Archive for the 'BDSM' Category

Rethinking “Isaac”: pain, redemption, male sadism and the Mac McClelland story

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 06, 2011
in BDSM
. 49 Comments

Based on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, when people aren’t talking about the Casey Anthony verdict, they’re debating this electrifying Mac McClelland piece that ran in Good Magazine last week: I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD. McClelland, a veteran and celebrated journalist, writes about her experiences in Haiti after the devastating January 2010 earthquake — and about her own complex response to what she witnessed. Predictably, her article aroused outrage from those who felt she was de-centering the far greater PTSD of the people of Haiti — and from those appalled by her sexual frankness. The usual slut-shaming suspects have been out in force.

Thanks to this piece at Feministe, I found this terrific defense of McClelland by Roxane Gay at the Rumpus: Still with the Scarlet Letters. Gay gets it right, particularly in her final paragraph:

Just as there cannot be a single story about any country, there cannot be a single story about women and desire and sexual violence and how those things knot themselves together. One woman saying she wants or needs violent sex does not negate another woman’s disgust at the idea of violent sex but it is damaging to try and silence either of those perspectives.

That makes good sense.

But reading McClelland’s honest and harrowing account of her experiences and recovery, I wondered about the man with whom she had the violent sex that proved so healing for her. The rest of this post is below the fold because of the obvious trigger warning. Continue reading ‘Rethinking “Isaac”: pain, redemption, male sadism and the Mac McClelland story’

The magic of trust: of consent, power, BDSM and professor-student sex

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 23, 2010
in BDSM, Emotional and Sexual Boundaries and Sexual relationships between professors and students
. 36 Comments

Not quite ready to let go of the professor-student sexual relationship discussion. Below yesterday’s post, Clarisse writes:

I’m curious to know if you see any connections between the argument you’re making now, and the arguments against BDSM/kink.

Clarisse, who writes a great deal about BDSM at her own blog, asks if I can make a case against teacher-student relationships that doesn’t privilege a disapproving majority against the desires of a minority. She’s concerned — as others such as the famous Jane Gallop were concerned — that policies which ban sexual relationships between consenting adults do a kind of violence to individual freedom. Given the history of these sorts of power-imbalanced campus relationships, I’m more sympathetic to hearing this argument made by women than by men. (I fisked Barry Dank, a leading defender of teacher-student sex, here.)

It’s worth noting that other professions ban sexual relationships between practitioners and those who seek their help. Attorneys are not allowed to have sex with their clients; psychologists and doctors aren’t permitted to have sexual relationships with their current — and in some cases, their former — patients. Few would argue that it abrogates human freedom to suggest that therapists should lose their licenses if they fuck their patients, even if those patients are well above the age of consent. Of course, we recognize the special vulnerability of someone who seeks therapy, or someone who turns to an attorney. It’s not clear that we see college students as equally vulnerable. I think a good case can be made that in terms of their professors, they generally are.

(A parenthetical aside. As someone who has made teaching his life’s calling, I bristle at the idea that my profession ought to be seen as less influential than that of medicine or law. By permitting professors and students to engage in consensual amorous relations, while disbarring barristers and solicitors who do the same with their clients, we send the signal that we who teach have less significance than those who litigate, or negotiate contracts. No offense to my lawyer friends, but I find that implication offensive!)

To get to the specifics of Clarisse’s question. At the very heart of BDSM, at the core of “kink”, is one thing: trust. One of the things I’ve heard, over and over again, from men and women who practice BDSM in one form or another, is that it is within that particular subculture that they finally found safe and reliable boundaries. Even people who don’t practice kink know the phrase “safe word”, a term that has made its way into our shared lexicon. Because BDSM deals openly with issues of power, domination, submission, and control, the reliance on clear and unmistakable boundaries is at the very heart of that world’s practices. There’s no question that many folks who come out of backgrounds of abuse — and some who never endured violation — have found redemption, healing, and catharsis in practicing BDSM. And to a woman and a man, they all seem to agree that trust is the sine qua non of the lifestyle.

