Among other things, one of the reasons BDSM flourished during the AIDS crises was because it was a way to get off without having genital sexual contact. e.g, a couple with whom my ex and I were engaged in a polyamorous relationship were also into 'the scene'. he got off with a collar and a dog dish, having her walk him in public and treat him like a dog.
*le sigh*
As Janet Halley explains what's going on, she draws on Leo Bersani's essay, "Is the Rectum A Grave?" Bersani persuasively argues that sex involves -- and some of us like more than others -- instances in which our ego dissolves. I suspect a lot of people are familiar with this in the language of US romance: "Oh, the sex was so great, I completely forgot I existed and we become one."
Bersani uses the figure of the homo "legs high in the air, unable to refuse the suicidal ecstasy of being a gay man".
Sexuality, she says, involves putting into continual play (quoting Bersani) "the source and locus of every individual's original experience of power (and of powerlessness) in the world: the human body." (The acts of mastering one's own body --eating, sitting up, crawling, walking, shitting, peeing -- are the primoridal experiences associated with coming to have a sense of separate self that is increasingly aware of the seaparteness of the self from others.
As such, sexuality (not just physical sex) involves the play between power and powerlessness -- the desire for both the mastery of the ego and the desire to experience a loss of that ego (its dissolution).
Bersani again: "that sexual pleasure occurs whenever a certain threshold of intensity is reached, when the organization of the self is momentarily disturbed by sensations or affective processes somehow beyond those connected with psychic organization'
(Note: many of my BDSM friends express what they desire as sensory play, often in the form of a repetition and increase in intensity, a ritual through which they explore their own body and their own response, the sensory rhythms of whatever turns them on performing the functions of rhythmic vanilla sex.)
In short: bersani is arguing that the center of sexuality IS masochism where masochism refers not to pain but to submission -- relinquishment of the sense of mastery over one's body and the world.
Shorter: to be sex positive is to be shame affirmative, recognizing not just the variety of sexual practices in the world, but to recognize that there is a dark side to sexuality: a desire for a kind of death of the self.
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>On this listserve, it seems to me it's only Charles now who isn't sold
>>on BDSM. :-> But you know some people feel cooler when there are
>>acting as if they were in a minority even where they are the majority.
yeah. it's all about cool for people. they aren't making up being treated as a minority -- by feminists or the left. and where they are tolerated they are, as Gayle Rubin pointed out over two decades ago, STILL the subject of condescension:
"Yet this defense of political rights is linked to an implicit system of ideological condescension" So, now that they are cool, they get treated to more condescension? Sweet.
Chuck wrote:
>There is an assumption in this discussion that BDSM/kink revolves around
>pain and pleasure. That is true of some of it, but there are many other
>factors involved. This discussion hasn't even touched on the issues of
>power, control, domination, submission, play and other factors involved in
>BDSM/kink roleplaying and sex. I think leftists do notice these factors
>and read them too literally.
As some of my friends in the BDSM community point out, some of it simply involves repetition: the enjoyment of sensory play.
At 06:59 PM 1/8/2007, John Thornton wrote:
>He's not confusing sex and violence he is having a difficult time
>differentiating between coercive violent acts perpetrated sexually and
>consensual sexual acts that appear violent.
>The point still stands. Many people make this same mistake. If BDSM
>practitioners want their practices accepted by those in the mainstream
>they will have to deal with the fact that many people hold this same
>erroneous belief. Telling everyone how ridiculous the idea is does nothing
>to dissuade them of this opinion.
It isn't incumbent upon marginalized to explain jack to anyone. It's a standard principle of the left re: the obligations of the oppressed to those who occupy positions of privilege. It is their gift to you if they bother to education, not their obligation. it is your obligation as someone who uphold freedom and justice to do _your_ homework about any group that has been culturally and socially marginalized to ask yourself: since marginalization of a group is almost always about enforcing arbitrary norms on a group of people in the interest of entrenched, already existing power relations, then maybe I'm wrong and I ought to look into it, reading the material these folks have already produced.
Sort of like not making dumb comments about native americans, etc.