“
Most kinksters see such “scenes” as standing apart from racism, sexism and all manner of ugliness that happens in the real world — but Weiss does not. “The fantasy of the scene as a safe space of private desire justifies and reinforces certain social inequalities,” she argues. The truth, she says, is that S/M “depends for its erotic power on precisely these real-world relations, within which it is given form and content.”
That said, Weiss objects to the idea that this sort of sexual make-believe is “the same as the violence that it mimes,” as some BDSM critics argue. Instead, Weiss looks at how particular scenes, whether it’s a slave auction or make-believe child abuse, affect the people participating, watching or (here’s looking at you) reading about it.
She also zeroes in on the contradictions of kink: “On the one hand, SM is figured as outlaw: as transgressive of normative sexual values,” Weiss writes. “On the other hand, SM is dependent on social norms: practitioners draw on social hierarchies to produce SM scenes.” The mostly-white, mostly-middle-class community is itself an example of real-world social inequality: ”These [sexual] experiments are more possible and more accessible to those with class, race and gender privilege: heterosexual men playing with sexism, white bodies at a charity slave auction, professional information technology (IT) workers with several rooms filled with custom-made bondage toys.”
Speaking of toys, she further questions S/M’s “outlaw” status by painting a portrait of a social network built on capitalism and consumerism: Just consider the rainbow’s array of classes (on everything from spanking to rope bondage) and fetish toys (from handcuffs to latex vacuum beds) that practitioners can, and are to some degree expected to, invest in. BDSM is not as transgressive as most assume, says Weiss.
That said, Weiss objects to the idea that this sort of sexual make-believe is “the same as the violence that it mimes,” as some BDSM critics argue. Instead, Weiss looks at how particular scenes, whether it’s a slave auction or make-believe child abuse, affect the people participating, watching or (here’s looking at you) reading about it.
She also zeroes in on the contradictions of kink: “On the one hand, SM is figured as outlaw: as transgressive of normative sexual values,” Weiss writes. “On the other hand, SM is dependent on social norms: practitioners draw on social hierarchies to produce SM scenes.” The mostly-white, mostly-middle-class community is itself an example of real-world social inequality: ”These [sexual] experiments are more possible and more accessible to those with class, race and gender privilege: heterosexual men playing with sexism, white bodies at a charity slave auction, professional information technology (IT) workers with several rooms filled with custom-made bondage toys.”
Speaking of toys, she further questions S/M’s “outlaw” status by painting a portrait of a social network built on capitalism and consumerism: Just consider the rainbow’s array of classes (on everything from spanking to rope bondage) and fetish toys (from handcuffs to latex vacuum beds) that practitioners can, and are to some degree expected to, invest in. BDSM is not as transgressive as most assume, says Weiss.
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