Every once in a while, someone will ask me a question about something BDSM-related that I feel “done with”; I feel like I did all my thinking about those topics, years ago. But it’s still useful to get those questions today, because it forces me to try and understand where my head was at, three to seven years ago. It forces me to calibrate my inner processes. I often think of these questions as the “simple” ones, or the “101″ questions, because they are so often addressed in typical conversation among BDSMers. Then again, lots of people don’t have access to a BDSM community, or aren’t interested in their local BDSM community for whatever reason. Therefore, it’s useful for me to cover those “simple” questions on my blog anyway.

Plus, just because a question is simple doesn’t mean the question is not interesting.

One such question is the “BDSM versus sex” question. Is BDSM always sex? Is it always sexual? A lot of people see BDSM as something that “always” includes sex, or is “always sexual in some way”. In the documentary “BDSM: It’s Not What You Think!“, one famous BDSM writer is quoted saying something like: “I would say that eros is always involved in BDSM, even if the participants aren’t doing anything that would look sexual to non-BDSMers.”

But a lot of other people see BDSM, and the BDSM urge, as something that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex — that is separate from sex.

I see two sides to this question: the political side, and the “how does it feel?” side. Both sides are intertwined; when it comes to sex, politics can’t help shaping our experiences (and vice versa). I acknowledge this. And yet even when I try to account for that, there is still something deeply different about the way my body feels my BDSM urges, as opposed to how my body feels sexual urges. I don’t think that those bodily differences could ever quite go away, no matter how my mental angle on those processes changed.

This post is about the political side. Several days after I wrote this post, I followed up with a post about the bodily side. But first ….

The Political Side of BDSM versus Sex

“BDSM versus sex” could be viewed as a facet of that constant and irritating question — “What is sex, anyway?” I’ve always found that the more you look at the line between “what is sex” and “what is not sex”, the more blurred the line becomes.

For example, no one can agree about what words like “slut” or “whore” actually mean. As another example, recall that ridiculous national debate that happened across America when Bill Clinton told us that he hadn’t had sex with Monica — and then admitted to getting a blowjob from her. Is oral sex sex? Maybe oral sex isn’t sex! Flutter, flutter, argue, argue.

It is my experience that (cisgendered, heterosexual) women are often more likely to claim that oral sex is not sex, while (cis, het) men are more likely to claim that oral sex is sex. I suspect this is because women face steeper social penalties for having sex (no one wants to be labeled a “slut”), so we are typically more motivated to claim that sex acts “don’t count” as sex … whereas men are usually congratulated for having sex (more notches on the bedpost!), so men are typically more motivated to claim that sex acts “count” as sex. (Unless they’re Bill Clinton.)

So we already have this weird ongoing debate, about what “qualifies” as sex. And you throw in fetishes such as BDSM, and everyone gets confused all over again. A cultural example of this confusion came up in 2009, when a bunch of professional dominatrixes got arrested in New York City … for being dominatrixes … which everyone previously believed was legal. Flutter, flutter, argue, argue, and it turns out that “prostitution” (which is illegal in New York) is defined as “sexual conduct for money”.

But what does “sexual conduct” mean? At least one previous court had set the precedent that BDSM-for-pay is not the same as “sexual conduct for money” … and yet, in 2009, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office decided that “sexual conduct” means “anything that is arousing to the participants” … and then decided that this suddenly meant they ought to go arrest dominatrixes. It’s not clear why the Manhattan DA did not, then, also begin arresting strippers. And what about random vanilla couples on a standard date-type thing, where the woman makes eyes at the man over dinner, and the man pays for the meal? Sounds like “sexual conduct for money” to me. Which could totally be prostitution, folks, so watch your backs.

The following quotation is from an essay that doesn’t just tear apart some awful BDSM stereotypes, but also makes a great case for coming together as a community and living our lives without shame … all in the context of parenting. It’s called “S/M Fetish People Who Choose To Parent”, and was printed in the anthology Speaking Sex To Power by one of my all-time heroes: the brilliant and inimitable Patrick Califia.

The state does seem to have a vested interest in preventing anyone who is sexually different from raising a child. Over the years, I’ve heard many stories of custody battles involving polyamorous people, pagans, transsexuals, sex workers, and members of the BDSM-fetish community, not just lesbians and gay men. The people who go through these battles usually do it alone, and they usually lose. But that story can change when there is enough publicity to generate community support.

