Once more, with feeling.
May. 22nd, 2008 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riot_nrrrdOkay, folks. It's been a long damn time since I've written any kind of rant/polemic on this here LJ-- particularly in response to an online conflict-- but at this point, I feel compelled to speak up. "I won't be silent anymore" is a bit of a cliché, but in this case, it's kinda true.
I am kinky. I am a big ol' submissive masochist who like doing things I can't go home and tell my mama about. I am also a feminist. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It has been said, by some feminists-- and particularly, some feminists of my acquaintance of late-- that people who believe they can be kinky and feminists at the same time are simply dupes of the "sex-positive" turn in third-wave feminism. That we are mindless trend-followers. That asserting that feminism and BDSM are compatible-- just because we want them to be; just because we choose both-- is depoliticized "choice feminism" of the worst sort. That we are blithely, purposely ignorant of the ways in which the personal is political, and we don't want to examine the ways in which systems of oppression affect our sex practices, because then (obviously, of course) we would have to give up our precious kink.
None of this is true.
It may surprise some feminists to discover that I am actually quite critical of any argument that declares an act "feminist" just because a woman chooses it. A couple of years back, I was a member of an LJ community called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
feminist_sub, which is precisely what it sounds like: a community of submissives-- predominantly women; predominantly, it seemed to me, heterosexual women-- asserting that their feminism and their kink were compatible. Actually, it was more like they were trying to reconcile the two, because there's not a lot of space for them in feminist communities, or in society at large, for them to try to do that. Time after time, women would post in the community, asking how they might reconcile their kink with their politics. And time after time, people would post comments to the effect of, "because you chose both."
I always disagreed. It is, and has always been, patently obvious to me that an act is never feminist just because a woman chooses it. One has to look at the context surrounding those choices: did she have a meaningful set of choices to consider in the first place? Does her decision benefit only her, does it actually curtail the choices of other minorities, or does it help open up the possible range of choices for other people? Clearly, the simple act of choice is not inherently feminist. But this does not mean that BDSM and feminism are incompatible.
When it comes to feminism and kink, I always come to two conclusions. First, BDSM is not inherently feminist, but it can only stand to benefit from feminist critique. I am not an anarchist; I don't believe that hierarchy and power are always already oppressive. But I do believe that some forms of hierarchy are abusive and oppressive, while others may not be. As such, I believe that feminist critique is an imporant tool in BDSM communities and relationships, because it can help community members distinguish between workable power dynamics, and oppressive ones.
Secondly, it has been my experience that BDSM, at its best, can help widen women's (and queers', and other sexual and gender minorities') range of possible choices in a systematic and meaningful way. Above all, what I have learned from my involvement with kink is how to negotiate my desires and limits in the context of play. All good scenes begin with negotiation. I think most vanilla people are, by now, familiar with the concept of the safeword. But it goes beyond that: it's a constant process of negotiation. I talk with potential play partners before scenes-- perhaps by e-mail, perhaps at coffee before a play date, perhaps briefly at a play party-- to make sure I feel safe around them, and so that we can talk out what we're willing to try, and what we absolutely won't do. And in most of the really good scenes I've been in, the safeword has been the absolute last resort: one that I generally haven't had to use, because our pre-scene negotiations were adequately thorough, and because most of the really good tops I've been with have been really good about checking in at fairly regular intervals and making sure the experience is still good for me.
In other words, BDSM has enabled me to assert my sexuality more-- to communicate what I do and don't want. It's taught me how to be verbally open about my desires. I think that true sexual negotiation and consent is more than just a matter of "no means no". It means being able to, and feeling comfortable, talking about what your limits are-- preferably before the proverbial heat of passion, before things get volatile and difficult. More than that, it means learning how to say "yes"-- how to communicate what you do want. I think that a lot of people-- perhaps especially women-- don't feel comfortable asserting their desires, and that learning to do so is at least as important, if not more so, then learning to say no. BDSM, then, is not inherently feminist, but certainly a lot of its tools and techniques can be adapted for feminist purposes.
