I’m behind on everything, and every time I manage to take a day where I swear I’ll catch up, I get sidetracked by some other huge thing. But this Thursday I’ll be presenting at a conference hosted by Chicago’s very own LGBT community center, Center on Halsted: “The 2009 Alternative Sexualities Conference: Cultural Competence and Clinical Issues”. I, and some other people in the community, will be speaking about the role of communities in the BDSM experience. I can’t possibly get sidetracked from that, and I’m pretty excited about it!
Now I’ve said before, and I say as often as I can, that BDSM communities are filled with many different voices — plus, there are many BDSM communities out there, not just one. I hope no one ever takes me as “speaking for BDSM” or accurately describing every possible BDSM community out there. But there are some elements common in the BDSM subculture, and some very general splits that I often find myself noticing within it. (I do welcome other voices, ideas, additions, or disagreements with what I’m about to say! Feel free to leave comments! Especially disagreements — I relish getting different perspectives on the BDSM scene and questioning my own assumptions. Absolutely relish it. Delicious.)
Right now I’m thinking about the split between people who are attracted (or partly attracted) to BDSM because it feels wicked and transgressive — and people who are attracted to BDSM entirely for other reasons. That is, some kinksters are really excited by the very fact that BDSM is illicit and hush-hush … while some aren’t.
On the face of it, I have no problem with this difference — I really don’t care what draws people to their sexuality, as long as they’re doing it consensually! But a consequence of the split is that it creates tension around the question of whether or not we should seek wider social acceptance for BDSM. Arrayed on one side of that tension are kinksters (such as myself) who think it would be totally awesome if BDSM were more widely socially acceptable, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about coming out (or involuntarily being outed) to our parents or friends or employers. We don’t want BDSM to be seen as illicit! But the divide’s other side includes kinksters who feel as though bringing BDSM into the light means disenfranchising their sexual needs, because they want BDSM to seem transgressive and scary …
… and I’m just not sure what to say to that. I had a conversation with a friend today in which he pointed out that for people who are attracted to certain forms of sexuality because they’re illicit, there will always be further horizons to explore. His argument is essentially, “Well, if someone wants illicit sexuality, they’ll always be able to find something that feels illicit. Society will simply never get over most of its boundaries around sexuality, at least not in our lifetimes; we can just move those boundaries around a little. But it’s not fair to expect BDSM-identified people who don’t want BDSM to be illicit to silence ourselves in order to preserve a transgressive quality that attracts others to BDSM.”
I think I agree with him. And more fundamentally, I really don’t like being unable to talk about BDSM with people I respect for fear of their reactions and judgments. I don’t like cloaking a large part of my life. I do not enjoy living with that stigma. And I’m not willing to compromise my efforts to work against that stigma for the sake of other kinksters who want BDSM to be stigmatized because that’s hot for them.
(As a side note: I do recognize that some kinksters feel nervous about BDSM advocacy, or oppose trying to make BDSM more socially acceptable, not because they’re actively attracted to the illicit image of BDSM but for other reasons — for instance, concerns about backlash against the community. I don’t mean to imply that everyone who resists the idea of raising the BDSM public profile is doing it because they really enjoy feeling transgressive and illicit. But I think a lot of kinksters do, and are.)
Clarisse
Too simple a dichotomy, IMO. For example, back in the dark ages, the BDSM community was smaller and more cohesive, and it was much more possible to establishe and enforce norms and police behavior by reputation. With social acceptance, that cohesion is lost. Thom Magister’s essay in Leatherfolk, about the pre-Stonewall California leather community, is really illustrative, in that it portrays a very close community with formalized teaching and mentoring. That has both its advantages and its disadvantages.
In the same vein, “transgressive” really asks more questions than it answers. There are people who want to be “transgressive” against a bunch of restrictive social norms about how sexuality proceeds — like the centrality of penetration, the gender binary, etc., who do not also fall into that “any club that would have me as a member” habit of courting stigma for its own sake. The latter is often regarded as a personality quirk, or simply as immaturity; while the former is political. Whatever the merits of seeking stigma for fun, it is not in and of itself political.
