Withdrawing consent

While waiting for the firestorm over my three masculinity posts to die down (I’ll post a followup soon, promise), I want to parse out some recent thoughts on — you guessed it — consent!

I’ve been dating a guy here in Africa whom I will henceforth refer to as Chastity Boy.* I recently wrote a piece on my southern Africa experience that included descriptions of my relationship with him. I texted him, asking permission to write about him — which he granted — and then the next time I saw him in person, I had him go over the writing and specifically give consent for the piece itself. I warned him that the writing would almost certainly end up in a public place, though it would be under my scene name Clarisse.

This step accomplished, I sent the piece to some friends for feedback. One of those people was a mutual friend. Chastity Boy heard that she’d read it and wasn’t happy; he asked me about it, saying things like, “Well, it wasn’t quite a red flag, but close …” Naturally, with him talking about red flags, I felt scared that I’d transgressed a serious boundary. My ears perked up, I sat straighter and I tried to figure out why I’d failed to sense that boundary.

We talked for a while. “I don’t understand,” I eventually said. “You knew those pieces could end up in public. That’s why I thought it was okay to send them to her.”

“Well, but that’s different … I knew it’d be in public, but I didn’t expect people I know to see it,” he said. He thought about it some more. “I guess it just took me by surprise.”

“Do you want me to edit some parts of the pieces, or not post them?”

“No,” he said. “You can keep writing whatever you like about me.”

I asked if he was sure. He assented. I asked if he was really sure. He assented again. I asked if there was anyone in particular he didn’t want knowing about my identity as Miss Clarisse Thorn. He told me, and with that understanding, we closed the topic.

The whole incident got me thinking, though. Eventually, if I publish those pieces, he won’t be able to withdraw consent. I myself won’t be able to, either: after all, once published, it’s published. Even if circumstances change drastically, even if I’m outed, etc. etc. etc. … it’s out there: end of story. Especially in today’s highly backed-up and mirrored world, it’s nearly impossible to bury something once it’s been tossed into the public arena.

The ability to withdraw consent is one of the cornerstones of BDSM communication. (In a hypothetical world that did a good job of teaching vanilla relationship communication, I’d think it would be one cornerstone of that, too.) Hence our most basic tactic — safewords, which even most mainstream folks have heard about by now. There are some tricky aspects of using safewords well: you want to ensure that the safeword is easily pronounced, for instance; you want to ensure that both parties have access to some kind of safeword-signal at all times, even when (for example) gagged. Most importantly, you want to ensure that all parties feel comfortable safewording. This is often the hardest part, since (for example) bottoms can have a ton of pride wrapped up in not safewording, or be so desperate to please the top that they’ll feel guilty for safewording. (And tops may feel as though, since they’re “in charge”, they have no “reason” or “right” to safeword.)

Ultimately, I think all those issues come down to mastering good communication tactics and learning to read one’s partner. For instance, I’ve had a number of tops stop the scene before I safeworded because they accurately sensed my distaste before I was sure we should stop (and I’ve done the same myself, while topping).

But the situation with Chastity Boy isn’t like that. His consent is bounded by factors beyond my control, which any amount of good mutual communication can’t change. Past a certain point, he can’t withdraw consent.

It reminds me of a situation I once saw outlined on a FetLife discussion board. A fetish model who’d had a relationship with her photographer was posting. She said that she’d signed a model release (that is, a document giving up all rights to his pictures of her), and that they’d taken photographs together for years. Now they’d broken up, and she wanted him to take down the pictures, but he wouldn’t do it. She was asking the group if she had any recourse.

My initial reaction to her question was to feel indignant on her behalf. Obviously, I thought, her ex was being an ass! She might have no legal recourse, but I figured that at the very least she might be able to ruin his reputation in the BDSM community, and I said so. Then, however, I read some of the other comments, and I reconsidered. It’s true that her ex was perhaps being a jerk, but he also might not have been; it’s impossible to tell without his input. As a photographer, those photos were part of his livelihood, and was it reasonable for her to demand that he lose that money just because they’d broken up? Too, there’s the fact that models who sign model releases with other photographers would never be able to “take back” the pictures: those photos aren’t theirs and never will be. It might arguably be different for a fetish model than it would be for, say, a Nordstrom model, because leaving fetish photographs public could affect her future relationships in ways that a Nordstrom photo shoot wouldn’t. But the basic commercial framework is the same.

So here’s the question that came out of this, for me. What are my responsibilities in a situation where consent, ultimately, will have to be permanent? What were the photographer’s responsibilities?

Hmm. But maybe I should back up a bit! Maybe the situation of the model and of Chastity Boy can be compared, if not to a heated BDSM encounter itself, then to a BDSM encounter that has lasting effects: for instance, one that leaves bruises or scars. In such a situation, I think the top has the responsibility to ask the bottom ahead of time where it’s okay to leave marks (and what kind of marks are acceptable). A top who deliberately marks a bottom in a place where the bottom doesn’t want to be marked has violated that bottom’s consent. But if a bottom gives permission — with full understanding of what the marks will look like and how long they could last — then there’s no way to withdraw consent once marked.

True, the bottom could have “morning after” regrets, just as the model had regrets upon breaking up with her ex. But those regrets do not a violation make. The only potential violation would arise from a top’s (or photographer’s) failure to clarify the consequences of their acts. I do think that it’s incumbent upon all partners to be open to feedback, of course! The good tops I know are open to discussing a bottom’s morning-after regrets, if the bottom has any. But it’s also incumbent upon a bottom to take ownership of their own responsibility for those regrets.

One might argue that the responsibilities of a writer are different from the responsibilities of a kinkster. Must I as a writer be as careful as I am during BDSM, in gaining consent? After all, there are plenty of writers out there who aren’t anywhere near as cautious with their muses as kinksters try to be with our partners …. Still, I think any artist who plans to portray a sexual partner explicitly should observe the same care with that person’s boundaries as they would while actually having sex with them. Other personal information (for instance, writing about how my boyfriend drinks his coffee) may require less care; but sexual boundaries are as sensitive when portrayed in a memoir as they would be in person, and deserve the same respect.

So, here are my responsibilities — as both kinkster and sex writer: not just to get consent ahead of time, but to be very sure that my partners know exactly what the long-term consequences could be.

