[cw: this post is entirely about BDSM and may not be safe for work. Includes descriptions of sex acts (inc. fetishizing nonconsent) that not everyone may be comfortable with; social coercion into sex; some people with Very Firm Opinions about how your consensual sex life is evil]
Exciting things happened in the Land of Rolequeer while I was gone! Most notably, Maymay deleted all their stuff (?). I genuinely hope they’re all right and among friends, and that the deletion was by choice and not a result of bullying or other mistreatment. For this reason, this post will not contain citations; my apologies and I promise I did not make anything up.
Anyway. Maymay has prepared for us a helpful infographic!
Maymay’s framework talks about sensation, story, and felt sense. Sensation is the physical feelings you want to experience: for instance, you may want to be spanked, experience sexual arousal for a long period of time, or be bound with ropes. Story is the scenarios or roles in which you can experience it: for instance, being punished, taking a vow of celibacy, or being wrapped up for comfort. Felt sense is the psychosomatic impacts the experience has. Maymay argues that a rolequeer felt sense “instills camaraderie and cooperation, confuses authoritarian narratives, encourages compassion for those who are mistreated, focuses on peering behaviors, [and] undermines power imbalances”, while a BDSMy felt sense “instills obedience, demonstrates subordination to authorities, encourages gratitude for enacting mistreatment, exaggerates power imbalances, [and] focuses on one actor overpowering another.”
I actually think this is a really cool framework for thinking about scenes! As someone who primarily fetishizes stories, I appreciate having story explicitly drawn out as an element of sex, rather than being considered another “sex act”.
I like the emphasis on the psychosomatic impact, assuming Maymay is using that word in the standard meaning of “related to the interaction of the mind and the body.” (If Maymay is using the term in a nonstandard way, I apologize greatly and retract my discussion of psychosomatic impacts.) A lot of sex-positive discourse (including some of mine in the past) tends to assume that sex has about as much emotional effect on us as going for a jog. But for a lot of people that’s just not true. When we argue against things like “you shouldn’t have casual sex because you will fall in love and get your heart broken!”, we shouldn’t erase the very real fact that, for most people, sex has a strong emotional and mental impact, not just the physical.
Furthermore, I really like removing kink from the usual top/bottom binary. For one thing, as often as we say that dominant is a different thing from sadist is a different thing from penetrating partner, it’s really easy to collapse them into one singular unit. I knew someone who was a masochist but squicked by submission, and he had a very difficult time finding partners who wouldn’t assume that his desire to enjoy the sensation of flogging meant he wanted to be collared and called “slave.” Even when we discuss, say, sadistic submissives, it’s often discussed in a sort of “did you know there can also be THIS WEIRD THING????” tone. I myself had a hard time working out that I wasn’t into being tied up, because I’m a submissive, and all submissives like getting tied up, right?
For another thing, a lot of really sexy story ideas don’t feature an obvious top or bottom. When I enjoy a fantasy in which Alice gets infected with sex pollen and starts aggressively initiating sex with Bob, who is attracted to her but resists because he knows she can’t really consent, who is the top? What about in a hurt/comfort scene? What about the favorite rolequeer example of puppy play in which everyone is a puppy? The idea that BDSM involves a dominant and a submissive involves closing ourselves off to sexy possibilities.
First: for theory from someone who has devoted their work to breaking down binaries, the BDSM/rolequeer distinction seems really, uh, binary. The psychosomatic impact doesn’t have to be Subverting Power or Upholding Power. It can be totally unrelated to power (or at least as totally unrelated to power as humans can get).
Perhaps the most obvious example is sex that expresses people’s love for each other, on account of our culture literally never shuts up about it and large portions of the culture think this is the Only Acceptable Psychosomatic Impact Of Sex Ever Ever Ever. But it can also be an experience of being desired and wanted, or of aesthetic appreciation, or hatred, or of freedom from restrictions, or relaxation.
Second: this is using “BDSM” and “rolequeer” in extremely nonstandard ways. Maymay themself in Consent as a Felt Sense points out that you can’t know what the felt sense of sex is until afterward, sometimes quite a long time afterward, after you’ve processed your feelings about the sex. Logically, it seems like you also can’t know if you’re having rolequeer sex or BDSM sex until a long time afterward. But people seem to not just confidently declare that they’re having rolequeer sex, but to use “rolequeer” or “BDSMer” as identities. Isn’t Maymay’s whole point about rapists that anyone could be a rapist? Shouldn’t Maymay consider themself to be a BDSMer (if only by accident)?Perhaps Maymay should take a page out of the rationalists’ book and refer to themself as an “aspiring rolequeer”?
It is slightly amusing to me (given that I am, apparently, a “vocally anti-rolequeer” “leech, a cowardly, intentionally politically melodramatic, social capitalist popularity-seeking pitiful pop social justice putz”) to discover that I have been having rolequeer sex this whole time. Well, I don’t think I’ve had any sex that encouraged compassion for the mistreated, except in the general sense that I’m a nicer person when I’m happy. But other than that… fuck, undermining power imbalances is the good shit!
Mm, give me an Aliens Made Them Do It scenario where one gently pets and soothes the other one’s hair as he cries but continues to violate him, because he knows the consequences. Give me sex pollen fic where both characters are convinced, the morning after, that they raped their partner. Give me a sub humiliating her dom, whispering about how she’s the only one who will fulfill his sick, disgusting sexual fantasies and he better be grateful. Give me desperate, lusting gay boys who know homosexuality is wrong but they love each other and don’t care. Give me Christian abstinence porn. I am so disappointed about the absence of Christian abstinence porn, and I feel horrible writing it as someone only tangentially connected to Horrible Christians, so some of you survivors need to get on that.
I guess I’m not rolequeer really, because I’m sort of suspicious of this whole “have sex to make yourself a better person!” project. I am to rolequeer as a crossdresser is to those people who keep going on about how their genderfuck is subverting the patriarchy. Sorry, guys, I’m totally depoliticizing your sex with my asshole liberalism.
Third: I’m not really clear on why “the focus of the story” and “psychosomatic impacts” are the same category. Like… it is trivially easy for me to think of sex acts where the focus of the story is that I, Ozy Frantz, am a worthless human being, but the felt sense is warmth and happiness and affection. I suspect that this might be because of Maymay &co’s abusive experiences in the BDSM scene; I have been lucky to do humiliation play primarily with people who are extremely aware of my emotional health. That is (unfortunately) a privilege not everyone has.
Fourth: Maymay uses this taxonomy to argue that “your kinks are not BDSM,” because you can get access to the sensations that you desire to experience outside of a D/s context and therefore the D/s context is unnecessary.
But, uh… not everyone fetishizes sensation. This is one hell of a case of typical mind fallacy.
