One of the criticisms that gets leveled at BDSM players is the claim that BDSM is violence and that it reinforces social oppressions such as sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. There’s even a Facebook group called the Sex-Positive Leftists Critical of BDSM. In my experience, these sorts of arguments often have just enough accuracy in some of their claims that it’s hard to tease out the distortions, misunderstandings, and plain old lies. This can be really challenging, especially for newcomers to the world of kink, because it can be quite shaming to read that someone thinks that your desires and fantasies are rooted in oppression. So I’m going to take a look at some of the claims that these folks make and offer a different perspective.
Before I get into that, though, I want to start by saying that in most of the anti-BDSM writing that I’ve come across, it’s rare to see language that reflects the diversity of human sexuality. Whenever I hear someone talk about sex as if everyone has the same desires or experiences, I take it with a grain of salt. It’s simply more accurate to use “some/many/most” language because there’s nothing about sex that everyone experiences in the same way. So for anyone to call themselves “sex-positive” and then use language that rests on an assumption that people are the same is, I think, a contradiction, and I see it in most of the anti-BDSM blogs that I’ve seen
One of the common strategies used by anti-BDSM folks is the attempt to define certain acts as “moderate” (and, therefore, OK) and others as “extreme” (and, therefore, problematic). For example:
Light spanking, biting, hair-pulling, and other mild acts done without the intention of establishing dynamics of dominance/submission, or of causing pain or degradation, but rather as an expression of passion, out of the enjoyment of the sensation, or some other benign motivation are not considered BDSM in this group.
To me, this seems to replay the same old good sex/bad sex message, as in “this type of sex is good/allowed/normal/ok, but this other type of sex isn’t.” There are several problems with that, but foremost in my mind is that the only person who can decide that some sexual activity is extreme for a given individual is that person. By comparison, for a marathon runner, a 10-mile run is moderate. For a couch potato, a quarter-mile jog is extreme. Similarly, what one person considers a “just right” spanking could be boring for another person or excruciating for someone else. Many people enjoy sexual experiences of strong sensations that might be painful in a non-sexual context or to another person. In fact, in a sexual context, it’s often difficult to determine whether someone is experiencing pain or pleasure without asking them. But somehow, that diversity of experience doesn’t seem to warrant a mention when this writer talks about “moderate” or “extreme” experiences as the marker of what makes something bad. The very notion of categorizing a sexual act as mild or extreme without recognizing that those have to be defined by the people doing them is problematic, to say the very least.
Now, I fully understand that there’s a distinction to be made between benign motivations and the intention to cause harm to someone. But you can have ill intentions and have entirely vanilla sex, and you can have positive intentions and leave someone covered in bruises. It’s a mistake to assume that motivations are equivalent to intensity of sensation or experience.
Having said that, I will acknowledge that ill intentions are sometimes acted out through violence during sex and that sexual violence can look similar to BDSM. The difference is whether the participants made informed choices and are having their pleasure, health, and well-being honored. And if you think you can decide that based on what sexual activities someone does, without asking them how they experience it, I have a bridge to sell you with a great view of San Francisco Bay.
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