The Lies about the Lies, part 2

First part by Xzenu Cronström Beskow can be found here.

To recap, the ten lies that Melissa Farley claims to uncover, are:

1. Pain is pleasure; humiliation is enjoyable; bondage is liberation.
2. Sadomasochism is love and trust, not domination and annihilation.
3. Sadomasochism is not racist and anti Semitic even though we “act” like slave owners and enslaved Africans, Nazis and persecuted Jews.
4. Sadomasochism is consensual; no one gets hurt if they don’t want to get hurt. No one has died from sadomasochistic “scenes.”
5. Sadomasochism is only about sex. It doesn’t extend into the rest of the relationship.
6. Sadomasochistic pornography has no relationship to the sadomasochistic society we live in. “If it feels good, go with it.” “We create our own sexuality.”
7. Lesbians “into sadomasochism” are feminists, devoted to women, and a women-only lesbian community. Lesbian pornography is “by women, for women.”
8. Since lesbians are superior to men, we can “play” with sadomasochism in a liberating way that heterosexuals can not.
9. Re-enacting abuse heals abuse. Sadomasochism heals emotional wounds from childhood sexual assault.
10. Sadomasochism is political dissent. It is progressive and even “transgressive” in that it breaks the rules of the dominant sexual ideology.

Part 2: The Strawman Sadomasochist
To some extent, all ten points listed in part one are to some extent a “Strawman Political” version of sadomasochists. In this part I will focus on six points where this “Strawman sadomasochist” is the main problem, while the next part will instead deal with the four points where the main problem is radical feminist dogmatism.

1. Pain is pleasure; humiliation is enjoyable; bondage is liberation.

For some people, the RIGHT kind of pain in the right degree and context can indeed be enjoyable. Same thing goes for humiliation and for being tied up with ropes – which is what the word “bondage” refers to in a BDSM context. (BDSM stands for sadomasochistic sexual practices: Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism.)

During my decades of experience with the BDSM scene, I have *never* encountered a person who claims that all pain is enjoyable. However, I have often encountered this stereotype among people who are prejudiced against sadomasochists and their BDSM practices.

It is also worth noticing that this first point of Farley’s is homage to the novel 1984 and the propaganda of the evil regime in that novel: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” The problem here is not the homage itself, but that she attributes it to the sadomasochists. The strawman sadomasochist she is “exposing” have more in common with the villains of children’s comic books, standing on mountaintops shouting “Muahaha, I’m EVIL!” to the raging thunderstorm, then it has in common with actual people. I assume that Farley has made up the ten points herself, incorrectly presenting her prejudice against sadomasochists as if it was the actual opinions of actual sadomasochists. If the list actually do come from someone who claim to be a sadomasochist, and Farley has not twisted the words or ripped them out of context, then Farley has indeed been extremely lucky with finding a source that is easy to mock.

The Lies about the Ten Lies, by Guestblogger

Ve: When I first read Melissa Farleys piece ‘Ten Lies about Sadomasochism’ I wanted to respond.  I did not know how, but kept the text in the back of my head.

Then, time went by, and I did not give a proper response. Instead, a couple of weeks ago I saw the text was mentioned in a discussiongroup. Closely following, I realised a fellow sex-positive activist who is also an acquaintance of mine was saying all that I never managed to express when it came to Farley’s badly informed rants.

So here, we proudly present our first guestblogger; here is Xzenu Beskow and the first part out of 3, with an examination of the claims made by Melissa Farley.

Part 1: Totalitarian categorism in Radical Feminism

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and this metaphor is very true for totalitarian branches of radical feminism. Tough everyone divides things and people into categories, it is all too easy to make the categories into prisons instead of tools. This is the point at which categorization turns into what I call categorism: When categorization by skin color or ethnicity turns into racism, where categorization by gender turns into sexism or transphobia, where categorization by sexual orientations turns into homophobia, heterophobia or paraphobia.

Feminism focuses on the categorization of people into men and women, and on the oppression of the second category. At best, this focus is liberating by fighting oppression and by making oppression visible. At worst, however, feminism can be misused to lock people into narrow categories of what it means to have a certain gender or sexuality. And thus, certain branches of radical feminism are infamous for prejudice against gender identity minorities (notably transsexuals, for example with Raymond’s book The Transsexual Empire) and against all sexualities that do not fit their narrow normative orthodoxy.

Such orthodoxy can be relatively harmless when it is very far from what the mainstream believes. If a debater claims in the name of feminism that all heterosexual women are brainwashed victims of male rapists, then the debater is unlikely to accomplish anything other then giving antifeminists an opportunity to ridicule feminism as such. But if the same debater instead claims that all masochists are brainwashed victims of sadistic rapists, then the debater has a chance to cause real harm to real masochists since this sexual minority is already viewed with mistrust and prejudice by many in the mainstream.