In early 1995, members of the BDSM-fetish community in the US and Canada were appalled to learn that a couple in the scene had had their children taken away. The Canadian fetish magazine “Boudoir Noir” established a defense fund for the unlucky pair, known as the Houghtons. As we had for the Spanner defendants, the community banded together and raised enough money to allow Steve and Selina Houghton to hire a decent defense attorney. Selina ultimately pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, and her husband to one count of endangering the welfare of a minor, a Class E misdemeanor. They were also ordered to continue to receive family counseling …. Although they did not receive jail sentences, their privacy and home life had been badly damaged by the intrusive actions of the police. When the Houghtons got their kids back, they moved suddenly, disappearing from the scene, probably to protect themselves from further persecution.

This tragedy occurred because the pair had made a videotape of a scene they did at a dungeon party in a bordering state. A family member and friend who babysat for the children apparently unlocked the box where the tape was kept, revealed its contents to at least one of the Houghtons’ children, told them their father was abusing their mother, and sent a copy of the videotape to the police. No minors were featured in the videotape, and S/M activities did not take place in the Houghtons’ home. Nevertheless, the videotaped evidence of kinky sex was enough to bring down the wrath of Child Protection Services, who removed the 7- and 12-year-old and kept them in foster homes for more than a year. This was in spite of testimony by one of the law guardians, who told the court the children would be better served by returning them to their parents.

… It’s interesting to think about how we might feel about being parents if we lived in a society where S/M was not stigmatized. … One of the smartest things I ever heard about S/M was uttered by a gay man, Steven Brown, who used to pair up with me to do educational lectures about the scene. He once said, throwing up his hands in despair about the suspicious grilling we were getting, “I do this because I am a loving person. I love and respect the people I play with. And that includes being able to embrace parts of them that are supposed to be unlovable.” This foundation of acceptance and empathy seems to me to be potentially quite useful to a parent, who must be able to see things from a child’s point of view, and deal with a lot of behavior that is extremely trying.

As a top [i.e. a dominant/sadist], I’ve learned how to communicate in terms that will make sense to the other person. I’ve learned patience. I have a deep love for the vagaries of human nature and respect for the wisdom of the body. I am able to create a positive experience within a framework of limitations handed to me by another person. Of course, some idiot will probably assume that by making this list I am saying that I am going to somehow top my child. That would be asinine. I’ve learned how to keep my intense sexual experiences from spilling over into parts of my life where that kind of role-playing would not be appropriate. That is, if anything is, the First Principle of participating in these kinds of erotic fantasies. In order to be a responsible, safe player, you have to know when to be your scene-self, and when to be your mundane self.

I still remember how crushed I was when I read Story of O and Return to the Chateau [two famous BDSM novels] and came to the ending, where Sir Stephen loses interest in O and tells her to kill herself. I can also remember being furious with the way Nine And A Half Weeks (the book, not the movie) ends. The submissive woman has a public breakdown. She begins to cry hysterically, and is abandoned by her master, so that strangers have to obtain help for her. One of the cruelest stereotypes of S/M people is that we don’t love each other, that there is something about our sexual style that makes our relationships mutually destructive and predisposes us to suicide. We are supposed to be content with existing as two-dimensional caricatures of vanilla people’s erotic paranoia, emerging from our warrens only after dark, always clad in body-hugging fetish gear, having no real lives outside of public dungeon clubs and “violent” pornography. What’s really sad is the fact that a number of us buy into this insane picture of how a “real sadomasochist” is supposed to behave. It’s a good way to end up burned out, disillusioned, and in exile from the realm of pervery.

When I received the following email, I was sitting in my mother’s living room. I read the letter aloud to Mom where she was standing in the kitchen; she stopped what she was doing, came over and sat down across from me. When I was done, she said, “That’s heartbreaking. This girl sounds just like you.”

Yeah, I relate a lot to this one.

Posted with the writer’s permission:

Dear Clarisse,

I’m sorry to email you out of the blue like this, but I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now and it’s been a great help to me. I’m also sorry if this is pretty personal, but I don’t know of anyone else with any relevant experience that I can turn to. You’ve always seemed friendly and open to discussion from what I’ve read, so I hope you won’t mind.

