UNsafe and HARDLY consensual: Arguments not to defend BDSM with

(Warning: Some links and the picture on this blog entry is NSFW. Trigger warnings for rape and other forms of sexual violence also apply to the contents of this blog post, and the links.)

You may have heard of people defending BDSM. Perhaps you have a friend who is into being a sub, and her words make you think she is okay. Perhaps you yourself consider getting involved. But she is most likely not as okay as she claims, and it a dangerous world to be involved in. Please remember that with this article, I do not want to shame bottom partners. I want their friends, and the police, to be willing to help them.

Arguments that are not adequate to defend BDSM

1) “It is consensual”:

a) In a study of the BDSM community, 1 in 3 kinksters reported to having had their consent violated. If that doesn’t sound very high, remember that this sample includes both dominants and submissives, of both sexes. The amount of consent violations among submissive women is in all likelihood a lot higher. Read, for example this testimony from Kitty Stryker: (Bold added, italics hers)

“When I start to think of the number of times I have been cajoled, pressured, or forced into sex that I did not want when I came into “the BDSM community”, I can’t actually count them. And I never came out about it before, not publicly, for a variety of reasons – I blamed myself for not negotiating enough, or clearly, or for not sticking to my guns, or I didn’t want to be seen as being a drama queen or kicking up a fuss. Plus, …I didn’t feel traumatized because it happened so bloody often that it was just a fact of being a submissive female…

As I reflected on the number of times I’ve had fingers in my cunt that I hadn’t consented to, or been pressured into a situation where saying “no” was either not respected or not an option, or said that I did not want a certain kind of toy used on me which was then used, I’m kind of horrified. When I identified as a submissive female, I was told that using a safe word indicated a lack of trust, or that if I was a “real” submissive I wouldn’t need to have limits… I had multiple times when I took more pain that I could handle because I developed a fear of safewording, since it was so rarely treated with respect.

I never thought of any of it as sexual assault, even though it was all non-consensual, because I blamed myself for attracting the wrong sort of Dominant, for not being good enough at negotiating. Speaking to other women, I discovered how many of them had similar stories that they laughed off, because if we stopped and really took it seriously the community we clung to would no longer feel safe, and we didn’t know where else to go…

How on earth can we possibly say to society at large that BDSM is not abuse when we so carefully hide our abusers and shame our abused into silence?… I can only speak for myself, but as a fat, insecure girl coming into the BDSM scene, whatever rhetoric I was told, actions taught me that my value was in my sexuality and my willingness to give it up. A good submissive, you see, is quiet, passive, and obedient…

Of course [sociopaths walk among us]- we treat that kind of sociopathic behaviour as dangerously sexycool. This creates a situation where predators are allowed to continue to be a part of the community, often an honored part, while past victims keep their mouths shut and hope that it doesn’t happen again to someone else…

… I have yet to meet a female submissive who hasn’t had some sort of sexual assault happen to her.

Other commenters on the linked study give other reasons why the number of violations is probably higher than 33%, namely that the questions did not include things never asked in negotiations and therefore not consented to, while during scenes the sub is physically not in a position to utter a safe word.

Conclusion: BDSM is very often not consensual.

b) The kink community has a misleading definition of consent.

* Human rights supporters believe a power difference is problematic for consent, and frown on, for example, boss-employee or therapist-patient relationships. BDSM is about power difference – Master/ slave, free/ bound, holding the whip/ feeling the whip, etc. * Human rights promote enthusiastic consent. Kinksters say that when someone is crying/ screaming/ feeling pain or fear (the opposite of enthusiastic participation), but is not safewording, it is OK to continue. * Human righters promote ongoing consent – if she said “yes” yesterday, but “no” today, her partner may not do it today. Kinksters talk of “consensual non-consent” – if she said “yes” yesterday, but “no” today, her partner may do it today. * Conscious consent means the partner has to be aware (not asleep or under the influence of drugs, for example) and capable of stopping what is happening to his/ her body. In what the BDSM community call “subspace”, conscious consent may not be possible. * The UN say that nobody could consent to torture, kinksters say that people could.

c) Consent is not enough to make something right. Some things that people consent to (for example drugs or self-mutilation) are bad choices, which can be criticized.