Having actually thought about these things (QED), I hope it should be pretty understandable why I get blood-boilingly angry when I am told that I am only kinky-- and a kink apologist-- because I'm a brainless urban hipster unthinkingly pushing the sex-positive orthodoxy (is this an orthodoxy? and if it is, why do I know so damned many kinky feminists who feel the need to defend themselves?). Furthermore, it makes me angry when I am told that my interest in BDSM is part and parcel of my being a patriarchal dupe who has been tricked into glorifying violence, or that I must be an abuse victim who can't think of any constructive (read: vanilla) ways to work out my victimization.
I am not, nor have I ever been, a victim of abuse. I have been in relationships where I have not been loved as well as, or in the way that, I needed to be, but that's not abuse. I have been in a couple of dubious sexual situations, but a) I began to show an interest in BDSM long before I got into those dubious situations, so my proclivities did not arise as a result of them (to say nothing of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy); b) perhaps because of the communication and assertion skills I have learned from BDSM, as soon as I realized a situation was dubious, I got the hell out of there. As far as I can tell, I've always had kinky desires; I remember being 4 and 5 and having daydreams about being ordered around by a lover. I knew I was kinky before I knew I was queer. Hell, I knew I was kinky before I even knew what sex was. The assumption that kinky people are abuse victims reacting to their past is a stereotype, and it's pop psychology of the worst variety, meant to contain certain forms of sexual and social deviancy through the deployment of so-called "common sense." Pop psychology as a means of "explaining" society's misfits is never okay.
Furthermore, what if I were an abuse victim? I bring up my relatively well-adjusted background to highlight the inaccuracy of certain stereotypes, but let me be clear: this does not mean I think that former abuse victims shouldn't engage in BDSM. Frankly, I find that whole argument offensive to people with backgrounds of abuse, because it denies them agency. Can a person who's been abused never be trusted to make hir own decisions regarding what will heal their past, what is benign, and what will constitute a traumatic re-living of that abuse? Is everything a former abuse victim does always already a reaction to the fact that s/he has been abused? Who gets to decide what acts and interests are healthy for those who have been abused, and how is the assumption that such people need an outside observer to make those decisions for them not oppressive?
Also: the automatic equation of BDSM with abuse, the assumption that all kinky people are inherently abuse victims, is potentially damaging to members of those communities, because the sad truth is that some kinky relationships are abusive. Some kinky relationships. Not all of them. But this is precisely the problem: if we issue a blanket judgment declaring all kinky relationships abusive, just because they may or may not involve a power dynamic of some sort (because, apparently, vanilla relationships are never hierarchical), then we do a disservice to those who actually are being abused in a kinky relationship, because we have no means or standards for articulating what, precisely, constitutes an abusive relationship in a BDSM context. I think this can often be a problem within BDSM communities, too, because we spend so much time trying to prove to the cultural mainstream that what we do isn't abuse, that admitting that abuse occurs within our own communities can become something of a taboo. But again, I wish to articulate that calling all kinky relationships abusive just because some are, is no more fair than arguing that, for example, all same-sex relationships are immoral because some queer people are abusers.
I would like to conclude here by asserting that I am not trying to argue that kinky people are sexually, politically, or in any other sense better than people whose tastes run to the strictly vanilla. I have no interest whatsoever in making those kinds of judgments; my only hope is that whatever you enjoy, you feel comfortable articulating your limits and desires, and that you have success in finding a lover (or lovers) who respect your limits and are more than happy to fulfill your fantasies-- whether your tastes are kinky, vanilla, asexual, or something else entirely. However, the reason I feel the need to conclude my post this way is because I am, in part, reacting to others' tendency to declare something oppressive simply because it has been problematic for them in the past. The second-wave feminist adage that the personal is political may be true (and I believe that it is), but this does not give any single feminist carte blanche to dismiss everything s/he doesn't like as oppressive. Certainly, it doesn't grant any one person the right to unilaterally decide what sex acts will and will not be okay from a feminist perspective. Choice feminism is just as problematic when it is used to prohibit, as it is when one employs it to justify one's own acts. That my tastes are different from yours, and that I assert the right to express them, does not make me an oppressor, insofar as I do not assume that all people should adopt my own desires. Asserting that I am an oppressor for those tastes, however, and arguing for a feminist utopia in which no one has such desires, might well be. From a feminist perspective, "utopian" solutions are always suspect, as they generally rely on the unilateral, one might even say magical, disappearance of all dissenters.
