Tea and Strumpets
A guest post from the brilliant Constance. (Link NSFW)
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This is a post I’ve wanted to write for a long time, but have kept putting off because I haven’t been sure exactly what I want to say (or how to say it). I’m still not sure, but I’m realising that this might be one of those topics I will never be sure about, and my feelings and thoughts will always be a fluid jumble, absorbing and evolving the more I learn and talk about it.
I am a feminist who is committed to sex positivity. I am constantly thinking about, analysing and ultimately hoping to help dismantle the saturation of misogyny that hurts women, men and folk who don’t identify with either of those genders. I think the media is a huge perpetrator of misogyny by (both overtly and subtly) reinforcing gender norms, gender roles, aesthetic desirability etc. I am also really interested in sex (academically and, uh, in practice) to the point that I like to try my hand at things people may consider left of centre. Namely BDSM.
Every now and again the media churns out something so overtly sexist that people are forced to (briefly, for most) acknowledge that we haven’t really come as far as we think we have in terms of “women’s liberation”. Today the White Ribbon Campaign’s Facebook page showcased some shockers from the past and present. Like this one.
Obviously talking about oppressive images of women is central and relevant to a campaign which works to stop violence against women across the world. However, a few of the pictures that they showcased have multiple layers, especially for those aware of, or engaging in, BDSM.
Now, this is possibly going to get me in big trouble, but I can’t say I’m offended by these photos. I can even see how people would find them sexy. I’m obviously conscious that people who have no idea about BDSM (and the heavy emphasis the community places on consent and negotiation) will see these photos as oppressive and violent, and not as a portrayal of alternative sexual preferences. But the thing is – how do we know that they aren’t?
There’s no context around either of these images to suggest that this isn’t a portrayal of consensual sexual play. There’s also no context to suggest that it’s not problematic sexual violence either. But when we default to yelling “sexism!” at images of women in submissive sexual positions, I would argue that we are actually being oppressive ourselves.
I’m not saying that we should assume all images of sexual male dominance are harmless. I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t be discussing what exposure to these images without any dialogue about consent may mean. What I am saying is that we need to have that discussion, and we need to drop our assumptions.
At times (and depending on your internal head noise) it can be pretty shitty to be a female feminist who’s also a submissive to male dominant/s. I know dozens of women who are committed to ending violence against women and subverting oppressive gender roles, but who enjoy being a submissive, begging plaything to their male partners in the bedroom. And although all of these women are conscious that the second consent is negotiated these acts are not in any way violent, it can still be really confusing to want to dismantle the power men have over women everywhere…except the bedroom.
When our discourse around the portrayal of potentially consensual kink screams “oppression!”, it furthers the messages that female submissives get constantly. These messages range from “woah that’s a bit twisted” to “your sexual preferences are contributing to the rapes of millions of women and children across the world” (an actual sentence I’ve had thrown at me).
I am conscious that queer submissives are not in any way immune to sex shaming and internal conflict, but given that queer dominant/submissive relationships would be seen by many as subverting traditional gender roles and norms, and images of queer sexualities are sadly omitted from mainstream advertising, I am going to talk solely about women engaging in dominance and submission with men. I am deliberately not specifying cis women, as trans women are women and are not immune to feeling conflicted about acting out the very things they may be working to end in other spheres of their lives.
I would also like to state that by lamenting an issue some women have, I am not implying in any way that we don’t have privilege in many other interlinked and pervasive ways.
Sex positive feminists are of course aware that any sex involving consenting, informed and considerate parties is fine. And if the goal is to dismantle oppression and gender norms then these acts of submission to men are ultimately not reinforcing anything problematic because they are not manifestations of some deeper desire for the patriarchy to rule us all. The fantasies exist as play. And a lot of other BDSM is super subversive of gender roles.
But the thing is, when your kind of BDSM is actually a play on things that you see as problematic in other contexts, the sex positive mantra is not super effective or reassuring at times. Even if you know it’s right. And people taking images of things some people enjoy and labeling them as “sexist” is going to elicit a very exhausted sigh from pretty much every sex positive feminist sub everywhere.
I am not in any way arguing that images of male dominance should have a blanket classification as “fine” because they might be part of someone’s sexual preference. What I am arguing is that we can’t just assume that they’re not. Perhaps in a perfect world there would be a disclaimer in the fine print of the ad that says ‘this image is meant to represent consensual adult fantasy’. I think that would be great.
If advertising is adhering to normal censorship and age-appropriate regulations then why can’t alternative sexual preferences be portrayed? The only arguments against using kink in the same way we use vanilla sex to sell stuff are incredibly sex negative ones: “because it’s violent” (not if you establish consent either in the image or with a disclaimer as mentioned above. And while we’re fucking at it, why don’t we establish consent in vanilla images?), “because it’s vulgar” (define vulgar, and don’t tell me non kinky sex in advertisements doesn’t fit that bill at least half the time), “because it’s not everyone’s taste” (yeah well bikini clad ‘scientists’ selling me Tui beer isn’t my taste but I’m saturated with it), “because people might think that sort of stuff is okay to do without asking” (if you follow that line, then no sex should ever be portrayed anywhere in case someone tries it without asking).