OK. Here goes. Basically, I’ve had what I now know to be BDSM leanings since an early age — tying up the Barbie dolls, bizarre childhood games, the works, gaining a more sexual edge in my teenage years. I never really thought about it, and if I did, I would just think, “Oh well, I can think and fantasise about what I like, it doesn’t hurt anyone, why should I be ashamed?” The difficulty for me has come in my first proper relationship. I’ve been with my boyfriend for 10 months and it’s not a secret between us. I mean, it surprised him, but he’s completely fine with it and he seems pretty enthusiastic (and has consistently over the past nine months or so, so I think it might be more than just to please me, though he’s not as into it as I am). Maybe I should specify. I don’t enjoy labelling myself, but I suppose you would call me a submissive. 

As I’m sure you can relate to, this poses some problems for me. I’ve always thought of myself as a strong, independent young woman. I endured bullying at school and I have always espoused — or tried to, to the best of my ability — a philosophy that can be neatly summed up as “Fuck ‘em.” It’s very difficult for me to come to terms with this other side of myself, that, while it was always there, never really intruded on my actual life, if you see what I mean. Now it does. I’m saying these things I’ve thought about a lot of my life, and doing some of them too. There’s a level — well, two, the rational level and the physical one — where I’m completely OK with it, but another part of me — I suppose the emotional part — is entirely disgusted. If it was just the pain, I could deal with that. It’s this desire for submission that makes me feel sick about myself. The thing is, rationally, I know that there’s no reason why I can’t be a strong woman in my relationships and my everyday life but play with a power dynamic during sex acts. I mean, from what I’ve read, you do it fine! I just don’t know how to make that leap. I’m sure you know the feeling I’m talking about.

I should also add that I’m 16 and a virgin, and the same with my boyfriend. This entire kaboodle is new to me and I don’t really know what I’m doing, and this is really causing me quite a lot of anguish. I don’t really know where to go for support. I can hardly ask at the regular sexual health clinic! I wouldn’t know where to start looking for kink-aware therapists, as you did. Besides that, I would have to talk to my parents about it. I’ve spoken to my mother about BDSM briefly in conversation without letting her know anything about myself, and she said she thought relationships like that were “unhealthy” and “destructive”. I’m sure that’s just ignorance on her part, but I don’t feel like I’m ready to come out to her, and explain why it’s OK, at least not until I’m sure about this myself. It still feels partly unreal, as though it’s something I’ve created in myself that will go away if I ignore it — even though I know that’s not the case. I share the feeling that you’ve written about before — I’ve never been in an “other-ed” minority before, being white and middle-class etc. My boyfriend is very supportive and caring, but to be honest, he doesn’t know what he’s doing any better than I do! So I hope that you will be able to offer me some reassurance and advice. Your blog, as I’ve said, has been a great help, but reading something like that, wonderful as it is, isn’t the same and doesn’t have the same power to reassure as a more personal dialogue. I hope you see what I mean and don’t just think that I’m seeking attention. That is not my goal here. All I’m after is a sense of personal integrity. Perhaps in the end that can only come from myself, but, it would be nice to be told I’m not completely mad!

I wanted to post that letter mostly because I think it’s eloquent. Again, I’m probably somewhat biased because the girl who wrote it sounds a lot like me. (The “fuck ‘em” philosophy especially. It got a lot better once I got out of public school and went to university, but, man, it was pretty intense for a while there.) There are so many lines in there that I could have written, once. Even the way she writes, “I suppose you would call me a submissive” …. It took me months — maybe even years, I can’t recall — after coming into my BDSM identity for me to accept the word “submissive” and apply it to myself. I hated that word so much.

Fortunately for the letter-writer, she lives in the United Kingdom, which means that at age 16 she’s not below the age of consent. This, presumably, means that she can hang out in BDSM communities if she likes; in the USA, people have to be over 18 to do so. One thing I suggested she look for is a group called The Next Generation, to see if there are any UK branches. In the US, TNG has branches in a number of cities; it’s a kink group that usually hosts low-key café meetups and the occasional BDSM demo for folks aged 18-35 (perhaps in the UK it’s open to ages 16-35). I also noted that there are probably some UK therapists on the Kink Aware Professionals list, though I don’t know if there’s as much representation over there. I only know a couple of things for sure about BDSM in the UK. One is that the country contains the Torture Garden, which is the world’s largest fetish club, and which has released some absolutely gorgeous fliers. It’s also where one of the nastiest BDSM scandals in recent history occurred, the infamous and ridiculous Spanner Case, which resulted in a group called The Spanner Trust that works to protect S&Mers.

