This is part one of two. Two's already started, so it'll be up later today. If your read this (there are like, three of you? Which is awesome! Hi handful of people! Thank you thank you!), keep in mind there's a second part on it's way shortly.
There's an argument that comes up every few months on the BDSM community subreddit that I'm a part of (it's here, and also in the resources section). It's a debate that I'm sure comes up in lots of kink communities, online or not. It usually starts with a question or a story about a bad experience during play with a particular person, and then the community continues to discuss abuse, abuse and BDSM, and what the appropriate course of action is when it happens. What is abuse? Is it more likely here than elsewhere? Who do you tell? Who do you not tell? Who's place is it to talk about? What responsibilities do you, as the experiencing-of-this-bad-thing person, have to tell and/or to not tell? Where does accountability stop and the rumor mill start? How do we as a community treat reputation, and the idea of reputation?
It's an interesting argument, and one I've participated in before on an... intellectual basis, I suppose. But I had a conversation this weekend that brought it a little closer to home. And I don't think my views have changed, but they've certainly gotten much clearer.
I work for a festival each summer, a big hippie party in the woods. And although I'd known this woman in years prior, we had a kink-recognition moment this winter that was pretty great. "Wait, did I see you at kink fest?" "Wait, you went to kink fest?" "Wait, yay!" "Oh man, yay yay!" The conversation devolved (or evolved?) pretty quickly into techniques and rope preferences, and I was happy to find a kinky friend in this other part of my life.
But, as I said, that sort of changed this weekend (not the friend part; the knowing her better part. As in, I got to). We were walking around the grounds of the festival, taking a break from working, and we headed towards a part of the grounds where her ex hung around sometimes. And Hannah (not her real name, but various places on the internet have told me it means "grace," or "beauty," or "passion," all of which this woman is) couldn't keep going. And her kids went ahead with another friend of ours, and we hung back to talk. She told me about him, this man, who'd been the first person to introduce her to BDSM. This man who had two sides to him, one that was sweet and benevolent and caring, all of which she learned quickly was a pile of crap. This man who was emotionally abusive. This man who, over the years they were together, took that emotional and psychological abuse to the physical place. This man who lied about his STD status. This man who eventually choked her out without her permission, who hit her in nonconsensual ways, who manipulated abuse under the guise of BDSM. This man who ignored her safeword. This man who raped her, and who she knows from her own experience and those of others, is a fairly terrible partner. This man who puts up a very good front. This man who, she's learned in the last year, has done this other women before. This man who, she's probably sure, will do this to other women again.
I'm not going to go into a lot of specifics (I have her permission to talk about it here, but they're just not needed). We hugged, and she cried, and I cried with her. I cried for a lot of reasons, and then I drove the two hours home and did a lot of thinking.
I usually hate it when the "How is BDSM like abuse?" questions comes up, because I see (and much of the BDSM community sees) little to no link between abusive (read: actually abusive) relationships, and what we do in kink. But in this sort of situation, the question seems relevant. It has very little to do with healthy kinky relationships, I think, and more to do with the physical action of what we do and its proximity to what actual abuse looks like.
Physical abuse, in non-kinky relationships, is usually distinct. As in, the physical language between partners doesn't usually involve pain, either giving or receiving. In kink, that changes. And the line between "ow, that amazing, ow yes please thank you Sir," and "ow, stop, ow, safeword, ow, red," becomes a matter of consent, and a matter of enjoyment. I like this about kink; I like that there is no action that is okay, even if the person didn't like it (read: "Well, I mean, I was kissing her, I thought she liked it;" as opposed to "Well, I was hitting her, I thought she liked it." You've got to be much more explicit about one than the other). In this way, it's not so different from the non-kink world (or rather, not so different than I'd like to think the Whole Big World could be, one day). As in, anything without consent becomes exactly that: nonconsensual, abuse, sexual assault, and rape. Doesn't matter what the initial physical interaction was; now, it's the not the same. Not even in the same universe.
Those last two paragraphs are meant to acknowledge, and then put aside, the idea that abuse is easier in BDSM relationships. I understand where that idea can come from, but I don't agree with it. If anything, the kink community is more of consent-culture oriented community than the Outside World. But I do understand how it could look that way. To those people, I say: look harder.
I've never been in a abusive relationship, kinky or otherwise, so I'm not speaking from personal experience. But hearing about the psychological and emotional abuse that happened to Hannah hit me just as hard as hearing about the physical assaults. I don't want to set up a kinky vs. non-kinky dichotomy here, but I imagine they were harder for her than might be for other people involved in non-kinky relationships. Not to say that abuse isn't hard, and terrible, in any situation. But I've found, in my friends and in my relationships, that kink often has a great deal of trust and open communication involved, much more so than many non-kinky relationships I've been involved in. So maybe it's wrong to say that abuse is worse in kink, and more correct to say abuse is harder in relationships built on trust and vulnerability. Again, it goes back to the consent-culture idea; one is more aware, because the things we play with require it, than the other. And with kink, the trust involved can relate directly to trusting someone physically, with your body, and emotionally, with your vulnerability, in a very direct way. In kink, when I play, I offer up the smallest, most defenseless parts of myself, and I ask my partner to hold them, to play with them. I do this because it's fun for me; I do this because it's fun for him; he does it for similar reasons. But there is risk, physical and emotional, that I don't think is as often encountered in non-kink relationships, simply because there's not an interest. Do I think all non-kinky relationships are trivial and trust-less? Not at all. I just think it isn't as often confronted as directly as it is in kink.
Brief caveat: I'm not talking simply about play, or play parties, or casual kink encounters, if you will. I'm talking about emotionally involved kinky relationships. Just... a note about seriousness, I suppose.
What I'm trying to say (and I'm saying that a lot in this post.. maybe it's a difficult subject? It's a muddled post, that's for sure) is that BDSM abuse can hit much closer to home, particularly because of that line that exists, because the materials we play with (emotional, physical, psychological) are closer to the materials of abuse than, say, a non-kink relationship. To this point, Hannah spoke to me about how confusing her physical reactions were when this would happen. How her body didn't understand, that these were her partner's hands, that these were actions they'd played with in a happy way so many times, suddenly turned sinister. How hard it was to feel that, and all of the fear and betrayal and panic, and how lost it left her. And when you're turned on by pain, like I am, like she is, it's really, really hard when your body thinks Bad Pain is Good Pain. A mixed message from beneath your skin. When she told about this, that's when I cried with her.
And on top of everything, she's confronted with him. In communal situations, like this festival, like the local BDSM scene. And there stands the question of what, exactly, she should do about it.
Back in a bit with ruminations on that question, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment