Mandos: “within a paradigm of male supremacy, equality between the sexes is impossible…” Er, um, isn’t this immediately and redundantly tautological anyway? Supremacy obviously can’t mean equality.

I think the point is that people (mostly men) often try to assert that equality between men and women exists in this or that limited domain based on superficial resemblences, but that they are mistaken: under a society-wide system of male supremacy the superficial resemblences do not actually play the same role or get taken up in the same way for the men that they do for the women. It’s obvious that supremacy and equality can’t coexist at the same time and in the same respect, but it’s not always obvious that male supremacy in particular is pervasive and systemic. It’s true that it is, but many (especially men) ignore or deny it.

Paging Carol Adams. Carol Adams to the TV, stat…

Pony: If you’re interesting to read and saying something no-one else has said, and/or saying it in a way no-one else has said it, and being somewhat inclusive so that no matter how one defines oneself, they see themselves in what you’ve said; you’ll get read.

The phrase “If you’re interesting to read” is an interesting choice. Interesting to whom? To you? To the general run of people who happen to be sitting around looking for weblogs on topics that interest them?

Maybe what some people are trying to suggest that some of these people ought to reconsider what they find interesting.

“I always thought the vanilla thing came from vanilla being the default icecream flavor, ie if there’s only one flavour of icecream available, it’s going to be vanilla. Thus making BDSM, I don’t know, the Spumoni of the sex world.”

Yes. It’s an intentionally condescending term, and frankly I think it’s disingenuous in the extreme for vocal BDSM advocates to pretend like they don’t mean anything derogatory by it.

belledame222:

I validate that BB had a bad experience of BDSM and does not want any truck with it.

Well, that’s mighty big of you.

It would be nice if y’all could recognize that other people have different experiences, and that ours are also valid.

Look, experiences aren’t “valid” or “invalid.” Experiences just are. There’s a question here, though, about what some people’s personal experiences with BDSM, in and out of the formalized “scene,” mean. That’s not necessarily just a matter of “Well, you had your experiences and I had mine.”

And for the record, there *is* a recognized difference between abuse and BDSM, and while there are plenty of assholes within the scene(s), there are also plenty of healthy, evolved people who would immediately understand that what BB went through was coercion by any other name.

Part of the question here is whether it’s just some big accident that there are plenty of assholes in the scene in addition to the people you’re comfortable with, or whether there’s something about the scene (or about BDSM itself) that encourages that.

(And before you mention it, I know that there abuse and coercion happen in non-BDSM sexual relationships too. Most feminist critics of BDSM do think that there are plenty of things about normative sexuality in our society that encourage that, and criticize them at length. Part of what we are asking y’all for is not to just stop applying that level of scrutiny and criticism when it’s your own sexual “scene” that’s in question.)

Q Grrl:

Belladame, how can they be negotiating for what they want without simultaneously negotiating for what they don’t want: being pushed beyond their comfort levels.

Brava. This helped clarify what it is that bugs me so much when BDSM advocates are talking about the supreme importance of “negotiation,” in particular, in BDSM sex. Consent is unilateral, based what each partner wants to happen to her own body. “Negotiation” over “boundaries” is something that warring states do to work out territorial claims in order to avoid a conflict. One party suggests that they take X but give Y, the other says they want to take Z instead of Y, they either hash out a tit-for-tat compromise or else they get the guns and fight until their positions in the negotiation changes, and then they try again with a bit more quid on the table and bit less quo.

Sex shouldn’t be like that.

BritGirlSF:

I think a lot of people are failing to distunguish between the actual BSDM scene and the facsimile of it produced by the porn industry. … Honestly, I think that part of the problem is that the porn industry loves to use BSDM themes, and that gives people a distorted picture of what it’s really about. In my experience it was always a playful thing – silly at times, absurd at others, but certainly never scary,dangerous or abusive.

I think that this has it backwards. Sadomasochistic pornography is not taking “themes” from the “scene” and making “facsimiles” of them. Sadomasochistic pornography predated anything like the “scene” you’re involved in (going back, as it does, to de Sade and Sacher-Masoch). Of course, if people try to mechanically apply what they know about sadomasochistic pornography to the scene that you’re involved in they may say any number of things that are ignorant or selective. But I think that a responsible discussion of BDSM as a cultural and social phenomenon does have to discuss not only the scene that you’re defending, but also pornography (both the stories that it tells, and also the “scene” involved in the real people used in its production); it also has to discuss people involved in forms of BDSM who haven’t joined any sort of formal (or even informal) “scene”. The kind of community defense mechanisms that Dim talks about are worrisome when they obscure the fact that we’re talking about something broader than just the community that you’ve found.

As for Twisty, who was explicitly talking about the “official” BDSM scene and not the phenomenon of BDSM as a whole, well, she didn’t say that the scene defended by BDSM defenders was scary, dangerous, or abusive. She said that it was self-important and dorky.

Lis Riba:

I think people may be missing the cause-and-effect.

Part of the reason there’s so much more communication regarding BDSM scenes and so much more emphasis on active consent is because BDSM can so easily be misread or misinterpreted as (or possibly even slide into) abuse. … Because the actions taken in so-called vanilla sex are not seen as inherently abusive by mainstream society, participants don’t feel the same need for negotiation and explicit consent. It’s quite easy for people in the heat of the moment to slide from first to third, because there aren’t as many risks if somebody goes too far and the other objects.

Right, I understand why the necessities of BDSM (in particular) are supposed to demand much more explicit discussion of boundaries and consent, and I’m sure that it does often work out that way in much of the “official” BDSM scene. (My own concerns about BDSM lie elsewhere.) My point is that this situation isn’t unchangeable; there’s nothing about so-called “vanilla” sex that prevents communication between partners and explicit care about consent. Talking as if it were just a choice between communication-rich kinky sex and wordless, manipulative non-kinky sex — which is what Aero was doing above, even if that’s not what s/he intended — confines the issue unnecessarily. And that this isn’t something that feminist BDSM critics are unaware of, or sanguine about.

Twisty wins at contemptuous invective!

Les: The thing about BDSM is that it gets people off by being transgressive, etc.

I believe that part of the point is that BSDM isn’t. It’s practitioners just really, really want you to believe that it is.

Aero: Many of the commenters need to remember that making assumptions about something you know nothing about is not an intelligent thing to do. Especially the comments about doubting the consensuality of a BDSM scene. Hell, that’s why I like kinky sex; because there is so much more communication going on before, during, and after than usual vanilla sex.

More than one commenter (Dim Undercellar, in particular) is speaking from personal experience in the BDSM “scene.”

Noting this in passing, I move on to ask: if one of the benefits of “kinky” sex is supposed to be the greater level of communication, what’s to stop you from communicating with your partner before, during, and after so-called “vanilla” sex? It seems like the alleged benefit here is not all that closely connected with BDSM and other forms of “kink.” So if that’s what it is that gets you off, why the specific draw to fetishes that have nothing essentially to do with it? (N.B.: it’s not as if anti-BDSM radical feminists haven’t criticized the attitudes that get brought into the bedroom with so-called “vanilla sex”, for involving, among other things, too little in the way of communication and clear boundaries. Andrea Dworkin wrote a whole book on the subject, entitled Intercourse, just to take one example.)