A sense of community is, in my experience, incredibly helpful for new kinksters who want to talk about the insanity-inducing coming-out process. One of the most powerful moments in my BDSM-integration process occurred during a discussion group at the San Francisco Citadel. It was the first BDSM group I’d ever attended — basically a Dominant/submissive roundtable — and the statement I recall best came from a woman who was happily curled up next to her boyfriend on a couch. She identified herself as a submissive and she noted that she and her boyfriend had an agreement that, every night, she had to kneel at the foot of the bed and ask his permission to get in. “Some nights,” she said, “I’m really tired, and I don’t want to do that, I just want to climb in and go to sleep. But then I remind myself that this is the kind of relationship I want, and that it is part of my sexuality. That this is part of my integrity as a submissive, to show him that I want to keep our power dynamic alive by asking his permission to get into bed every single night.”

At the time, this blew my mind. Her use of the word integrity …. I don’t personally prefer to have those kinds of agreements going, the kneeling-and-asking-permission type agreements, at least not usually. (Rarely do I encounter a man with whom our mutual power dynamic is so incredibly strong, whom I trust so much, that I’m willing to submit myself totally like that. But it has happened — though it had not yet happened when I attended that Citadel discussion group, and I may never experience it again.) Still … even though I don’t personally prefer the kinds of relationships she does, it was still such an incredible relief to see a submissive, who was so clearly in possession of herself and feeling so good about her relationship — to hear her use a word like integrity. To hear her apply the word integrity to her sexuality.

This is one of several reasons I usually encourage people to look into the local in-person community, but not everyone is going to mesh well with their local BDSM groups. Luckily, the Internet may provide another option. There’s a kinky social networking site called FetLife.com where BDSMers can make profiles, engage in discussion groups, etc.; that seems like a good place to start.  (There are even feminist discussion groups on FetLife, of which I am obviously a member.) BDSM blogs other than my own can perhaps function similarly.  I know there are online BDSM fora, and I’ve heard mixed things about some of them, but I don’t have a lot of experience with them.  This girl sounds plenty smart enough to make her own decisions about which groups to participate in and which to ignore, but I did encourage her to keep in mind that there are plenty of BDSM fora in the world, so if she finds one that’s full of annoying people, she doesn’t have to settle for that one.

In terms of straight-up relationship advice, there are lots of books and blogs out there for that too.  I personally like The New Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy; one could also check for the highest-rated on Amazon.  And then there’s just generally great advice on the amazing sex education site Scarleteen.  I know Scarleteen has its own message boards as well, though I haven’t participated much over there either.

For those who are interested in coming out to their parents, I recommend the book When Someone You Love Is Kinky by Dossie Easton and Catherine W. Liszt (it’s intended for the parents or for any other relatives of a kinkster).  Copies are available from about $10-20 USD on BookFinder.com.  I’ve also heard good things about the “Parents of Alternative Sexuality” pamphlet by Dr. Amy Marsh.

And, just in case you’re thinking, “This girl is 16? That’s ridiculous. What does she know about her sexuality?” — I encourage you to read this post by Maymay: Young People Into BDSM Are Not Exceptional. The post is mostly about the community dynamics that occur in some places (though not all), where people who are younger and into BDSM are sometimes seen as “exceptions”, when in reality we’re not exceptional at all. Plenty of us experience sexuality, and have a firm grasp on it, at an age younger than the age our culture chooses to allow us full access to information about sexuality.

I think a lot about younger kinksters — not just because of issues like the ones Maymay raises in his post, either. It’s clear that in-person American BDSM communities cannot allow folks who are under 18 into our ranks, because of the liability we risk. Even if the community’s only and entire goal is education, it’s simply too likely that some concerned parent would find out about their under-18 kid talking to us. Then the parent freaks out and our community comes under attack for “child molestation” or some similar trumped-up charge. Oh, I can picture the worst that could happen, all too clearly …. But this leaves us in the position of being unable to educate people under 18 about BDSM. So the best we can do is encourage those who are under 18 to read as much as they possibly can, both on the Internet and in books, before practicing any of the BDSM they might be attracted to. It’s not great, but it’s something. It’s more than our parents’ generation had.