I’m sympathetic to this case of typical mind fallacy, because it took me a relatively long time to wrap my brain around the fact that not everyone is primarily into stories. Hence Tiny Ozy had a lot of conversations with their sexual partners like so:
Me: So what are your fetishes?
Them: Oh, you know, I like catgirls.
Me: What kind of catgirls? Like, they’re genetically engineered slaves? Or they’re another species that grew up around humans? Do you want me to be your pet and you scritch me and tell me how cute I am and then we have sex? I can totally eat food out of a bowl if you want me to! Or are we going for more of a feral thing here? I’m a wild cat and you tame me by leaving food out in bowls and then finally I trust you enough to allow you to–
Them: … … I just think that girls in cats’ ears are cute…?
I’m actually not totally clear on why story is a necessary part if you’re assuming everyone is a sensation fetishist. I mean, I’m an almost pure story fetishist and I’ve had lots of sex that was perfectly ordinary PIV with a story wrapped around it. It seems just as possible for a pure sensation fetishist to just get hit without fussing around with pretending to be roughhousing. I mean, These Things Aren’t Necessarily Related To Each Other is literally Maymay’s whole gig.
But if you’re a story fetishist… well, most of the time you don’t get infinite degrees of freedom in deciding what your story fetish is. Sometimes the story element is something like “feeling like other people are watching us” or “the process of sexual discovery” or “someone who doesn’t usually have attention paid to them getting lots of attention” that can be easily removed from a D/s or power exchange context, in which case Maymay’s argument applies. But sometimes the story element is something like “sugar daddies”, which is pretty much always going to have a power exchange element.
My kinks are BDSM, actually.
I’m not sure what Maymay would have me do.
Thing of Things 
Eh, I like story AND sensation, but one of my MAJOR story kinks is corruption– an evil, charismatic character slowly mindfucks/seduces an innocent character into becoming evil themselves (I mean a very tropey version of “evil”, btw, not, like, they’re committing genocide). I mean…. that IS a power thing. Period. Sensation stuff is divorced from that, though.
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I love the “tropey version of evil”. It reminds me of that arc on Charmed when Phoebe became the Queen of the Underworld, and demonstrated her total descent into corruption and iniquity by… wearing black, sneering a lot, killing demons (big change there!), and having tons of hot sex with the equally “evil” Cole.
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Can I suggest the story “The Pilfered Princess”? (Google it.)
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This looks glorious! Thanks– I’ll need to read it!
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This crashes my semantic parser. Is this, like, two people are sexually attracted to eachother but not married so it’s all hands-off and sexual frustration until they get married and have consensual sex in the missionary position for the purpose of procreation (with the lights off) and they feel God’s love and it is the best sex ever?
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Just because people shouldn’t have sex does not mean they don’t.
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By Rule 34, even if that kink did not exist before, it surely does now 🙂
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There’s a really entertaining piece of Apocrypha called the Acts of Paul and Thecla that more or less fits this description. It doesn’t actually involve sex, but it does involve some rather impressive levels of fetishizing chastity.
And God saving people from killer seals.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/thecla.html
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The Twilight series has been described as Mormon abstinence porn…
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Could be featuring anal as the “loophole sex” that doesn’t affect your virginity. Apparently that’s a thing.
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The story thing reminds me of this OGLAF (3 pages, click through) http://oglaf.com/shiptoship/ (Definitive NSFW)
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OGLAF should be marked “not safe when within 200 yards of your office.” 🙂
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Actually I was more reminded of this one: http://oglaf.com/fully-fleshed/
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Some people seem more inclined than others to straightforwardly link “happy content -> happy feeling”, “sexy content -> sexy feeling”, “sad content -> sad feeling”. The first time someone told me she didn’t like a movie because it was “too sad”, I was thrown — to me, that was like hearing she hated apples because they were too fruity. Of course sad movies are sad! They still make me happy, if they’re good movies!
Like you, I’m also very much into arousal-by-narrative. Being into stories as stories (porn or otherwise) even feels like a distinct emotion from being into the content. I’m not sure how typical that is, or how well I’m articulating it, but I think it might bear on the question you raised.
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I can’t help but feel like this is another instance of, “if I can’t fuck, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” (Fuck, of course, is code in this instance for “have the kind of mutually pleasurable consensual erotic exchange that gets me and my partner off.”)
And yeah, sometimes people have fetishes for the sensation, and I’m always in favor of more empowering, supportive interactions between people. But sometimes it’s the fucked-up-ish-ness of it that gets us off. Sometimes, the stuff that Maymay dismisses as negative IS THE FETISH.
Yes yes yes yes yes.
Yes.
One of my partners identified for a long time as straight, and for her 20th, we threw her an all-lesbian gangbang. Part of the ‘what got her off’ about that was that she, a young straight girl, would be subject to sexual use by many people who did not match her orientation. It was a degrading thing, a humiliation thing. That was the point.
But afterwards, when we all went out for dinner, and everyone was giving her hugs and telling her how great she did, and there were birthday presents and a cake … that was real too.
So part of it for me has to do with the recognition that a sexual interaction may not always (or even may only rarely be ‘one thing.’ The other part is that if we accept that sometimes people have fetishes for stuff that we wish they wouldn’t, or for stuff that’s not emotionally or socially ‘positive,’ we need to think about how we want to address those fetishes.
Right now, the optimal method of dealing with those fucked-up fetishes is for people with compatible degrees of fucked-up-ish-ness to come together and learn how to explore their shared fucked-up-fetishes in a safe, supportive, and less fucked-up way. I like that method, and I’m not sure what Maymay wants to replace it with (though part of that may be because their site is down).
I mean, if you DON’T have a fetish for being degraded, but you DO have a fetish for spanking, then I’m 100% with Maymay on “spanking without degradation” being the way to go. But some people have a fetish specifically for the stuff Maymay thinks is bad, and I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do.
—Myca
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Damn!
You and your friends are awesome!
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> I can’t help but feel like this is another instance of, “if I can’t fuck, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2352#comic
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I wish I had friends like you.
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One of my partners identified for a long time as straight, and for her 20th, we threw her an all-lesbian gangbang. Part of the ‘what got her off’ about that was that she, a young straight girl, would be subject to sexual use by many people who did not match her orientation. It was a degrading thing, a humiliation thing. That was the point.
But afterwards, when we all went out for dinner, and everyone was giving her hugs and telling her how great she did, and there were birthday presents and a cake … that was real too.
Yum.
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So, as a straight guy who is (sort of*) in the submissive category of things, and with some sexual interests that are more paraphilia than kink, I’m obviously not the target audience of Maymay, and I’ve also yet to actually ever have sex, let alone fetish sex, but…
I am definitely in the category of people for whom the horrible stuff is itself an important part of what is erotic. I don’t really have any unusual sensation fetish. I fantasize about some painful scenarios, but I’m not a masochist and actually have a very low pain tolerance. The pain is just part of the story element. And these stories are very dark. Happy endings are sometimes an active turnoff. (these stories don’t exactly have to be elaborate though. Sometimes they are really more about an event than any kind of extended story). So the victim and aggressor* roles are an important part of the fantasy, it cannot exist without them.
