The Gauntlet-men in Pain

It’s easy to find pictures that objectify female form, both in the ‘vanilla’ world and the kinky. That is why I constantly look out for other images. Especially those which objectify male suffering. I still find it very hard to sexualize non-consentual suffering, simply because it is often not erotic. But still, I’ve changed quite a bit and find more and more imagery thats hotter than hot.

Like this clip for example:

An undressed James Bond, exposed and vulnerable and in actual pain, struggling to keep the villain at bay, challenging him still. And some CBT have never hurt anyone before.

But this is a clip that I’m even more interested in. Because there is so many layers to it.

There is the cocky individual, trying to desert from the British Army, only to get caught out, having to enrol in another army. Suitable punishment follows, and as he walks through the gauntlet, slowly and controlled, but in pain. And this is a kink of mine, slow paces that forces the objet du désir to keep control over him or herself. Barry London is an interesting movie all in all, but this was definetly the highlight for me.

But all in all, I’m not feeling very toppy at all at the moment. The only thing I’m really longing for is to speak to a certain someone and have someone with rope bundle me up and move my mind and body. But maybe you will find something that is hot with both of these clips, at least I did.

All Hail Mary- now give yourself a hug.

I personally can feel it is tricky to sometimes feel the joy and the calm of Xmas-time. This is because of many reasons. For some people, the Xmas has nothing to do with joy and togetherness. It can be a rather lonely affair,  when the one who is lonely get even more lonely because of the anticipation of the idea of the lovely family. The idea about the nuclear family is never as present as it is during this ‘festive’ season.

I belong to the tradition of the Xmas tradition that is what it is because it has always been. We meet, we eat, we have one debacle after the other, talking about my now deceased grandmothers lover (whom she met for more than 40 years), get quite hammered and sing to the snaps.  It is fun to meet some of the people, but the peace really first occur when the Xmas is over, and I can go back for normal. Everything that reminds me about the ‘peace’ during Xmas makes me so fucking stressed. Any one else?

Going to church, not because of belief, but because of tradition is another feature. Last Xmas was the  first time I stood my grounds on not getting up 6 o’clock in the morning and sing to some kind of god I do not believe in. I was called selfish, but did not care the slightest. I find it more selfish to attend something that does not belong to me. A god I cannot relate to or wish to have in my life.

The following text is not going to be academic. It is not going to relate to everything written on the subject, don’t take into the account of all the writings of the possible misunderstanding of the concept of ‘virgin’. I am simply going to ask a question related to how people seem to be viewing the immaculate conception and ‘virgin’ Mary, the holy mother, and blablabla.

First of all, I can’t feel it. I can’t feel the joy every one is talking about when Xmas is coming. That the saviour was born, that the world received a messiah. Cause I think about something else. I think about the so called ‘virgin’ Mary, the immaculate conception and how fucking scared that girl must have been. In a  society, women was more children than grown-up women when getting married.
There is a saying that if there is many possible explanations to something, the most simple is the most probable. So. A couple of different explanations, just from the top of my head.

• The God spoke to Mary, said she would have the son that would save the world. Jesus.
• Mary was a child, got raped, did not dare to say anything to anyone, and when she was supposed to be married but had not been fucking with her husband and still being pregnant, freaked out and found the best explanation in the whole world.
• My favourite. Mary liked sex. She managed to get what she wanted, enjoy it, but got in to trouble and needed an explanation. An nothing is as imaginative as a person that needs to explain herself.
• Mary’s parents needed to figure something out and she did not have a say. Or maybe she did.

By Masonic Bomb

I don’t know about you, but somehow the other scenarios seems to be more accessible than the others.

I know I disregard a lot here. Especially the meaning of virgin in different translations from Hebrew and things (any one want to fill me in?)

So, instead, I come to think about the concept of whores and madonnas. The accessible and the divine. Something that the
”Immaculata Conceptio” helped to create, sustain and re-enforce. This was of course done through various other cultural and structural influences that worked this, such as the later domesticity ideal in the west, or the earlier (im)possibilites for women to have the right to inherit or even have access to financial means.

But how old was she? Really? How old was the woman (girl?) who is said to give birth to Jesus? It is not impossible to speak of her as a 12 to 13-year old. What does that say about a western, christian society? I can’t find comfort in a story about a young girl/woman becoming pregnant, going on a trek and then, while sleeping in a stable, giving birth for the first time. Where was the angels then? Do you believe anything while trying to give birth in a stable?

I repeat: I cannot find comfort in this story!
Or should I try to give away to the need of belief? Cause it is not always about rational thoughts, especially not when believing/feeling.

But I see something else. And that is how the concept of the whore and madonna keeps on being reinforced, on all the levels in our society. Easiest place to see it is in the debate about sex workers. She is the whore that cannot claim agency, she is the one that shall be considered as ‘used’ or ‘broken’ or ‘vice’.

