
“There are abusive people everywhere.”
Certainly men everywhere are abusive, but it so happens that BDSM —
in spite of all the propaganda about it — is rife with abuse. As many as
one in three “kinksters” report an assault (or, as they would call it, “consent violation”) and the BDSM community has its own share of problems with shaming victims and protecting abusers.
It’s clear that the lines BDSM advocates try to draw between “kink”
and abuse, oppression, and violence against women, are not are firm as
they say.
This is the second of a three-part series. Read part one here.
Part 3.
“What about aftercare?”
The mere fact of aftercare should clue people into the abusiveness of
BDSM when a BDSM encounter leaves someone emotionally distressed,
unable to communicate, or in need of “processing.” Processing is
something one does with a traumatic experience, not a pleasurable sexual
encounter.
Aftercare, in this context, is used as a means of reassuring the
submissive it wasn’t “really” abuse. It is a form of gaslighting — an
attempt to claim that what actually happened (deliberate infliction and
enjoyment of the submissive’s suffering) did not “really” happen. It is
also a common technique practiced by abusers to engage in “rewards” of
affection after abuse, in order to further confuse and maintain a bond
with the victim. It is not a surprise, then, that aftercare involves the
same sort of brainwashing tactics that abusers typically employ.
“It involves a lot of trust”
It is hard to understand why someone would think this is a
justification. Women trust men who hurt them all the time. In fact, one
of the main ways that abusers get access to their victims is precisely
by exploiting a position of power or a position of trust — this is one
of the many reasons why most sexual predators are friends, teachers,
coaches, pastors, or family members. Having someone’s trust is not the
same as being trustworthy.
It should at least be counterintuitive that a dominant — a person who
wants to abuse and enjoys causing the submissive pain and degradation —
could ever care for the person that they want to abuse. But it isn’t
for most people; precisely because the perversion of patriarchalism
teaches women that “love” is about being hurt and abused.
“It’s not like it’s a 24/7 relationship”
Except, of course, when it is … And when one partner is given license
to control and possibly psychologically or physically abuse his partner
(once again, affirmative consent is stunningly absent). If you are
wondering how this is different than a domestic violence relationship,
it isn’t. Domestic violence is about control. The mere fact that the
submissive “agrees” means nothing; women agree to stay with and even
protect their abusers all the time and often feel they deserve the abuse
they receive.
Even in a non-24/7 relationship, the only difference is the duration
of the abuse. And that isn’t terribly different from domestic violence
relationships either. Many abusers are not always abusive or
always controlling. Putting arbitrary limits on the duration and place
of the abuse does not thereby mean that women are no longer being
abused. At best, it demonstrates to women that no matter how successful
they may become in the pubic realm, no matter how “equal” the
relationship appears in other spheres, there is always a realm where she
is nothing more than an object to be used and hurt by a man.
“People do all sorts of risky things because they like it. We
consent to painful things all the time (like tetanus shots). People like
pain because of endorphins.”
This class of objections is a red herring mixed with some false
analogy. The false analogy comes with “other painful things” — with the
exception of tetanus shots, this involves things that we do to ourselves
and that don’t involve a sexual context. In the case of the tetanus
shot, the doctor is presumably poking the needle in your arm as a matter
of medical treatment, not because the doctor enjoys making her patients
suffer.
The fact that someone “enjoys” it is not, in itself, a justification
for making violence permissible. People could easily get their adrenalin
and endorphin rushes through other activities; if they really wanted to
be in pain, there are plenty of ways to self-harm. What differentiates
BDSM is that it does involve, and is used to justify, interpersonal and
sexualized violence.
“You assume that women who like it are brainwashed/broken. You
are saying submissive women do not exist. I’ve always felt this way
since I was a child, therefore it cannot be because of social
influences.”
These objections are predicated on the idea that being submissive or
masochistic is an “authentic” desire for women. The claim to an
existential crisis is an easy way to justify one’s perspective and to
side-step critique.