* “Submissive” is really not the right word for these sorts of fantasies. While I am a pretty submissive and deferring person in general and probably by extension in sex, I don’t submit in my fantasies, I try to resist and fail because I am overpowered/trapped/whatever. If anything “victim” would be more accurate.
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Hmm, I think you’re a little bit off as far as the typical mind fallacy goes. I don’t think that Maymay doesn’t realize that people fetishize D/s and degradation–I suspect zie realizes, and just continues to think that fetishizing those things is bad, and that rolequeers are different from BDSMers because they don’t fetishize D/s dynamics. I don’t have the exact context for the infographic, but it seems plausible to interpret it not as “No one’s kinks are BDSM,” but instead, “Potentially -your- kinks are not BDSM, and can be fulfilled outside of a BDSM context.”
Also, unrelated–I find it kind of interesting that the majority of Maymay’s sensation and story examples seem to be focused on the receiving sensation side of things (or what would usually be termed submissive in a BDSM context, even if the D/s isn’t really in play). Like, clearly in scenarios like “being tied up” and “being spanked” there’s someone doing the tying up and the spanking, but Maymay doesn’t really seem to have thought about what that person is getting out of it.
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They have; they think dominance is inherently evil and dominants are rapists.
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And why does anyone listen to this person again?
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But, in a rolequeer scenario, assuming that you want to be spanked, presumably you are going to be spanked -by someone.- We’ve established, according to Maymay, that being spanked isn’t inherently submissive. Is spanking still inherently dominant? Does the person doing the spanking just have to, like, accept that they are evil? Or is spanking someone else okay as long as you don’t -enjoy- spanking the other person?
Like, all of these options seem to me to be distinctly suboptimal even if you’ve written off all dominants as evil people who we don’t care about, because either you are rolequeering with evil people, or else you’re making someone else do a sex act that they don’t want to do?
I guess the third option would be that everyone is a service top and compassionately provides the requested sensation to their partner without having feelings about it other than that they are Pleasing Their Partner, but I literally cannot figure out whether that is what Maymay is advocating or not.
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Oh man, and I would totally agree … if submissive people didn’t exist.
Part of this for me goes back to some of the ‘foundation myth’ stuff for BDSM, where once upon a time, there were just groups of submissives sitting around, having to take turns spanking one another, and then … *heavenly choir* … they encountered a dominant.
I just have a really hard time with the idea that it’s exploitation to meet my partner’s sexual needs. I mean, I don’t think “ignoring the things that gets your partner off and explaining to them why their desires are wrong and bad,” is exactly the most feminist thing in the world.
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@Myca
Oh man, and I would totally agree … if submissive people didn’t exist….
I just have a really hard time with the idea that it’s exploitation to meet my partner’s sexual needs.
Why do you think that applies to submissives and not to dominants?
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I…don’t? Since I’m dominant and all.
I think maybe you’ve minsinterpreted my post, or maybe I was unclear. If you could rephrase your question, I might be able to respond more clearly.
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My bad. Or rather, stupid nesting limit bad. I think was misreading who you would be agreeing with.
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“Does the person doing the [X] just have to, like, accept that they are evil?”
The general answer in Social Justice culture seems to be: “YES, how dare you ever open your pathetic mouth to complain, you oppressive piece of shit! WAAAAAAAH! MOMMY!”
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Only if you luuuuuuuuuuuv strawmen.
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@Myca: Tin men maybe. “If you’re a cishet white male, you need to accept your responsibility for oppression” is an actual sentiment that I’ve seen expressed by multiple SJWs.
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Yeesh. Okay, first:
“If you’re a cishet white male, you need to accept your responsibility for oppression” is an actual sentiment that I’ve seen expressed by multiple SJWs.”
Cannot be reasonably be interpreted to carry the same meaning as:
““Does the person doing the [X] just have to, like, accept that they are evil?”
The general answer in Social Justice culture seems to be: “YES, how dare you ever open your pathetic mouth to complain, you oppressive piece of shit! WAAAAAAAH! MOMMY!”
I AM a cis het white male, and as a cit het white male, I benefit from an oppressive power structure. Does that mean either that “I’m evil” or that “I need to accept that I’m evil?” No, I didn’t choose this power structure, and I work against it. But denying that it exists, and that it exists to benefit people like me is just silly.
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@Myca: You’re equivocating (possibly unintentionally). “I benefit from oppression” != “I am responsible for oppression.” I find the former dubious, actually, but it’s a defensible contention, while arguing the latter (on the basis of the former) is batshit insane.
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It really depends on what you mean by “responsible,” though.
I think that those who are unjustly enriched by an unjust system have a moral responsibility to work against that system. That’s one possible meaning, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable.
Another possible meaning is that since you’re a cis, het, white male, you are therefore personally responsible for causing oppression. This is less defensible, but still can be broken down further. If you benefit from an unjust system without opposing it, I think you have some responsibility for the resulting injustice. I don’t think that’s crazy.
Probably the least defensible meaning is that since you’re a cis, het, white male you are therefore an active and willful oppressor. I don’t agree with that, but I also doubt that it’s all that common.
And also, I mean … I’m aware that we’re discussing your rephrasing of ‘a thing some people said somewhere.’ That’s totally not to say that I think you’re deliberately changing the meaning or anything, just that we might be better off discussing actual quotes from actual people?
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I kind of get annoyed when everyone goes on about how something they find entertaining “undermines power imbalances” or “deconstructs the somethingarchy.” I think there’s a strong urge among people who are interested in social justice ideas to attribute subversiveness to anything they like. It’s probably a form of the Halo effect. Fun is good. Subversiveness is good. Good things go together, so if I find this fun it must also be subversive.
In particular, there seems to be a strong tendency to classify any activity created by or primarily enjoyed by marginalized groups as subversive in some fashion. This generally involves reading way, way, too much into these activities. It also leads to anger if these activities are adopted by mainstream groups, because there’s some sense that they must be removing the subversiveness.
This is stupid. Sex, fiction, and art are some of the greatest things the human races has ever created. And it’s not because they serve some kind of political or revolutionary purpose. It’s because they’re fun, full stop.
It’s true that sex can help you bond with people and understand your desires better. And fiction can reveal truths about human nature. Art can be subversive. But this isn’t the real reason we value those things. We value them, period. Any instrumental values they fulfill are side benefits.