* This moniker arises from the fact that he’s got a vow of chastity going — yeah, I know, it’s beautifully ironic that a sex activist is dating such a man! And I do, of course, have his consent to call him that.

Evidence that the BDSM community does not enable abuse

How can you tell BDSM from abuse?

People ask me this all the time.

The idea behind that question is that BDSM “looks like” abuse. BDSM can leave bruises or other marks of pain. When two people are having a BDSM encounter, then — if an outsider were to walk in in the middle — it might look like a scene of abuse. Hence, one of the biggest fears that people outside the BDSM community have about BDSM is that — although it appears to be consensual — BDSM enables abuse, or is used as a mask for abuse.

Are some BDSM relationships abusive? Unfortunately, some are. But abuse happens, sometimes, in all relationships. There are lots of non-BDSM relationships, whose participants have never even heard of BDSM, that are abusive. And the fact is that the majority of BDSM relationships — just like the majority of vanilla relationships — are completely consensual encounters between adults who have specifically sought out, opened themselves up to, their own BDSM desires.

Just as importantly, there are swaths of the BDSM community that actively work against abuse within the community.

I want to caution, before I talk about this, that the “BDSM community” is a big place. Plus, there are many BDSM communities out there — not just one. There are BDSM communities in cities around the world, and within those city-communities, there are multiple smaller communities. Here in Chicago, for instance, there are communities based around multiple BDSM clubs, multiple BDSM events, and more. And all the BDSM communities that exist are filled with many different voices, and all those voices will agree and disagree with me to varying extents.

But I can observe some commonalities from various BDSM communities I’ve participated in. And one of those commonalities is that many (if not most) kinksters are very concerned about potential abuse. Arguably, the greater BDSM community contains a far higher proportion of people who worry about abuse, than the rest of the world does.

You can tell partly because of the steps BDSM people are frequently trained to take within our relationships, to ensure that we communicate well and do not misunderstand each other. Safewords are the most common example of these kinds of anti-abusive communication tactics. I think the more convincing argument, however, comes from these examples of specific anti-abuse initiatives from the community:

Anti-Abuse Initiative #1: The Lesbian Sex Mafia, an old and respected BDSM group in New York City, has a short page on its website devoted to the difference between BDSM and abuse. The page has a list of quick, comparative maxims designed to explain the difference simply, and ends by providing the number for an abuse hotline.

Anti-Abuse Initiative #2: At one point, while sorting files up at the Leather Archives and Museum, I found a copy of an anti-abuse pamphlet that has been distributed at various dungeons, BDSM workshops, and other BDSM community spaces in the Northeast.

Here’s one panel from the pamphlet — I think it speaks for itself:

(For the rest of the pamphlet, check out the images at my Flickr account — here’s the front, and here’s the back.)

Anti-Abuse Initiative #3: In September in San Francisco, I attended a workshop put on by Angela of EduKink, an excellent BDSM educator. The workshop was titled “Emotional Aspects of BDSM Play”, and there was a section that talked about how to look out for abuse in a BDSM relationship. Angela described:

Four General Guidelines for Recognizing the Difference Between BDSM and Abuse

1) Consent. BDSM is consenting; abuse is not.
a) Assuming consent was given — was it informed consent? Did everyone know what they were consenting to?
b) Was consent coerced or seduced from the partner? Did everyone feel like they could say no if they wanted? Was anyone worried about suffering negative consequences if they said no?

2) Intent. A BDSM partner intends to have a mutually enjoyable encounter; an abusive partner does not.
a) Did everyone leave the scene feeling somewhat satisfied?

3) Damage. A BDSM partner tries to minimize the actual damage inflicted by their actions; an abusive partner does not.
a) Did the two partners learn what they were doing before they did it? Did they learn how to perform their activities safely?
b) Were the partners aware of the potential risks of their activities?

4) Secrecy. Abuse often happens in secret. This is the hardest one on this checklist, because — due to the fact that BDSM is a very marginalized, misunderstood sexuality — BDSM often happens in secret, too. But this is one of the benefits of having an entire subculture that deals with BDSM: we look out for each other.
a) Were the two partners involved in the local BDSM scene? Did they get advice from knowledgeable, understanding BDSM people during rough patches in their relationship?

The moral of the story here is … for a community that’s so frequently accused of hiding or accepting abuse, doesn’t it seem like the BDSM scene puts in an awful lot of work against abuse? Again, I can’t speak for all BDSM communities, nor can I speak for everyone who has had BDSM experiences; and I know that — as with all types of relationships — there will occasionally be abusive BDSM relationships. But the three anti-abuse initiatives I’ve listed above are hardly unique, and many of us within the BDSM community work to emphasize those ideas as much as possible.

We’re not monsters. We’re not trying to do things that our partners don’t want to do. I have never met anyone within the BDSM scene who was not exquisitely aware of how careful we must be to gain consent from our partners. I’m not saying that people who don’t care about consent don’t exist — I’m not saying that abusers don’t exist — even within our community. But the community as a whole dislikes abuse at least as much as any other community. The only difference between us and non-BDSM people is that we feel violence and dominance as a language of love; violence and dominance is not, for us, intrinsically abusive — rather, something to be considered in context and with full understanding of the involved parties’ BDSM needs.

Storytime with Clarisse, slash Clarisse’s Advice Column: On Collars

I received a lot of really great positive feedback after I gave my BDSM Overview presentation at the Museum of Sex. One of my favorite letters was this one. I swear, I should start an advice column ….

Her letter (posted with permission):

Hello Clarisse,

I attended your lecture at the Museum of Sex on Friday and I just wanted to say that it was very helpful for me. I’m very new to the BDSM scene and I guess I’m being mentored by a dominant who I am dating. He’s very patient and understanding with me, but I’ve had quite a difficult time accepting even the fact that I am submissive. As I once told him, to me submissive equates weak and helpless. I’ve always wanted to think of myself as a strong, independent, feminist woman so I am having a hard time with this. It definitely made me feel better to hear you talk about your similar struggle. I am not being coerced, or lured into anything I don’t want — I am definitely submissive and interested in BDSM and exploring that whole path — but it took me a while to accept that I am submissive, and I do have issues with it a little still. I just want to make sure you understand that it’s not an issue of being forced or asked to do anything I don’t want to do.

