Although I've written before about some things that irk me about Dan Savage, I keep listening to his podcast. Partly because he's says great things much of the time, and partly because, as a sex nerd, I like to listen to other sex nerds.
On his most recent podcast, a caller asked about whether power exchange was at the core of all fetishes, and remarked that he saw, under the wide umbrella of what we call deviance or kink or BDSM, common themes of power exchange, control, etc. I'm inclined to agree with him (and even to take it a step further: to say that sex, even the most obviously non-kinky sex, has elements of power exchange somewhere in there), although that's not exactly what I wanted to write about here.
Savage invites an author and researcher on the program to talk about the caller's question, one Jesse Bering. And the conversation didn't go the way I expected. Here's some of it, transcribed:
Bering: He's referring to sadomasochism essentially. I wouldn't say that sadomasochism is a common feature of all the fetishes or all the paraphilias. I think it's a... it's a subtype in itself.
Savage: Don't you think that so many fetishes are, at bottom, about power and control and dominance? I mean, even a foot fetishist -
B: Not really.
S: No?
B: I mean, I think the argument would have to made. I think there are foot fetishists that are also sadomasochistic, but I don't think they necessarily have to go together.
[conversation veers into fetish as a term, etc., and how defining between "fetish" as a term is important]
B: But something that happens to sort of turn you on or makes your arousal more exacerbated is very distinct, very different from having sort of a clinically diagnosable paraphilia or fetish. Umm, so the terminology is slippery, but I think it's important as well.
S: Okay, so if not all paraphilias and fetishes involve power, why is it that so many people's fetishes and kinks do involve power?
B: Well I do think that the sadomasochistic component is a very strong one, and it does underly a lot of human sexuality, um, you know, typically, you wouldn't consider someone to be a sadist unless they're really sort of genuinely causing harm and distress to somebody who's not giving consent. I mean, they really take the pleasure in the fact that they're causing somebody else pain and suffering. But most people who are sadomasochistic, the sort of S&M, BDSM community, you know, they're sort of what John Money, a psychologist, called "velvet dragons." They're sort of playing with simulated pain. Very few people are sort of genuinely committed to the role of being a Sadist. Or, you know, they have limits to the extent to which they're agreeable to being the masochist in the interaction. Um, you know, a woman who's sort of biting into her husbands rear end and calling him a sissy little bitch or something like that, that's not really a sadist, that's sort of playful -
S: But that's sort of an arousing power game, and so many people's kinks and paraphilias sort of tap into that, those arousing power games. Does that have something to do with the fact that we're just monkeys in shoes, or that ...[something I couldn't decipher]... we're deeply hierarchical primates,and playing with hierarchies, and flipping roles and inverting power dynamics is inherently arousing, gets the blood going?
B: I do think that, I mean clearly what these types of interactions suggest is the eroticization of power differential, and you can change roles in the bedroom where it's... not as easy to do that, in your everyday life. So, I do think it's striking at some core feature of human sexuality, and getting into some animalistic aspects of our underlying psychology. And you know, you do find all sorts of variants of power differentials like this all across different societies and human cultures.
So first, I need to point out that Bering is using the term "sadomasochistic" in both a confusing and vaguely old-school fashion. As in the first printing of The Bottoming Book (of which I'm a proud owner) and many early books about kink, the term "S&M" or "sadomasochism" is used to refer to all things kinky; power exchange, playing with pain, sissy play, puppy play, whatever you want to put in that category. Now a days, with the coining of terms like "kink" and "BDSM," "sadomasochism" has, from what I can tell, returned to it's original meaning: namely, referring to sadism and masochism. Referring to pain. And while I think the history is probably where Bering got the use of his term, it's confusing when he conflates sadomasochism with power exchange, or general kink, over and over. He's not exactly wrong, so much as vague, and from someone who goes on to point out how important it is to define our terms, I find that sort of funny. Especially if when that someone is a sex researcher speaking as a guest on a show about sex.
Second, there's a polarization that happens in Bering's language, and it's pretty disappointing to hear it, especially from someone who's writing books about perverts. It's when Bering starts to talk about who's really a sadist, and characterizes the S&M that happens in the BDSM communities as "playing with simulated pain."
What he's trying to do, I think, isn't really so bad. Differentiating kinksters from scary sociopaths is great, and I understand that, in our current society, it's still a necessary distinction to make (to say nothing of the fact that it's true, we're not). But what happens, when Bering tries to say this, is that kink (the kink that's risk-aware, that's consensual) gets characterized as sort of meaningless. Bering uses words and phrases like "simulated," "[not] genuinely committed," "not a real sadist," (and I'll leave a rant about what makes a sadist "real" to the side, for now, although I think it's mostly that Bering's using a different definition of "sadist" than most sadists I know. Again, define your terms). I think there's a phrase pretty early on in the conversation that sums up an often unnoticed, prevalent attitude in so, so much of the mainstream view of kink.
"But something that happens to sort of turn you on or makes your arousal more exacerbated is very distinct, very different from having sort of a clinically diagnosable paraphilia or fetish."Throughout the conversation, these are the two options that Bering offers: you can have a silly little fetish that "exacerbates" (as if sexuality some kind of rash) your arousal, or you can be clinically ill. If you choose the first, your interest in kink/a fetish item/power exchange can't really be taken seriously, or isn't really important, or is just playing and look at the goofy little kinkster. Choose the second, and you're ill, and there's something wrong with you, and you need help.
And this is the option given, if you've got kinky proclivities, by much of the world. I don't think Bering really meant anything by it, and it was great that Savage pushed him to explain why, then, power exchange is such a big part of human sexuality (or, in his own way, challenging Bering on his de-legitimizing language and attitudes). But I don't think that excuses pointing out the lack of a third option here, the option that I and many lovely perverts I know tend to choose.
That this way of expressing ourselves can, all at once, be deeply felt, serious, playful, emotional, honest, vulnerable, and healthy. That the presence of consent doesn't make the pain any less real (I mean, has Bering ever seen someone take a long, hard, consensual beating? There's nothing simulated about it), and that the "deviant" nature of this kind of sex doesn't make it any less than other kinds of sex.
Basically, that I can say: masochism and submission are essential parts of my sexuality, and that doesn't make me sick. Yes, I need this to really get off (chosen intentionally: need); yes, this is the most true way I can express myself sexually; and no, that isn't a problem.
As in a recent post (where I go more in-depth about silly vs. serious sex and kink) I'm not trying to say that any sex (much less all kinky sex) needs to be super duper serious all the time. I'm just saying that people who pontificate about how it can't be serious, or if it is, it must be a diagnosable pathology, need to shut up already. Because, as the abbreviations used above denote (and to go with the ever-present acronym tendency of the kinky world), that's a bunch of BS.
No comments:
Post a Comment