———————————————————————————————
It also seems to me that feminist/social justice opposition to BDSM is generated by the same faulty heuristic that generates opposition to rational suicide:
In the case of rational suicide, dying is usually bad because people have all sorts of goals, and dying prevents them from achieving those goals. Rational suicide is a rare instance where it is living, rather than dying that would thwart someone’s goals (primarily the goal of not being in horrible pain). Anti-suicide people overgeneralize the heuristic that “dying is bad,” and fail to realize that dying is bad because it thwarts people’s goals, not because it is bad in itself (it doesn’t help that there are a lot of irrational suicides in addition to rational ones).
In the case of BDSM, being dominated and controlled is usually bad because people have all sorts of goals, and being dominated prevent them from achieving those goals. BDSM is a rare instance where being dominated helps you achieve your goals instead of thwarting them. Anti-BDSM people overgeneralize the heuristic that “domination is bad,” and fail to realize that domination is bad because it thwarts people’s goals, not because it is bad in itself.
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I think one reason why social justice people are labeling everything they like as “subversive” is an excess of scrupulosity (as per Ozy’s previous post). In other words, they are kind of giving themselves permission to enjoy fun stuff. After all, every minute they spend on having great sex, or reading a great book, or watching a movie, etc., is a minute that they aren’t spending on fighting the patriarchy…
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I think this is true, but I would add that I don’t think it’s just about not being a good enough Political Soldier[1]. I think there’s also an element of fear that their particular “fun stuff” might be deemed evil under most-wrong SJ’s arbitrary deontology[2]. Gender play is appropriating women’s and/or trans people’s lived experience, S&M is turning someone else’s hell into a playground, etc. Claiming to be subversive is an attempt to defend against being accused of not just inadequately resisting the “kyriarchy,” but actively participating in it.
[1] They wouldn’t use that term, of course, since it’s associate with Third Positionism, but the principle is the same, and I’m not aware of an SJ equivalent.
[2] While I think that all SJ (that requires the term) is wrong, there are gradations, and broadly speaking, it seems to me that least-wrong SJ is properly-executed consequentialism (which is still wrong because consequentialism is wrong), moderately-wrong SJ is badly executed consequentialism, and most-wrong SJ is deontology gone mad.
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I broadly agree with one caveat/addendum:
Subversiveness is good.
This sentiment is the product of an immature and destructive attitude, either nihilistic or (more commonly, in an SJ context) Manichean. Modern Western society[1] has a lot wrong with it, but it has a lot right as well. And even the deeply flawed bits are often part of broader structures—and no true radical would ever limit themselves to just striking at mere bits, that’s reformism—that are in the aggregate better than nothing, and frequently better than anything else that’s actually been tried. Subversion for subversion’s sake is taking an ax to the support beams of the house you live in because you find it too cramped. You’ll get more space alright, if you survive the collapse! Just wait for winter, though.
None of which is to say that societal change, even radical change, is bad[2]. But change must be targeted, and change that targets load-bearing walls had damn well better start with a plan for where the new walls are going to be.
[1] In a broad sense, encompassing both the US and Sweden.
[2] A brief look at my comments elsewhere shows that this could hardly be my position.
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I think their opposition to BDSM stems from the same theory as their opposition to Grand Theft Auto, toy guns, and Barbie — basically, the idea that people are passive sponges, soaking up cultural inputs and then leaking them out as behavior. (People other than themselves, naturally, who have not learned the mystic power of Deconstruction.) Under that theory, violence and dominance in fantasy will automatically create more violence and dominance in the real world.
That their theory of has no empirical support, less than no predictive value, and is formally identical to the culture-behavior theories of their ideological opposites, who merely blame different inputs, seems not to bother them.
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Eh, I don’t think this analysis is particularly correct. The vast major of sj-minded praise for stuff as being “subversive,” for instance, is clearly not directed at revolutionary change in the way you seem to be envisioning it.
As stillnotking says, it’s more about the idea that cultural models shape behavior, and if you change the cultural models, people will behave differently.
Also, the majority of internet sj people, as far as I can tell, are only lightly versed in postmodernism as a whole, and not at all in deconstruction. Deconstruction -is- frequently referenced, and often badly and inaccurately, in the academy, but it would be nice if people would stop treating it as as shibboleth for all that is wrong with sj culture.
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Whether they call it “deconstruction” or not, the basic theme that they’re the enlightened ones, exempt, by superior understanding, from the worldly pollution that turns everyone else into (at least potential) monsters, is extremely common.
It’s also an idea that long predates Derrida. Rousseau would have recognized it.
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And your point is? I’m not trying to pick an argument, I’m simply pointing out that blaming the deconstructionists every time people on the left act superior isn’t particularly accurate. There are plenty of other philosophies, as you point out, that also allow you to act superior with very little reason, and many of them are more accessible.
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@bem
I wasn’t trying to pick on deconstruction is particular. I was just using “deconstructs” as an example of the kinds of thing someone might say when they are attributing subversive intent to their favorite forms of entertainment.
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Oh, oops, I also wasn’t trying to reply to you, but to stillnotking and osberend simultaneously, having not noticed that there was actually another level of threading available. That particular use of “deconstructs” has trickled down pretty well into normal speech, I think? I wouldn’t really peg it as referencing Derrida without further context, any more than I would assume that someone answering a moral question with “Well, what if everyone did that?” is deliberately referencing Kant.
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@bem: What did I say about deconstruction?
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Um, nothing? You said some things about subversiveness that I found relatively unpersuasive, stillnotking said some things about things about culture influencing behavior that I thought were more a more accurate description, if phrased somewhat uncharitably, and also some things about deconstruction that I found disagreeable. I mentioned all of these things in one comment, because I missed the reply button and thought we were on the last available layer of threading. That is all.
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Well long ago Judith Butler decided to describe drag as “subverting the gender binary” (or something), and that kind of speech did catch on among a certain set. Except Julia Serano thinks it’s nonsense and counterproductive. And Viviane Namaste suggests that Butler was appropriating the experiences of transgender women for her own specious theories and ignoring the actual lives and motives of AMAB-GNC people — most of whom could care fuck-all about “destabilizing” or “deconstructing” anything. We mostly just want hormones and jobs. And these days Butler seems to be far more sympathetic to Serano and Namaste (and she writes a heck-of-a lot clearer too), so yay. Criticism works.
And tonight I’ll be at a queer-punk show in the basement of a drag club, with my tranny g/f, and no doubt we’ll “decenter” and “deconstruct” and “destabalize” all kinds of gender. Probably get drunk too.
Anyway, I think the way you guys criticize “social justice” is rather like broadly criticizing “libertarian” thought based on what some clueless ninny said at a Tea Party rally.
I hope no one destabilizes the train on the my way home. I have cool plans to subvert the cisphallopatriarchy by sucking my g/f’s dick.
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> Anyway, I think the way you guys criticize “social justice” is rather like broadly criticizing “libertarian” thought based on what some clueless ninny said at a Tea Party rally.