Forget the voices of sex workers who genuinely enjoy their jobs and are tired of being cut out of the discourse on the sex industry. Forget arguments about how the Craigslist shutdown will end up harming sex workers who are genuinely trafficked or abused. No, let’s focus on Phoebe Kay, who’s mad because Craigslist made it easy for her to sell sex, and she didn’t like doing it. Therefore, she argues in a recent Salon piece, it is entirely right and proper that Craigslist has been pressured into removing its “erotic services” ads.

Wait, what?

Ms. Kay’s experience does sound unpleasant — just as any job a person doesn’t want to do will be unpleasant. And I do sympathize. She writes that before she even started working, she “felt like vomiting” and adds, “There was no question this gig didn’t come naturally to me.” Hey, I’ve felt like that about jobs before. Usually those feelings are a strong hint that I shouldn’t take the job! Ms. Kay, on the other hand, went right ahead — but it’s not her own fault, it’s Craigslist’s fault.

She notes that she’d sent out “hundreds” of cover letters to other jobs before trying her hand at escorting, but one wonders if she tried McDonald’s. Or was that too degrading to contemplate? What about selling the car she mentions in the article, or asking the parents she mentions for support? I’m not trying to mock the “desperation” Ms. Kay says she felt, but it’s hard to believe that a woman with such an obvious safety net truly felt that she had no choice at all. Not to mention, there are plenty of escorts who got into the business because they were strapped for cash, but who don’t disown the choice they made, even if they had a bad experience in the end.

Perhaps part of the problem is that Ms. Kay didn’t do her research. (Would she have done more research if she’d taken a less romanticized, less stereotyped, so-called “real” job?) Her knowledge of the sex industry appears to have been limited to watching an interview with Ashley Dupré (you know, that girl who become famous for the ruin of Eliot Spitzer). Ms. Kay complains that she thought high-end escorts had a better life than the one she was exposed to. Well, many of them do — but many of them also try multiple work avenues, enjoy their jobs, and work hard at building a career: “I was eating ramen noodles and buying my work clothes from Ross Dress For Less,” writes FurryGirl of her first few years. As for liking the job, enjoyment is a pretty important ingredient of success at any career, but especially high-end sex work. As Mistress Matisse notes, “Clients often prefer someone who is warm and friendly to a chilly bitch who can get that extra inch down her throat.”

In particular, you’d think that someone who decides to go into sex work would have tolerance for other people’s sexuality. But too many don’t, as Ms. Kay demonstrates when she talks about an S&M-oriented client: she calls him “the guy who insisted I dominate him and creeped me out so much I had to ask him to leave.” No wonder she didn’t earn much of a living: “I never made more in a week than I’d made in any other job I’d had — often a lot less.” She calls the advertisements offering escorts lots of money “false promises”, but in reality they’re more like similar ads from insurance jobs or other commission-based careers: some people are good at getting those promised high commissions, and some aren’t.

I’m being serious when I say that I’m sorry for what Ms. Kay went through. She made a mistake, she chose a job that didn’t suit her, and again, it sounds like she had a really bad time. But nothing non-consensual happened to her, no one abused her, except for one single client who stiffed her for a fee. And despite my sympathy, I’m furious that Ms. Kay is using her story to militate against visibility and acceptance for sex work. She even acknowledges that there was absolutely nothing non-consensual about her experience: “I was carded by my employers. I was never forced to do something I didn’t want.” Yet at the same time, she condemns Craigslist merely for making it possible, using overwrought language better suited to a 1930s pulp novel: “ads on Craigslist made it easy — yes, too easy — for a naive woman like me to slide into a dark and illegal lifestyle.” She ends her article by saying that she hopes the Craigslist shutdown will “prevent someone like me from going down this path.”

I am reminded of a moment from 2004, when I attended the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. As we cheered and sang and marched for abortion rights, we passed a (much smaller) group of pro-life protesters. One street was lined with pro-life women who had chosen to have an abortion; they regretted it and had decided that, because of their bad experience, other women shouldn’t be allowed the same choice.

My column of pro-choicers briefly fell silent when we passed those pro-life demonstrators. We were touched by their obvious pain. But as the truth slowly seeped in — that these women were hypocritically seeking to restrict our choices, based on their mistakes — a cry went up: “Your body, your choice,” we shouted.

