Evidence that the BDSM community does not enable abuse
2009 30 Apr
How can you tell BDSM from abuse?
People ask me this all the time.
The idea behind that question is that BDSM “looks like” abuse. BDSM can leave bruises or other marks of pain. When two people are having a BDSM encounter, then — if an outsider were to walk in in the middle — it might look like a scene of abuse. Hence, one of the biggest fears that people outside the BDSM community have about BDSM is that — although it appears to be consensual — BDSM enables abuse, or is used as a mask for abuse.
Are some BDSM relationships abusive? Unfortunately, some are. But abuse happens, sometimes, in all relationships. There are lots of non-BDSM relationships, whose participants have never even heard of BDSM, that are abusive. And the fact is that the majority of BDSM relationships — just like the majority of vanilla relationships — are completely consensual encounters between adults who have specifically sought out, opened themselves up to, their own BDSM desires.
Just as importantly, there are swaths of the BDSM community that actively work against abuse within the community.
I want to caution, before I talk about this, that the “BDSM community” is a big place. Plus, there are many BDSM communities out there — not just one. There are BDSM communities in cities around the world, and within those city-communities, there are multiple smaller communities. Here in Chicago, for instance, there are communities based around multiple BDSM clubs, multiple BDSM events, and more. And all the BDSM communities that exist are filled with many different voices, and all those voices will agree and disagree with me to varying extents.
But I can observe some commonalities from various BDSM communities I’ve participated in. And one of those commonalities is that many (if not most) kinksters are very concerned about potential abuse. Arguably, the greater BDSM community contains a far higher proportion of people who worry about abuse, than the rest of the world does.
You can tell partly because of the steps BDSM people are frequently trained to take within our relationships, to ensure that we communicate well and do not misunderstand each other. Safewords are the most common example of these kinds of anti-abusive communication tactics. I think the more convincing argument, however, comes from these examples of specific anti-abuse initiatives from the community:
Anti-Abuse Initiative #1: The Lesbian Sex Mafia, an old and respected BDSM group in New York City, has a short page on its website devoted to the difference between BDSM and abuse. The page has a list of quick, comparative maxims designed to explain the difference simply, and ends by providing the number for an abuse hotline.
Anti-Abuse Initiative #2: At one point, while sorting files up at the Leather Archives and Museum, I found a copy of an anti-abuse pamphlet created by The Network/La Red that has been distributed at various dungeons, BDSM workshops, and other BDSM community spaces in the Northeast.
Here’s one panel from the pamphlet — I think it speaks for itself:
(For the rest of the pamphlet, check out the images at my Flickr account — here’s the front, and here’s the back.)
Anti-Abuse Initiative #3: In September in San Francisco, I attended a workshop put on by Angela of EduKink, an excellent BDSM educator. The workshop was titled “Emotional Aspects of BDSM Play”, and there was a section that talked about how to look out for abuse in a BDSM relationship. Angela described:
Four General Guidelines for Recognizing the Difference Between BDSM and Abuse
1) Consent. BDSM is consenting; abuse is not.
a) Assuming consent was given — was it informed consent? Did everyone know what they were consenting to?
b) Was consent coerced or seduced from the partner? Did everyone feel like they could say no if they wanted? Was anyone worried about suffering negative consequences if they said no?
2) Intent. A BDSM partner intends to have a mutually enjoyable encounter; an abusive partner does not.
a) Did everyone leave the scene feeling somewhat satisfied?
3) Damage. A BDSM partner tries to minimize the actual damage inflicted by their actions; an abusive partner does not.
a) Did the two partners learn what they were doing before they did it? Did they learn how to perform their activities safely?
b) Were the partners aware of the potential risks of their activities?
4) Secrecy. Abuse often happens in secret. This is the hardest one on this checklist, because — due to the fact that BDSM is a very marginalized, misunderstood sexuality — BDSM often happens in secret, too. But this is one of the benefits of having an entire subculture that deals with BDSM: we look out for each other.
a) Were the two partners involved in the local BDSM scene? Did they get advice from knowledgeable, understanding BDSM people during rough patches in their relationship?
The moral of the story here is … for a community that’s so frequently accused of hiding or accepting abuse, doesn’t it seem like the BDSM scene puts in an awful lot of work against abuse? Again, I can’t speak for all BDSM communities, nor can I speak for everyone who has had BDSM experiences; and I know that — as with all types of relationships — there will occasionally be abusive BDSM relationships. But the three anti-abuse initiatives I’ve listed above are hardly unique, and many of us within the BDSM community work to emphasize those ideas as much as possible.
We’re not monsters. We’re not trying to do things that our partners don’t want to do. I have never met anyone within the BDSM scene who was not exquisitely aware of how careful we must be to gain consent from our partners. I’m not saying that people who don’t care about consent don’t exist — I’m not saying that abusers don’t exist — even within our community. But the community as a whole dislikes abuse at least as much as any other community. The only difference between us and non-BDSM people is that we feel violence and dominance as a language of love; violence and dominance is not, for us, intrinsically abusive — rather, something to be considered in context and with full understanding of the involved parties’ BDSM needs.
Tags: abuse, anti-BDSM, BDSM, communication, community, feminism, Leather Archives
Also check out the SM Abuse Policy Statement that came out of Leather Leadership Conference (started at LLC2 and finished at LLC3):
http://www.leatherleadership.org/library/diffsmabuse.htm
thanks for this research & insight. timely for me, since I’ve just in the last few days been having a discussion about what my responsibility/obligation is to warn people that my work might be triggering if I publish stories with BDSM on my blog. is it enough if I put a disclaimer on my entire blog, or do individual entries need to be bookended with warnings? and part of me wants to go into what you’re saying – BDSM is not abuse! – but that is kind of irrelevant to someone who is triggered by violence in any context, even consensual.
anyway, this is giving me more to chew on, thanks.
