BDSM has gotten mainstreamed, says Margot D. Weiss:
<blockquote>Mainstreaming Kink The Politics of BDSM Representation in U.S. Popular Media
Contributors: Margot D. Weiss, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Sweet Briar College Journal Title: Journal of Homosexuality Volume: 50 Issue: 2/3 ISSN: 0091-8369 Pub Date: 5/2/2006 Page Range: 103 - 132
Abstract: This article explores nonpractitioners' understandings of and responses to the increasingly mainstream representation of BDSM in U.S. media, focusing on the film Secretary (Shainberg, 2002). Survey, focus group, and interview data indicate that popular images of SM promote the acceptance and understanding of sexual minorities through two mechanisms: acceptance via normalization, and understanding via pathologizing. Rather than challenging the privileged status of normative sexuality, these mechanisms reinforce boundaries between protected/privileged and policed/pathological sexualities. Instead of celebrating increased representation, this article argues that political energy might be directed toward the desire that the popularity ofBDSMrepresentations signifies: the desire to encounter authentic, undisciplined, and noncommodified representations that would transgress the sexual norms of American postmodern consumer culture.</blockquote>
Now that BDSM is mainstream, what to do?
In response to my classified political ad (cf. <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2006w30/msg00123.htm>), Doug said to me, "[I]t sure seems like you're creating a highly (homo)eroticized, which suggests exoticized, fantasy Islam." Indeed, when I take a break from my "Henry Kissinger of the Left" act, I consciously and wholeheartedly embrace this creation of mine (cf. <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060731/015105.html>).
Very queer, and very eighteenth-century. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>