“BDSM” is Kinky Sex for Rape Apologists

“BDSM” is to kinky sex and play as “polyamory” is to negotiatied non-monogamy.

Which is to say: It’s a small, narrow, rigidly defined subset of a much larger and more diverse set of activities, yet its related identity-community considers the term to be all-encompassing. The “community” internally maintains an image of itself as “diverse” by hyperfocusing on small differences within a fairly homogenous population rather than noticing larger ways that their group, as a whole, differs from others who engage in similar activities.

One of the classic indicators of this kind of perceptual distortion is what I’ll call “The 99% Fallacy.” It’s the notion that the issues being worked on by a particular privileged subset of a population are issues universal to all members of that population — and people who lack interest in the community or movement because it is addressing issues irrelevant to them are invited to “come on down” and join up, in order better understand how the dominant group’s issues should, in fact, be a priority for everybody.

I used to be very involved in a well-attended, popular polyamory discussion group that met once a week. At some point, I remember asking some of my lesbian friends who were in non-monogamous relationships why they never came to the group. The response I got was essentially, “Polyamory is for straight people.” I remember being shocked at this, “No, it’s not! I’m not straight and I’m polyamorous! Queer folks are totally welcome in the group!” What my friends told me is that they just weren’t interested in attending, not because they felt unwelcome in the group (“everyone seems very nice”) but because it just had nothing to do with them. The topics that were most frequently discussed had little relevance to their relationships or their lives. The people there didn’t move like them.

At the time, I didn’t understand. I believed that ANYBODY doing negotiated non-monogamy was “polyamorous” and could of course benefit from having conversations about jealousy, and veto power, and whether or not to be out at your kids’ school. In retrospect I realize that my friends already had plenty of community. They didn’t need this group, or the “polyamorous” identity structure, to build relationships that worked for them. They were doing fine on their own. Their showing up, and even encouraging us to talk about queer-specific issues, would be nothing more than a favor to us, an effort to make the group feel more inclusive and diverse. What defined the group as “polyamorous” was not simply that we were doing non-monogamy and other people weren’t. It was also that we were overwhelmingly hetero-centric and other non-monogamous people weren’t.

Similarly, I find the BDSM scene’s insistence that they are “not a monolith” — that they are simply a loose collection of diverse “kinksters” with only their “kinkiness” in common — particularly galling, because lumping a bunch of disparate and largely unrelated intimate/erotic practices into one monolithic identity is BDSM’s entire modus operandi. Pony play, and casual-sexy scarf bondage, and serious mathematically-oriented nautical rope bondage, and authority-fetishization, and bloodying someone’s back with a single-tail are all fairly unrelated activities unless you choose to do some of them simultaneously. The claim that what these activities have in common is that they’re all “kinky” is a circular argument. That’s not what “kinky” means.

I have a serious mind-control fetish. I like to tie people up and be tied up. Spanking turns me on. So does blood. I’m into super-intellectual experimental rolequeer authority play. Doing these things doesn’t mean I’m “doing BDSM” any more than having multiple simultaneous intimate relationships means I’m “polyamorous.” Because what actually distinguishes “BDSM” as an identity structure is not simply that it means enjoying kinky sex/play when others don’t. It also means being overwhelmingly invested in rape culture when other kinky people aren’t.

“Polyamory” is negotiated non-monogamy for straight people, and “BDSM” is kinky sex for rape apologists.

(This, incidentally, is why BDSM is evil while polyamory is just kind of inane.)

The effective response to rape culture in the BDSM scene isn’t to try and reform the scene. “BDSM” isn’t even a thing without rape culture — getting rid of rape culture is tantamount to getting rid of the scene itself. Why not save yourself the headache and just stop “doing BDSM” right now? This doesn’t mean stop having kinky sex. It means stop buying into a monolithic identity-based framework that claims that rape-based kinky sex is the only kind of kinky sex there is.