I’ve long maintained that there’s a great deal we in the “vanilla” (non-fetish) world can learn from our brothers and sisters who practice BDSM responsibly. I honor the commitment of the kinky folk to developing rules and rituals that protect each participant’s dignity and sense of self. And I honor there sense that trust is something that needs to be made explicit in our words as well as something that needs to be lived out in our most intimate actions.

And of course, the common thread between the teacher-student relationship, BDSM, and psychotherapy is the preciousness of trust. In the classroom, in a psychiatrist’s office, and in a bedroom filled with the tools of kink, we see asymmetrical power relationships at their healthiest. Students need to be able to trust their professors, particularly in fields like my own (gender studies). Patients need to be able to trust their therapists. And a submissive needs to be able to trust a dominant partner — and vice versa. Violations of trust in any of these arenas can be devastating. Continue reading ‘The magic of trust: of consent, power, BDSM and professor-student sex’

Perception, Intention, Pornography, and Competition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 28, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, BDSM and Porn
. 25 Comments

A few years ago, I wrote a post about healthy competitiveness, fantasy, and violence. I’m revisiting that post this morning in light of some of the recent posts I’ve had up about both relationships and pornography.

In July 2005, I wrote about running with my friend Mark:

When I race my friend Mark down the front stretch of the track at Arcadia High School, I’m not thinking “I’m going to kick his ass!” I’m thinking “Damnit, I’m going to keep up with you if it kills me!” Of course I love beating him (which happens one time in five, mind you), but after every hard interval together, we touch fists and say “Good job, brother.” I don’t want to dominate or humiliate him; our competition is a friendly rivalry. Deep friendship — even love — can comfortably co-exist with a real desire to defeat the very person one loves in a game or athletic competition.

The point I only made obliquely then, and would like to make more explicitly now, is about the way in which this anecdote displays that “love-of-self” and “love-of-other” can be fundamentally compatible. When I race Mark, I want to defeat him. I want to win, which will require him “not winning”. He and I have crossed the line together a time or two, and that feels great, but like most sports fans, I don’t consider a tie to be the grandest of accomplishments. What I want, when I race Mark, is to surpass him. He wants to do the same to me, of course. (It took me years to get comfortable with competition, and I still only fel safe being “ruthlessly competitive” with the folks whom I love and trust.)

Is it a failure of empathy on my part that leads me to want to beat Mark? If he is going to be disappointed even in the slightest by his failure to win, shouldn’t my regard for his feelings trump my own desire for victory? Of course not. After all, each of us has beaten the other many times in our workouts (he has the better record); each of us knows the disappointment of the loss is slight. But if one of us were to “throw” an interval to the other out of charity, the one who was the recipient of the gift would be angered and betrayed. To concede a race is not generosity, it is condescenscion at its most appalling. It says to the other “I think you’re too fragile to handle defeat.” It fails to honor the maturity and the dignity of the other. “Friendly competition” is that where each of us each believes three things about our rival:

1. He is playing by the same rules
2. He is capable of distinguishing between competition on the track and animoosity off of it
3. He is sufficiently emotionally resilient to handle defeat.

Unless I know these three things about the person I’m racing, I don’t feel I can give my maximum effort.

What on earth does this have to do with pornography? In my review yesterday of the Price of Pleasure, I noted that the anti-pornography documentary makes a compelling case that contemporary erotica is more and more likely to be focused on violence and degradation. (Even when I did regularly watch pornography, I found the harder, BDSM-oriented stuff to be distasteful. Without offering too much information about my own inner world, for all of the darkness I’ve put myself through, I’m clear that power imbalances are not particularly erotic for me. Power exchanges in the bedroom haven’t, in my experience, been either particularly healing or particularly interesting. Light-hearted reciprocity tends to be what makes my socks roll up and down. Your mileage may vary.) Continue reading ‘Perception, Intention, Pornography, and Competition’

“Domestic Democracy”, Ephesians 5:21, and BDSM in the Christian marriage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 03, 2007
in BDSM, Christianity, Marriage, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 15 Comments

So, one more post on BDSM. I can’t promise this will be the last, but I will try to move on to another subject eventually.

