Photo credit: kk+ (Flickr)
A few days ago, I visited Slate.com, one of my “everyday” websites, and found this article by William Saletan about BDSM. Saletan, who writes in the Health and Science section, has written what I have been secretly thinking for years.
BDSM – Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism to the sheltered – lives outside the boundary of normal sexuality. I will go as far to say I don’t consider it sex at all.
To me, sex involves the direct stimulation of the genitalia for the purpose of pleasure. It can occur with just one person present, two, or a whole group of people – male, female, and/or in-between. Sex is joyful and fun.
If I see a BDSM scene, I see neither joy nor fun. I see physical and verbal abuse. I see people trapped by ropes. I see bare bottoms reddened by the strap. I see tender flesh trapped beneath leather and latex. I see the simultaneous psychological degradation of the roles of villain and victim. I could not imagine doing such things to someone I loved, nor allowing anyone to do such things to me.
The fact that it is consensual (in the best circumstances) does not stop the shudder in my spine.
Saletan writes:
[G]iven the underlying dynamics—one person who wants to dominate, another who wants to be dominated—consent often blurs. BDSM attracts masochists whose boundaries can be pushed. It attracts sadists who like to push those boundaries.
I also have to wonder what BDSM is doing to our psychic environment. Saletan tells us:
While reformers in India battle a culture of rape, Indian BDSM advocates extol the bliss of female masochism. While human rights activists denounce caning and waterboarding, BDSM lecturers teach the joys of caning and waterboarding. Abduction, slavery, humiliation, torture—everything we condemn outside the world of kink is celebrated within it.
Does the world needs more caning and waterboarding, or abduction, slavery, humiliation, and torture, no matter what the context? I think not.
I know, I know – I should be a good liberal and be completely okay with whatever consenting adults do with each other.
In my head, this is what I believe. I do not want to outlaw BDSM, neither in art nor in real life. (As if such laws would stop anything.)
In my gut, however, I can’t help but think: If you get off on abusing people, being abused, or watching either happen, there must be something profoundly wrong with you.
Sorry.