Your body, your choice, Phoebe Kay. Pick up the pieces, learn from your mistake, and move on. If you’re so concerned about other women, then don’t use your story to distract from the real issues: issues of free will, bodily integrity, social security, and oppressive gender dynamics. I’m just sick and tired of sob stories that ignore what’s important about sex work — like the all-important fact that decriminalizing sex work, decreasing stigma, and raising the profession’s visibility will make conditions better both for those who enter the sex industry voluntarily, and for those who want to leave it.

Maymay, the brilliant BDSM activist who was recently attacked and labeled a pedophile on the Salvation Army’s human trafficking email list, has drawn my attention to another lovely little initiative from Citizens Against Trafficking: “BDSM: A Case of Human Trafficking”, by Donna M. Hughes and Melanie Shapiro.

Firstly, the title. “BDSM: A Case of Human Trafficking”. What the paper actually outlines is one single abusive BDSM relationship — the famous Glenn Marcus case — that is, a sadist who seriously mistreated, raped, and threatened the family of Jodi, a female submissive. No one was moved across any borders; I’m having trouble figuring out when and where the “trafficking” happened.

So why does the paper’s title imply that BDSM is one huge crazy orgy of “human trafficking”?

And if the authors aren’t trying to convince us that S&M is dangerous and scary in itself, then why is the paper full of blanket statements like “A sadist’s goal is the progressive destruction of a victim”?

And what the hell is going on with bits like this:

:::::::::::::::
One of Marcus’ other sex slaves testified in his defense saying that Jodi was a 
willing participant in sex games. She said that Marcus was harmless. 
When prosecutors showed a photograph of this woman’s breasts punctured
with dozens of pins, she still insisted it was consensual: “I love being around
Glenn. He’s a lot of fun.”
:::::::::::::::

Well, the “sex slave” probably “insisted it was consensual” because it was, you know, actually consensual. I have consensually had pins stuck in me as well, so I can see how someone might “insist”. In fact, the first time I ever did piercing, I purchased the needles myself and explicitly propositioned my partner … then handed him the box.

Now, I’m not saying that Marcus’s relationship with Jodi was entirely consensual. But it sounds like this other woman did herself have a consensual relationship with Marcus. And showing pictures of oh-so-scary pins stuck in her breasts doesn’t make this other woman’s relationship with Marcus less consensual.

But let’s get past the doubtful phrasing of those sentences, and start questioning why the authors included such explicit details. What, exactly, is the point of describing that piercing so carefully? Or the consensual floggings that the authors linger over? Or the cages and leashes they lovingly describe? These writers know that mainstream America is not remotely accustomed to this kind of imagery; sounds to me like they’re trying their absolute hardest to freak people out. They do thoughtfully include a “Warning the following includes extremely graphic descriptions of violence and abuse” … on page 6, after most of the descriptions of violence and abuse.

Chillingly, after flinging lots of stereotypes about, the paper ends with this:

:::::::::::::::
If you have been involved in BDSM that went beyond consensual 
activity and someone was making money from your work, sex acts or images 
of sex acts, you may be a victim of human trafficking, either sex trafficking, 
forced labor or both. You can get help by calling the national 24 hour, 
toll‐free trafficking hotline at 1‐888‐3737‐888, or call the local 
FBI office or U.S. Attorney’s  Office.

Donna Hughes has spoken to the director of the national trafficking
hotline. They are prepared to talk to victims of BDSM who may be victims 
of human trafficking.
:::::::::::::::

“Victims of BDSM”? Well, actually, a person who is involved in non-consensual BDSM would be a “victim of abuse”. Once such activities stop being consensual, they stop being BDSM and become physical/emotional abuse.

This reminds me of those awful pro-life “clinics” that “counsel” pregnant women about abortion — you know, the clinics that pretend to have actual medical qualifications so they can pull in desperate women who want abortions and then lie to those women about their abortion options — preferably completely scaring the women away from abortion by means of slanted statistics, religious moralism, and outright lies. (Did you know that fake clinics often set up shop right next to actual abortion clinics such as Planned Parenthood, so as to dupe women who come to the area seeking the legitimate clinic?)

“Chilling” is a strong word, huh? But here’s what scares me most about the Glenn Marcus case: Jodi went into the relationship willingly, after deliberately seeking out information about BDSM online. She went with Marcus after having two other BDSM relationships. And at first, she stayed with Marcus not out of fear, but because she enjoyed what he was doing.