In the two previous posts, I made the case that the incorporation of bondage and domination/submission strategies into a couple’s sexual life was not inherently anti-feminist. The debate continues in the comment threads below each.

But what about the Christian perspective on BDSM? Let’s imagine a heterosexual, married Christian couple (I’ll call them Edgar and Edna). Edgar and Edna are faithful to each other and devoted members of their local church, actively involved in the work of the Great Commission. And on Thursday nights after they get home from the building committee meeting, they take turns dominating each other. They incorporate restraints, quirts, and hot wax. It’s not uncommon for one of them to be sore and bruised the next day. Their marriage is a model of Christian egalitarianism. Not only do they fulfill the scriptural commandment to mutually submit to each other as spouses, they choose to take a very literal interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 with them into the bedroom (which they playfully call the “dungeon”.)

I’m making Edgar and Edna up, of course. But I’ve known at least one devoutly Christian married couple who did incorporate some elements of dominant/submissive play into their sexual life. They talked about it openly within a trusted small group at a church to which I no longer belong (no, it’s not All Saints or Pasadena Mennonite). My friends’ admission was a bit too much for even their small group family, and their revelation (which was really an invitation for some discussion about the ethics of married sex) did not result in further dialogue.

Too often, discussions of Christian sexual ethics focus on pre-marital, extra-marital, and homosexual sex. That doesn’t mean those aren’t important topics. Faithful Christians can, with integrity and in good conscience, vigorously disagree about whether all genital sexual activity ought to be restricted to heterosexual married couples. But we talk less about sex within marriage than sex outside of it.

The great debate about marriage in contemporary Christian circles is between “complementarians” and “egalitarians.” The former group argues that God intended men to “lead” their wives as “heads” of the family. Men and women have different roles, each complementing the other. The latter group (to which I belong) argues that God intended spouses for mutual submission, each in radical equality with the other. An army, after all, needs a general — but the military model doesn’t apply to marriage, or so we egalitarians argue.

For those of us who are egalitarians, then, isn’t BDSM — even within monogamous marriage — problematic? Regardless of who is assuming the dominant role, BDSM celebrates the erotics of asymmetrical power. Even if that asymmetry only applies in the bedroom (and not, say, in the divvying up of household chores), isn’t it at odds with the egalitarian worldview? If God intended spouses to practice “radical domestic democracy” (which is how I like to describe the egalitarian outlook), shouldn’t how we make love be congruent with how we live out every other aspect of our marriage? If we are committed to equality in decision-making and chore-sharing, shouldn’t our physical delight in each other also be egalitarian rather than hierarchical? If an egalitarian Christian couple delights in domination and submission (particularly, say, if one partner always assumes the same role), isn’t there some disconnect between their theological principles and their sexuality?

These are all excellent questions, the sort that I think my old friends in the small group were trying to work through. It’s also what Ann’s comment below my previous post on BDSM is getting at, I think.

Christians have to be concerned not only with issues of consent and enthusiasm but also with justice. We live in a world where men and women are taught to delight in the abuse of power. We live in a world where rape and abuse are so common that they have affected how many of us think about sexuality. We know that what “turns people on” is a consequence of both biological and cultural influence; too often, the culture sends out a message that tells both men and women to eroticize domination, degradation, abuse. So even if a couple practicing BDSM is doing so with great care, even if each partner in the relationship feels valued and loved, if they delight in radical inequality in their sexual life they may be bringing the brokenness of the outside world into their intimate private sphere. For married Christian egalitarians in particular, that’s a troubling thought.

I wrote in the previous posts of the potential for BDSM to offer healing and liberation. Those weren’t empty phrases; though I’ve never had any interest in delving into that world myself, I’ve known too many good people who did find growth and freedom within that “lifestyle” to condemn BDSM as inherently incompatible with Christian sexual ethics. At the same time, I cannot help but feel that for most, the delight that is taken in BDSM is rooted less in biological impulse and more in a sexist and exploitative culture. And so I’m torn.