But I did want to ask about the use of collars. I don’t know if this is more of a personal preference, but he is interested in buying me a collar and I just can’t shake the association with pets, slaves, a.k.a. degradation! He is the most charming man I know and treats me better than any “vanilla” boyfriend I’ve had, so I know he would never want to degrade me, but I just can’t shake those associations and a collar means a lot to him. Do you have any advice?

I answered:

Of course I can’t tell you whether it’s right for you to let your boyfriend collar you. Of course only you can make that decision. You already know those things, I hope! What I can tell you is about my own experience.

First, though, a side note. You might consider trying to find a different mentor, rather than relying on someone you’re romantically involved with. I mean, you might want to have this man stay your lover, but find a separate person who can mentor you.

For one thing, it’s a really good idea to have a mentor who is of your “type” — so for instance, as a bottom, I’d advise you to find a mentor who has experience bottoming. For another thing, it’s a good idea in any relationship to make sure that you have resources for advice and assistance other than your partner. And this is especially true of fledgling BDSM relationships, where there’s so much new to learn and understand! Of course, part of seeking an outside advisor is that you want to feel sure that you’re getting unbiased input. But it’s also worth noting that it can put a lot of strain on your relationship for your boyfriend to be, not just your lover, but your major source of BDSM information and understanding. That’s a lot of roles for one person to fill. That might feel okay now — it sounds like it’s a new relationship and you’re both excited — but after a while, being so dependent on one person could become a real problem for one or both of you. Or it might not. :grin: Again, I don’t know what’s right for you. This is just some general tried-and-true advice from mentoring groups I’ve encountered.

On to your actual question! There are lots of different feelings on collars, in general. There are people in the BDSM community who simply use collars to demarcate temporary roles. A while ago, I played with a man where we agreed that once he put the collar on me, I would obey him unquestioningly for the evening; then, at the end of the evening, he took it off and the encounter was over. That was just for one night, and in that case, the collar might be considered like a symbol, or a costume — putting us in a certain kind of space together for that time. But collars are also sometimes seen as a deep sign of love and commitment. I know people who consider collars to be as strong a statement as a wedding ring. They wouldn’t even think about wearing a collar just for one night, or for someone they met recently.

Personally, I have evolved a bit on my preferences, and collars mean something different for me from what they meant several years ago. When I first came into BDSM, I was very uncomfortable with it; I needed to take small steps to keep myself comfortable. Also, I was doing BDSM with a man whom I felt emotionally uncomfortable with — I think that I wanted to distance myself from him emotionally whenever we did BDSM. As a result, I believed (that is, I told myself) that I was only interested in the physical sensation: pain. I said that I wanted nothing to do with submission or ownership. I remember that I even told one friend, very emphatically, that I’d never ever wear a collar! Never!

Later, when I had my first BDSM-flavored relationship with someone I loved and trusted, I realized that I did want to wear his collar. I wanted to feel like he owned me and could do whatever he wanted with me. I started to understand that I did want aspects of ownership in my BDSM — I recognize now that I even want aspects of degradation. But I had to come into that slowly, because those things were emotionally very hard to accept for an independent, rational feminist such as myself. And it can be confusing to work out in practice, too, because I don’t want those things from everyone! For instance, I’m willing to do some BDSM with people I don’t know very well — but I need to trust someone a lot before I can enjoy a degradation scene with them. And obviously, since I top sometimes, there are some BDSM partners where it wouldn’t even enter my head to wear a collar. Every relationship has its own texture.

As for the statement, “You own me” — I don’t say that to someone unless I’m totally into them. It feels dark and a little scary, but it also feels real and important. It feels like I’m saying something even stronger than, “I love you.” If I were with a man who wanted to put a collar on me, and if putting a collar on me meant saying to him — whether aloud or silent — “You own me,” then I would have to be totally in love with him to do it.

Desires change over time. Sometimes people don’t like things that they’ll like later. Sometimes people stop liking things. But of course, sometimes people always like certain things … or never like certain things. Maybe someday I’ll wear collars casually. Maybe someday I’ll decide never to wear a collar again! Maybe I’ll even get bored of collars and wear them as nothing more than jewelry!

So maybe you’ll never want to wear a collar, and that’s fine. Just work on it slowly. Don’t rush. Certainly, if wearing a collar feels like degradation to you — and you don’t want to be degraded — then don’t do it! I know you don’t want to ignore your lover’s needs, though. So if this is so important to him, try asking him why it’s important. Does he want to degrade you? Or does he want to feel like he owns you? Or does he just want some kind of mark on you? Or does he just want you to carry a symbol of his? Once you know why he wants to collar you, maybe that’ll help you work out a compromise. For instance, if what he really wants is for you be marked by him or carrying a symbol, then he could give you another piece of jewelry that you always wear.

Hope this is helpful, or at least illuminating!

Storytime with Clarisse, slash Communication Screwup Post #1: isn’t tickling cuuute?

I had a conversation over the weekend that reminded me of an incident with one of my exes — a communication screwup that really highlights how strangely our culture thinks about consent, and how BDSM ideas of negotiation can work against that.

Wow, I’m realizing that I’m about to write a totally serious post about tickling. I hope I don’t sound too pompous.

Anyway, story!

So, I was lying around having a casual conversation with this particular ex, and he started tickling me. I really wanted him to stop, so I asked him to. He didn’t. I safeworded, and he still didn’t stop. Furious, I lashed out and scratched him badly enough to bleed. I do believe I left a scar.

He got upset because he was bleeding, and I got upset because he hadn’t listened to me. I can’t remember how exactly we talked it out; it was a pretty tense moment. I think I might have apologized, but I also might not have. I was really angry, and my stance was, “So I drew blood — how else was I supposed to get you to stop? You should have respected how much I don’t like that, and it is totally not okay that you ignored my safeword!” He snapped back that it simply never occurred to him that I would actually safeword, for real, against being tickled. Tickling just seemed like such a mild, unimportant thing to him ….

If we’d been in the middle of doing BDSM stuff, then he would have stopped instantly. Indeed, I did safeword with him a couple of times in the middle of BDSM stuff, and at those times, he did everything exactly right — he stopped immediately, he calmed me down, he reassured me, and so on.

I think one of the hardest parts about relationships is learning that your partner really doesn’t work entirely the way you do. That there are things that absolutely drive your partner crazy, that literally don’t matter in the slightest to you … and vice versa. That sensitivity is so hard to build.