 

2) “But this is safe and sane!”:

Safe is “free from the possibility of getting harmed or hurt”. If you want me to believe that BDSM is safe, you have to convince me that bondage, discipline, domination/ submission, and sadism/ masochism does no damage or pain of any kind to the self-image, the image of other people, the body, the interpersonal relationships, the mind, or the acknowledgement of real moral values, or the chance to get justice in a rape case, or the general image of women’s place in society, of the submissive, or the dominant, or the reader of BDSM blogs and websites, or the broader society. The BDSM community themselves say it is not safe. This post has a lot of links to where kinksters themselves talk of consent violations, cover-ups for abusers, and how the BDSM scene draws abusive types.

If you want to tell me it is sane, you have to convince me it is totally sane to want bondage instead of freedom, domination instead of you and others each getting their will, or pain (I don’t just mean physical pain, but also the mental pain of being degraded and treated as less than) – in yourself or your partner – instead of wanting yourself and others to have a healthy, non-hurting, autonomous body. mind and heart. And sane things could still harm someone. I can think why a sane man would want to hijack a luxury car, but that does not make hijacking right.

 

3) Sub: “But I do not see it as abuse”:

Many abuse victims do not know they are being abused. Their communities or the abusers tell them that it is not abuse, that they should be thankful for what they have, etc. To quote one abused woman:

Sometimes it takes time away from “normal” to see that it is indeed not normal after all. After 3 months of separation from my husband, I have new insight as to what normal is. When you are in a mentally or emotionally abusive marriage, sometimes you don’t know that your normal is not normal after all.

 

4) “But subs like it/ crave it”

a) Desiring something does not make it good. For example, selling heroin is harmful, even though addicts crave it. It destroys the one who gives in to the craving.

b) It is often not true that the sub enjoys BDSM – for example, a punishment to discipline the sub will be a punishment precisely because (s)he does not enjoy it.

It is not rare for subs to be loaded up with narcotic painkillers at BDSM events – precisely because they do not like the pain. Some even dissociate (subspace) because they need their minds to get out of the horrors of the scene.

Many subs speak of experiencing negative emotions like fear during scenes, and actually enjoy the feeling of relief from getting out of BDSM situations afterwards.

Sometimes subs are truly unhappy in BDSM. See, for example, the photo on the left: BDSM people tend to feel that nothing is wrong with this picture, if she consented. They are perfectly fine with scenarios where the bottom partner is visibly unhappy and crying, as long as, for some reason, the unhappy partner is not drawing a line and saying “no” to the unhappiness. If it is evidently true that some BDSM behaviour is experienced very negatively, I cannot see how anyone with a good heart could find BDSM acceptable without any cognitive dissonance.

c) Subs often “want” the opposite of what they want: They actually want kindness, tenderness and reassuring words of encouragement and praise like everyone else, but they feel they will be in a better position to enjoy having these needs met if they start with rough treatment and negative messages. They take that risk, in the hope that a scene, where they live themselves into the bad, will end with the good.
One dom claims that every sub he ever met was conflicted over her wants, with a part of her that finds her BDSM desires deviant. Between those two conflicting and opposite desires of the sub, the dom chooses to encourage, and act according to, the deviant one. This seem to say a lot about the character of the dominant partner.

d) If it was about the sub’s pleasure, orgasm denial would never be involved.

 

5) “You don’t respect the agency of women who choose this.”

Firstly, multiple testimonies tell that women who are bottom partners experience many things they do not choose. As such, they did not have the “agency to choose” it.

As for the things that are chosen, here are the words of Diana E. H. Russell, Ph.D., Founding Board Member of AntiPornography.org:

The defense that sadomasochism is consensual behavior does not make it feminist. Women have been reared to be submissive, to anticipate and even want domination by men. But wanting or consenting to domination and humiliation does not make it non-oppressive. It merely demonstrates how deep and profound the oppression is. Many young Brahmin women in the nineteenth century “voluntarily” jumped into the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. What feminist would argue that these women were not oppressed? It is not unusual for patients to consent to sexual relationships with their psychotherapists, or employees with their employers, or students with their teachers. But such consent does not mean that power has not been abused.