@ Lolita — Thanks, I hadn’t seen that one!
@ Sinclair — I agree that the question of whether it’s abuse is separate from the triggering question. I have had some conversations around the idea that many radical feminists and other anti-BDSM cultural analysts will be unaffected by the “consensual” argument, because what they are really bothered by is the perpetuation of harmful tropes and aesthetics whether that perpetuation is consensual or not. It’s an interesting problem, and one that I haven’t fully worked out my thoughts on.
Why not put trigger warnings on all entries? It may be a little more work, but seems worth it if it enables people bothered by that imagery to skip past it more easily.
You know, I don’t say much (and perhaps I don’t say as much as I should) about abuse in the BDSM community, because I don’t want to give ammunition to those who think everything we do is abuse. And I used to think abuse was primarily an issue for folks who didn’t really identify with the “BDSM community” narrowly defined, who did what they did in relative isolation.
I have a close friend who was nonconsensually beaten by someone she was in a collared d/s relationship with. She went to court, she got some protection from the judge, but the abuser is still welcome in local groups and she has been made to feel unwelcome. Other folks in the scene — a large city, well-established community with public play spaces and well-known groups where she’s done committee work — have told her she is divisive. her, and the other woman who spoke out against this man and his nonconsensual conduct. The victim is someone who has held a leather contest title; a long-time member in good standing. Folks defended the abuser and turned on the victim, just like the vanilla community. So we’re not a perfect community either.
I’ll say for the BDSM community that I think we’re better on abuse issues than the general population. That’s a long way from good.
@ Thomas: I have never personally encountered a situation like that, but I am not surprised that it has happened. I would agree with you that we’re better on abuse issues than the general population … I wonder what we can do to be even better. We are surrounded by rape culture and it’s hard to know what we can do to combat it as a community, beyond the significant steps that we already take.
The question implicit in your first statement is one that both worries and fascinates me. The fact that BDSM has been forced underground in the first place, that we must continually defend ourselves, can probably sometimes function to make it even harder for victims to bring accusations of abuse. What can we do about that?
Like you, I do not ever want to play into the hands of the people who want to take away my agency and tell me I can’t consent to BDSM. But it hurts to imagine that I could ever play a part in silencing someone who has actually been abused. I guess for me the solution is in the anti-abuse initiatives like the ones I outlined in that post. If only we had the resources to educate more abuse hotlines about us, so that more BDSM people could get that kind of abuse support in context.
If you’re up for sending me an email, I found an essay a while back that I think you’d be interested in, and I’ll email it back to you. [ clarisse dot thorn at gmail dot com ]
That pamphlet is produced and distributed by The Network/La Red, a Boston-based anti domestic violence and partner abuse organization that serves queer and kinky people all over the country. They do such important work and have an amazing crew of volunteers (my partner is one of them). Just figured i’d mention it, in case you want to credit or link them.
http://www.thenetworklared.org/smvsabuse.htm
http://www.thenetworklared.org/
@ephraim — Sorry, I thought I did credit them. Will edit the post to link.
It is worthwhile for all of us who are personally involved with kink (consensual bdsm and the fetishes) to read and review postings like this one from time to time. Thank you Clarisse for initiating it.
My only concern is your use of the terms violence and dominance, in the last paragraph of your post, because of their negative connotation. My preference is to use the terms omnipotence and vulnerability mixed with sexuality that does not approach or broach finality when we describe what we do.
>The fact that BDSM has been forced underground in the first place, that we must continually defend ourselves, can probably sometimes function to make it even harder for victims to bring accusations of abuse. What can we do about that?
We can start with believing people when they say they’ve been abused, and by making it safe for people to admit that they’ve been abused. By changing the culture, one person at a time, if need be, so that the victim doesn’t get run out of town, and that the perpetrator is the one who is shunned.
> But it hurts to imagine that I could ever play a part in silencing someone who has actually been abused.
Well, *I* am someone who has been abused – and more in BDSM relationships than vanilla ones. I’m fresh out of unquestionably the worst of the bunch, and my perpetrator is now gathering a small army of supporters against me among his new sub’s friends on Fetlife, with the two of them leading the pack.
>I guess for me the solution is in the anti-abuse initiatives like the ones I outlined in that post. If only we had the resources to educate more abuse hotlines about us, so that more BDSM people could get that kind of abuse support in context.
It’s certainly one method. Another is speaking out repeatedly in as many venues as possible individually.
The Manalive program also now has a class for kinksters dealing with abuse that is coed, which allows people on both sides of this equation to participate and deal with their respective issues around abuse in a BDSM context. I don’t know if it’s available outside the San Francisco area or not, but it hasn’t even been well-publicized here. I haven’t attended it yet, but I expect to check it out within the next week or two.
If all of us started posting more about this issue on sites such as Fetlife and in our respective blogs, and just quit protecting all of the abusers we know about, regardless of the consequences to ourselves, believe me, the critical mass will build. Eventually the tide will turn – although it may not be within our lifetimes.
BDSM sessions bring emotional balance to slaves especially if it is about people whose job involves taking some pretty big responsibility.
But BDSM sessions must fill an empty space, must solve a need ,not to distroy lifes.