In the wake of the Gaiman scandal, which I wrote about yesterday, many of the more Conservative writers whom I read have taken the opportunity to launch a full-on attack on the so-called BDSM community. Some excellent write-ups, like this one, for sure, but the general consensus seems to come down to this - enough is enough.
The Conservatives (and primarily the feminists) seem to be coming out against this culture of so-called kink-positivity that embraces all bizarre practices and paraphernalia and in which public scrutiny and shame are a thing of the past.
Another solid UnHerd article makes the interesting case against BDSM that underlies many of these public scandals - can it really be called consent considering the psychological and emotional instability that leads many of these people to agree or desire to be brutalized in the first place? From a legal standpoint, as the author herself acknowledges, that's not a theory that holds water. But as I was saying yesterday, we're not talking solely about a legal matter, but rather a public forum one.
Can it really be said that these vulnerable people are saying 'yes' to being beaten, choked, burned or humiliated out of their own free will, independently of past experiences or psychological fragility? Of course not. The idea itself is ludicrous when nearly everything in our behavior -gestures, words, actions and yes, sexual proclivities are heavily influenced by our early experiences, past traumas and other occurrences in our life.
Am I saying 'yes' because I want you to choke me, or because I think I'm something deserving of hurt?
It's a loaded question that often takes years of serious therapy and analysis, and yet our trite "positivity" culture seeks to do away with all that, in this panoply of "everything goes", which has led to such interesting and unprecedented quandaries: while we live in an overly kink-friendly world, many of these sexual scandals are all involving some kind of kink, which turns from liberating to disgusting at the drop of a hat.
Arguably, the deciding difference is consent. But then, since my consent can be given in the moment only for me to discover, months or even years after that I wasn't saying yes after all, what's really the difference?
Doesn't it seem strange to you that in the same culture where you're berated for "kink-shaming" somebody's most foul and depraved desires, we're also reading articles that call Gaiman and people with those same proclivities as him abusive, disgusting monsters?
Obviously, more Conservative media writers are using this latest scandal to call for a return to order. Perhaps the moralism of past generations wasn't so bad after all. But it's the same flawed argument that Conservatives throw around whenever progress doesn't go their way. Should we return to a strictly rigid society where sex was considered sinful and dirty and should (ideally) only be done within the bounds of marriage?
I don't think that would help us any more than a return to a rigid religious society would. We are, I think, moving through a phase of transition that has created some nightmarish situations. I think it was writer Louise Perry (though I could be wrong here) who linked the rise in these violent "kinks" with the alarming drop in fertility and birth rates. The more we pervert the natural practice of sexual intercourse, the more such anomalies as unwarranted violence will crop up in our bedrooms. Sex is for many young people becoming meaningless, consumable, unholy. No wonder we're trying now to sacrifice it on all sorts of devilish altars.
We're in very deep water indeed if we're not making new people and choking off the ones we do have. So how do we fix it? We make a map. I believe that's what we're currently doing, which isn't much use to the many who have died or will die as a result of these murky sexual practices.
For a long, long time, we've been told to suppress our natural physical instinct and desire for the sake of morality. Except we lumped the good with the bad, and when we liberated free sex, we also opened the door for the other, darker things that should've perhaps stayed in the box. That's the danger of generalizing and throwing the good in with the bad, and it's precisely why the past way is no longer the right way.
There are, however, aspects we can learn from our past, such as the enormous value of public discourse. As my dear Lionel Shriver once argued brilliantly, public shame played a pivotal role in keeping us on track - often, the things we were told were good or bad or that society shamed us for were incidentally for our own good. I'm sure a lot less girls (because it is, unfortunately, primarily women) died in a society where most sex was wrong than in this one, where no sex can ever be wrong.
We need to structure the way we talk and make it okay again to at least question some of the more "out there" practices both in and outside the bedroom.
We need to chart these unknown territories faster, and I believe that's what's happening. We need to put a marker on some of these wrongfully lauded practices that reads "there be dragons here". Not because the Church says so or God's looking, or because your mum and dad would have a fit. But because there's an increasing number of frustrated psychos out there who will use this easy-going culture to hurt you.
And I'm quite sure that's not what anyone meant when they were fighting for equality and free love back in the 60s.
It is really a mine field and we all are in the middle of it. Both going back and going forward present risks. And as a man who's always afraid of doing the wrong thing, I always try to talk about the male side of the equation.
I live in a world of sex-liberation and kink normalization, but if I make a wrong half-step I have my whole life ruined. And everytime I even think about touching a girl on the shoulder I'm scared of harassing her.
And then when I'm talking to some female in the bdsm world seems like asking for consent has become a kink itself 😅
Just joking. I mean, I read comments on how a male asking for consent is some kind of pleasure igniter, don't know if it's just a meme or if it's true
I was just reading an essay about this from 1998. I think Houellebecq was prescient, here:
Houellebecq, Michel. Interventions 2020 (p. 84). Polity Press. Kindle Edition.