I also think that when people engage in careful, consenting BDSM relationships, they learn that kind of sensitivity more quickly — and, more importantly, they learn how to communicate about those boundaries. If I hadn’t had a safeword at all — if I’d been in a “normal, vanilla” relationship with my ex — I’m not sure how I would have even tried to communicate about the tickling problem. What would I have said, if I hadn’t been able to draw on BDSM experience? “No, really. I didn’t like that. No, really,” — over and over, until he got the point? Thank God I had words for how I felt: words better than, “I wasn’t trying to be cute, I really meant it.” I had these words: “You ignored my safeword. You know what a betrayal that is. You know that’s never okay.”

There’s this stereotypical image we have — of the cute couple where one person is tickling the other, and the second person is protesting but secretly enjoys it. I’m sure everyone reading this has encountered that image; you see it in romantic comedies all the time. And that situation is totally fine … if the second person really does secretly enjoy it.

But I don’t think most people have considered what happens if the second person, who “secretly enjoys” being tickled, doesn’t actually enjoy it. How does that person show that they really hate it? Protesting won’t necessarily work, because people are expected to protest against tickling even when they like it.

There’s a limit to how much we can expect “No, really, I don’t like that … no, really,” to work in such a situation. This is part of what feminists are talking about when they discuss a “rape culture”. We have a culture where certain acts are considered acceptable, simply because they’re “not that bad”, or they’re “unimportant”; and sometimes people are expected to protest those things at first. So, (a) it becomes hard to tell when the protests are real, and (b) people are trained to ignore protests. Almost nobody is actually trying to be insensitive, but the culture in which we find ourselves encourages us to be.

BDSM is unusual in its approach to specific sex acts: the rest of the world is far less likely to think about consent in terms of “I consent to this act, but not that one.” (Instead, it is fairly common for people to assume that the existence of a sexual relationship or sexual agreement implies consent to all manner of acts. As a random example, if two adults are dating, then frequently there is an assumption of consent to oral sex.) And the BDSM community often emphasizes that members must consent to each specific sex act. But this is something we must teach everyone — not just kinksters — to communicate effectively, because that’s what all good relationships are built on: trying to make sure that we mostly do things we like together, and avoiding asking our partners to do things they dislike.

It is so telling that my ex violated my boundaries with a vanilla act, but never violated them with a BDSM act. To me, it indicates that — for all that I talk about how BDSM ideas of consent can influence us into being more respectful about our relationships — sometimes, our ingrained assumptions about “normal” consent can be so powerful that they overwhelm what we’ve learned from BDSM.

Liberal, sex-positive sex education: what’s missing

It’s been a while since I posted something substantive; I’m so busy with my awesome upcoming sex-positive film series and discussion group (please attend!), it’s hard to find time! So, I’ll make up for that with a really long post.

I am fortunate. I was born in the eighties and I received a great sex-positive upbringing. The public school I attended taught students how to use condoms; middle school health education included a section on sexually transmitted diseases. My parents didn’t throw their sexuality in my face — but they were almost always matter-of-fact, understanding and accepting when they talked about sex. (I’ll never forget how, at age 12 or so, Mom sat me down and gave me a long speech about how it would be totally okay if I were gay.) I was raised Unitarian, and the Unitarian Sunday School teen program included a wonderful sex education curriculum called About Your Sexuality. (I understand that the sex-ed curriculum has been changed and updated, and is now called Our Whole Lives. I haven’t delved deeply into the Our Whole Lives program — maybe it addresses some of the issues I’m about to describe.)

So I think I’m in a good position to describe the problematic signals we face in liberal sexual education. Yes, I’ve experienced the overall sex-negative messages that drench America, and they’re terrible — but so much is already being said about those. I also received lots of sex-positive messages that are incomplete, or problematic, or don’t quite go the distance in helping us navigate sexuality — and I think the sex-positive movement must focus on fixing them.

I’m so grateful for my relatively liberal, relatively sex-positive upbringing. I think it did me a world of good. But here are my five biggest problems with the way I learned about sexuality:

1. I wish that I hadn’t gotten this message: “Sex is easy, light-hearted — and if it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.”

Do I believe sex can be easy? Sure. Do I think it can be light-hearted? Absolutely! But do I think it’s always those things? No, and I don’t think it “ought to” be.

I think we need to teach that sex can be incredibly difficult. It can be hard to communicate with your partner. It can be hard to learn and come to terms with your own sexual desires. It can be hard to understand or accept all your partner’s sexual desires. And just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean that you’re with the wrong partner — or that you’re missing some vital piece of information that everyone else has — or that you’re doing it wrong.

And as for light-hearted, well — sure, sex can be “happy rainbows joy joy!”, but it can also be serious … or dark. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

I recently talked to a friend, who also identifies as a BDSMer, about our stories of coming into BDSM. Both of us had sadomasochistic fantasies from a very early age (mine, for instance, started in grade school — seriously, I actually did tie up my Barbie dolls). I told my friend about how I’d always had these intense, dark, violent feelings — but when I made it to middle school, I remember a change. I had a series of vivid BDSM-ish dreams, and I freaked out. I closed it all away, I stopped thinking about it, I repressed it all as savagely as I could.

Before that, I had also started thinking about sex. I imagined sex at great length; I read about sex. I had long since filched my parents’ copy of The Joy of Sex and examined it, cover to cover — not to mention many other fine sexuality works, like Nancy Friday’s compilation of female sexual fantasies My Secret Garden. I was totally fascinated by sex. I talked about it so much that one of my friends specifically searched out a vibrator as a birthday present for me. I actually pressured my first major boyfriend into any number of sexual acts before he was ready, which I suppose is an interesting reversal of stereotype. As I started having sex, I found that I liked it okay, but knew a lot was missing — and couldn’t figure out what.

It took me years and years to connect sex to BDSM — to figure out that the biggest thing I was missing, was BDSM. Why? Because BDSM was horrible and wrong, and I’d shut it away; BDSM (I thought) couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the bright, shiny, happy horizon of sex! Coming into BDSM was a crisis for me partly because — although I knew other people practiced it, and had never thought much about that — my own need for those dark feelings totally shocked me. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t healthy sex. Sex was light-hearted, happy rainbows joy joy! … wasn’t it?

