Apparently my posts on femdom and race are like buses. Nothing for ages, then you get two at once. My previous post was intended to be a one off, but then I spotted this article by British comedian Ava Vidal on a visit she made to London’s Club Pedestal. It’s an odd article, written by someone who clearly isn’t kinky. Unsurprisingly she therefore finds the whole thing strange. She finishes it by talking about race, and her discomfort with the idea of whipping someone and calling them slaves. Whatever your reaction to her comments (and I’m intentionally omitting mine from this post), it is interesting to see how somehow outside the kinky bubble might react to play that kinksters wouldn’t give a second thought to.
I’ve never attended Club Pedestal but it’s a fairly well known event. I was therefore surprised to read this in the article…
A white lady hands me a whip and tells me to beat the black man standing next to me…. later have a conversation with the black man and it turns out that this is his first time too.
It sounds incredibly dangerous to give a novice a whip and expect her to use it on another novice. Particularly in a space with other people around. She could severely hurt the submissive or take out the eye of a passerby. As the back of the man below shows, it’s possible to inflict some serious damage with a real single-tail. I can only hope that she was really given a flogger or a crop and is using whip to mean anything she could swing and hit with.
Unfortunately I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment. If found it on the Dominalova tumblr.
Hi paltego!
When I first started doing BDSM, first in my private life and then professionally, I didn’t like the word ‘slave’ either. I found it mildly politically offensive, but mostly it just offended my sense of aesthetics. I mean, it’s corny. Just like calling a BDSM studio a ‘dungeon.’
I’d bet anything that the journalist was handed a light, soft flogger. As you know, they’re harmless unless they have a ton of weight. I can’t imagine giving her a singletail, or even using a singletail in a crowded event space.
Hot picture!
I’m with you on the corny nature of the slave and dungeon terms. Personally when I think of slaves I think more of ancient history and the Roman slave society, or perhaps the Jews in Egypt. I don’t immediately think of the more recent context. Possibly that’s because slavery was never part of British society (although English ships were big slave traders through the 18th century).
And yes, I suspect you’re right about the flogger.
-paltego
@Miss Margo: “I’d bet anything that the journalist was handed a light, soft flogger.”
I’m willing to bet on that as well. Vanilla people use the term ‘whip’ to cover a range of hitty things (but nearly always floggers), and unless the next bit in her story was ‘I waved it around with it for a bit and couldn’t figure out how to use it’, it wasn’t a whip.
Ferns
Yes, I think you and Miss Margo are both right about it not being a real whip. As you say, most vanilla people aren’t going to be too choosy about their terminology here, and a leather flogger (with it’s handle and strands) looks awfully like a whip to the uninitiated.
-paltego
I have been to Pedestal and even if someone had handed her an actual whip (which I highly doubt), I’m as sure as I can be that someone else there would have stopped her from using it. It’s a big event, it’s well monitored, and at the very least, if someone got a whip out it would draw a crowd, along with questions like ‘How good are you with a whip?’
That aside, I think the article’s interesting and yeah, this is one reason I’ve become less and less fond of ‘slave’ terminology. As in, I wouldn’t use it now. It just doesn’t sit right with me because I feel like it takes something very real and horrible and turns it into a safe fantasy thing that doesn’t actually happen in real life. Acting as a sanitisation of the historical slavery Ms Vidal talks about is bad enough, but slavery still exists as well.
I know for a lot of people, taking something real and horrible and turning it into fantasy is what they want to do, but it’s not for me.
Interesting to hear a first hand report on Pedestal. Thanks for the background. Presumably it was just a light leather flogger.
Personally I’m in two minds about the use of ‘slave’. I don’t use it much as a general term (preferring submissive of masochist), but I can see it having it’s place when someone really acting as a slave (in the general sense of the word). There’s a long history behind that word (going back thousands of years and involving all sorts of races and religions) that makes it a useful one from a descriptive point of view. At the same time I don’t have the cultural context others people do, and I get that for a lot of people slavery is something from very recent history.
-paltego
Source: Krystal and Diosa 🙂
Thanks for the hint!
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-paltego