I’ve often wondered what could have happened to me if I’d come into BDSM from a slightly different angle — if I hadn’t had the resources or the mentors or the education or even the just plain luck that have kept me from experiences like Jodi’s. I’d like to think that I would never get involved with a sadist who showed such obvious warning signs (Marcus did not, for example, allow safewords from the start) — and I think that most of the wider BDSM community would never enable such behavior — but we all tend to think we’re so brilliant and invulnerable and know exactly what we’re doing, now don’t we?

I recall this moment from my coming-out story:

:::::::::::::::
Richard explained that he hadn’t particularly been satisfied with how he’d dealt with me before he left, but hadn’t had time for anything better. Now, he thought the situation was “healthier”. “What do you want from this?” he asked seriously.

I want the strength to walk away from you, I thought unclearly. I want you to actually care about me. I never want to see you again. I hugged my arms to myself, resting my hands gingerly on swelling skin. “Um,” I said slowly, “nothing in particular?” I took a breath and gathered the one overriding fact: I want you to keep hurting me. “I don’t expect anything from you,” I told him, “and I don’t want you to expect anything from me.”

I knew from his smile that my answer was the right one. I could only hope it was accurate.
:::::::::::::::

Given that I recognized BDSM as something I wanted, desperately — what would I have tolerated in order to get it? Richard isn’t a bad guy, but what happened with him certainly wasn’t my ideal relationship. Could I have ended up in some appallingly abusive situation? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

But I do know one thing. The single biggest factor making women like Jodi (and, arguably, myself) vulnerable is lack of social acceptance for BDSM — fear of being outed, fear of associating too publicly with our desires. Note that the biggest method of control Glenn Marcus used was threatening to out Jodi. In other words, he was able to abuse her because she was afraid he would tell people (especially her parents) that she was a kinkster and porn star.

And the second biggest factor? Lack of freely-available information about BDSM, what makes a good BDSM relationship, and how to practice it safely. Jodi did not run screaming from a dominant who flat-out disallowed safewords … perhaps she didn’t have good community support?

Remember how I mentioned that I initiated the piercing scene with my first piercing partner? I basically read a few webpages, bought the needles, and dove in. And based on that limited information, my partner and I did a couple of things that I now recognize as dangerous — things we wouldn’t have done if we’d had access to better resources on piercing. “Better resources” might include the KinkForAll sexuality conferences that maymay pioneered, the same thing that then — oh yeah! now I remember! — got him labeled a pedophile and trafficker by Donna Hughes et al.

If people like Donna M. Hughes and Melanie Shapiro are so concerned about BDSMers’ safety, then they ought to be speaking out on behalf of S&M; they ought to be trying to create a safer social climate for us to explore and access our desires; they ought to support the free spread of kink-related information. Panicky reports like this “BDSM: A Case of Human Trafficking” are therefore doing the opposite of helping, as are insane crusades like this anti-maymay thing.

But methinks their actual goal has very little to do with protecting actual women, and everything to do with scaring the public into supporting their fundamentally conservative agenda — and also scaring people away from accepting or practicing BDSM. Hence, they offer “support” with one hand — support that would doubtless tell callers that kink is Bad Wrong Awful Must Avoid At All Costs Intrinsically Abusive! — while promoting awful stereotypes about kink with the other. Just like those horrible clinics. It’s chilling.

I wish I were in the States right now so I could call this human trafficking hotline myself — which has apparently been oh-so-well primed to talk to kinksters — and see what they really think about BDSM. If any of my readers have voice acting skill and time to kill, plus maybe a voice recorder standing by, I invite you to try it. I mean, they must be well-prepared to help all those “victims of BDSM”! After all, Donna Hughes talked to them! Even if no actual S&Mers did.

NOTE: If you are a BDSMer and think you might be in an abusive relationship, then I encourage you to seek support, but not from Donna Hughes and her ilk. There may be therapists listed in your area on the Kink Aware Professionals list, and sometimes feminist sex toy stores such as Chicago’s Early to Bed host kink-friendly workshops for abuse survivors (but you may want to call ahead to ensure that the workshop facilitator will be kink-aware). Indeed, your local kink scene may specifically have workshops for kinky abuse survivors (if you’re in Chicago, here’s a calendar of local BDSM events). For more on the subject of BDSM community anti-abuse efforts, see my blog posts The Alt Sex Anti-Abuse Dream Team or Evidence That the BDSM Community Does Not Enable Abuse.