In contrast, my friend — who had an extremely sexually repressed upbringing — never had any trouble integrating BDSM into his sex life. Sex, for him, was already wrong and bad … so as he got in touch with his sexuality and began having sex, BDSM was involved from the start. After all, there was no reason for it not to be.

As glad as I am that my upbringing was not stereotypically sexually repressed, I have to say that I envy my friend his easy personal integration of BDSM.

2. I wish this point had been made, over and over: “You might consider being careful with sex.”

Edit: 1/20/09 — A really great comment from PAS led me to pull back and rethink a few of the things I said here. I edited this point a bit, to reflect that I’ve been trying to think through the biases he called me out on.

I recently read an excellent “New Yorker” article that reviews the new version of The Joy of Sex. It talks about the time when The Joy of Sex came out, as well as a similar contemporary feminist book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and it points out that “both books espoused the (distinctly seventies) notion that sex could be a value-neutral experience, as natural as eating”.

“Value-neutral”: that’s a great way to describe the overall attitude about sex that I absorbed. As if sex were something I could do as an amusing diversion, with anyone, at any time, and it would always be fun fun fun! As if there was no need to be overly careful or sensitive — sex was just a game I could play, like a sport — where the worst that would happen if I screwed up might be a skinned knee.

I wish that there had been an emphasis on how emotions can really matter, when it comes to sex. I wish that there had been acknowledgment of the fact that we can really hurt ourselves, and others, when we’re cavalier about sex. (Not that we always do — but we can.) I wish I had understood sooner that sex is not always value-neutral; that everyone has all manner of different sexual needs and hangups, anxieties and strong emotions. I think maybe there are people out there who can have “value-neutral” sex — where it’s totally about physicality and nothing more — but I am not like that, and I suspect that most people are not.

Which isn’t to say that I think there’s anything wrong with people who can have sex that’s “value-neutral”. (And maybe “value-neutral” is not a great term for it; I worry that I sound like I’m judging, when I use that term.) I just don’t think it’s a good model for everyone, and yet I think that it has somewhat been promoted as if everyone “ought to” be that way.

I think that there are lots of people out there who feel as though the sexual liberation movement “failed” or “betrayed them”, because they convinced themselves that sex is value-neutral and then got hurt. You see a lot of assertions along these lines in the conservative media — for instance, here’s a quotation from a synopsis of the book Modern Sex:

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The 1960s sexual revolution made a big promise: if we just let go of our inhibitions, we’ll be happy and fulfilled. Yet sexual liberation has made us no happier and, if anything, less fulfilled. Why? … sex today is increasingly mechanical and without commitment—a department of plumbing, hygiene, or athletics rather than a private sphere for the creation of human meaning. The result: legions of unhappy adults and confused teenagers deprived of their innocence, on their way not to maturity but to disillusionment. … These beautifully written essays — on subjects ranging from the TV show Sex and the City to teen sex to the eclipse of the manly ideal to the benefits of marriage — add up to the deepest, most informative appraisal we have of how and why the sexual revolution has failed.
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I disagree with most of their attitude. We don’t need innocence. We don’t need sexual mystery. We don’t need to eliminate teen sex. We don’t need to re-establish some limiting, patriarchal “manly ideal”. But they’ve got one thing right: we do need to start talking about sex as something that is not mostly mechanical — as something that, yes, can be “a private sphere for the creation of human meaning”.

3. I wish I’d learned this: “Good sex doesn’t just require two (or more) people who like sex. It requires desire — and desire simply doesn’t work the same way for everyone.”

I’ve said before that I went through a period — back when I was first becoming sexually active — where I simply could not figure out why sexual acts with people I didn’t care about, didn’t seem to turn me on. Or rather — they turned me on a little, but not … much. It took me a while to understand that sex requires more than just two eager people. It requires attraction and desire.

When I was fifteen or so, and at summer camp, I remember making out with a boy. I didn’t really want to make out with him, but I wasn’t sure how to reject him (more on this under point 5). And I figured: he seems nice enough, so I might as well make out with him. Afterwards, I felt angry at myself, and I felt like I’d wasted my time — and I felt confused. I’d been bored at best and repulsed at worst, and I wasn’t sure why I felt that way, or why I’d done something that made me feel that way.

So why had I done it? Because I’d thought: “Sex is value-neutral.” Because I’d thought: “Making out is fun, right? — that means I ought to do it when I get the chance!” Because I’d thought: “My preference not to make out with him is probably just some silly repression that I need to get over.” Because I didn’t understand that desire is complicated, that you can’t just make yourself feel desire when it’s convenient, and that you don’t need a reason for your attractions — or lack of attraction. This situation was to reprise itself in various forms over the next years, until I finally learned that sometimes you simply want or don’t want things, and that you aren’t required to justify your desires.

4. I wish I’d gotten a list of suggestions: “Here are some places you might go to start figuring out what turns you on.”

I was told that sex was fun. I was even told to explore! But I still spent years with very little actual idea of what I wanted. No one ever told me how or where I might be able to learn more about my needs, or what exploring my needs might look like. And no one ever explained that people are turned on by different things, that some people like some sex acts and don’t like others, and that’s okay.

I went into sex with a buffet-style attitude, thinking that I must naturally enjoy sex equally in all ways. I was so surprised when I found out that I like some positions better than others! I remember how confused I was when I dated a guy who didn’t like fellatio, and how hurt I felt — like his lack of enjoyment meant that I must be doing it wrong, because everyone likes oral sex, right?

And of course, while I had a pretty comprehensive idea of the vanilla sex acts I could experiment with, I had very little idea of what else was out there. In retrospect I find this hilarious, but I remember — back in my vanilla days — I had two boyfriends who tied me up. They tied me up and were nice to me, and I suppose it was amusing enough, but didn’t drive me crazy with lust or anything. And — this is the kicker — because I did not understand that there’s a lot more to BDSM than light bondage, because I did not understand that there are many separate BDSM acts that people can enjoy and many ways to flavor them, I assumed from this experience that I didn’t like BDSM. I went through my old journal entries the other day and uncovered one in which I, confused, am speculating about what’s missing from my sex life: I write, “I’ve tried S&M, so it can’t be that.”

What a learning curve I had ahead of me, eh?

