I’m friends with one of the founders of Harvard College Munch, and he recently showed me this about how Harvard College Munch is literally the worst thing that ever worsted. Mostly he just wanted to know if he should get “sexual anarchist” on his business cards. (Sources say yes. God, no one has ever called me a sexual anarchist. So upset.)
Now, there are lots of objections that one can have to this article. For instance, what “wide-ranging impact, profoundly effecting students’ daily lives”? I go to a school that has an official school Violet Wand, and yet there are no discernible effects except “lots of students, even vanilla ones, have been electroshocked just to see what it’s like.” I wouldn’t call that profoundly affecting students’ daily lives.
But the objection I want to have is to the sentence “we have always been eager to discuss with these other groups our competing views of how best to honor the dignity and beauty of sex, but we do not even share this much common ground with Munch, which instead seeks to associate sex with violence, humiliation, and oppression.”
(Note: below the cut, I talk about my sex life! If you don’t want to hear about it, here’s Cute Roulette.)
I like BDSM. Some of the best sexual memories of my life come from things an outside observer might think are violent, humiliating, or oppressive.
There was the time I was scratching a dude’s back for half an hour to the point that I drew blood. He was writhing under me. The sun was dappled across his skin; his back was this latticework of red and white and drops of pearl-like blood. My heart was in my mouth and I could barely speak because he was so beautiful.
Or the time I was Violet Wanded for the first time. Masochists have different reactions to pain: some moan, some are still. Me, I giggle. I was giggling so hard that I accidentally knocked into the person Violet Wanding me and made him drop it. Afterward I was so happy I couldn’t stop jumping and laughing. The next day, every time I looked at the faint burn marks on my skin, I smiled.
I’ve been bitten so hard that everywhere from neck to shoulder on both sides was solid bruise. There’s a feeling you get when you push yourself past where you think you can go, when every nerve is crying for you to tap out and instead you just take more. I imagine athletes are familiar with it, the moment when you’re halfway through a marathon and you just want to sit down and yet you put one foot in front of the other. It’s the best feeling in the world.
You want to talk about humiliating sex? I have Issues with punishment, because the thought of someone being angry at me is enough to reduce me to tears. So one time a man I love bent me over the bed and caned me senseless while he told me how stupid and ugly and horrible I was and how he was just hurting me because I was bad and if I were less bad he wouldn’t have to hurt me. And then afterward I cried and he held me and told me I was sweet and precious and he would never say those things really, not ever. I felt safe and loved. I could do the thing I’m scared of, one of the things I’m most scared of in the world, as a game, with a man I know will never really hurt me.
The time my best friend left for Maine for the indefinite future and it was one of the last times we were ever going to see each other so I sucked him off and then he came on my face. It was the first time either of us had done a facial, and I feel like it’s something special I shared with him before he left. There was nothing like kneeling before him while he was in his post-orgasmic haze and feeling the warmth of him all over my face.
Or, hell, the time I was fucked doggystyle with cat ears on while my partner held my leash and clothespins dangled from my nipples. That wasn’t really any complex psychological thing. That was just hot. I think there’s a place for “just hot” too.
I don’t know what you’re talking about when you talk about the beauty of sex. But most of the most beautiful sex I’ve had, the sex I look back on a year later and it still fills me with warmfuzzies, was kinky sex. Sure, we playacted violence and humiliation, but the fun and glee and play, the affection and kindness and quite often love were real.
In b4 accusations of false consciousness
It really upsets me the way they write that bdsm can’t be good or beautiful just because they can’t see it. I can seriously understand why people don’t understand bdsm, I mean hell, I don’t particularly feel like trying it, but I would NEVER just assume that because I don’t like it, no-one can, and if they do it they either don’t like it or are pure psychos.
It’s like not liking prawns and go “I don’t like prawns and I can’t even talk about food with people who like prawns cause the point with eating food is that it tastes GOOD and is enjoyable, and since prawns obviously aren’t good I can’t accept them!”
When can people learn that we are just different, we like different things and look at the world differently. Maybe some people find bdsm beautiful, and maybe some people don’t even want sex to be beautiful at all.
Regarding the munch thing: if there’s one thing I have learned pretty well in the last few years, it’s that any group of people that gets together for any purpose whatever has the potential to do some really awful, toxic shit. So one must be vigilant, but people aren’t sociopaths for being kinky, either. The extent to which good and ethical things happen when the toxicity shows up is the real test of such a community.
@Pickle, you’re so right! A “community” comes down to the least socially-able-but-popular members. Pretty muich the reason I left my hometown kink community,
“Or, hell, the time I was fucked doggystyle with cat eats on while my partner held my leash and clothespins dangled from my nipples.”
