Regular readers may remember this previous post critiquing William Saletan’s BDSM articles at Slate. His latest offering is considerably better that his past efforts, but that’s not exactly a high bar to aim over. There’s actually some real data in this new article, although his thinking remains flabby and his reasoning haphazard.
He doesn’t seem to understand common activities like piercing or electrical play, or when tools like safewords might be needed, and therefore makes foolish sweeping statements. He correctly states that BDSM participants are not a single homogeneous group, but finishes with a set of conclusions that implies they are. I also think his concerns about exploitation based on the gender percentages in the top/bottom roles makes no sense in the framework he presents them. However, I’m going to ignore all that, and instead talk about a single issue he raises: Is BDSM an orientation?
This is a hot button topic for some kinky people, who get quite passionate about it. He implies it’s not because some fraction of people only dabble in kink. Personally I think the whole discussion is a red herring.
The people who argue that it is an orientation often seem to draw from, or adopt similar arguments to, some of the recent debates on gay rights. The religious right would argue that being gay was a choice and therefore gay people were choosing to give up their right to marry. Presumably they thought that people were being gay just to spite them. The obvious counter argument was that homosexuality was an intrinsic part of someone’s identity, and it was therefore unfair to penalize someone for something they had no control over.
I think getting dragged into that kind of discussion misses the point on two counts. Firstly, when you’re dealing with prejudice and bigotry, any apparently logical argument offered is really just a smokescreen. If you knock it down they’ll simply move on to another. The color of someone’s skin is clearly intrinsic to a person, but that didn’t stop society withholding civil rights from minority groups for many years. They simply picked a different reason to do so. Secondly, there are plenty of examples of society protecting the rights of groups that are the result of choice. For example, nobody pops out of the womb with a specific religious affiliation, despite what some religions may claim. Yet religious freedom is something society chooses to legally protect.
Rather than arguing that particular groups are special, we should be arguing for a culture that has a strong bias to protect people’s rights to live their lives as they see fit. And if you’re going to claim that their freedom to do so harms you in some way, then that had better be some clearly provable harm that we’re talking about. Not just that you think it’s icky to have a co-worker who might be into BDSM. Or that you think there’s some risky but undefinable moral hazard to having kinky people bring children up.
I wasn’t really sure what photograph was suitable for accompanying this post, so I thought I’d simply continue the medieval theme from yesterday. Mr Saletan seemed particularly concerned about knife play. I wonder what he’d make of bloody big sword play?
The image is by the photographer Jerrell Edwards (also on deviant art). I found it on Thy Queendom Come, Thy Will Be Done tumblr.
Some of the stats look dodgy for all sorts of reasons.
1. Let’s look at the most robust sample for those based on the question ‘How Many People Do BDSM’.
The question that’s used to identify people ‘doing’ BDSM is “In the last 12 months, have you been involved in B&D or S&M?”
Well, I’ve been interested in BDSM most of my adult life. I started with fetish interests, and then graduated to F/m power exchange because I realised that the signified was more important than the signifier. But had I few opportunities to get involved, because the opportunities that now exist, didn’t in my youth.
The fact that BDSM is taboo, even more taboo than being gay these days, means that it’s going to be difficult to get reliable stats in this area. Thus, for most of my life, I would have answered “No” to this question.
I would be prepared to bet big money that far more people *think* about it, and want to get involved but can’t, than actually do it, as is evidenced by the global sucess of the otherwise execrable ’50 shades…’.
2. The argument that it’s not an orientation because kinsters exhibit ‘flexibility’ is quite simply bollocks.
If my vanilla wife suddenly decides she wants to queen me, or if she enjoys giving me a forced orgasm, does that make her a dabbler in kink overnight? Does her ‘flexibility’ mean that her vanilla proclivities are not an orientation and that she can’t be called vanilla any more? I’m sure she’d be very surprised at that!
Nope. Another case of sloppy misleading journalism I’m afraid.
The devil is definitely in the detail with these kind of surveys. Often people (including myself) just look at the headline figures. But how they selected the interviewees, how many they selected and exactly how they framed the questions are indeed critical. I consider that kink is very much an intrinsic part of who I am, but like you, I’d have answered no to that question for many years.
As for the orientations aspect, I just put up another post on that. I found a good article by Clarisse Thorn that I thought captured the discussion pretty well.
-paltego