One good example is Farley’s “The Ten Lies of Sadomasochism”. In this text, the author makes the claim that there are ten claims that sadomasochists usually make about themselves. She also claims that these ten statements are lies, and that she has successfully exposed them as such.

Three things are wrong about this statement. First of all, her list is highly questionable. Some claims are twisted into generalizations, others are outright outrageous. It is obvious that it is the list of a radical feminist who want to portray sadomasochism in a bad light, not a list that the sadomasochist subculture would agree on. Thus, her whole argument is based on a “Strawman Political”. (See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrawmanPolitical )

Second, not only does she use heavily ideological definitions of what certain words mean, but she also pretends that sadomasochists agree with her definitions of these words.

Third, she generalizes in ways that very consistently imply the word “all” without using the word itself. She talks about how all sadomasochists are, without ever using the word “all”, taking for granted that all sadomasochists form one coherent group. This kind of generalization is a hallmark of categorism.

The ten so-called lies are:

1. Pain is pleasure; humiliation is enjoyable; bondage is liberation.
2. Sadomasochism is love and trust, not domination and annihilation.
3. Sadomasochism is not racist and anti Semitic even though we “act” like slave owners and enslaved Africans, Nazis and persecuted Jews.
4. Sadomasochism is consensual; no one gets hurt if they don’t want to get hurt. No one has died from sadomasochistic “scenes.”
5. Sadomasochism is only about sex. It doesn’t extend into the rest of the relationship.
6. Sadomasochistic pornography has no relationship to the sadomasochistic society we live in. “If it feels good, go with it.” “We create our own sexuality.”
7. Lesbians “into sadomasochism” are feminists, devoted to women, and a women-only lesbian community. Lesbian pornography is “by women, for women.”
8. Since lesbians are superior to men, we can “play” with sadomasochism in a liberating way that heterosexuals can not.
9. Reenacting abuse heals abuse. Sadomasochism heals emotional wounds from childhood sexual assault.
10. Sadomasochism is political dissent. It is progressive and even “transgressive” in that it breaks the rules of the dominant sexual ideology.

In the next two parts we will take a closer look at each of these claims. I have divided this into two chapters: The Strawman Sadomasochist and Sadomasochism Versus Radical Feminist Dogma.

To be continued

By Xzenu Cronström Beskow

The author is a  queerfeminist veteran, active both in struggles against sexual abuse and  for the rights of sexual minorities. Xzenu got  academic degrees in psychology and sexology.

 

I’m all tied up at the moment

The story about the bound hugfriend:

He is quite dominant, my hugfriend. So I tied him up. Not really like that maybe, but basically.

I’m not the ma/ist/e/ress of ropes at all, and he isn’t either, so I figured we should play around and workshop a bit in a nonsexual way to see what we could accomplish with our 10 metres of rope. Turns out that “nonsexual” was not one of the things.

I started out tying his feet together and attaching that to a rope I then attached to a leg in each corner of the bed (two lower corners, you know). He couldn’t move much, but a little. There was enough space though for me to put a knee between his thighs and force his legs apart (fun!). After checking he got blood to his feet and everything was tied securely enough I tied up his arms in a way that he could get out of with a little work, but that would feel sturdy enough. Took some work, but I had a lot of fun (fun!). Turned out he had to. Or well, fun might not be the right word here. But he did like it. I never heard anyone so angrily ask pretty please to get to fuck me.

Had fun, got a bit unsecure about my role and dropped out of dommie headspace, loosened up the knots. Then my turn. He tied me up in some strange kneebending way that was actually both quite comfy and good, I was impressed. And much closer to a good subspace than I’ve been with anyone in ages. Interesting change is that when he untied me, I was the opposite of what I would have thought. I wasn’t all Oh THANK you LORD mighty HUGFRIEND of supersexay sir whatever, but what I said was “I’m not finished, fuck me with your hand, now”. And he said “oh, ok”. And there was light (possibly fireworks). I came out of subspace into a new and improved silia deluxe. I sort of liked that. I usually never asks for things sexually, but I realized that if I want those orgasms, I better tell. Even if he gives them often enough, I can’t just wait around like some christian girl hoping jesus will fulfill her wishes anyway. If the prophet isn’t coming to the mountain, the mountain will have to shape up and move it’s ass to the prophet.

Good night it was anyway. And I’m gonna think about it for a while longer, since it’s a month until I see him again and I just can’t bring myself to go out and pick up random person for sex in the meantime. I’m getting old and lazy.
Speaking of no sex for me, anybody have any good altporn links?

I’ve been bad

 

Daddy, I’ve been so bad. Not updating the blog…

No, not really. I’m just saying that all those updates I’m planning takes a bit more time than I thought. It’s worth waiting for, because we are going to be speaking about needles. We are going to look at a radical feminists argument against BDSM and pick it into pieces. And furthermore, in hopefully a not too distant future, more interviews with perverts.

So, what then?