The problem is, of course, that this relies upon the hubris that we
exist in a social vacuum and are completely unaffected by social
influences (even though socialization and exposure to rape culture
occurs from the day we are born) and the fallacy that becomes [since] something
exists it must therefore be justified. Neither of those assumptions are
true. But in the end, whether it is an “authentic” desire misses the
point; the point, instead, is whether violence against women is
acceptable.
“Women like it and feminism is about CHOICES. You are taking away women’s agency!”
Feminists called themselves “women liberationists,” not “women libertarians.” And, as Meghan Murphy has said, “just because you like it doesn’t make it feminist.”
The fact is that if men did not want to hurt women, it wouldn’t
matter whether women enjoyed subjugation or not; sexualized abuse
requires the participation of a minimum of two people. When people say,
“But what if women like to be hurt? They have a right to do what they
want,” what they are actually saying is, “But men enjoy hurting women!
They have the right to hurt women!” (Doesn’t sound so feminist anymore,
does it?)
This is a clever reversal that obscures the real issue by
“disappearing the male.” The issue never has been about what women
choose but about how men choose to treat women. Even if we were to
effectively outlaw violence tomorrow, it wouldn’t impact women’s agency
at all; they would be free to do the same things that they did before.
It would merely affect men’s ability to engage in violence against
women. Masochistic women couldn’t even claim a harm, since no one is
entitled to demand that anyone else participate in their sexual
practices or desires (whatever they may be). However, and importantly,
feminists do believe that women are entitled to freedom from violence.
“If you don’t like it, don’t do it”
It might be hard for sexual neoliberals to understand, but I actually
care about what happens to people other than myself. But I also have to
live with men who enjoy making women suffer in the most horrendous ways
possible, and with the knowledge that my pain, suffering, and
degradation is something which society condones and glorifies. And in a
society that does not acknowledge or validate women’s humanity, it is no
wonder that women have a hard time seeing themselves as human beings
worthy of respect.
My Challenge to the BDSM and Sex-Positivists
So here’s my challenge to the BDSM advocates (adapted from a comment on a previous blog post):
How would you teach women that they are owed bodily integrity,
freedom from violence, and mutually pleasurable activities if they are
also taught that it’s normal for sex to be degrading, painful, and
non-mutual?
How do you expect to prosecute and prevent domestic violence when
you promote controlling relationships, sexualized abuse, and
psychological and physical abuse as part of “healthy” relationships?
How would you teach men to respect women and want to engage in
mutually pleasurable activities if they are also taught that it is sexy
to hurt, dominate, and coerce women?
How do you expect to teach men about affirmative consent when BDSM
practices themselves do not embody affirmative consent — including
situations where consent is physically impossible?
How would you prevent emotional and social coercion into these practices?
I haven’t heard a satisfactory answer to these concerns, and I don’t
think that there are any, because to really eliminate sexual violence we
need to change the way men treat women. In the sex-positivist vision of
society, nothing changes from the old patriarchal order. Women (and
girls) are still bought and sold like commodities. Women and girls are
groomed into non-mutual, uncomfortable, or painful sex by pornography
and socialization; girls are still told they are mere objects to be used
and hurt by men; men inflict violent, painful, or degrading sex upon
women. The difference is that women are told that these institutions are
acceptable because of “choice.”
But this is not a satisfactory conclusion for any feminist. Because when we say we are working for sexual liberation, we should mean it.
This is the third of a three-part series. Read part one and two here.
There are also issues of pervasive whiteness in the BDSM community/ kink culture.
“The [BDSM] scene in San Francisco, at least the pansexual scene, is
almost entirely white, which was surprising to me given the demographics
of the Bay Area, and that was something that most of the white people
that I interviewed didn’t seem to notice. It wasn’t until [the BDSM
organization] Society of Janus did a panel presentation on race in the
scene that the people I was interviewing said, “Oh yeah, I guess the
scene really is white, that’s so strange.”