‘

We also see it in rape-cases.

‘What did you wear?’
‘How many sexual partners have you had in your life?’
‘Why do you think he was interested in you?’

I don’t know how many women who have heard those questions. And what is the result of survivorblaming? That there is a lot of women who still not report sexual assaults of any kind. Or even that there is no legislature at all.

Rape  is considered to be a mean of warfare, at least since a couple of years back. Genocides has been made possible because of the breakdown of societies when women has been systematically raped. And it is not only something that is over when perpetrators leave. It is there, the survivor becomes the embodiment of the trauma, a physical form that lingers after the physical threat has been reduced to a mental image.  In her body, the nation also rests, the mother. And because of this binary idea, in which a woman is pure when she is ‘pure’ and not ‘touched’ and unpure if she is the rape is highly ‘effective’.

Oh, wow. I do give you a lot of Xmas cheer don’t I?!
One last thing. It does not comfort me at all. Instead, I ask you to give someone whom you want to hug a hug. One of those big, massive, warm, long ones.
And tomorrow in church I will not listen. I might read Dan Brown in the back row instead.

Ok. Sorry about that. I will shut up now.

Some more reading can be found here:

Rape in War

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Ve

The Lies about the Ten Lies-part 3

We have Zxenu Cronstrom Beskow onboard as our guestblogger. He examines the radical feminist claims abut ‘lies’ told by BDSMers.

The first part
Second part

Part 3: “Sadomasochism versus Radical Feminist dogma”

If Farley had openly accused sadomasochists of not conforming to the dogmas of her particular brand of radical feminism, then she had been correct. But this is not what she is doing. Instead, she’s exploiting mainstream society’s contempt for BDSM in an attempt to establish her very special discourse as if it was a objective reality or consensus viewpoint. She’s establishing a world view where society itself is “sadomasochistic” and where her own brand of radicalism is the ONLY valid resistance against mainstream society. Lets take a look at the remaining four points.

2. Sadomasochism is love and trust, not domination and annihilation.

Good relationships, sadomasochistic and vanilla (conventional/mainstream) alike, are based on love and trust. Of course, there are also bad relationships. There are also sexual relations that are based on mutual lust rather then love. Such a relationship can still be mutual and non-abusive if it contains enough trust and respect.

Farley’s examples are not even examples, merely shallow propaganda. David Koresh was a destructive religious cult leader, not a sadomasochist. Of course HIS kind of dominance was bad – and so was his heterosexuality and masculinity. If he is being to be used as an example of sadomasochism being bad on a general level, then he can just as well be used as an example of heterosexuality being bad on a general level, or of men being bad on a general level. Then again, there are radical feminists who would agree with that kind of argument.

Farley also uses some sexual fantasies as examples. And indeed, these particular fantasies certainly do not seem loving. Then again, they are fantasies. The love and trust is not about the fantasies themselves, but about how they are handled. Also, there are a lot of sadomasochistic fantasies that are very much about love, and many heterosexual and homosexual fantasies that have nothing to do with love.

4. Sadomasochism is consensual; no one gets hurt if they don’t want to get hurt. No one has died from sadomasochistic “scenes.”

Regardless of her sexuality, a victim of abuse is a victim period, not a masochist. She may or may not ALSO be a masochist, but this is entirely beside the point. By the definitions that sadomasochists typically use, abuse (sadistic or otherwise) is not sadomasochistic. The word sadomasochism include the word masochism, and this word implies that the person on the receiving end is there as a masochist, not as a victim.

Thus, BDSM and sadomasochistic sex can never be abusive, but only in the same way as vanilla lovemaking can never be abusive: If it turns abusive, then it is no longer lovemaking.

Of course, there are many sexual relations – vanilla and BDSM alike – that have started out consensual, but later turned abusive. This is a real problem, but it doesn’t men that all sadists (in the BDSM sense of the word) are abusers, and it does not mean that all heterosexual men are abusers either.

Furthermore, there are people who have died from vanilla lovemaking, so of course there are also people who have died from consensual BDSM play. Heart attacks are a common cause in both cases, but when it comes to advanced forms of BDSM there is also the issue of people being inexperienced and lacking proper safety education. Just as with mainstream sexuality, porn is NOT a good teacher for how to do it in real life. Even in its advanced forms, BDSM can be LESS dangerous then vanilla sex – but only if people know what they are doing.

Deeper in her argument, Farley practically claims that it is impossible to consent to BDSM – that the masochist is a brainwashed victim who does not know what she really want or an addict unable to say no. While a convenient excuse to disqualify the experiences of women who don’t share Farley’s dogma, it is simply not true for masochists in general, regardless of gender. (Farley’s argument seem to assume that the submissive is always female and the dominant is always male.) Of course there are individual masochists and victims of manipulative sadists who fit this stereotype, just like there are destructive vanilla relationships that contain addiction or cultlike tendencies.

