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sophiaserpentiaAlmost finished reading bell hooks' Feminism is for Everyone. I got to the part where hooks wrote about the divisive debate within feminism thirty years ago over BDSM, and her comments which would place her on what is now (not quite accurately) called the "sex-positive" side of the debate, and reflected that it sounded eerily similar to debates i've read online over the past few months.
This debate is still going on now, and is still dividing people who, on many other issues (such as rape, family violence, wage imbalance, FGM, reproductive freedom, political representation, religious doctrine, etc.) would otherwise be allies.
The debates within feminism over BDSM, pornography, prostitution, and acceptance of transgenderism are important because they go to the heart of two differing -- but let me be clear, not mutually exclusive -- views over what constitutes the best possible feminist outcome. These debates create acrimony because in part they force radicals to examine what it is we are ultimately working for, and who then constitutes our foes.
On the one hand you have people whose main goal is the utter dissolution of discriminatory power imbalance in society. Their experiences have led them to conclude that, humankind being as it is, any expression of power imbalance could be a gateway for domination to enter society. For example, they will argue that the social construction of gender would not survive the dissolution of patriarchy. Therefore any performance of gender reinforces the discriminatory power imbalance.
On the other hand you have people who want to see a world where people feel empowered to express themselves just as they wish. Their experiences have led them to conclude that what ties a person down is any form of restriction on their self-expression. They see as a foe anyone who seeks to restrict them, especially if they are citing an ideological or philosophical point of view.
In a sense, both points of view could be simultaneously true. The first point of view looks at the structure of society at the ideological and institutional level and examines how this affects the individual. The second point of view starts by examining what restrictiveness looks like at the level of individual experience and works upward to the structure of society from there.
Why do these two approaches, then, have so much overlap (with regards to women's rights) yet still they do not meet in the middle? I think the ultimate answer to this question goes beyond the scope of a single journal entry. But i'm going to ponder it for quite a while.
Right now i wanted to focus a bit on the question of BDSM. Critique of BDSM from the first point of view might include, for example, an observation that much or most BDSM practice reflects a culturally-standard male-dom fem-sub arrangement; or a theory that women living in a patriarchal society might so deeply internalize cultural notions of male domination that their sexual fantasies have been colonized, and so women are not truly capable to freely consent to being dominated; or the question of what the difference really is between traditional marriage and 24-7 BDSM, if in both arrangements you find women who are expected to follow orders or face violence if their performance is unsatisfactory?
I don't think these questions are easily dismissed. Nor is the response from the second point of view, which might include, for example, testimony that many women receive enjoyment and satisfaction from BDSM; that in their lives they have found that attempts to suppress these desires are more oppressive than seeking to fulfill them; that there is something important and profound which would be lost if people gave up BDSM; and that women have been forced to give up so much under patriarchy that it is not good or right to make them feel they have to give up anything else, which they enjoy, in order to achieve liberation.
It is relevant to ponder what the unraveling of gender or of male domination would look like. This is still an open question. People who take the first perspective are inclined to believe that any proposed solution which bears characteristics resembling the problem itself are not really a solution. For example, they say of transsexualism that 'sexual reassignment' does not help to unravel gender because it guides gender rebels back into the male-or-female fold -- and therefore it is informed by the gender caste system. Of BDSM, they would say that it leads sexual rebels back into the mainstream sexual domination fold.
The second perspective would suggest that reshaping a system of involuntary caste domination into something more democratic is progress towards greater individual freedom. IOW, when someone comes to the BDSM community, they are taught that they ultimately have the power to consent or not consent to any arrangement -- and that furthermore they are capable, if they find acceptable partners, into a form of power exchange previously unknown to them. In practice this is not always perfect, but i have heard of situations where people were literally able to unravel abusive patterns in their relationship after learning that they had the power in any BDSM arrangement to negotiate the terms.
If we are to ponder the unraveling of the gender caste system as something which will happen in stages, rather than all at once, BDSM might even look like one of several tentative first steps in that process. It is true that in much of the BDSM community we can find defenders of sexism. But in this respect they are no different than the rest of society, and while we should not be silent about sexism in BDSM, we also should perhaps consider that since people have been so deeply colonized by patriarchy, that it will take stages, steps, changes by degree, for human beings to learn how to relate to one another in any other way.