First of all: did you know that keeping a slave makes you stay healthy?
Another site that is a bit better on keeping up to date is Island of Pain.
They report on the Sharon Warner Case, which is one of those brilliant, fucked up things that makes me sad, mad and frustrated.  I’m not going to try to put it better than it is already written:

Chavez, on the other hand, as the situation is described by Warner, seems to have mixed work ethics and lifestyle behaviour beyond what could be seen acceptable, even within the BDSM community. My opinion is that you are definitely on thin ice when you involve your graduate students in your lifestyle behaviour – Not moral reasons, but because certain dependencies issues are created, as the lines between work and lifestyle are blurred.

So, yeah, what is wrong with people who can’t see the power dynamics at play here?  Go ahead and be as kinky as you want, but let’s dwell for one second on consent. Consent, power and trust.  Thinking about those terms, that we are often playing with and then just not realising the implications of involving your students is just plain stupid. No one is judged yet, but I don’t care and have a really hard time feeling sorry for Chavez. Furthermore, as it’s said in the comments, this is not about kink. It could be, but it’s not about kink-rights.

Another stupidity is Julie Bindel’s latest rant on how horrible the trans-people are, or rather, the mutilation and distortion of gender that they portray; as well as how loud and threatening they are.  I can’t feel sorry for her. At all. She has been advocating many a important issues, but not understanding that her stance on transgendered people is so insensitive and out of touch is deserving of the award ‘Nutter of the week’.

Moving on to something completley else; the fact that we know nothing or very little about HPV (human papilloma virus). Poundcake explains it very clearly and it is indeed important to keep updated about all of these things. I want to stay healthy and do regular check-ups about every half year. It feels like a  total overhaul, like beeing a car that goes in on service. And even though I am careful it is always nervous doing the three-minute HIV test.

Tomorrow, at Trafalgar Square there will be a candle light vigil for Ian Baynham, who died after an attack in the end of september.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/10/16/vigil-planned-for-gay-man-murdered-in-trafalgar-square/#
There will also be a march against homophobia in Liverpool, sometime in the end of November, following after recent homophobic attacks.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=162737774775&ref=mf

And a very hardhitting blog-entry on how the case is still not won in regards to LGBTQI-rights can be found here.

This whole sub-thing, I’m doing it wrong

Ok, people, a question for you:

How the heck do you ever manage?

I find myself constantly mixing up my roles and getting even more confused. So please, pretty pretty readers, tell me how you do to separate that subby little person inside of you with the one who is supposed to have a normal functioning relationship.
I know that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m intelligent (enough intelligent, at least) and can see through myself (a bit) I’d end up in an abusive relationship where I’d just succumb to this deep desire to just you know, be punished for being me. Since according to me, I’m always wrong. And probably needs to be punished. Possibly killed.

To be sexually submissive (switchy, really, but mostly submissive) and combine that with a mind that constantly tells me that I’m horrible, is not the best of ideas.

I really just want to tell the hugfriend “Take away my rights, control everything, and please hurt me a lot.”. I’m not doing that though, because I’m not a teenager and I do understand that I’d only get even more fucked up in the process. Please note that I’m not a painslut, so I would more suffer than enjoy myself anyhow most of the time.

Can anyone else reckognize themselves in this? I’m aiming for the overkill while writing this, but you know, the general feeling.

I mean, how normal is it to oh-gazm while thinking of your hugfriend drowning you, because you accidentically woke him up by calling to early. (The calling did happen in real life, and popped up in my mind while working my way towards the Oh.)

I know normal might not be a concept we really aim for here, but I’d say even a very liberal therapist would think that’s over the line.

So how do you do it people? How do you keep yourself sane and functional, without turning into a complete doormat, when the option is within reach?

(Ok, hugfriend would never let me go doormat on him, but if I’d lowered my standards far enough, I’m sure there’s plenty of middle aged men with redeveloped babyfat that would just love to assist me on my road to doom.)

If I'm gonna be a doormat, this is the doormat I want to be.

//Silia

Church says yes

So yeah, I’m not religious and have been having a hard time to understand why people would want to be a part of a structure that through so many years clearly expressed a anti lgbt- attitude. I left the Swedish church in my late teens and even if I look back sometimes and think it was not the most constructive thing to do, I am very proud today. But not because I’ve left but because I used to belong to a structure that today has shown that it can change. Not only a semi-change (civil partnership) but also a full change GIVING SAME SEX COUPLES THE FULL RIGHT TO MARRIAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the light of queer activism around the world this is amazing news. Change can happen, take place and mean something rather than nothin. Empty words can become filled with a meaning. I’m not fooled in the fact that the meaning not always itself is the best one ( how come marriage is continued being viewed as the goal of love, as the ultimate manifestation of love?) but I do acknowledge single individuals want to enter such an agreement and manifestation and think they should have the every right to.
And now, finally, in Sweden you can