Preaching to the Prejudiced

I wrote the following response to my sociologist acquaintance (with whom I spent many months in correspondence providing my perspective on BDSM) from Berlin where I spend a fair amount of time and which I know as well as any city other than my own. I pay attention to the rope scene in Berlin, and will also allow here that it has changed for the better in the couple of years that have passed since this element of the longer exchange was dispatched. Still, I think the cultural and anthropological points might still have some currency.

Here are some questions related to misconceptions others have of BDSM:

1. What are the misconceptions that you believe others (vanilla folk) have regarding the BDSM community?

2. Do you ever attempt to clarify misconceptions? If so, can you give some examples of when you've had or ceased the opportunity to do so.

Also, Frau Doktor B., apropos deine Frage interesert es mich sehr im Moment in Berlin zu sein, weil heir das Perspektiv ueber BDSM volkommen anders ist. Von welche seite des Atlantiks solle ich mal antworten?

(It's interesting to be addressing your question from Berlin, Dr. B., because attitudes toward BDSM are rather different here. From which side of the Atlantic would you like your answer?)

There are vanilla folk on both sides, of course. I find that in Germany people are generally equally as disinclined to be personally interested in BDSM as their American brethren, but more inclined to shrug casually and say "Eh, it does nothing for me." At home (and especially outside NYC) there is much more likely to be a judgment of some sort leveled. I'm not at all surprised by this, nor really even bothered - the difference is consistent with the distinction between the moral and cultural relativism that is pervasive in Europe and the moral absolutism that characterizes the history of American thought. Just the same, it's fun to point out to a people here of conservative bent that it was the Germans who first fetishized leather. ("Echt? Ja, das kann sein...")

If I come out to someone in the US (or, as is actually more often the case, play devil's advocate), it's easy to observe whether the idea of BDSM shows up in my companion's right or their wrong column. The latter predominates, perhaps due to simple lack of experience or exposure, but predominate it does and there is seldom even the hint of moral ambiguity. Once BDSM has been positioned as wrong, the absolutist imperative demands that the prejudice itself be made correct, so some story has to be contrived in order to settle the issue - it takes some thought to be right about making things be wrong. In the case of conventional, media-conditioned middle class values, this story shows up as something like a Hannibal Lecter characterization: intelligent, cunning, inscrutable, wine drinker, knows which fork to use, probably homicidal.

In my experience of more youthful, less proprietary narratives, the leather-daddy archetype shows up, early and often along with presumptions about orientation (i.e., if I'm kinky I must be gay too. Between the ages of 20 and my early 30s I was pegged for gay a lot by both straight and gay people (regardless of their knowledge of my marital and/or pervert status). In my 40s I seem to have taken on a patina of straightness). In this story I am made less wrong than I am willfully (and excitedly) misunderstood, but the project of laying to rest the misguided preconception is comparatively easy.

In the argot of establishment feminism there is usually reference to reductivist conflict-theoretical constructs having to do with objectification and patriarchy (which, curiously, if I were in fact a gay leather daddy, as others have assumed me to be, would not apply. In this case it is my essential straightness which motivates the feminist case against my being a top). Both objectification and patriarchy are absolute wrongs in the feminist Weltanschuung, of course. I've had more than a few exchanges with the scrupulously politically correct around the problem of female bottoms for whom objectification is very gratifying (see the previous post - ed.). In the end, those bottoms must be made wrong by dint of either patriarchically-induced poor self esteem or by having succumbed to my presumably over-developed powers of seduction.

The last case is perhaps the most sporting, for it's quite a lot of fun to point out opponents' faulty logic and that they are assigning to female bottoms very little intrinsic power, which I then am at liberty to observe is not merely condescending, but politically opportunistic (since the same thinking does not apply to gay male bottoms). It is only in these sorts of instances that I make it a point to correct perceptions, for I find the victim mentality of establishment feminism more than a little problematic and being a target of its prejudice allows me to indulge a bit of opportunism myself. Having made the observation that my opponent's case is predicated largely on presumptions of powerlessness inherent to the (female) bottom's situation, I point out that the efficacy of BDSM and what distinguishes it from, for example, governmental torture, proceeds from the fact of the bottom's power and its equivalence to that of the top's. The matter of gender and its presentments are utterly academic, and there are no victors nor vanquished. A good scene is a simple "win-win", which, being non-zero-sum, flies in the face of Marxist conflict theory and its elaboration along the gender vector. Then there's queer BDSM, which punctures gender-based analyses QED, but for the politically convinced the fun in that fact is elusive.