This is basically the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, unless you can put together a convincing case why tumblr users shouldn’t count as true Social Justice members, whereas you yourself should.
> I hope no one destabilizes the train on the my way home. I have cool plans to subvert the cisphallopatriarchy by sucking my g/f’s dick.
For reasons of medical safety, I would recommend against doing that on an unstable train 🙂
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It is not “no true scottsman,” as I am not asserting that such folks do not exist, just as the ranting Tea Party person exists. Thing is, it is useful to criticize such people, but when you fixate on such people at the exclusion of the more thoughtful members of a movement, you do truth a disservice.
Let me suggest an analogy: Say some person wants to be a boxer. So they get their gym membership and start training, and it looks like they’re training hard. But when it’s time to get fights, they only agree to fight the chumps and has-beens. They make no efforts to fight the champ.
Which fine. But on the other hand, on the other side of the gym is some person who is hungry as shit. They wanna fight the champ. Big time. Their coach actually has to slow them down, hold them back until they’re ready.
Which boxer do you admire?
Anyway, I haven’t looked at the new Motte and Bailey thread, but I’ve noticed this: whenever we talk about social justice issues, folks come and knock down the silliest of the Twitterattie and the Tumblerinas and then act like they’ve made a strong point.
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My kingdom for a rhetorical device that would make people introspect.
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Sex, fiction, and art are some of the greatest things the human race has ever created.
I think you might be giving the human race about 33.3% too much credit here.
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You’re right, sex is a product of the Blind Idiot God. Change it to “really weird sex.”
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” I think there’s a strong urge among people who are interested in social justice ideas to attribute subversiveness to anything they like. ”
Ding ding ding.
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I think that’s the disconnect, right there. The difference between what maymay is talking about and what you seem to be saying is that maymay is making the argument that this response (of happiness, etc.) at stories of being worthless is kind of, well, fucked up, to use an earlier commenter’s term. Their argument is not that such experiences don’t happen, nor even that such experiences should be prevented from happening. Rather, that such fucked-up-ness is a social problem that has inevitably resulted from the kind of world we live in in which people are routinely abused by the systems that dictate the day to day happenings in our loves and, empirically, they’re right.
Think about it this way: stories in which we are told that we are worthless are not actually different from most of the experiences most people have in most parts of the world. Advertising is based on telling people they are missing something, that they’re not as valuable without a given product. All the institutions maymay seems to hate—schools, corporations, employment, even BDSM—all share the characteristic of imparting the story that people are generally worthless on their own and need something else (provided by said institution) to be “better.” Maybe the institution does this intentionally (advertising) maybe it doesn’t (BDSM). Maybe it does this in a very straightforward way (“bad parenting”) or maybe it does it in a very subtle way (capitalism). But it still does that. BDSM, to them, fits the pattern because of exactly what you described: the “felt sense” of a story of degradation is happiness and acceptance.
It seems to me to that normalizing/mainstreaming/uncritically accepting the idea that it is somehow “no big deal” to get all warm-fuzzy about stories in which we are worthless is not the best path for society en masse to take. That’s a really legitimate argument to be making, and it’s the opposite argument that the “My Kinks ARE BDSM” argument you put forth is making. And maymay didn’t even came up with their own argument because they’re some kind of genius, that argument they’re making is a very classic feminist/social justice argument. I think maymay themselves even made that point. Or else someone else did. Someone was all like, “rolequeer isn’t even maymay’s thing, it’s unquietpirate’s, but no one seems to be talking about her because misogyny” in some other link I just read after my whole evening to this thread, lol.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble. My point is just that the piece you seem to be missing is that maymay isn’t saying rolequeer ACTS are different from BDSM’s acts. What they are saying is that the difference between rolequeer and BDSM is in people’s internalized response to those acts. If you tell yourself a story in which you’re worthless and you see no problem with that, then that’s BDSM. If such a story makes you uncomfortable and makes you want to respond by proving the premise of the story wrong (i.e., “No, I’m not worthless! I’m valuable!”) then that’s rolequeer. And, like, okay, maybe you want to tell yourself that you’re worthless because that makes you feel happy. I don’t see anything in the rolequeer blog that says this is somehow not a valid thing to want. But it does seem weird to me keep telling ourselves that a response to “you’re worthless” like “oh yay happy warm fuzzies I’m so happy that I’m so worthless!” is a ridiculous thing to call “empowerment,” which is what a lot of the BDSM-identified people seem to be doing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling yourself something you want to hear, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any strong ground to what you’re telling yourselves.
So I guess the sex stuff just seems to be window dressing, given how much maymay and co. also talk about capitalism and other institutions in relation to rolequeer, too. So it’s not about the sex. They’re just saying that, insofar as sex is what’s being discussed, rolequeer responses are ones that eroticize (sexualize) that latter response of having warm-fuzzies about being valuable rather than being worthless.
That doesn’t seem like a bad message to me, honestly.
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Goliathan: I’m not sure that my response of happiness at being told I’m worthless is a social problem, to be honest. In my personal case, it seems connected to my aneurotypicality and while obviously I don’t know what I’d be like in a nonableist society it seems plausible to me that I would have hated myself even in a society that didn’t hate people like me. Not every problem in someone’s life is a result of oppression. 🙂 I agree that an interest in kink is sometimes a product of oppression, but not always.
I personally don’t think my sex is empowering. I have sex I like because it gets me off. I am suspicious of attempts to be like “if you have kink y then it will make you a better person!”; I feel like it falls prey to making people feel like better people without actually having to put the work in to be more virtuous.
(I hope this doesn’t come off as condescending, but I really appreciate rolequeer/kink-critical/whatever people commenting here! A lot of my commenters are pro-kink, and I do want a wide variety of viewpoints on this issue.)
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I don’t think maymay is saying is that it is either, though. Maymay’s not talking about you. None of this is about you. You basically come right out and say “my experiences are totes different, clearly I’ve had very different experiences,” so I’m confused why you’re even rebutting them?
I think, and again, maymay’s blog is down (?) so I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, that maymay would say that maybe you, Ozy Frantz, don’t think that feeling happy when you’re told you’re worthless is a problem for you, and that’s great for you, but signalling to others in the way that you are that this is a perfectly acceptable response only helps abusers, right? Like, you can’t seriously be arguing that people should just be like, “Hey, stop being concerned about people calling other people worthless! Maybe they LIKE that!” I mean, are you? And sure, maybe they do, but maybe they don’t? And isn’t it reasonable for society en masse to be like, “Hold up, that kind of ‘you’re-worthless’ storytelling doesn’t really seem like something we should be encouraging.” Not even the BDSM folx seem to think that’s a good idea, but that’s exactly what 50 shades and whatnot is doing, is it not?
I guess what I’m saying is that you, like a lot of “the BDSM folx” seem to be hearing things that aren’t being said, and you’re taking a lot of things really personally(?), or else we just aren’t reading the same maymay.