I wish someone had showed me Katherine Gates’ fetish map (though, as I understand it, the map was first created in the early 2000s, so it didn’t exist when I was getting my sex education — anyway, I wish someone had tried to explain to me the vast cornucopia of human fetishes out there!). I wish someone had explained that erotica and pornography are both actually really good ways to learn about your turn-ons, and — more importantly — had told me that not all erotica and pornography are the same, so the fact that I wasn’t into mainstream stuff didn’t mean I automatically wasn’t interested in all erotica or porn. I’ve mentioned that I had lots of conversations with friends about sex, but — until recent years — those conversations were never framed as “This is what I like,” or “I’ve found something new that turns me on,” and I wish I’d realized sooner what a great resource conversations like that might be.

5. And I wish I’d gotten a list of ideas: “Here are some ways you can try communicating with your partner about sex.”

Lastly, but certainly not least — I was never taught how to communicate about sex. No one ever gave me even the first idea. In all my sex-positive, liberal sexual upbringing, I was told over and over that “relationships require communication”, but no one ever said: “And here’s some ways in which you might communicate sexually with your partner.”

One big benefit of teaching sexual communication strategies will be that it will help people learn to say “no” when they don’t want to do something. Teaching people how to set boundaries is massively important, and I think a lot about ways to do it. I saw this adorable video about cuddle parties recently that really struck me — these people create parties where everyone basically just cuddles, but everyone also specifically has the power to say “no” to any given person or act. The reporter who made the video talks at the end about how she found the whole experience to be empowering — how she felt like it gave her space to say “no” that she hadn’t had before. Perhaps these could be used to teach people to set boundaries?

But you can’t really use cuddle parties in a school or workshop setting, more’s the pity. If I ever create a sex education curriculum, I want to describe a bunch of good communication strategies. I’ll list questions that all sex partners should ask each other, including “What do you like?” and “What do you fantasize about?” and “Is there anything you really don’t want me to do?”

And I’ll talk about ways that you can make communication easier, if the two partners are uncomfortable having this conversation. I’ll take a page from the BDSM community by creating checklists of all kinds of sexual acts and weird fetishes and gender-bending craziness, and I’ll put it all on a 1-5 scale (with 1 being “not at all interested” and 5 being “I’d love to try this”), and I’ll tell people that they should fill out those checklists and give them to their partners. I’ll suggest that partners write out their fantasies and email them to each other, if they feel uncomfortable talking. I’ll suggest that partners write out descriptions of their mutual sexual experiences — long accounts, describing how they felt about everything and what sticks out in their minds — and send those to each other, too, so they can get each others’ perspectives on what they’ve done.

God, it’s so hard to talk about what we want. It’s even hard to talk about talking about what we want. I mean, it’s hard enough to figure out what we want in the first place — but communicating it … eeek! And it’s worth noting that this is not just a problem of having good sex. As was pointed out recently on the blog for the book Yes Means Yes! (a book of sex-positive essays that I still haven’t read, but really really want to):

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[There is a] need to demystify and destigmatize communication about sex. If we can’t talk about what we like and what we want, we will always have problems making clear what it is we’re consenting to. If we can’t be frank about what we do want, we put a lot of weight on the need to communicate what we don’t.
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Giving everyone great sexual communication skills doesn’t just give us all better sex — it fights rape. There’s a noble cause for you!

… So, that’s my five-pointed analysis. And that’s what I’m pushing for. My goals are not just to get people thinking that sex is awesome and sexual freedom is important. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be an uphill battle, but I’m hoping that I can not only help out with sexual liberation — I’m hoping to improve it.

BDSM-related relationship screwups

Bloody Laughter has recently started a fantastic series of posts about BDSM screwups, and how it would be helpful if the BDSM community were more willing to talk about the encounters we’ve had that went wrong. You know: the encounters where we miscommunicated — felt confused — felt like we were pushed into things before we were ready — pushed our partners into things they weren’t ready for ….

Miscommunications happen even in committed, loving relationships. (They even happen in totally “normal”, heterosexual, vanilla relationships — imagine that!) Sometimes those miscommunications are overall positive, because they help partners figure out where their boundaries are. Sometimes they’re overall negative: they strain the relationship, they cause fights, someone ends up feeling violated, someone else feels misunderstood. But either way, talking about these things is one of the best ways to figure out how to avoid them in the future. We cannot create a truly safe, consensual BDSM community unless we’re willing to articulate and describe what it means to be unsafe and unconsensual.

Obviously, I agree with Bloody Laughter. And I’ve got some ideas for posts about some of the problems that have come up, the mistakes I’ve made in my BDSM relationships. But I’m also terrified of posting them. I identify primarily as a bottom — a mostly heterosexual one to boot … so I’m a woman who likes being hurt and dominated by male partners. (Though I’ll admit to a couple of toppish screwups in my time, too.) And that means that the average audience could map all kinds of scary, incorrect abuse images onto my stories. I mean, even I — when I was coming into BDSM — even I was afraid that my desires meant I “wanted” to be assaulted, that I “wanted” to be raped, that I was participating in something deeply warped and abusive.

Of course I don’t want to be assaulted, I don’t want to be raped — of course I am not participating in abuse. But. If even I had these thoughts, once … then how can I expect an audience containing vanilla people to look at my desires, my fantasies, my consensual experiences without flinching in horror? In this particular case, how do I talk about BDSM experiences that went wrong? If I discuss my less-than-perfect moments here, I think I’m mostly telling them to a BDSM-friendly audience: an audience that will get something constructive out of what I’m saying, and might use my experiences as a guide to avoid screwups themselves. But then again, this is the wide world of the Internet, where the audience potentially contains everyone. And the last thing I want is for Concerned Women for America to pick up one of my blog posts and quote me out of context and tell the world about Clarisse Thorn’s abusive BDSM lifestyle.

Arguably, this is a particularly important problem for me, because I am specifically trying to do BDSM outreach right now. I am trying to let the world know that kinksters are not scary. Do I have more “responsibility” in my self-representation? Is it more dangerous for me to talk about problematic BDSM experiences, than it would be for other people?

So. I’ve got some stuff written out, that I’m scared to post. If I post, am I damaging the BDSM community image? If I don’t post, am I allowing anti-BDSMers to silence me?

(Never mind that every vanilla person ever born has had sexual experiences that crossed boundaries — sexual experiences that were poorly negotiated. That’s understood and expected, goddamnit. For so many people out there, their standards for sexual communication are so low, they don’t even notice screwups that the BDSM community usually recognizes as major. Not that I think the BDSM community is perfect, not that I think every kinkster is a brilliant communicator … but we train sexual communication in ways the outside world simply doesn’t.