I am kinky. I am a big ol' submissive masochist who like doing things I can't go home and tell my mama about. I am also a feminist. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It has been said, by some feminists-- and particularly, some feminists of my acquaintance of late-- that people who believe they can be kinky and feminists at the same time are simply dupes of the "sex-positive" turn in third-wave feminism. That we are mindless trend-followers. That asserting that feminism and BDSM are compatible-- just because we want them to be; just because we choose both-- is depoliticized "choice feminism" of the worst sort. That we are blithely, purposely ignorant of the ways in which the personal is political, and we don't want to examine the ways in which systems of oppression affect our sex practices, because then (obviously, of course) we would have to give up our precious kink.
None of this is true.
It may surprise some feminists to discover that I am actually quite critical of any argument that declares an act "feminist" just because a woman chooses it. A couple of years back, I was a member of an LJ community called
feminist_sub, which is precisely what it sounds like: a community of submissives-- predominantly women; predominantly, it seemed to me, heterosexual women-- asserting that their feminism and their kink were compatible. Actually, it was more like they were trying to reconcile the two, because there's not a lot of space for them in feminist communities, or in society at large, for them to try to do that. Time after time, women would post in the community, asking how they might reconcile their kink with their politics. And time after time, people would post comments to the effect of, "because you chose both."I always disagreed. It is, and has always been, patently obvious to me that an act is never feminist just because a woman chooses it. One has to look at the context surrounding those choices: did she have a meaningful set of choices to consider in the first place? Does her decision benefit only her, does it actually curtail the choices of other minorities, or does it help open up the possible range of choices for other people? Clearly, the simple act of choice is not inherently feminist. But this does not mean that BDSM and feminism are incompatible.
When it comes to feminism and kink, I always come to two conclusions. First, BDSM is not inherently feminist, but it can only stand to benefit from feminist critique. I am not an anarchist; I don't believe that hierarchy and power are always already oppressive. But I do believe that some forms of hierarchy are abusive and oppressive, while others may not be. As such, I believe that feminist critique is an imporant tool in BDSM communities and relationships, because it can help community members distinguish between workable power dynamics, and oppressive ones.
Secondly, it has been my experience that BDSM, at its best, can help widen women's (and queers', and other sexual and gender minorities') range of possible choices in a systematic and meaningful way. Above all, what I have learned from my involvement with kink is how to negotiate my desires and limits in the context of play. All good scenes begin with negotiation. I think most vanilla people are, by now, familiar with the concept of the safeword. But it goes beyond that: it's a constant process of negotiation. I talk with potential play partners before scenes-- perhaps by e-mail, perhaps at coffee before a play date, perhaps briefly at a play party-- to make sure I feel safe around them, and so that we can talk out what we're willing to try, and what we absolutely won't do. And in most of the really good scenes I've been in, the safeword has been the absolute last resort: one that I generally haven't had to use, because our pre-scene negotiations were adequately thorough, and because most of the really good tops I've been with have been really good about checking in at fairly regular intervals and making sure the experience is still good for me.
In other words, BDSM has enabled me to assert my sexuality more-- to communicate what I do and don't want. It's taught me how to be verbally open about my desires. I think that true sexual negotiation and consent is more than just a matter of "no means no". It means being able to, and feeling comfortable, talking about what your limits are-- preferably before the proverbial heat of passion, before things get volatile and difficult. More than that, it means learning how to say "yes"-- how to communicate what you do want. I think that a lot of people-- perhaps especially women-- don't feel comfortable asserting their desires, and that learning to do so is at least as important, if not more so, then learning to say no. BDSM, then, is not inherently feminist, but certainly a lot of its tools and techniques can be adapted for feminist purposes.