I honor the fact that so many of those who did practice BDSM have such evident care for each other and for each other’s boundaries. I am struck by how many people in that “scene” speak of how they have found recovery and fulfillment through ritualized acts of domination and submission. Their positive experiences are genuine and real. But if they had not already been so wounded by a corrupted, violently misogynistic culture, would they need to find healing in this way? Is BDSM only appealing because it is a response to darkness, or, in a perfectly egalitarian world where we all were raised with healthy sexual messages, would some people still be drawn to it? As a Christian feminist, I have to ask these questions and ask both my fellow feminists and fellow Christians to ask the same.

I’ve gone on and on here, and I’m still ambivalent. Because neither my wife nor I have any real interest in any aspect of BDSM, this is a moot point in our marriage. Still, I’m interested in the discussion because I think it’s important for us (feminists, Christians, honest, thinking people) to reflect on what we think really good sex is. I do believe we are called to match our language and our life (a phrase I use too often, perhaps); we’re called to match what we do in private with what we do in public. That doesn’t mean we ought to have public sex, but it does mean that if we are egalitarians in the outside world we ought to be wary of finding particular pleasure in dominating another human being behind closed doors.

At the same time, we ought also to be wary of insisting that all good sex “looks” egalitarian. Taken to its logical extreme, that would mean that the missionary position would be seen as evidence of too much comfort with male domination. Egalitarians would always have to have sex while spooning, so neither was on top! Proscribing certain positions because of their anti-feminist, complementarian implications would be manifestly silly. But if it’s okay, say, for both partners to prefer sex with the woman on top, isn’t it just a very small leap to saying it ought also be okay to incorporate handcuffs and a ball gag?

I don’t know the answer to all these questions. But I think that Christians need to be fearless and forthright in wrestling with them.

Private pain, private pleasure, public justice: a follow-up on feminism, sexuality, and BDSM

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 01, 2007
in BDSM, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

Folks, this is an R-rated post.

Some interesting exchanges in the comments section below Friday’s post on feminism and BDSM prompt me to follow-up.

In the thread, the basic positions (sorry, can’t help it!) are sketched out: one camp argues that BDSM is only a turn-on because of patriarchal conditioning. According to this view, when consenting adults mutually delight in bondage/discipline/submission/domination, they’re still replicating in the bedroom the brokenness of the culture. If we lived in a world without toxically oppressive sex roles, the thinking goes, no one would be turned on by bondage or pain or domination. If we want to end public oppression, we need to make sure our private erotic lives do not replicate (symbolically or substantively) that oppression.

The other camp usually stipulates that the turn-on of BDSM is culturally conditioned. I don’t encounter a lot of folks who say that a delight in BDSM is genetic! But the fact that we live in a culture that eroticizes often unhealthy power imbalances doesn’t mean that every such exchange in the bedroom is automatically an unhealthy replication of a warped society. In this view, BDSM can be both healthy and redemptive. I’ve heard from too many women and men who, though sexually disenfranchised and victimized through childhood or adolescent abuse, have found liberation and authentic erotic empowerment through BDSM. (Someone mentioned the terrific Secretary, which while a perhaps problematic film from a feminist standpoint, came closer to “getting” that aspect of submission and domination than anything I’ve seen in the mainstream.) I’m not going to pathologize these folks or question their feminist credentials, particularly when so many of them (like Dev) are willing to wrestle with the feminist implications of their sexual lives.

Pisaquari writes:

Believe it or not, what people do in their bedroom does NOT stay there. It perpetuates how they treat other people, what they do to the next lover, interactions with the sex industry, etc…

At least in part, that’s right. While like any good liberal I believe in a right to privacy (whether or not it is enshrined in the Constitution), I also acknowledge (as most folks do) that most of us don’t do a great job of building a wall between our public and our private lives. If my sexual life with my wife were characterized by degradation and mistrust, that would invariably carry over into my teaching. If I were to go back to using pornography, as I did many years ago, it would sooner or later affect the way I view the women in my life. If we’re taking sex seriously, we put a lot of ourselves into it! And the reverse is true — if we’re taking sex seriously, how we have it will invariably help shape who we are, for better or worse.