Like, I would also be totally suspicious of attempts to say “this kink will make you a better person,” but that’s not what rolequeer’s blog actually says. Maybe maymay said that at some point, and a lot of people (you included) seem to be acting like OF COURSE maymay said that, but there just isn’t anywhere I can see where they actually said that. Not in the rolequeer blog, not even their own blog archives that I can find (although I suppose maybe it’s been taken down? i dunno)
So, like, it’s just…weird that so much of your thought process is responding to stuff no one’s ever said. And I think why maymay hates you so much has more to do with the fact that you’re basically coming right out and saying that abusive behaviors are totally not worth being concerned about because, y’know, the recipient of that behavior “might have asked for it” and that this sounds too much to them like every “she asked for it comment” they say they saw so much of in the very BDSM scenes you both talk about.
anyway I’ve rambled again lol, sorry. But basically, yeah, I’m gonna guess that this is why I think it might come across to a lot of people more like you’re fighting with some demons of your own than actually engaging with the things coming from the rolequeer blog. *shrug*
Well, I don’t think maymay would disagree with you on that. 🙂
And I mean, like, there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, except insofar as it’s Not The Perfect Action Of A Holy Saint or whatever. So i don’t think you and maymay actually disagree about that about your sex.
But I do see maymay & co trying to advance an argument in which sex has the possibility to be empowering for a large group of people where it was previously not. They’re making that argument by contradiction; BDSM is not empowering sex for X, Y, and Z reasons. Thing is, not even you seem to disagree with them on that! So is it just that you don’t think that the rest of their argument holds water? And, like, fine, but you’re also saying it doesn’t hold water while simultaneously also saying that you’re not their target audience anyway? That might be way your engagement comes across as disingenous.
So again, maybe you’re processing your own shit. That’s cool! Everyone has shit to process! It’s just not a nice thing to use someone else—personally, as you have done quite a few times on your blog now—as a strawperson with which to process your own internal stuff and then call what they’re doing wrong when everyone involved, you and them both, seem to constantly say that it never had anything to do with you in the first place, yknow?
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@Goliathan: And I think why maymay hates you so much has more to do with the fact that you’re basically coming right out and saying that abusive behaviors are totally not worth being concerned about because, y’know, the recipient of that behavior “might have asked for it” and that this sounds too much to them like every “she asked for it comment” they say they saw so much of in the very BDSM scenes you both talk about.
Do you really not understand the difference between “Don’t be concerned above behaviors X, Y, and Z, because the recipient might have asked for them” and “Don’t be concerned about behaviors X, Y, and Z, if the recipient asked for them?” Because there’s a pretty damn big difference, and I don’t think anyone here is arguing for the former.
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Goliathan: wow, what a smug fucking passive-aggressive piece of shit you are…
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Goliathan- It seems like you are feeling ganged-up on. I don’t really want to add to that, but there are some things in your last post that I would like to respond to.
I’m going to quote some pieces of your post:
“So, like, it’s just…weird that so much of your thought process is responding to stuff no one’s ever said. And I think why maymay hates you so much has more to do with the fact that you’re basically coming right out and saying that abusive behaviors are totally not worth being concerned about […]
I think it might come across to a lot of people more like you’re fighting with some demons of your own than actually engaging with the things coming from the rolequeer blog. *shrug*
[…]
So again, maybe you’re processing your own shit. That’s cool! Everyone has shit to process! It’s just not a nice thing to use someone else—personally, as you have done quite a few times on your blog now—as a strawperson with which to process your own internal stuff and then call what they’re doing wrong”
And, basically…eh. I have to say, this passage gives me the creeps, and it comes off as really insincere. Because when you insist on speculating that the person you are conversing with is “fighting their own demons” and “processing their own shit” and et cetera, what you are announcing to your readers is that you think that that person can’t possibly believe their stated beliefs, and that all of their arguments are coming from a place of brokenness, and that you understand their psychology better than they do. It’s dismissive, it’s pretty ableist, and, frankly, it sounds a lot like a silencing technique.
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So I think the questions is how, under this schema, we deal with the fact that there are people who get off on that, and even people where that’s their primary sexual response.
I mean, I’m with Ozy on, “sometimes kink is because of oppression/abuse/whichever and sometimes it’s not,” but to take it a step farther – even assuming that the only reason someone get off on degradation/humiliation is because of oppression or abuse … so what? However they got here, now they exist, and their preferences and responses need to be respected.
I mean, if the “what to do” is “create a world without oppression or abuse,” sure I’m down. It’ll take a bit, but it’s worth doing. But on the way, I don’t think we can ethically ignore the existence of people who have these kinks, and I don’t think that positioning these kinks as inherently unethical no matter how hard practitioners try to make them ethical. is likely to produce better results, overall.
The argument seems a little too close to condemning someone for participating in the capitalist system they were born to: “Yep, capitalism is slavery. Sure. I’m on board. I still gotta eat. What’s your solution, smart guy?”
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Um. That’s exactly the question that rolequeerness seems to be trying to answer, to me? Wasn’t that kind of thing maymay’s primary sexual response? Isn’t that their whole shtick? “I used to be into BDSM and now I’m not and here’s why”? Isn’t that where rolequeerness came from??
Am I just reading a different blog than everyone else here? I’m really confused! 😦
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That’s a really good response to the question, “what should people who get off on being spanked do in order to do that ethically?”
It’s totally nonresponsive to the question, “what should people who get off on being degraded or humiliated do in order to do that ethically?”
At least, that’s how I read it … it’s entirely possible I’m misunderstanding.
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Advertising is based on telling people they are missing something, that they’re not as valuable without a given product. All the institutions maymay seems to hate—schools, corporations, employment, even BDSM—all share the characteristic of imparting the story that people are generally worthless on their own and need something else (provided by said institution) to be “better.”
Aren’t they right, to some extent, depending on how you define “worthless?” We are certainly less able to achieve things in life without the institutions and products that our civilization provides. If you define “worthless” to mean “having inherent moral value as a person,” then no, you aren’t worthless without them. But if you define worthless as “incapable of providing value to yourself and others,” you are definitely worthless on your own and need something else to be better.
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Worthless? BDSM only says that you may get orgasms if you seek out people with compatible kinks. Who said they are broken? There is a bit of defensive making fun of vanilla people, but I for one am not afraid of the evil furries convincing the population at large that any sex without cat ears is meaningless.
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I realize this isn’t constructive, but… honestly, Maymay’s chart just looks like a load of nonsense to me. You do them excessive credit by taking their ideas seriously.
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I was completely unaware of the context of Maymay’s opinion of D/s play and I thought it was rather good and was congruent with my experience.
