I haven’t written much about BDSM lately, even though a little over a year ago I was writing a lot about it. I got stuck a while ago when I tried to formulate a working theory of what BDSM is and what my problem with it is, a theory I could explain to anyone easily, and I got stuck. I was pretty sure BDSM as a culure was highly dangerous and I am still very sure of that, but the rolequeer theories I was working within did not feel accessible to a large audience and had some aspects that I wasn’t sure off. I haven’t renounced any of those ideas but I am weighing them for myself again to see if I still believe all of them. I still don’t have a full more accessible working theory but I have decided to start writing about it again in hopes that I can figure it out along the way. To people who have read my earlier writing, this will probably feel like me taking my first babysteps on rolequeer thought again and having an old conversation on repeat. Deal with it. It’s what I need. Sometimes you need to touch base to go forward. If it bores you: not my problem. If it offends you: definitely not my problem.
So, today, I’m writing ‘things that I know, which includes linking to some old writing that I’m still 100% sure on.
So, 10 things I know about BDSM:
1. I know we live within a deeply invasive, violent rape culture that has tainted a lot of our ideas about sex, dating, touch, friendship, boundaries and consent. Rape culture saturates all the media we consume and fills our screens and newspapers and books with images of violence against women from a very early age.
2. I know we have a subculture that get’s their rocks off on ‘fake’ rape and violence that looks 100% like the images of rape that already saturate all the media we consume and within that subculture the vast majority of people who fantasize about raping someone are men who fantasize about raping girls younger than they are. I know all that can not be a coincidence. There’s just no way all that’s a coincidence. There is no way all these men coincidentally fantasize about the exact things rape culture tells them to want.
3. I know that ignoring that ‘coincidence’ is dangerous because it means ignoring a very direct manifestation of rape culture. Hence I know a dogmatic line of ‘BDSM is part of the born-this-way accept-us-as-we-are spectrum of unproblematic kinks’ is dangerous.
And the BDSM culture as it is proves how dangerous it is every time it refuses to examine even the possibility that rape culture impacts their fetishes.
4. I know every BDSM scene I have ever been in, which is quite a few on and offline, has had a very high number of creeps that really should have been kicked out immediately based on their predatory behaviour. I know in every BDSM scene the submissive had public secrets, they would take you apart and warn you not to play with Bill, but they wouldn’t question why Bill was still there. And they didn’t question what happened to the newer subs they hadn’t warned in time or the ones Bill was meeting online. I know BDSM talks the talk when it comes to consent, but is disasterous when it comes to walking the walk.
5. I know pretty much every BDSM scene gets stuck in the ‘no true Scotsman’ complex: they’re so busy convincing themselves and the world that they’re not rapists that they start to dogmatically defend that BDSM is never rape. That if a Dom rapes someone, he was never a ‘real’ Dom. That there are rapist actors and rapist tennis players and rapists teachers, but no rapist doms. It is only in this way that they can tolerate extremely predatory acting men who talk loudly about how hot it is to tie up, beat and fuck a woman.
6. I know the ‘safeword’ is a very explicit manifestation of how far the BDSM scene has lost sight of what it’s doing. Despite often being treated as the next hip thing to have in your local queer scene, a safeword is not cute. A safeword means creating a space where no does not mean no. Think about that. Really think about it. That’s not cute and fluffy, it’s deeply creepy stuff to be playing with so casually, and the fact that it is often treated as a starting point on a journey into experimental sex is beyond fucked up.
8. I know the theory of BDSM as therapy for victims is bullshit and it is probably the worst part of the whole BDSM scene because it takes real victims of sexual abuse and offers them a terrible warped version of do-it-yourself therapy. This is predatory doms at their worst.
9. I know there are a lot of people within the BDSM scene who do not realize that they’re not getting what they deserve but who have never imagined that it could be different, that it could be better.
10. I know there are people for whom the current system is working out perfectly. It is letting them get away with rape without ever having to examine their behaviour. I know the Doms who read this and immediately think this is not about them are probably exactly those people. I know that these people will fight violently against anyone trying to smash their empire. I know they will lie and manipulate and pretend to be nice guys to protect their empire. These people are not to be debated, they are to be fought.
Now, 10 things I know about better kinky sex:
1. I know kink is an incredibly diverse spectrum of emotions, textures, temperatures, games, fantasies, characters and more, and fantastic kinky sex without BDSM bullshit is possible and most kinky sex is not BDSM.