Having actually thought about these things (QED), I hope it should be pretty understandable why I get blood-boilingly angry when I am told that I am only kinky-- and a kink apologist-- because I'm a brainless urban hipster unthinkingly pushing the sex-positive orthodoxy (is this an orthodoxy? and if it is, why do I know so damned many kinky feminists who feel the need to defend themselves?). Furthermore, it makes me angry when I am told that my interest in BDSM is part and parcel of my being a patriarchal dupe who has been tricked into glorifying violence, or that I must be an abuse victim who can't think of any constructive (read: vanilla) ways to work out my victimization.
I am not, nor have I ever been, a victim of abuse. I have been in relationships where I have not been loved as well as, or in the way that, I needed to be, but that's not abuse. I have been in a couple of dubious sexual situations, but a) I began to show an interest in BDSM long before I got into those dubious situations, so my proclivities did not arise as a result of them (to say nothing of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy); b) perhaps because of the communication and assertion skills I have learned from BDSM, as soon as I realized a situation was dubious, I got the hell out of there. As far as I can tell, I've always had kinky desires; I remember being 4 and 5 and having daydreams about being ordered around by a lover. I knew I was kinky before I knew I was queer. Hell, I knew I was kinky before I even knew what sex was. The assumption that kinky people are abuse victims reacting to their past is a stereotype, and it's pop psychology of the worst variety, meant to contain certain forms of sexual and social deviancy through the deployment of so-called "common sense." Pop psychology as a means of "explaining" society's misfits is never okay.
Furthermore, what if I were an abuse victim? I bring up my relatively well-adjusted background to highlight the inaccuracy of certain stereotypes, but let me be clear: this does not mean I think that former abuse victims shouldn't engage in BDSM. Frankly, I find that whole argument offensive to people with backgrounds of abuse, because it denies them agency. Can a person who's been abused never be trusted to make hir own decisions regarding what will heal their past, what is benign, and what will constitute a traumatic re-living of that abuse? Is everything a former abuse victim does always already a reaction to the fact that s/he has been abused? Who gets to decide what acts and interests are healthy for those who have been abused, and how is the assumption that such people need an outside observer to make those decisions for them not oppressive?
Also: the automatic equation of BDSM with abuse, the assumption that all kinky people are inherently abuse victims, is potentially damaging to members of those communities, because the sad truth is that some kinky relationships are abusive. Some kinky relationships. Not all of them. But this is precisely the problem: if we issue a blanket judgment declaring all kinky relationships abusive, just because they may or may not involve a power dynamic of some sort (because, apparently, vanilla relationships are never hierarchical), then we do a disservice to those who actually are being abused in a kinky relationship, because we have no means or standards for articulating what, precisely, constitutes an abusive relationship in a BDSM context. I think this can often be a problem within BDSM communities, too, because we spend so much time trying to prove to the cultural mainstream that what we do isn't abuse, that admitting that abuse occurs within our own communities can become something of a taboo. But again, I wish to articulate that calling all kinky relationships abusive just because some are, is no more fair than arguing that, for example, all same-sex relationships are immoral because some queer people are abusers.