To be specific, there was a period where I was into masochistic play, but I didn’t feel this as a submissive or punishment narrative, but more as a ritualistic initiation. This happened during a time when I was re-orientating myself toward a more traditional conception of masculinity/fatherhood – so I integrated it as kind of a coming-of-age rite (but 30 years late I guess). So the general idea of decoupling “sensation” and “narrative” structures kind of just makes intuitive sense – I had this strong urge to be hurt, but not to be submissive.
But this is only descriptive – these are lego you can put together however you want.
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My objection is mostly to the last two columns, which are an entirely arbitrary division of “things Maymay approves of” and “things Maymay does not approve of.”
I can’t really speak to the left part of the chart. I was in my 30s by the time I figured out I was dominant/sadistic, because I don’t identify at all with the choreography of BDSM (somewhat like “narrative” here, although the correspondence isn’t perfect). I’m not sure “sensation” adequately captures what’s important to me either, though.
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Matthew – Right… I’m not sure it’s arbitrary. I don’t know what your experience is – I hope I’m not forcing something to fit here, but BDSMer’s do something called “after-care”, right? Which would seem to align approximately with the stuff in the green box.
If I understand the Rolequeers point (I might not, or only a facile understanding), it’s that BDSM really is evoking adaptive responses to abuse… And, I think this is true. That’s pretty much what it is (nothing wrong with it in consensual settings).
Another adaptive response is to bond emotionally with our abusers, so as to better manipulate them into keeping us alive. And this is very much what BDSM is structured around – including the aftercare part, which serves to cement the bonding.
So I guess *a* response to the rolequeer stuff is you can break it down however you want – tying someone up, or hitting them is hijacking our adaptive responses to abuse even if you dress it up in a slightly different narrative context – if it makes you feel like a more moral person to do that then go right ahead. Civilization is built on tweaking narratives.
For others, it’s not that stuff in the red box is bad and the green box is good, it’s kind of all part of the play.
I mean, all of this is why the BDSM community conceived of consent as a gold standard for valid play.
(In my own context, well, painful rituals associated with status changes are pretty obviously a case-in-point)
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The whole post reminded me of this!!
Lol!
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Oh my god. You are such a smug, self-satisfied piece of shit. “Golly gee, I sure hope Maymay’s okay! I’d hate to think they were a victim of bullying and mistreatment! * cough * tee hee! * cough *” You just can’t leave them alone, can you?
I’m not even going to bother responding to the hot mess of miscontextualization, failed reading comprehension, non-sequiturs, and rhetorical feints that make up the bulk of your “theorizing” here, given that your patently transparent intention with this post is not to intellectually engage with the material but, rather, to ramble at length, again, about all your Maymay Feels and how wrong you think they are about everything and what an innocent little peach you are for just helpfully pointing those factual errors out.
I’m fairly certain there’s no way you’ll let this comment through moderation. Still, rather than wasting time responding point-by-point to your latest clueless attempt to strawman rolequeer theory, I’ll just helpfully inform your readers that if they *are* interested in learning about rolequeerness, there are lots of better places they can do that. For example:
– The Rolequeer Blog on Tumblr (rolequeer.tumblr.com/)
– The Bandana Blog (bandanablog.wordpress.com/)
– The Big Resources List of rolequeer post and bloggers: rolequeer.tumblr.com/resources
– Notfuckingcishet’s Rolequeer ‘Zine: http://rolequeer.tumblr.com/post/102988999462/since-a-book-isnt-happening-any-time-soon-ive
– The actual post of mine, not Maymay’s, that you’re attempting to skewer in the title of this post: bandanablog.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/stop-enabling-sociopathic-abusers-your-kinks-are-not-bdsm/
– Any of the many places where copies of Maymay’s posts are still available on the Internet
– The entire Tumblr #rolequeer tagspace
– Y’know, Google.
But hey, no reason to put any citations in your post, since obviously there’s *no way* to link to any information about rolequeerness if Maymay’s blogs are down! Innocent little peach that you are, I’m sure that’s just because you don’t understand how to use the Internet, not because you’re actively trying to prevent your readers from having any access to the material you’re “critiquing.”
No wait, I’m sorry, that’s ’cause you’re not actually critiquing any of the materials; you’re just critiquing Maymay.
> I’m not sure what Maymay would have me do.
Oh, I think you know the answer to that question.
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Innocent little peach that you are, I’m sure that’s just because you don’t understand how to use the Internet, not because you’re actively trying to prevent your readers from having any access to the material you’re “critiquing.”
Yes, because clearly the readers here are to stupid too employ a search engine in the absence of links.
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I swear those homophones were in their correct positions when I typed that.
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Oh my god. You are such a smug, self-satisfied piece of shit. “Golly gee, I sure hope Maymay’s okay! I’d hate to think they were a victim of bullying and mistreatment! * cough * tee hee! * cough *”
Or, you know, Ozy’s a bleeding heart type who has repeatedly expressed opposition to bullying even their worst enemies. But nah, epistemic charity is for weaklings, right?
You just can’t leave them alone, can you?
She said, in a comment on Ozy’s blog.
The actual post of mine, not Maymay’s, that you’re attempting to skewer in the title of this post: bandanablog.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/stop-enabling-sociopathic-abusers-your-kinks-are-not-bdsm/
I’m pretty sure they’re skewering the infographic they posted. But let’s talk about that post.
Their kink is not for rape-play itself. Their kink is for rape apologism.
Except that what you’re describing is actually a kink for rape-play apologism. That’s a kinda big difference.
But the BDSMers have convinced their flock that if anybody questions them jacking each other off to the fantasy that “Sexual Violence is No Biggie,” then those critics are also threatening every person’s right to get their rocks off in whatever other kinky ways feel fulfilling to them. That it’s either an 100% abuse-trivializing no-holds-barred free-for-all or vanilla sex in the missionary position with the lights off forever — and that you’ve already chosen a side, because you let someone blindfold you and fuck you with a strap-on once and you really liked it, so it’s only a matter of time until you’re a gibbering desperate perverted mess of uncritical rape-loving jelly.
You’re conflating “if you’re kinky, you should be okay with other people being all [consensual, which you’re conveniently omitting] kinds of kinky” with “if you’re kinky, you will inevitably become all kinds of kinky.” Which, um, no. These are not the same statements, even without the bit about consent.
Overall: A very weak argument for a very stupid position. 1/5.
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What I see is not Ozy refusing to address your points, but you refusing to address theirs. You say all doms are rapists, which means all subs are rape victims; but if a sub insists they’re not a rape victim, then what? Tell them they’re wrong about their own desires and experiences? “Typical mind fallacy” is too kind a term for that bullshit; I’d have gone with “blind zealotry”.
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No, no, no, not all subs, just all subs that have ever been with a dom. Subs getting together to whip each other is totally fine. (I am not sure if they have a concept of switches.)