Many things that fit on the BDSM continuum are fairly common. I was going to say “nowadays” but actually, none of it is new or more prevalent than it was 2000 years ago. And I bet you that even then, women who wanted their male partners to have power over them in the bedroom but not in any other way were just as fraught about it then as they are now.
I suppose what I’m saying here is that we get it. Any issue you have with female sexual submission to men has been thought about over and over by the submissive themselves. Why do I want this? What if there’s something wrong with me? Why does he want that? Does he respect me? What if this goes too far?
Chances are, if you’re into this sort of stuff and even vaguely aware of feminism, it’s been thought to death. And hopefully, fears and anxieties have been quashed by the knowledge that we can’t always explain why people are into things, and ultimately we wouldn’t be into them if it didn’t make them feel fucking amazing and strong and sexy and liberated. And that, as both sex positive feminists and members of the BDSM community, we think about consent and negotiation probably about a zillion more times a day than you do.
But no matter how staunch people are in owning and advocating their preferences, having messages that tell you something you may very well have done the other night is misogynistic, sexist and oppressive, just kind of makes people feel like shit. And really, people who are into BDSM get enough of that.
If a sexual image of two or more adults is ambiguous in its message and makes you feel uncomfortable, remember that anything conveying sexuality is going to have a multitude of layers.
Don’t assume that there’s no consent. Don’t assume that there’s not a bunch of people who do that for fun in your life that you may never ever know about. Don’t decide that you’re an expert on whether someone’s fantasy is harmful or not – they can decide for themselves.
Instead, have a discussion about it. I even have a mind blowing suggestion for you – you could do some research about something that you’re not personally into. That way, you can extricate yourself from the masses of uneducated sex-shaming voices that can get the fuck out of my bedroom.
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Here, I’ve even got some further reading suggestions:
I think women who participate in pornography, and those who condone it are disrespecting themselves.
After Tallulah’s post re: The Wellington Young Feminists Facebook Kerfuffle, it seemed like an appropriate time to post some more links to porn. Because now Marcia has left, I really will have to go back to disrespecting myself, instead of just having her do it for me. It’s either that or just sit home playing with my magic vagina.
Please assume all links are NSFW. By that I mean, not safe for Actual Workplaces.
Here is the trailer for Erika Lust’s Life Love Lust - moderately explicit, some nudity, possibly excessive use of tattoos.
But that, clearly, is not what Marcia means by porn. Porn is
sex as an act done to a woman by a man, or several woman at once, or an act done by two or more men to a woman, or encourages violence against women.
So let’s find something a little more “choky and rapey”, shall we? How about some of Maria Beatty’s work? – mildly explicit, BDSM, lesbianism. That spur? Yeah.
Or how about this? That’s horrible BDSM porn too. Well, again, there are no men, and that clip is, while powerfully erotic, perhaps not what a lot of people would be happy calling “porn”. When that spreader bar appears? That’s not intended to arouse, right? And then there’s all that laughter and genuine pleasure.
This is porn, though, definitely: the trailer for Petra Joy’s new film The Female Voyeur - highly explicit, group, domination, bi material. Finally, we’re finding an act done by two or more men… oh, no, that’s to each other… There are several women at once…
You know what? I think I’ll just stay deluded, and stick to listening to people who don’t call me a whore.
So I was right. Clarisse Thorn’s piece on BDSM vs Sex did climb inside my brain and crawl around for a couple of days, so I was thinking about BDSM while I was cooking and shopping and stuff, the irony of which should become clear shortly.
The question she was looking to answer was basically:
Is BDSM always sex? Is it always sexual?
And I think the answer cuts to the heart of a question that seems simple until you start thinking about it, and then becomes completely unanswerable: what is sex? So even for those of you who are really bored with me talking about BDSM, there might be some interest in this.
I mean, given where we are (feminist website in a pretty liberal blogosphere), we can take for granted that “penis in vagina” is not a sufficiently broad definition of sex. But I think there is a default assumption, if we were going through a list of acts and considering how much they were “sex”, that penetrative acts (PIV, anal, pegging) are sex to a greater extent than non-penetrative acts. Then we take a moment to remember that lesbians can also have sex, and remember to include oral…
And things start to get a bit shaky. Frottage: is that sex? It fits our previously-proposed definition of “a situation where orgasm is appropriate”. So, touching? And there seems to be an unconscious, unthinking boundary in there somewhere – like the difference between touching someone’s outer thigh and touching their inner thigh – and it all gets grey and subjective and horribly complicated. Or, just the way I like it.
Clarisse’s articles include a quote I find quite useful:
“I would say that eros is always involved in BDSM, even if the participants aren’t doing anything that would look sexual to non-BDSMers.”
Eros: eroticism. Here, I think, is the difference between the two parts of Clarisse’s question. It might not be sex, but could still be sexual. And this is where I think BDSM offers a useful perspective, on the borders of the erotic.