The people of color I talked to felt marginalized by the scene’s
normative whiteness. It wasn’t so much that white people doing S/M were
overtly racist or didn’t want to play with people of color, it was that
the scene itself had a normative, assumptive whiteness at its center, so
that people of color doing S/M experience themselves as marginal to
that community.
Most people that I talked to didn’t see S/M slavery play as having
anything to do with historical slavery in the United States — but none
of the people of color I talked to thought that this was the case. I
talked to an African-American woman in the scene who’s well-known for
doing race play and she said, “You know, I don’t think these white
people ever think about handcuffs and whipping and the slave auction as
connected to histories of slavery, but I can’t help but think about that
when I play.” —
BDSM: It’s less transgressive than you think, So says the author of a new book on white,
middle-class kinksters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tracy Clark-Flory
[Content warning for detailed black slavery reenactment]
“A young African-American woman walked onstage, led by a white man
holding a leash attached to a collar around her neck. “As he spoke, he
yanked up her dress to display her shaved genitals, and he then turned
her around,” writes anthropologist Margot Weiss. “Still holding her
dress above her waist, he smacked her ass so hard she pitched forward;
the leash attached to the collar around her neck stopped her fall.”
Then the bidding began.
This scene from a BDSM “slave auction” — before a predominantly white
audience – makes for one of the most viscerally challenging passages in
“Techniques of Pleasure,” Weiss’ book-length investigation of San
Francisco’s kink community, although there are other examples, ranging
from father-daughter incest to Nazi guard-prisoner scenarios. These
encounters aren’t described in much detail — instead, they’re used as
passing evidence of the depths of politically incorrect play that she
observed, or heard about, during the three years spent observing this
world.
Most kinksters see such “scenes” as standing apart from racism,
sexism and all manner of ugliness that happens in the real world — but
Weiss does not. “The fantasy of the scene as a safe space of private
desire justifies and reinforces certain social inequalities,” she
argues. The truth, she says, is that S/M “depends for its erotic power
on precisely these real-world relations, within which it is given form
and content.”
That said, Weiss objects to the idea that this sort of sexual
make-believe is “the same as the violence that it mimes,” as some BDSM
critics argue. Instead, Weiss looks at how particular scenes, whether
it’s a slave auction or make-believe child abuse, affect the people
participating, watching or (here’s looking at you) reading about it.
She also zeroes in on the contradictions of kink: “On the one hand,
SM is figured as outlaw: as transgressive of normative sexual values,”
Weiss writes. “On the other hand, SM is dependent on social norms:
practitioners draw on social hierarchies to produce SM scenes.” The
mostly-white, mostly-middle-class community is itself an example of
real-world social inequality: “These [sexual] experiments are more
possible and more accessible to those with class, race and gender
privilege: heterosexual men playing with sexism, white bodies at a
charity slave auction, professional information technology (IT) workers
with several rooms filled with custom-made bondage toys.” ” —
BDSM: It’s less transgressive than you think, So says the author of a new book on white,
middle-class kinksters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tracy Clark-Flory
The majority of kinksters (i.e.: BDSM practitioners) are white. Try to make logical connections between having white privilege and feeling comfortable fetishizing human slavery. This is not a coincidence.
The majority of BDSM Dominants are male. Try
to make logical connections between having male privilege and male socialization (which encourages men to use their bodies to dominate, intimidate, control, and inflict violence) and them feeling
comfortable in a controlling, abusive, dominant sexual “role”. This is not a coincidence.
There’s also this study which revealed that 71% of heterosexual males are in the Dominant role when practicing BDSM:
A study looking at message board posts found 71% of
heterosexual males but only 11% of heterosexual females and 12% of
homosexual males prefer a dominant role when engaging in sexual bondage. (Ernulf, 1995.)
Ernulf, K. E., & Innala, S. M.
(1995). Sexual bondage: a review and unobtrusive investigation. Archives
of Sexual Behavior, 24(6).
I’ll make another post in the future that provides more information and resources on the rampant racism, anti-blackness, racial fetishization, and anti-semitism that goes on in the BDSM community, which is NOT okay.