I do see the point you are making, but I think the phenomena are a bit messy to fall into those categories.
Comment by Thomas — May 20, 2009 @ 9:36 am
BDSM has become much too watered down and too many are calling kinky sex BDSM, when in reality it is part of BDSM but does not make one a practitioner of said.
Mistress Spidr
Comment by spidrsden — May 22, 2009 @ 11:16 pm
@Thomas — I agree with what you’re saying, but I think it’s still useful to try and articulate general splits — again, with the caveat that they are very general. It doesn’t sound like you are asserting that this split does not exist, just that it’s not completely clear-cut … am I right? Do you think it’s still useful to talk about it even if we acknowledge the boundaries to be blurred? I do, if only because it helps us figure out the cultural layout and thereby how to communicate better.
@Mistress Spidr — I don’t tend to think that it’s very useful to disallow people from the BDSM community, or claim that people aren’t doing “real” BDSM. The community doesn’t need to be “exclusive”. In fact, I think it would be greatly beneficial to the general public and the community itself if our demos, information, and groups were more open. When I see comments like yours, I worry that some BDSM communities are not being as welcoming as they could be to outsiders who could genuinely use some of our resources, and might genuinely be inspired to explore more by our examples.
Comment by Clarisse — May 27, 2009 @ 3:44 am
Well, I’m saying that what you’re talking about is there, but to call it a “split” constructs it as an exclusive dichotomy, which I’m saying it’s really not.
Axes where I think we can place people with some explanatory power are political-apolitical, mainstream-antiassimilationist, identity-activity. I’m fairly well political, mainstream and identity by that reckoning, though not at the polar end on any of it.
Comment by Thomas — May 27, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Considering how difficult it can be, also today, for people to find resources that aren’t wrapped up nutty ideologies or commercial interests, saying “I want it to be hush-hush, because the forbidden thrills me” sounds rather cynical. To this I would reply, well, you have already found out – what about other kinky people? What about those who are made to believe that they can not do what they are deeply longing to do and be happy?
Also, some people have a vested interest in BDSM being taboo and hush-hush.
I’m looking forward to water down BDSM some more tonight with my partner.
Comment by Ranai — June 2, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Another thing: the effect of tabuisation is not a tabula rasa. It’s not that people hear nothing about BDSM; it’s that most of what people hear are distorting lies. In my society, what gets through to pretty much everyone, via media, fiction and prurient small talk, are the negative stereotypes and ignorant clichés. How is this to be counteracted, if not by widely, publicly available realistic information about kinks?
The friends-and-relations aspect is the secondary one. Tabuisation has the effect that often people are afraid to ask their primary partners, the very persons they fall in love with, date, have sex with, live their life together with, whether they possibly have interests in BDSM too.
As the authors of Die Wahl der Qual, Kathrin Passig and Ira Strübel wrote:
“An dem Tag, an dem SM genauso seltsam oder normal ist wie die 10 beliebtesten Kopulationsstellungen, können wir getrost die Hände in den Schoß legen und dort sinnvoller beschäftigen als mit Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Vorher gibt es aber noch einiges zu tun.”
“On that day, when SM is just as weird and normal as the 10 most favoured intercourse positions, we can cheerfully lay our hands into our laps, and there put them to use in something more worthwhile than public information. Before, there are still some things to do.”
Comment by Ranai — June 3, 2009 @ 2:00 am
@Ranai — Yeah! I’m right there with you on all your comments.
@Thomas — Explanatory power yes, but sometimes these axes get politically worrisome. My latest post is about issues I see in the “orientation model”, which has some relevance to the identity-activity axis … I’d be interested to know what you think.
Comment by Clarisse — June 3, 2009 @ 5:21 pm