I would like to conclude here by asserting that I am not trying to argue that kinky people are sexually, politically, or in any other sense better than people whose tastes run to the strictly vanilla. I have no interest whatsoever in making those kinds of judgments; my only hope is that whatever you enjoy, you feel comfortable articulating your limits and desires, and that you have success in finding a lover (or lovers) who respect your limits and are more than happy to fulfill your fantasies-- whether your tastes are kinky, vanilla, asexual, or something else entirely. However, the reason I feel the need to conclude my post this way is because I am, in part, reacting to others' tendency to declare something oppressive simply because it has been problematic for them in the past. The second-wave feminist adage that the personal is political may be true (and I believe that it is), but this does not give any single feminist carte blanche to dismiss everything s/he doesn't like as oppressive. Certainly, it doesn't grant any one person the right to unilaterally decide what sex acts will and will not be okay from a feminist perspective. Choice feminism is just as problematic when it is used to prohibit, as it is when one employs it to justify one's own acts. That my tastes are different from yours, and that I assert the right to express them, does not make me an oppressor, insofar as I do not assume that all people should adopt my own desires. Asserting that I am an oppressor for those tastes, however, and arguing for a feminist utopia in which no one has such desires, might well be. From a feminist perspective, "utopian" solutions are always suspect, as they generally rely on the unilateral, one might even say magical, disappearance of all dissenters.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*claps*
Date: 2008-05-22 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 03:09 am (UTC)I've been meaning to call you for a while now. I just randomly reread that card you sent me a couple months ago with the parcel o' books, and it immediately put a smile on my face. I miss you lots, and I need my Carla fix! Any particular day good for you?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-27 04:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-05-22 08:23 pm (UTC)I think looking at $PRACTICE from a feminist standpoint is good, as is attempting to isolate and reject any sexist pieces of $PRACTICE.
But I don't think "feminist critique," talked about in a free-floating way, clearly means that to me any more. Way too many people use "feminist critique" to mean a process by which it is determined once and for all whether "$PRACTICE is feminist," with anything in the isn't-feminist box being something women ought not do, or at the very least ought only do out of necessity.
And that sort of "feminist critique" is pointless, IMO, which is why I actually do think "but I chose it" is a valid response.
The kind of "feminist critique" that IS worth doing is something a bit different, IMO. This kind of "feminist critique" has a purpose. It's something like, "I am going to look at SM, as currently done by real people, through a feminist lens in order to determine why so much of the community voice is so overwhelmingly M/f, and what can be done about it."
In other words, it has a specific and precise goal, one which is more than simply deciding if SM "is" feminist and discarding it (or considering it a necessary evil for poor fucked-up abused girlies, which is where a lot of anti-SM feminism is with this) if it is not.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 03:01 am (UTC)I think, as has happened before with you and me, that our viewpoints are fairly close, and the vocabulary we employ to describe them is, due to our specific experiences, different.
I would call what you describe in your comment, not "feminist critique," but "prescriptive criticism," which is a subset (chronologically, one of the earliest forms) of feminist critique, and I would agree with you that it's not very useful. I think prescriptive criticism, in its desire to outline a simple liberatory/oppressive binary, actually ends up doing more damage, because it effect is to suppress and curtail women's (and other sexual/gender minorities') actions, rather than giving them an empowering means to decide for themselves whether something is liberating or not.
So while I'm not necessarily in favor of the "but I chose it" argument, I do believe in individuals' ability to think critically, and in feminism as a meaningful (but not necessarily prescriptive, and certainly not monolithic) system of critical thought. I'm critical of "but I chose it," but I'm much more willing to listen to "I've given some amount of consideration to my tastes and their connection to greater societal forces, and having considered them, I still stand by my desires." I recognize that when people think critically, they do not necessarily come to the same conclusions I do; and I consider feminism to be a way (or, really, several related ways) of organizing one's thoughts and actions, rather than a simple set of prescriptions.
I would hope most (well, all) feminist critique, as I call it here, is more nuanced than a simple question of "is it liberatory or oppressive", and I hope (at least, I tried) I succeeded in modeling some of that here.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 03:43 am (UTC)And I get that, but I think that all too often "but I chose it" is taken to mean the exact same thing when it comes from someone saying "Y'know, fuck examination, I've spent the last five years worrying about what 'feminism' says I should do, and now I don't care any more -- my body, my mind, my choice" as when it comes from someone saying "I was raised to submit to men."
And I'd rather err on the side of assuming Ms. I Was Raised is being more thoughtful than she is than err on the side of assuming that the "dammit I chose it!" feminist is foolish.