 

6) “What you described is abuse, not BDSM:”

Here is a definition of domestic abuse:

“Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members. This can encompass, but is not limited to, the following types of abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional. Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour. Coercive behaviour is: an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.”

BDSM often include “physical and other forms of violence”. (Participants in this sexual kink may not like the word violence, but per definition it fits.) It is no surprise that it does, because sadism is part of the name of BDSM, and thus a component that may or may not be part of such a relationship/ scene. It includes many types of “acts to make a partner subordinate”, it often includes bondage which obviously “deprive”, for the time of bondage, “of the means for independence, resistance and escape”. psychological methods – telling a (often very young) woman she is no more than an object, and she exists to please her man/ men in general – often deprive women of the mental ability to resist. Dominance often amounts to “regulating the sub’s everyday behaviour”. Much of BDSM include acts to “punish”, and many subs describe feeling fear (being “frightened”) during scenes.

Some warning signs of abusers include: Controlling behaviour, “playful” use of force in sex, verbal abuse; rigid sex roles (man above, woman lower); a sense of entitlement (many doms say they “deserve” the worshipful treatment the sub gives them); and hierarchical self-esteem (needing to be “better” than another to feel good about himself). Most of these warning signs of potential abuse are present in what I hear of almost every BDSM relationship.

As such, BDSM and domestic abuse are not mutually exclusive. Also note that the idea of consent and non-consent is not part of the criteria for determining if something is domestic abuse. As such, consent in BDSM does not exclude the relationship from being abusive.

If anything among sadism, bondage (depriving of the means for resistance and escape), dom/ sub and master/ slave (controlling behaviour), discipline (control and punishment) – the very definition of the BDSM acronym – is abusive, BDSM is inherently abusive.

 

7) “All communities have abusers”

True, but the BDSM community is the only one …:

a) with “sadism” in the acronym;

b) which brings together as a feature and not a bug
(i) very submissive people – people who would struggle to refuse mistreatment (for example those who allow unjust punishments they dislike) –
with
(ii) people who like to treat others as slaves and objects;

c) where you know, from the fact that someone is a member, he approves of “playful” use of force in sex (using force “playfully” in sex is one of the qualities by which abusers are recognized);

d) which tells some of its participants that they exist to please, that a “true submissive” does not assert her own will, that using a safe word indicates lack of trust, etc.

 

8) “The sub holds all the power”

(a) One partner holding all the power is exactly what makes BDSM problematic. It is the power imbalance that makes society frown on sexual relationships between bosses and employees, teachers and students, and therapists and patients. The power difference is even a large part of the problem with pedophilia. If the BDSM community uses one partner holding all the power as a defense, they don’t even understand, much less share, the values of the broader community.

(b) What they literally mean, of course, is that subs have the right to say “no”, or a safeword that stands in for “no.” But bodily autonomy is a basic human right. If the BDSM community sees this as a special and generous power privilege given by BDSM, they don’t see bodily autonomy as a human right.

 

9) “BDSM is based on trust”

Trust is not always a good thing. If you trust the wrong person with your money, you end up bankrupt. If you climb into a car with someone whom you wrongly trust to bring you home safe, you could end up dead. And vanilla people who can be trusted to not even start doling out pain and degradation is more trustworthy than sadists who can be trusted only to stop somewhere in doling out pain and degradation.

 

10) “It is relaxing to sometimes leave decision-making to your partner”

Many people outside the kink community agree. But you could also leave decision-making to someone who would never dream of tying up, hitting, punishing or objectifying, in which case it would not be BDSM.

 

11) “I don’t feel like this is something bad”:

I will quote CS. Lewis on this:

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both bad and evil: bad people do not know about either.

People do not regard these things as morally bad, because their souls become used to how BDSM ritually breaks down some of its participants.