(A couple of little sidebars before we get into the meat of this. I use “Dom/me” because I am bisexual, and my Dominant partner could be male or female. I also capitalise the Dominant. These are simply conventions; I don’t really give a rat’s who follows them or doesn’t.
Also, and more importantly, I think we’ve done quite a lot towards acceptance of submissive sexuality, particularly female subs. But I don’t think we’ve made quite as much progress accepting Dominant sexuality, particularly male. Which is odd, because I don’t think it’s really possible to properly respect my sexuality without also respecting the other side of the coin, the person who, without cruelty, wants to hurt me. That’s one of the reasons that I’ll continue to be vague about my Dom/mes, and use a sort of fluffy conditional present tense to disguise when particular things happened. One of the reasons. Nobody signed up to sleep with a sex columnist, after all.)
There’s an awfully broad palette of practise covered by the term “BDSM”, and people don’t use all of it. For me, humiliation and verbal abuse has never been a turn-on. For me, it’s about pain and restraint, but also obedience. When I wrote about BDSM for Public Address, I very much concentrated on the pain response, because that’s easy to understand. But it’s a very long way from all there is. And in this context, sex/sexual/eros, we’re mainly going to talk about obedience.
It’s actually pretty challenging for me. I’m not good at doing what I’m told. It’s much easier for me to be tied down than to be told to stay still, and do it through sheer will. (Really challenging? Being told to shut up.) And in a non-sexual context, nobody gets to tell me what to do. Nobody. I’ve always been really shit at taking direction even from bosses and clients.
In a BDSM context, though, obedience is heavily erotic. There’s a bit near the end of Secretary where Lee says to her poor hapless fiancé, “Does this look like something sexual?” She’s sitting at a desk. She’s doing what she’s told. It’s not sex. It is sexual.
Now, I will admit that I’ve never actually “played” with a Dom/me I wasn’t also having sex with. Perhaps because of my history, I have Trust Issues. Strangers are not going to have access to that level of intimacy with me. And for all it might appear that you can’t shut me up about it, my response as a sub is an intensely private thing to me – far beyond my vanilla sexual response.
BDSM allows you to take that level of response out of a conventionally sexual setting. (Yes, we have a very strong idea of “conventionally sexual”, that’s why the word “kink” exists.) For instance, my safe word is a concrete noun. And I can’t ever look at a “one of those things” without it being a visceral reminder of my deepest response. But also there was a day when I was kneeling to sweep my kitchen floor, and I was simply and suddenly overwhelmed, just from being on my (admittedly slightly bruised) knees.
I’m pretty sure lots of people have particular touchstones – songs, scents, situations – that remind them of something sexual or relationshippy. I do. And here I agree with Clarisse that it “feels different”. The non-BDSM frisson is pleasant, warm and soft. The BDSM one is a knife-sharp catch of breath, straight to the core. It’s not sex, clearly. But it is sexual. There is eros.
So where I was seeing Clarisse’s “sex” and “BDSM” as heavily-overlapping circles in a Venn diagram, I don’t think it’s the most useful image. There is, for instance, a point where she says,
I, Clarisse, can certainly attest that it’s common for people to have BDSM encounters that are “just” BDSM — “no sex involved”. For example — an encounter where one partner whips the other, or gets whipped, and there’s no genital contact or even discussion of genitals.
That seems to indicate to me that when she talks about “sex”, she’s using a narrower definition than I am. To me there’s an awful lot of sex that isn’t genitals. Mostly, though, I think the problem is that those mental circles have hard-drawn, mutually-agreed edges. And that doesn’t seem to be the case with “sex”.
The very concept of “kink” indicates something that “most people don’t find appropriately sexual”. And with BDSM it’s not just being turned on by pain that’s inappropriate. It’s also the concept of finding it arousing being told what dress to wear, or to have the salmon.
Anyway. When Clarisse says
Part of me felt like, “If my desire for pain and power is sexual, then it’s weird. If it’s not sexual, then it’s less weird.” … In contrast, I once met a couple who told me that it took them a long time to do BDSM that wasn’t part of sex. In their heads, the thought was more like: “If the desire for pain and power is sexual, then it’s not weird. But if it’s not sexual, then it’s really weird.”
I’m definitely more of the latter persuasion. For me, it would feel really uncomfortable if my desire for pain wasn’t sexual. But if not all of my sexuality is kink (and it really seriously isn’t by a very long way indeed) then perhaps not all of my kink is sexual. That instinctively feels wrong, though. What feels right, is a broader definition of what “sexual” is. What’s the difference between “sexual” and “sensual”? Are they both to some degree erotic? And does it matter anyway?
Here’s why it matters, and why I would never pressure anyone to move outside their accepted personal idea of “sex”: because sex is Wrong and Bad. Even if not in itself, then in certain situations. Clarisse talks about having partners who wouldn’t condone her having sex with other men, but were okay with her doing BDSM with them. Ergo, BDSM is not sex. It’s not cheating. We might laugh at the “eating ain’t cheating” Southern philosophy, but if people genuinely believe that, then they make decisions and take actions on that basis. I think it does help to be aware, though, that we might all be fudging those judgements (“that doesn’t count…”) to some extent.
Banter in the Garden