For instance, there are so many people out there — girls and guys — who are being pressured into sexual acts they’re not comfortable with. Here’s just one example: How many people don’t understand that it’s unacceptable for their boyfriend/girlfriend to demand — say — that they perform sexual acts at times when they’re not in the mood? How many people don’t feel empowered to tell their partner, “I’m not up for that right now, sweetheart”? There’s a lot of them.

Everyone knows that people are sometimes pressured into heterosexual vanilla sex, and yet no one uses that as an argument against heterosexual vanilla sex in itself.

The contrast just kills me. Sure, there were a few problematic miscommunications with — for example — some of my recent BDSM partners. But my slight frustration when I think of those moments pales in comparison to the rage and resentment I feel against my first real boyfriend, whom I dated on and off for six years. My relationship with Boyfriend #1 was entirely vanilla — it was the most vanilla relationship I’ve ever had; we only indulged in genital and oral sex — and he managed to screw me up way past anything anyone else ever did to me. Just thinking about him makes me feel used.

And it just seems totally unfair that I can talk about anything he said to me and people won’t be shocked; but if I mention some of the things my most recent ex-boyfriend said to me, people could be horrified and use it as ammunition for anti-BDSM rhetoric.)

You know, maybe what I should do is write a series of posts in which half the post is about a totally vanilla relationship screwup I’ve experienced, and half of the post is about a BDSM-related screwup. Just to put it all in perspective.

Casual sex? Casual kink?

I have the benefit of a very sexually open, pro-sex, highly sex-educated upbringing. Perhaps as a result of this, I went through a period — back when I was first becoming sexually active — where I simply could not figure out why sexual acts with people I didn’t care about, didn’t seem to turn me on. Or rather — they turned me on a little, but not … much. It actually took me a while to register that the difference was emotional engagement: sexual acts with people I really cared about were dramatically better. This seems so obvious, I’m kinda shocked by how long it took me.

(For the record: I identify as very sex-positive! — but my issues with the general sex-positive message, or at least the way the message has largely been received, deserve their own post. I’m sure I’ll write one soon.)

Eventually, I came to terms with the fact that I not only was way more into sexual acts with people I was emotionally invested in; I was really not into sexual acts with people I wasn’t emotionally invested in. I personally dislike casual sex, even when the acts in question are as “mild” as heavy petting. So I pretty much stopped.

On some level, though, my preference against casual sex has always bothered me. For a while, it was because I just didn’t feel “liberated” enough. (I wish I could get every American child with a liberal sex education to write this 100 times: “It is a perfectly valid preference if you don’t want to have casual sex! It doesn’t mean you’re repressed, or warped, or should try to train yourself out of it!”) Anyway, after I got past the “liberation” trap, I started feeling depressed about the fact that this is a huge limit on my sexual experimentation.

I mean, ideally, if I want to explore my sexuality to the greatest possible extent, I need to be open to having sex with lots and lots of people, right? And I’m just … not. Which means that my sexual experimentation is limited to people I already care about, feel somewhat connected to, have built something with already. I find this incredibly annoying! But ultimately, I acknowledge that I feel much worse if I try to force/guilt trip myself into casual sex, than I do when I limit my sexual partners. I feel way better when I’m somewhat frustrated and not getting any, than I would if I tried to take the edge off by screwing some guy I’m not very interested in.

(Oddly, I’ve had one or two casual encounters that I enjoyed. I’ve never been able to figure out why those were different from the others — I’m working on it. Maybe it’s just that I connected emotionally more quickly to those guys than I do to most people? … For the most part, though, I recall my casual encounters with a wince — mostly because I felt so confused. “Why aren’t I enjoying this more?” I was asking myself. “I must be. Sex is fun, right?”)

So. I have established that I’m not into casual sex. I’ve gotten better at setting boundaries with people I’m not very sexually interested in. And I’m okay with that, albeit frustrated.

But what about casual kink?

I discovered my BDSM orientation a few years ago; I went through a period of adjustment, and then I went through a couple of monogamous relationships. Since the end of my last relationship I’ve played, BDSM-wise, with people I didn’t know very well — in a few cases, total strangers. I’m glad I did it, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot. But the encounters that rated as most enjoyable were ones where there was more effort put forth to emotionally connect, especially the ones that happened in private. (I think privacy really intensifies my ability to connect to my partner.) *

Not that it’s incredibly easy to connect to me! There’s this stereotype that tops are closed off and emotionally cold, and bottoms are emotionally open — easily taken advantage of. But when I look at my BDSM experiences, I see that I tend to be less emotionally accessible than most tops I’ve played with. I shut myself down, I don’t talk about what I’m thinking, I give only small wedges of information about myself and what I want. It takes a lot for me to tell a top much of what I’m feeling.

What all this probably means is that it would be good for me to take more time to get to know the tops I’m interested in, before I play with them. I should try to build care before going straight for the BDSM.

Yeah, half of me thinks I really should simply close myself off to casual kink, the same way I’ve pretty much closed myself off to casual sex. Yet the other half is screaming against that, because my BDSM urge is way stronger than my sexual urge. Not that I don’t love sex, and want it, and enjoy the hell out of it! However. I crave BDSM. Going without sex feels less like celibacy than going without BDSM.

It’s also easier for me to enjoy casual BDSM, than it is for me to enjoy casual sex. There’s a few reasons for this. One is that extreme pain can … blank me … much more easily than sex can. And I need to trust my partner way more to immerse myself in the right headspace for sex, than I do to get into the right headspace for masochism.

In conclusion, I’m not sure, but I think I’m coming to a place where I want to limit my casual BDSM. Which is even more frustrating than limiting casual sex! And it’s even worse at this moment in my life, because I got very badly burned in my last relationship — the passage of time just seems to make it more obvious how much further I need to heal before I’ll be ready for a new boyfriend. Am I limiting myself to celibacy until then? Damn it, I don’t want that!

Sigh. We’ll see.

… Of course, preferences do change over time. I’m open to having different feelings about casual BDSM (and even casual sex) now, from my feelings in the future. Also, I’ve been having some surprisingly intense toppish fantasies lately, too (surprising because — until now, anyway — I’ve identified mostly as a bottom). Those fantasies don’t seem to have anything to do with sex, and they feel somewhat … performative. I’m curious to see whether, in the course of exploring them, I’ll find myself interested in topping casually and/or publicly.