　

12) “You don’t understand BDSM/ you should talk to more BDSM people/ read more about BDSM.”

The more I hear about BDSM, the more I know about the dangers of the scene. (Here, here, here, here, here, here and here, for example. ) I think it is the participants who don’t understand.

The map of a forest is better understood by riding in a small plane over it, than by standing inside the forest looking at the trees around you. Similarly, it is sometimes easier to believe how tragically broken the pain and degradation in BDSM is when looking at it from the outside, if you are not trying to get acceptance from that community.

 

13) “It takes strength to submit.”

Have you ever, as a little kid, submitted to what your parents make you wear/ where your parents made you go/ what your parents wanted you to eat? Did you start doing it only after you developed strength of your own, while never submitting as a baby? Have you ever submitted to the goverment asking you for taxes you do not want to pay? Did you only submit/ yield to those taxes because you are at least as strong as the goverment? Did you yield to someone cutting ahead of you in traffic, or being pinned to the ground in an informal wrestling match? Did you only yield because your car is stronger than the car cutting in ahead (you’ll never yield to a big truck), and because you are stronger than the person pinning you down in wrestling?

Conclusion: Submission does not take strength. And even if it did, why is this a defence when the strength is used to put the strong person in with sadists?

 

14) “You (who oppose BDSM) are judgmental!”

This red herring tries to take the attention from BDSM to the person who dislike it.

a) Judgement is not, in itself, a bad thing: Legal judgment of a dangerous criminal can keep him out of society, judgment in a civil case can lead to retribution, judging a certain act as dangerous could keep you safe, judging some acts – for example child molestation – as bad could help you to protect your loved ones.

b) This accusation is hypocritical: Not only does the BDSM community use judgmental terms like “wh*re” and “sl*t” for subs, doms go as far as actually doling out real punishment (“discipline”). To punish someone is the ultimate form of judging.

 

15) “BDSM sadism is not the same as clinical sadism”

a) Everyday sadists, who do not qualify for Sadistic Personality Disorder (what kinksters mean with clinical sadism) should not be trusted, warns psychologists:

“Within their own families and in the workplace these people cannot be trusted, No one can ever feel safe with them. Therefore, they do not have real relationships. They engage by exploiting, manipulating, and using other people as a means to their own end. The best thing to do is keep reasonable distance from these people… Never do business or get close to one of these people. They will always take you down.” – psychologist Fran Walfish, Psy.D., a family therapist and author in Beverly Hills, Calif.

b) By the clinical definition of sadism, a BDSM sadist can be as bad as a sadist with Sadistic Personality Disorder, but the mere fact that the violence, cruelty, etc. was for sexual reasons will put him out of the Sadistic Personality Disorder diagnosis. See this list with the diagnostic criteria on the page I link to, and concentrate on the last point:

Sadistic Personality Disorder Diagnostic Criteria
The DSM-III-R criteria for diagnosing SPD are presented below:
A pervasive model of cruel, aggressive and demeaning behavior that begins by early adulthood, and indicated by repeated occurrence of a minimum of 4 of the following:
Have used violence or physical cruelty for establishing dominance within a relationship, not just to achieve some non-interpersonal goal, like striking someone for robbing him or her
Humiliated or demeaned people in front of others
Has behaved with someone under his supervision unusually harshly in the name of discipline (for example, a child, prisoner, student or patient)
Takes pleasure in or is amused by the physical or psychological suffering of others, even including animals
Lied to other people for causing harm or inflicting pain on them, not just to achieve a definite goal
Uses intimidation or terror to make other people do things that he or she wants them to do
Restricting the autonomy of the other people within a close relationship
Has a fascination towards violence, martial arts, weapons, injuries, and/or torture
The behavioral patterns listed under A have not been directed towards only one person and has not been solely done for achieving sexual arousal (i.e., sexual sadism).

But violence, physical cruelty, domination, humiliation, suffering, etc. does not become harmless just because the context is sexual. It just stops to be defined by the term “Sadistic Personality Disorder”.