What are “cat eats”?
What struck me is this sentence here: “We believe that BDSM itself trivializes sex, promoting a selfish and anarchical sexual ethos.”
For goodness sake, kinky sex does the exact opposite. If anything it’s the mainstream culture surrounding vanilla sex that’s trivializing and selfish.
Oh also, if you want some more eye-roll-worthy moments I suggest looking at the other articles on the Love & Fidelity website.
Still even after a couple months, this is my go-to for kink-hatred. (Warning: kink hatred.) Without agreeing myself, I guess I can see how people could get there.
@picklefactory:
The first paragraph of that thing you linked to actually isn’t that far off. In media representations of sexual sadism and masochism, sadists usually are cis-men and masochists usually are cis-women. And there are people out there who think cis-women can’t be raped because all cis-women want to be dominated by a cis-man, etc. But they just seem unable to separate media misrepresentation of kink from the realities of kink.
And I kind of find a very patronizing tone in the idea that somehow cis-women who choose to engage in sado-masochistic relationships are just blindly following patriarchal ideas.
Doug S.: I think Ozy means “cat ears”.
@HeatherN: No doubt about it. I don’t think that the conclusions follow from the premise.
And there are actual bona fide woman-hating sociopaths out there doing kinky things, too, not having been ejected by their local munches / communities / whatever.
I agree that it’s patronizing.
I guess my conclusion is that imputing motives to others is, uh, fraught.
Yes, I meant cat ears. *sighs* Typoes.
Thanks so much for this. I also laugh as I am being beaten, especially if I am being punched so hard I think I might die from it. And I completely agree with o when you say that cruel words directed in hate against me reduce me to confusion and tears. It does not happen to me now, but it did at school and in my early jobs. Thanks…
@HeatherN: Oh yes, they’re hilarious. Somewhere they said that it was wrong to fantasize about secksaytimes before marriage.
I noticed I also have a tendency to giggle when people hurt me.
On the Harvard link: you’d think that a Harvard student would know the grammatical difference between “affect” and “effect.”
Ugh. I was going to ask if you had read this LJF article (which basically sums up a lot of what you used to say at NSWATM before the GMP ate it and then exploded in a sexist haze). Then I read THIS bullshit.
You don’t do kinky sex with people you don’t trust. I’ve tried to explain this to people before–in an Eschergirls comment thread about one of those annoying Japanese pillows with an anime girl on them, I said “Wow, I have a non-con fetish, and that girl’s face still looks uncomfortably rape-y to me.” And then, someone immediately jumped on me for being some kind of monster who wants to rape women.
Explaining that:
1. My fetish is for being on the receiving end only;
2. I only engage in this fetish with people I trust;
3. Non-con is exactly as much like actual rape as Super Soaker fights are like actual warfare
had no effect. Clearly, fantasy is reality, and I am a rapist for wanting my boyfriend* to handcuff me and give me a good pounding while I pretend to struggle and scream. Somehow.
* I’m actually kind of sad that my current boyfriend won’t go along with this. But he says he doesn’t trust himself not to go too far and actually hurt me.
@Gundermann: Yeah I read their article about “emotional chastity.” Such a facepalm moment.
@The_L: I wonder if a lot of these people who think kink is inherently abusive simply lack imagination. Otherwise how could someone not understand that a sexual fantasy (even one that is acted out in a scene) does not necessarily mean you want that fantasy to translate into an un-negotiated reality?
My conscience compels me to contribute the following: I don’t think kinky sex is any more or less beautiful than regular sex.
Yes: kinky sex has been marginalized, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s wrong. Consequently, I feel kinky sex needs advocacy. I think kink is more common than people realize, and I think that people should be encouraged to explore and embrace their kinks and a safe, constructive way.
But as fun as kinky sex can be, there’s nothing wrong with being satisfied by vanilla sex, either. No matter how much kinky sex needs advocacy, that doesn’t mean we should cast aspersions on vanilla sex (not that we are doing so here, I just felt it needed to be said).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, “If it works, it’s beautiful.” Here, “works” means “is happy and fulfilling for all concerned.” This applies to both kinky sex and vanilla sex. To me, the idea of a vanilla, heterosexual couple breathless and blissful after a mutually satisfying missionary position roll in the proverbial hay is just as beautiful (if slightly more tired and cliche) than all of the wonderful things Ozy described in Ozy’s original post.
@The_L:
You and your partner have my sympathies.
Just an anecdote: when I push my partner’s kink buttons, I do so by “inhabiting” a role. I am not “roleplaying,” I am casting my mind in a mold in which I do my best to think like a certain kind of person (in this case, I’m trying to be what amounts to Cenobite Engineer for my partner =P).