2. I know submissive desires, although very probably also deeply influenced by growing up in rape culture, are not the problem. Submissives are not the ones being predatory and dangerous, they are the ones who choose to be vulnerable and who unfortunately often do that in the company of the absolute worst predatory people. I know submissives can have great sex without inviting a dom. Vulnerability is the key to intimacy. Being vulnerable around each other is a fantastic way to connect to each other. If you do that without inviting a person who fantasizes about raping you? 1000 times better!
3. I know to avoid BDSM bullshit, people who want better kinky sex need to know how to recognize BDSM culture and to stay as far from it as possible. Because like the safeword, a lot of BDSM bullshit has bled into other sexually marginalized subcultures and that does not make us safer.
4. I know better kinky sex in a world filled with rape culture starts with facing the fact that rape culture does clearly shape human desires and that it very probably shaped some of our fantasies too. This is not easy and realizing that it is not easy is good.
Understanding that our desires were not created in a vacuum but were and are influenced by the world we live in means understanding our needs and vulnerabilities better.
Facing the complicated nature of how rape culture invades our fantasies and our sex lives is the first step to having safer and better sex.
5 I know better kinky sex is not a matter of ridding sex free of all things that resemble the tools of BDSM. Getting rid of all your ropes and leather and burning your blindfolds probably isn’t going to make your sex any better (unless you never liked those things to begin with) and it would be a shame to let BDSM-ers take all those sensations for themselves. If we want to genuinely understand the complexities of how rape culture impacts our desires, why create the fiction of clean untainted minds by purifying our bedroom? Getting the impact of rape culture out of our sexlife is an internal struggle, not a lifestyle statement.
6. I know the ‘all kink is dirty and shameful and rapey’ sex negative folk are not helpful. They’re upset about a lot of the same things that I’m upset about but their answers are harmful. The concept of sex as something dirty is a huge part of rape culture, it is not part of the answer.
7. I know consent is a feeling, not a state of having given permission.
8. I know that better kinky sex involves understanding, really understanding, that you are capable of violating someone’s consent and to have a plan for when you do.
Realistically, anybody who is having any kind of sex in the context of rape culture is likely to violate someone’s consent at some point. The most ethical response to this fact, obviously, is to not have sex—and, in fact, if enough people decided to opt out of rape culture by opting completely out of erotic intimacy, that would ultimately bring rape culture crashing down. But a “sexual hunger strike to bring about the end of rape culture” is an unrealistically high ethical bar to set for most real people who are trying to survive in a world where intimacy is a human necessity.
Instead, we need to take it as a given that if you choose to have sex in the context of rape culture, especially if you choose to have sex with people who have less power than you, and especially if you choose to have kinds of sex that explicitly play with that power differential, at some point you are probably going to violate someone’s consent—if you haven’t already. We need a process for dealing with that other than abject denial. We need to develop ways of regularly acknowledging, taking accountability for, and participating in healing work around the damage our coercive behavior causes.
See also:
You might be a rapist if it never occurs to you that rape is something you’re capable of
9. I know a recipe for better kinky sex is going to be a homecooked mishmash of DIY ideas for a very long time to come. Right now the BDSM narrative is such a dominate narrative about how kinky sex works, and it is using horrible websites like Fetlife so effectively, that any kind of healthier community interested in better kinky sex will be slow to form. There just aren’t a lot of people yet who have really accepted that the
the born-this-way accept-us-as-we-are narrative just can’t be applied to BDSM and that the correlation between rape culture and people enjoying ‘play’ rape is not a coincidence and that we need a different, far more self-critical approach to kinky sex.
10. I know better kinky sex is worth it. Because hey, kink is at it’s heart the discovery of sexuality, intimacy, desire and connection in unexpected places and actions and things. Kink is in the spaghetti sauce that dropped down his neck and in the rough stubbles on her leg and in the smirk of a butch in leather. Kink is wonderful and magic and energy. Getting all that without the rape culture bullshit? It’s worth it.
— oh, and bonus: —-
I know I’m gonna ignore most BDSM’ers who respond to this post. I have heard all of your bullshit a thousand times before. I am not interested in your opinion. Arguing with you is a waste of my time and energy. If you wanna have a serious conversation about the connection between rape culture and BDSM and you feel that we’re at least on some level on the same page, come and talk. Maybe we can help each other. But if this whole post pissed you off, get ready to be pissed off again because I know I will probably ignore your reply too or just respond with a gif mocking you (especially if you read this bit and still respond with your bullshit). Sorry not sorry. I just have no interest in having these lame conversations with you over and over again.
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