 

16) “This is a matter of personal taste. I like it, you do not, what is the issue?”

If sexual violence is a matter of personal taste, these two people are equally right:

She: “I want to be treated with love and respect, and treat my partner the same way.” He: “I want to choke you, beat you black and blue, treat you like a slave and an object, while you call me master.”

Personal taste, right? If she thinks he is being kinky she should compromise on this, right?

If their desires are mere personal taste, they should compromise in a relationship: She should accept being beaten and choked half as much, or half as often, as he would like to do it.
There are women – and perhaps even men – who are tolerating violence today because they feel it would be bigoted to protest against the “personal taste” of their partners.

 

17) “All BDSM is not like that! Master and me …[details of mild BDSM scene]”

Arsenic is not proven to be healthy when you tell me of someone who ingested a microscopic amount and survived. Ditto BDSM.

 

18) “It is a fantasy, not reality”

The pain is real, the punishments are real, the powerlessness of the bondage is real.

And kinksters really fetishize the thought of rape, torture, sexism and slavery. These things exist in real life and should be opposed, not made sexy.

 

19) “But there are female doms/ gay BDSM too!”

The majority of doms are male and the majority of subs female. And even when the sexes are the same for both sub and dom, or reversed, either:

a) sexism is still promoted, in things like male symbolism (for example strap-ons) for the dominant, or the sub being insulted for not being masculine enough. (Masculinity is seen as a reason to be treated well, lacking it as a reason for being mistreated.) Male “subs” are more likely to have a paid domme (paid to do exactly as they say) instead of being in a relationship with someone who comes with her own needs and desires. As such, even so-called femdom is usually about catering to male needs.

OR

b) all the other evils of sadism and dominating another human stays the same, except that this minority of BDSM does not, like the majority, promote sexism.

2o) “It is like watching horror movies.”

In horror movies, normal people pick the side of the victim and next potential victim, and their fear is because they do not want the psychopath/ zombie/ monster to hurt or kill anyone else.
In BDSM, the side of the sadist is chosen, he is allowed/ asked to act out rather than stopped. The pain and fear of real humans are minimized and rationalized: “It is okay because she asked for it.”
This is the exact opposite of how a horror movie is watched.

21) “But the unpleasantness ends in orgasm”

(To clarify: This is not something BDSM people actually say, but how “but she enjoys it” would probably have been worded if kinksters used literal language.)

That makes it even worse: If you end unpleasantness with orgasm, the brain releases chemicals, which, in future, strengthens the relationship in your brain between unpleasantness and sexual release. The victim will be more likely to tolerate suffering in future, and the perpetrator more likely to cause suffering, if the association between sexual release and violence is strengthened.

22) “What people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is no concern of yours.”

a) BDSM is not limited to bedrooms. It is discussed on the Internet. It thus affects the views young people have of sexuality, teaching them sex is violent and violence is sexy.

b) Even if it was actually limited to a bedroom, and a particular kink couple would never discuss BDSM on the Internet or with anyone else, things which happens in the privacy of bedrooms regularly affects society, for example:

> People get conceived in bedrooms, and every single human affects society in some way.
> People contract STDs in bedrooms, and health issues affects society.
> People cheat on their partners in bedrooms. Marital health affects society.
> People get raped in bedrooms. Mental health and happiness affects society.

Society does have an interest in it when someone gets affected, even when it happens in the privacy of a bedroom.

23) “I/ They do it for the endorphin rush.”

If an endorphin rush was the real reason, I would have expected a lot of people tolerating physical pain, but no bondage, nor dominance, punishments, insults or degradation. But these same subs who tolerate pain usually also tolerate these other violent aspects. This gives a clue that this is about sadists desiring to hurt their partners, therefore grooming the subs to accept all sorts of violence – not about the desires of individuals who happen to have a large affinity for endorphin.

 

 

————–

Note:

I used to have this blog entry open for comments. I changed that, because the majority of BDSM commenters do not stay within my commenting guidelines, and I often had to delete them. In other words, they disrespect boundaries.