It’s rather like asking, “What would so-and-so do?”
Regrettably, I lack sufficient data to make any but the most general recommendations:
Gently discuss and explore both your limits and your partner’s limits
Communicate regarding the nature of a scene and the manner in which a scene constitutes a special contractually designated space in which kink happens
Consider the possibility that your partner also has to trust you when satisfying fantasies of non-consent: that he has to re-learn how he views you, what your limits are, how tough you are, and what actions he can safely perform
That’s all the advice I can give, I’m afraid. I do hope that wasn’t patronizing. =(
I think at least part of this has to be with the difference between reality and, well, porn. When you see someone being whipped, it’s a much different experience than that of the person being whipped.
Oh hey! I’ve been to Harvard Munch! I bet we know the same person! wheee
Okay, I will play the devils advocate, because sometimes I can be a contrarian asshole, but also because I try to put myself in other’s thought processes to a fault. (This is more about the link that picklefactory posted, and less about the Love and Fidelity article Ozy posted). (And yes, the author has no discussion of non-binary identified people, so I’m translating their language, not implanting my own).
Reiterating picklefactory’s link: BDSM is a culture, but exists within a culture, as do people. In that culture, there is a serious problem with men who enjoy harming women. Anytime people, basically, play at harming women they reinforce the cultural concept that men have a right to actually harm women, therefore that play is not allowed or at least not socially acceptable. This is especially true in the pornography industry. Another portion of the argument is: it is troubling to see people who get off on hurting other people, even when they respect boundaries. This is doubly true when hurter and hurtee line up exactly along the historical poles of exploitation that exist in male-female dynamics
I can’t actually play devil’s advocate, because the author’s argumentative style is full of bad-faith arguments. The author simply decides that male-subs and femdoms aren’t real. The female doms they knew were only doms as sex workers, and the male submissives actually hate women! (No evidence is given for that statement, but building a national-cultural strategy of acceptable sexual practices only on the people you personally know simply will not work).
Beyond that, the sacrifice of the individual to the benefit of society is taken as necessary. Basically, you can’t play, because it influences the non-play actions of others down the road. But there’s an error in that reasoning, in which we ignore the agency of the sadist who engages in non-consensual pain-causing. That person has the ability to not do it. If we use reductio-ad-absurdum, any form of play might be perceived to reinforce the right to commit a non-consensual act of violence or oppression. You must be 100% sober when you have sex, even with your SO of 10 years, as intoxicated sex allows a haven for rapists who want to blur lines of consent. No office nerf-guns, as people die in real gun violence. No tea parties, as they help to perpetuate strict gender roles for women, (with a healthy dose of bourgeois/race privilege heaped in.)
Human sex and sexual desire is complicated, and so the social regulation of sex requires a complex system. These always scare people; even in my field I have to avoid scientific arguments which seek to reduce system to overly-simple states. (And if scientists can’t handle complex systems…) But this battle has to be fought around consent. Once we start putting ourselves into the sexual lives of others, the potential for further ingress is huge, and has been the historical norm. In short, the author doesn’t have to like it that people get off on getting and giving pain, but as long as every one is giving a fully aware, uncoerced consent, than you don’t get a say in it. The continuing conversation on consent from, for example, the Pervocracy is the best.
In conclusion, consent. Consent consent consent. Consent. If you engage in public-visible sex work, especially pornography, be really loud about how you’re consenting.
@Gaius: Not patronizing at all! Thanks!
Part of the problem is that I’m his first everything, and since he’s in his 30′s and has decades of emotional baggage to work through (as do I, but in less-sexy areas), we’ve been sort of taking things one step at a time. The vanilla’s been good though, and we share other fetishes, so I’m happy even if we don’t get into that particular kink.
Their kink is being “anti-kink”. They are into it, and it drives them, as much as our kinks drive us. Their problem isn’t that they have a sexual kink, it’s that they don’t recognize it, and that they try to force it on the rest of us as the “only true way”.
Wonderful job Ozy. Those people were so silly. I’m going to summarize their points.
1) America as a Christian nation must be opposed to all forms of violence. That’s why we don’t have a military or police force. Similarly we are opposed to humiliation which is why T.V. shows that make fun of people like the Daily Show all went bankrupt long ago.
2) BDSM, which plays at those, is close enough to the real deal to be just as problematic. This is similar to how shooting someone with a Nerf gun is nearly as bad as attempted murder.
3) BDSM is bad QED.
Although I really wish people would accept that sexual tastes are just that. Tastets. If Person A offered me form of sex X, I would refuse, and if they tried anyway, I would likely be driven to try and hurt/kill them very viciously. (In self-defense.) But person B offering Y, would be a-okay. We need to accept that these things are arbitrary.