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.”

Mainstream society is most definitely not sadomasochistic in any definition of “sadomasochism” that EITHER the sadomasochists themselves OR the mainstream society would agree with. Farley is taking theoretical constructs of radical feminism for objective reality here.

10. Sadomasochism is political dissent. It is progressive and even “transgressive” in that it breaks the rules of the dominant sexual ideology.

Seen from a non-totalitarian perspective, this statement contains an obvious truth. Although sadomasochism, just like homosexuality, is becoming more and more accepted, it is still far from mainstream.

To deny this, one must reduce reality to two groups. On one side, the one and only true resistance (in this case radical feminists) and on the other side the evil conspiracy and all its minions, including all resistances that do not conform to the orthodoxy of the one and only true resistance.

Of course, this only covers the matter of dissent. Far from all dissent is constructive, progressive or transgressive in any good sense of any such word. If one can reasonably consider BDSM and sadomasochism to be good things depends on your point of view.

In BDSM, dominance and submission is optional and not based on gender. One can be dominant, submissive, both or neither, regardless of whether one is a man, woman, intersexual or a gender-undefined queer-person. Being a dominant doesn’t give you any right to dominate someone who doesn’t want to be dominated by you or in a way that he doesn’t want to be dominated. Being a submissive gives you a right to chose who to submit to, when, how and to what extent.

From a queer-feminist perspective, this is very liberating and a useful tool in the struggle for freedom and diversity. From most other feminist perspective, it is neutral: Neither a good thing and a help, nor a bad thing and a threat.

From a totalitarian conservative or radical feminist perspective however, it is inherently evil. It is, by definition, a lie – Or at least a contradiction in terms. One core belief shared by patriarchal conservatism and radical feminism is that men are, by definition, dominant/oppressive, while women are, again by definition, submissive/oppressed. While the conservatives consider it good and the radical feminists consider it evil, both sides agree that That’s Just The Way It Is. Thus, the dominant women and submissive men of BDSM must be explained away for their worldview to remain intact. And an all-out attack is always the easiest defense.

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 has  academic degrees in psychology and sexology.

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.

 

On racism & fastfood-pr0n

Apparently, there is even shaky things going on in the pr0nbuisness. If I hear one more person saying the words ‘credit’ and ‘crunch’ in the same sentence I will probably tie a noose and give it to that person. But apparently, even the buisness of picturing people making whopiee is feeling it and trying to find ‘new’ ways of continue being able to sell. Violet Blue (she is awesome and will have her link in the list ASAP) writes about the question of ‘interracial’ pr0n and the ‘humour’ and ‘tongue in cheek’ of the mainstream pr0n companies that is not supposed to be racism at all. Or is it? Where is the titles like ‘Oh, no she is fucking a white, ugly middleclass, fat idiot with nothing behind his skull‘ . But then again, pr0n is big buisness, that title would not sell and buisness must go on, giving people what they want. Yeah right. Adult Video News (AVN) claims that interracial pr0 is the recessionproof category in adult video industry, but Violet Blue is examining that statement in this brilliant column in San Fransisco Chronicle pointing towards standards and racism in the industry of pr0n.

We all know about roleplay and taboos being broken but Blue hit the nail on the head when she says:

“On closer inspection, there’s something more than a little disingenuous about AVN’s sense of humor. We all know that porn is built to part you with your hard-earned cash and proffer fantasies; sometimes certain kinds of fantasy or roleplaying can be sexy: taboos, whether actual or perceived, are always hot, right? The positive ability of porn is that is can show partnering that is charged because it crosses racial boundaries; I believe that damage is not done by the FACT of crossing those taboos, but in the WAY those taboos are crossed.”

AVN responded with what can only be describes as a unfounded, personal attack on Blue, rather than thinking about what the implications of her text and questions actually mean.
To read the whole story, click here.

This is so fucking important to talk about with the mainstream pr0nindustry that exists today.  And it stinks of racism, orientalism, sexism and plain stupidity. Cause there is so much more to it. This blatant commersialised shit does not get me turned on, but someone else might. I don’t like pr0on to be honest. I am tired of going through hords of shit to find 3 minutes of hotness. Cause the stereotypes are nothing more.Madison Young who is interviewed for the column puts it perfectly by saying:

“The LA porn world has gotten to the point where the majority of the material that they are producing is something that I would call ‘fast food porn.’ It’s junk food. Offensive and artery-clogging porn.”

I like organic things, I like food where I can taste something and recognise it as an actual taste. But must confess that I occasionally have a burger or two. D00m on me. How about you?
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Ve