How I have sex matters. If I don’t practice my feminism in my sexual life, then my feminism is superficial and hypocritical. If I don’t practice my faith in the marriage bed, then my faith — despite my claims — has not really transformed my life. The specific details of my sexual life with my wife are, of course, private. But I will say that what we do in the bedroom is far less important than the devotion, honesty, and caring with which we do it. What makes sex unethical, I am convinced, is exploitation, abuse, dishonesty, and selfishness. What makes sex righteous (and feminist) is genuine concern for mutual pleasure, radical trust, and a willingness to be there for the other person as he or she processes through their own responses to the sex that’s being had.

It’s possible, too, to overthink this stuff. The word “fuck”, for example, is a loaded with potential anti-feminist implications. It’s a word we use for sex — and violence. We do our children a disservice by raising them in a culture where the most common vulgar term for intercourse (“fucking”) is so closely linked to the term that most commonly expresses sudden anger (“Fuck off!”). In a world where women are often victims of male violence that mixes together sex and rage, it’s more than a little unfortunate that our most popular slang word also mixes the two! That said, I think a feminist can cry out (when so inclined) “Fuck me!” or “I’m going to fuck you so hard!” in good conscience. A lusty and enthusiastic “let’s fuck” may take a similar semantic form to the vocabulary of degradation and violence, but thinking adults (even thinking teens) can use the phrase with emotional and ideological safety. The words themselves matter less than how they are understood at the time.

Here’s the point: if honesty, integrity, communication, trust and concern for the other’s well-being are the hallmarks of good sex, then I think it quite possible that many practitioners of BDSM could meet that standard at least as well as those of us who are cheerfully “vanilla.” One thing I’ve learned from my friends in that “scene”: it is possible to “perform” acts of domination and submission in the bedroom (or the family dungeon!) while also practicing radical respect and mutuality. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge amount of potential for ritualized self-abuse, soul-destroying cruelty, and toxic exploitation within the BDSM world. But you can have miserable, selfish, damaging sex with your spouse in the missionary position with the lights off. Take it from this thrice-divorced fella. The postures adopted, the wedding bands present or not, and the toys and tools used do not tell us much about whether or not sex is mutual, loving, or safe.

Ultimately, “Good Sex” (in the larger sense of “contributing to the greater good” as well as mutually pleasurable) can happen in an almost infinite variety of ways. And though it does not fall into the realm of my own experience, I am reliably assured by those whom I trust that it can even involve the carefully negotiated use of pain and domination.

A long post on feminism, BDSM, consent, and constructive suffering

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 28, 2007
in BDSM, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 24 Comments

Though most of the letters I get from readers revolve around the same few issues (older men/younger women; student crushes on teachers; chinchilla care), every once in a while I’ll get a spate of queries about another topic. And on my return from Israel, I found no fewer than three emails in my inbox on the topic of BDSM and feminism. This same week, a student obliquely raised the subject in my conference hours.

I don’t do this often, but let me suggest a quick perusal of the generally work-safe Wikipedia entry on BDSM. It’s a non-titillating, and inoffensive introduction to a world that makes many folks uncomfortable (in more than one sense, I suppose.)

Two of the three emails I received were from young women; one from a man in his thirties. All three are self-described feminists, and all three are involved — in one way or another — in the BDSM subculture. And their questions were all essentially the same. “Caitlin” (21) wrote:

I’m a women’s studies major at (mid-size university in Ohio)…The only sexual experiences I have ever had with another person that felt safe and pleasurable… were in situations where I was a submissive. I’m not into heavy pain, but I connect my own arousal to being dominated and controlled. I know it’s my “choice” to participate in this scene, but I feel as if I’m betraying a basic feminist principle by doing so.

How can I distinguish between what I really want and what society has acculturated me to want? If I can’t discern the difference, am I a bad feminist? Do feminists have to have vanilla (non-BDSM) sex?