According to one of these two (I think Maymay? But I might be wrong), “Submissives need a dominant like lesbians need a man.”
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someone took seriously maymay’s theories and wrote a detailed post about what they agree with and what they do not, based on personal experience! QUICK, SOMEBODY CALL THE POLICE.
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10/10, would giggle at incoherent frothing again.
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Hmmmm.
See, thing is, I know almost nothing about rolequeer. I mean, I see it get mentioned here and there, but mostly in the context of people I respect warning me to stay the heck away from Maymay.
Which, whatever. I don’t know Maymay and don’t really have an opinion but I respect my friends. So that.
But on the other hand I’m queer and kinky and I role-play and I’m pro-SJ, so maybe something called “rolequeer” would be kinda cool, a new approach.
Except, the one thing I don’t want to do is be surrounded by doctrinaire jerks. I don’t want bad discourse norms and tons of ideological purity and all of that.
Sorry. I already wade the waters of the trans political spaces. DO NOT WANT MORE.
Anyway, yeah. This comment. Heh. I think I know what I need to know about “rolequeer.” Kink has its problems, believe me I know! But we have pretty good communities who work through our shit without being completely horrible to each other.
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Yeah, it’s kind of one of those things which tries to see the cracks in an existing moral edifice and…
just kind of stops, fetishizing the moment of seeing the cracks and condemning them. Only it doesn’t stop, it builds up this whole superstructure of shame and scrupulosity.
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Hi Ozy! I came up with my own infographic that I think explains it.
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A+ good job.
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Oh, I get it now. 😦 You guys are just a bunch of bullies.
Wow. No wonder maymay hates you so much.
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You come to someone else’s blog, say some pretty insulting shit about them (albeit politely), and one person insults you, not even that severely . . . and your conclusion is that we’re “just a bunch of bullies” and that maymay is right to hate Ozy?
Bullshit.
You came here looking for an excuse to label us as bullies (and, implicitly, as a homogeneous pack, even though we argue we argue with each other all the time and are doing so in this thread, about subversion), and were ready to use anything you could for that purpose. Which, whatever, but don’t lie about it. There’s nothing new that you “get now.” You’ve just found your pretext.
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Perhaps you should both slow down a bit and make sure you’re not misunderstanding each other. There’s no reason this needs to turn into fighting.
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@ninecarpals: What part of [insulted relatively mildly by one person, while others engaged them politely] -> “all a bunch of bullies” -> “no wonder maymay hates [not even the person that insulted Goliathan] so much” do you find ambiguous?
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Oh, and this is after Ozy specifically expressed gratitude for their being here, defending an uncommon viewpoint.
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I’m not coming at this from the question of who’s in the wrong; I’m coming at this from the question of what the best way to keep the peace here is, because I’m of the opinion that more will be lost if things escalate than if a handful of small insults stand.
Nothing personal against you, Osberend – my experience just tells me that there’s nothing to be lost by pausing to take a deep breath before engaging with someone who’s upset you.
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Tell you what: If Goliathan is willing to discuss this reasonably (with or without insults, but without bullshit), then I’ll admit I was wrong in my assessment of their motivations, and also I owe you a drink, should the opportunity to buy you one ever arise.
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To be fair, I wouldn’t call that insult “not severe”; I think we tend to grade multi on a curve because we’re used to outbursts from her.
On the other hand, note the striking similarity between the insult multi used here and the one UnquietPirate leads off with in attacking Ozy elsewhere in the thread. One wonders if Goliathan S. also considers UnquietPirate a bully….
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By “arguing on the internet” standards, I’d consider that “not severe,” even if it weren’t from multi. But YMMV.
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@nine
“There’s no reason this needs to turn into fighting.”
Yes there is.
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@Stargirlprincess
What reason would there be that outweighs the costs? (It seems like you took it back, but I’m curious what you were thinking at the time.)
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Actually I am sorry I take that back. Goliathian =/= maymay and deserves more respect.
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My own kinks bounce back and forth between these categories like ping-pong balls. How would you even rank wanting to have sex like literal animals? Sometimes there’s consent and outright cuddling; sometimes there’s rape; but both are side-effects of the root kink. It’s a story with different endings, and a multitude of possible emotions.
It’s entirely possible that I’m misunderstanding what’s going on here, as is being alleged in other comment threads. The only other time I read anything of Maymay’s I was linked there by a friend with no connection to this blog, and I told the friend that I didn’t think much of it at all, so I’m not predisposed to be generous (though I wouldn’t say I’m especially predisposed to be generous to Ozy, either).
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Something I don’t understand, is why people have such difficulty with the concept of getting off on a fantasy without remotely wanting it to become reality.
I have sexual “fantasies” that involve myself dying (painfully) (yes, I am messed up in the head, etc.). I really, really, really don’t want to die, and am a transhumanist who plans to sign up for cryonics later in life. Obviously, I have zero desire for any of those “fantasies” to come true (though virtual reality would be nice).
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Well, this is the core of the argument, isn’t it? Are the stories we tell ourselves when having sex a reflection of the messed up power dynamics of the world, or are they us taking these simply as fantasies?
One reoccurring theme in feminist articles I’ve seen lately is that stories about rape in the media influence “rape culture”– i.e., make people more likely to commit rape because it’s normalized. In a different sphere, people argued that video games couldn’t cause people to be more violent because violent crime rates had gone down.
Which is it? How much of the stories we tell about sex are what we really believe and how much is stuff that we’re just playing with? I feel like we’re missing some information somewhere, and people need to think about this in a more nuanced way than we have been previously, but I’m not sure how to proceed.
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Those aren’t mutually exclusive. Some of one’s preferences are caused by the culture and power dynamics of the society in which one grows up, but that doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than fantasies when one acts on them in a sexual context. For example, someone may like the fantasy of overpowering women because of cultural norms, but that doesn’t mean that their preference in fantasies is reflective of how they behave in everyday life, or what their view of ideal social norms is. Someone can personally treat men and women equally and wish the general culture were the same while still enjoying being a dom.
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This all looks very funny when you’re a bisexual switch.
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Solution: empiricism (and bribing a lot of ethics comitees)
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Pardon the interruption, but I’m really curious: Ozy, will there be a new open thread anytime soon?
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I’ve never been a fan of Maymay’s rolequeer movement due to the rolequeers holier than though attitude. That and their movement seems to be built entirely around demonizing BDSM. At the same time I’m also not a fan of the tendency of some in the BDSM community to reduce all BDSM to being about “power”. Or to promote “True Dom” and “True Sub” ideology. Some of my kinks involve things like being restrained, held down, used, and objectified. Some of these things could be considered submissive and some could be considered masochist. But I don’t really enjoy being submissive. Submission isn’t what makes these activities pleasurable for me. And I only experience very limited enjoyment of pain. So I often feel alienated by a lot of discourse on what BDSM is supposed to be like.
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