This debate is still going on now, and is still dividing people who, on many other issues (such as rape, family violence, wage imbalance, FGM, reproductive freedom, political representation, religious doctrine, etc.) would otherwise be allies.
The debates within feminism over BDSM, pornography, prostitution, and acceptance of transgenderism are important because they go to the heart of two differing -- but let me be clear, not mutually exclusive -- views over what constitutes the best possible feminist outcome. These debates create acrimony because in part they force radicals to examine what it is we are ultimately working for, and who then constitutes our foes.
On the one hand you have people whose main goal is the utter dissolution of discriminatory power imbalance in society. Their experiences have led them to conclude that, humankind being as it is, any expression of power imbalance could be a gateway for domination to enter society. For example, they will argue that the social construction of gender would not survive the dissolution of patriarchy. Therefore any performance of gender reinforces the discriminatory power imbalance.
On the other hand you have people who want to see a world where people feel empowered to express themselves just as they wish. Their experiences have led them to conclude that what ties a person down is any form of restriction on their self-expression. They see as a foe anyone who seeks to restrict them, especially if they are citing an ideological or philosophical point of view.
In a sense, both points of view could be simultaneously true. The first point of view looks at the structure of society at the ideological and institutional level and examines how this affects the individual. The second point of view starts by examining what restrictiveness looks like at the level of individual experience and works upward to the structure of society from there.
Why do these two approaches, then, have so much overlap (with regards to women's rights) yet still they do not meet in the middle? I think the ultimate answer to this question goes beyond the scope of a single journal entry. But i'm going to ponder it for quite a while.
Right now i wanted to focus a bit on the question of BDSM. Critique of BDSM from the first point of view might include, for example, an observation that much or most BDSM practice reflects a culturally-standard male-dom fem-sub arrangement; or a theory that women living in a patriarchal society might so deeply internalize cultural notions of male domination that their sexual fantasies have been colonized, and so women are not truly capable to freely consent to being dominated; or the question of what the difference really is between traditional marriage and 24-7 BDSM, if in both arrangements you find women who are expected to follow orders or face violence if their performance is unsatisfactory?
I don't think these questions are easily dismissed. Nor is the response from the second point of view, which might include, for example, testimony that many women receive enjoyment and satisfaction from BDSM; that in their lives they have found that attempts to suppress these desires are more oppressive than seeking to fulfill them; that there is something important and profound which would be lost if people gave up BDSM; and that women have been forced to give up so much under patriarchy that it is not good or right to make them feel they have to give up anything else, which they enjoy, in order to achieve liberation.
It is relevant to ponder what the unraveling of gender or of male domination would look like. This is still an open question. People who take the first perspective are inclined to believe that any proposed solution which bears characteristics resembling the problem itself are not really a solution. For example, they say of transsexualism that 'sexual reassignment' does not help to unravel gender because it guides gender rebels back into the male-or-female fold -- and therefore it is informed by the gender caste system. Of BDSM, they would say that it leads sexual rebels back into the mainstream sexual domination fold.
The second perspective would suggest that reshaping a system of involuntary caste domination into something more democratic is progress towards greater individual freedom. IOW, when someone comes to the BDSM community, they are taught that they ultimately have the power to consent or not consent to any arrangement -- and that furthermore they are capable, if they find acceptable partners, into a form of power exchange previously unknown to them. In practice this is not always perfect, but i have heard of situations where people were literally able to unravel abusive patterns in their relationship after learning that they had the power in any BDSM arrangement to negotiate the terms.
If we are to ponder the unraveling of the gender caste system as something which will happen in stages, rather than all at once, BDSM might even look like one of several tentative first steps in that process. It is true that in much of the BDSM community we can find defenders of sexism. But in this respect they are no different than the rest of society, and while we should not be silent about sexism in BDSM, we also should perhaps consider that since people have been so deeply colonized by patriarchy, that it will take stages, steps, changes by degree, for human beings to learn how to relate to one another in any other way.