I should add that I was raised in a liberal Catholic home, and though I don’t go to church anymore, I still believe in God. I’d be interested in a feminist Christian perspective on BDSM, because I haven’t seen anything like that.

The questions in Caitlin’s middle paragraph are essentially the same ones the other two emailers asked, and they jive with what my student was asking me this week.

I have no personal experience in the BDSM scene or the fetish world. Though I often allude to a colorful past, I confess that even in my wildest periods of youthful indiscretion and experimentation, I shied away from that subculture. I’ve long known — ever since I was a child — that I have, for lack of a better phrase, a mean streak. I’ve worked all my life to keep it in check; much of my passion for feminism and animal rights work is linked, on a not-very subconscious level, to my own awareness that my capacity for cruelty is very real. God and I have done some amazing work together; the gentleness that I think many others can see in me today is rooted entirely in my effort and His grace, not in my nature. Stepping into the world of BDSM would, for me, have been to tempt something that even at my most reckless I was not ready to tempt.

That said, I’ve had many colleagues and students and fellow feminist activists who were involved (to one degree or another) in the world of domination and submission. Indeed, when I think about it, it’s remarkable how many men and women I’ve known who spent time in that subculture. Going back to my years as an undergraduate, I can recall a series of conversations on the question of whether or not BDSM was compatible with feminist commitments. Twenty years ago — even ten years ago — I was certain that an authentic devotion to public equality couldn’t possibly coexist with a delight in private transactions in which sexual power is surrendered and taken. But I’ve met too many women whose public “feminist credentials” were impeccable and whose freely chosen delight in submission was equally sincere.

I got a note last year from a former student. I looked for it in preparation for this post but couldn’t find it. She’s worked as a submissive fetish model, and just finished her MA in women’s studies. She remembered that when she was my student, I had made some remark (long since forgotten by me) that she perceived as “closed-minded” about the BDSM world. It had taken her a while to get around to correcting me, but correct me she did. Part of what she said in her email I remember well, though I’m paraphrasing rather than quoting in the hope of conveying the gist of what she said:

Growing up as a teenage girl in my society, I felt my power taken away from me by everything and everyone: peers, parents, culture, men. No one ever asked me what I wanted. It was only in the ‘scene’ that I found a voice. I’ve never known people as respectful, as caring, as concerned with my feelings and my own boundaries as the people I’ve found in BDSM. Because we find pleasure in pushing limits, we take greater care than anyone else does to make sure that we respect each other’s boundaries. Yes, as a submissive, I’ve found pleasure and I’ve found a voice. Of course it’s been cathartic to be involved in this world, but it’s not just about healing the damage done to me as a girl. It’s brought me healing and joy.

I remember she pointed out to me that as an endurance runner, I obviously was aware of the close relationship between suffering and pleasure. She even used a phrase I first heard used by one of my old running buddies: “constructive suffering.” Reflecting on her note, I admitted that taking my body to its often painful limits has not only been empowering for me, it has helped me to heal much of my own physical self-loathing. The greatest and most enduring payoff of endurance work hasn’t been the eradication of fat, because fat isn’t the enemy. The greatest payoff of marathoning hasn’t been the lowered resting heart rate or the endorphin high. The greatest payoff has been the end to the dualism that sees the body as separate, disconnected, and alien from me. Running — especially hard, painful running — has helped me understand what it means to be an incarnate spirit, a soul and a body joined together. And I’ve become convinced that for many men and women, participating enthusiastically in BDSM can bring about the same sort of epiphany.

I’m a great believer that we’re all called to work for public justice. I’m also convinced that a commitment to public justice needs to be built on a foundation of private virtue. I don’t think compartmentalization is healthy. And until relatively recently, I would have had a hard time believing that a “feminist submissive” wasn’t an oxymoron. But if, as my trusted sources tell me, real integrity and caring and concern for “voice” and boundaries not only exists in but is treasured by the BDSM community, then I think it’s possible to say that feminism is indeed compatible with this often misunderstood subculture.

Those who are better informed than I are welcome to weigh in.