* Hey kids! If you are considering having a casual BDSM experience in private, then be careful! If you can, then ask your partner for references — call the references, and see what they have to say. Meet any potential partner in a public place and hash out the details of what you want to happen, before you go private with them. Be sure to look at their driver’s license, and text their real name and license number to a trusted friend before you leave the public place. Arrange to call the friend at a prearranged time later — and instruct the friend to go to the police if they don’t hear from you. (Incidentally, you should probably do the same thing if you go home with a stranger to have sex with them!) Please note that you are usually quite safe if you have a BDSM experience with a stranger in the middle of a community playspace such as a dungeon; if you do that, make sure that you know the house safeword (it’s probably “red”) so you know what to scream if you want outsiders to intervene. Please also note that even if you are a top, you are not totally safe with someone you don’t know or trust: for one thing, you could be risking assault charges if there is a communication failure and your partner ends up feeling violated … or if your partner is a sociopath and decides to screw you over.

BDSM-dar

I’m in New York right now, so I spent part of yesterday (Saturday) at the Lesbian Sex Mafia party, then headed off to a TES event. (Ah, New York.) I met a lot of cool people, but the one whose words I’ll cite in this entry is named Liz. Liz is an older lesbian and top. I love talking to culturally aware people who lived through the feminist / sexual revolution — particularly if they’ve got a specific focus on alt sex communities, which Liz does.

She made a lot of great comments at dinner. My favorite, though, was when I started talking about BDSM-dar. You’ve probably heard the term gaydar, “the intuitive ability to assess another individual’s sexuality”. BDSM-dar is a similar concept, but obviously for BDSM rather than homosexuality.

I have some attachment to the concept of BDSM-dar. The reason is that I came into BDSM by means of a man who unexpectedly went after me at a party and hurt me — and though I was shocked and horrified, I also loved it. I went back to him and asked him to do it again. Multiple times. And I spent the next year flipping out as I faced up to the fact that I’m a sexual deviant. And once I was done flipping out, I felt far more whole and sexy and powerful than I ever had before.

Let’s call him Richard. And let me make it clear right now that I was never attacked, abused, or assaulted in any way. I could have asked Richard to stop, that first night, and I didn’t. It was difficult for me to come to terms with my BDSM desires, but I have no doubt that they are real and that they have been in me all along. In childhood, I did things like tie up my Barbie dolls and draw sadomasochistic comics; I only started repressing those feelings in adolescence. When Richard went after me, he did not create anything in me — he drew out what was already there, something I’d been pressing back for years.

Later, when I asked him how he knew, he smiled and said he could tell. That with me, it had been obvious. He called it SM-dar.

Now, there are some obvious reasons for why Richard might have been able to appear to sniff me out, and yet not actually sport any real special sense. The biggest: if he just asserts that lots of women are into BDSM, he’s bound to succeed some of the time, right? Maybe he doesn’t actually have SM-dar. Maybe he just discounts the cases where his “detection” doesn’t work, and plays up the ones where it does.

I don’t think so. I know Richard pretty well; I’ve seen him do a lot of interacting. Furthermore, I’ve actually seen him “detect” one or two other people with surprising accuracy. I say surprising, because initially I found the way he talked about SM-dar extremely irritating and presumptuous; so I was surprised when it worked with people besides myself.

But on the other hand, I don’t have BDSM-dar myself. And I have no proof, no studies or anything approaching real evidence that BDSM-dar exists.

I had one quotation that I thought was powerful evidence for the BDSM-dar concept. It’s from a 1953 book of psychological case studies called Sadism and Masochism: the Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty (buy it here — I’m talking about volume 2). The quotation comes from the story of a sadistic woman who came to Stekel for a cure. She tells how she’ll go out to spas and engage the attending men in pleasant, noncommital conversation. She’ll pick one man, and tell him to come to her room. When he gets there, she’ll whip him. Then she goes home and feels incredibly ashamed. Oh Doctor, please help!

Understandably, Stekel asks her how she can possibly identify these men; obviously she’s doing a pretty good job identifying them, since no one’s pressed charges for assault — but how? She answers: “Sadists and masochists have a secret language. I might say a secret alliance with secret customs and secret agreement.” I always figured that since this woman clearly wasn’t hooked in to an established community of any kind, she couldn’t be referring to a real “code”. I figured this was just her way of articulating her BDSM-dar.

Liz, however, told me a bit about how lesbians used to function in the absence of a lesbian community. She said that even without a “central authority”, they would develop little tricks for finding each other. For instance, lesbian-tinged books or movies, referenced slyly. She said that’s how she interprets Stekel’s sadist: not as “sensing” her bottoms through any aspect of their personalities or appearance, but as taking advantage of tiny cultural hints.

Liz also expressed irritation with the preponderance of male tops (particularly older ones) in the scene who will come up to women and say, “You’re a submissive. I can just” — :leer: — “tell.” I get the impression that she’s dealt with a lot of this, which must be particularly annoying as a top.

(Ironically enough — later that night, an older male top I’d briefly played with commented haughtily that a female top we’d spoken to earlier was “a submissive; I can tell.” I gently argued with him for a while on the subject. His stance was, “I’m not being sexist or patriarchal. I’ve got 20 years of experience in the scene, and I just think I’ve probably learned how to tell a top from a bottom.” My stance was, “Okay, maybe, but I really think you need to (a) not say these things in quite so presumptuous a fashion and (b) carefully examine your assumptions.” I wonder if I made an impression. I hope so; it pisses me off to think that I might’ve had a BDSM experience — no matter how casual — with an unrepentant sexist jerk. :grin: That’s the risk with people you don’t know too well, I guess. And maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. Anyway, I digress.)

I considered trying to discuss my coming-into-BDSM experience with Liz, but I didn’t really get the chance. I wish I could have heard her thoughts.

So now I find myself back to square one. Did Richard sniff me out with BDSM-dar, or did he just get lucky? Is BDSM-dar mostly just a figment of our assumptions and biases?

If Stekel’s sadist wasn’t using BDSM-dar — if she was instead doing something more like what Liz described — I wish I had some idea what cultural references she might’ve used. Lawrence of Arabia, perhaps.