Besides which, I *still* want someone to explain to me why "I chose it and that's that!" is totally feministily acceptable ONLY SO LONG AS what's chosen is "my abortion."
I have NEVER understood why women are assumed by default to be making thoughtful choices in that area but no other.
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Date: 2008-05-22 08:44 pm (UTC)I was also reminded of this entry I wrote (seemingly forever ago) about some of the very same ideas in your entry today. You'll notice you left a comment, but no surprise there, right?
Anyway, kudos, and keep on problematizin' !
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 01:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 09:33 pm (UTC)I've only begun to explore my sub kink online and in fanfic (given where I'm living and my job and a lot of other factors, I seriously doubt I'll do anything offline--and by where I'm living, I mean rural Texas, the state that until recently make it a crime to own more than some set number of sex toys!).
I am also a feminist, and have been for some decades.
I have always rejected the tendency among feminists to unthinkingly assign "feminist" status to acts, with the idea that there are "non-feminist" or sexist acts: i.e. wearing make-up means you're not a feminist, enjoy X sex act means you're not a feminist, all the way up to BDSM means you're not a feminist.
And I remember the 1980s sex wars (albeit through reading about them! not participating).
And I also agree: just because a woman does it, does not make it feminist (excuse me! Phyllis Shaffley! Margaret Thatcher! Camille Paglia!).
People tend to want simple binaries and choices, and that's just not life--and a feminist life is one that involves a lot of critical examination and work in *all* areas because we are part of a patriarchal culture.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 10:59 pm (UTC)In my stage works, I often depict highly violent or sexually (or both) charged power relationships, sometimes men/men or woman/woman or even woman/man - the latter of which I have come under criticism because I am told the display of "inappropriate" or sexually violent behaviour onstage is to tacitly condone it. I think that's untrue - how are artists supposed to express anything if this is the case: it is an attitude that would then condemn some of the greatest artists of our time.
I really enjoy your LJ rants.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 12:24 am (UTC)1) The notion of kink/bdsm being anti or un-feminist is intriguing to me. I grew up with second wave feminists as mentors and heard often the idea that violence was a masculine behavior and act. I found that contradictory to both my own personality and to the world around me but lacked language and courage to say anything. Claiming that violence an aggression are male and patriarchal is precisely why we see teenage girls acting out aggression in cattier, more passive-aggressive ways. See: Odd Girl Out.
2) BDSM/kink = abuse. I'm a trauma survivor. I'm a sexual abuse survivor. I've been in abusive relationships. But none of my kink/bdsm tendancies or desires are related to those expereinces. Quite the opposite, I find negotiating a scene or interaction to be extremely healing and empowering. Being told that my history dismisses and positive result or genuine desire further dismisses the work that I'm doing to reclaim my body. The use of something complicated and weighty as a blanket argument against something extremely difficult to explain and define is in my opinion cheap and trite.
33) West Wing reference perhaps?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 01:32 am (UTC)*Not that I'm into cold dead hands, just um...FYI. :P
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 02:39 am (UTC)The particular conflict to which I am responding was actually fairly gender-neutral in its rhetorical terms (which, I suppose, is at least an improvement over the assumption that all BDSM takes place in a heterosexual, male-dominant/female-submissive context), but seemed to suggest that anyone, of any gender, who participated in BDSM in any way, was in love with abuse and violence, and as such, ignorant to the ways in which BDSM is inherently oppressive and patriarchal, regardless of its participants. I just ran with the female submissive position 'cause, y'know, it's my position. (^_^)
(no subject)
From:BDSM & Feminism
Date: 2008-05-23 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 10:36 pm (UTC)I miss my Amanda. When are you coming back to BG? *whines*
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Date: 2008-05-23 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 06:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-05-28 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-04 02:03 am (UTC)I think there is some particular quality of character/personality trait that allows people to do this stuff, but I'm not quite sure how to define it any further than what I said right now. Any thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-07 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-07 03:47 am (UTC)