I should note my sympathy to the feminist project generally, and especially economically. My antipathy toward reflexive grievance and/or identity based political maneuvering extends well beyond the establishment feminist camp to all segregationist movements that require division to legitimize their claims. My personal Weltanschauung is additive rather than divisive.

More recently, I have been a little more casual about being out, and have had far more compelling exchanges about peoples' reactions to my admissions than about the fact of my interest in BDSM. I would admit to practicing misdirection if I were unwilling to answer any question an interlocutor might have about my interest, but their disquiet about my sexuality ends up often being more interesting for both of us. Notwithstanding, I'm aware that my not taking a defensive stance about my sexuality goes a long way toward shifting a discussion in the direction of the real tension, that being the judgement passed on BDSM.

(Cartoon courtesy of Dave Annis at rope-bondage.com)

Il a commencé par la Fin

On this date 25 years ago, I fell in love with a German woman in Venice at the end of a blind alley. 20 years ago on this date Fin and I were wed, and today we celebrate. In that couple of decades and some we’ve toiled and rejoiced in the way that people who grow truly intimate inevitably do, and instead of children (not entirely out of the picture quite yet) we’ve birthed art, hers and mine (she knew from age five what she was put on earth to do - it took me years to own up to bondage being art, and I still don’t know why I resisted). A quarter century of common and diverging-in-common aspirations has been no less colorful than that crystalline moment when everything changed, and there is nothing today that each of us does not endorse in the other. Nothing. The world only opens wider with each yes.

It has been a quiet epiphany to learn that all revelation pales before expansive love - recklessly admitted, honestly expressed and gratefully received. Run to it with glad abandon and give yourself to its tender ravages, for in the loss of your self there is the universe to be gained.

With thanks to Barbara Nitke

A Parable of Taste and Patience

Are the very rarest and most precious things really so hard to obtain, or do they merely seem so?

For the last week and some I have been visiting relations in the Pacific Northwest. A key point of the trip was to spend time with my young nephews, my youngest brother and his wife, and to give myself a mental picture of their still relatively new circumstances, having moved from the northern reaches of Vermont a little over a year ago to a charming 100 year old bungalow in Portland. My sister-in-law is a native of the city and in part their relocation was prompted by a desire to be near her clan at least while the boys are little. There is much to be said of the culinary culture in the region triangulated by Portland, Hood River and Bend, and my brother, a chef, was more easily persuaded by this fact than proximity to in-law sitting services.

The soils and waters of the Columbia, Willamette, Deschutes and Sandy valleys are veritable Xanadus for foragers such as my brother and myself. At this time of year the salmon are running, the sturgeon are gearing up and the fungus is coming in. It is the latter that occupied my time and thoughts disproportionately over the course of several wet days.

But first, a bit on stalking the former.

A sturgeon is caught using a drop line outfitted with bait or a lure. One waits sipping Full Sail Ale for the gentle creak of the gunwale telling of activity below. The sturgeon have to be induced to make one’s acquaintance, and once having done so they are anything but acquiescent to my playing my proper role in our sudden relationship. There is an adversarial feel about fishing of any sort, and I inevitably respect the ones that get away – it’s a sobering experience to be bested in a contest of wits and patience by one’s dinner. That sobering is mitigated by ever more generous administration of Full Sail, so a day on the Columbia is never wasted - though by the end of it I may be.

My guess would be that a sturgeon has better things to do than accept my invitation to dinner, as evinced by their forceful resistance to my entreaties. I have to take some pains to convince my intended guest to come to the table, an act of persuasion that crosses over very readily into coercion. Still, once having gotten the upper hand I’m grateful to the fish for finally giving itself over to me, but triumphalism of any sort is usually just code for having worked, or having idled while others did.

The mystique surrounding the wild morel is rather more developed than that of most fish (maybe excepting sturgeon of the Caspian sort). If one has a well developed fancy for edible fungus, then gustatory congress with the morel would the sine qua non of your condition. Certainly adding to their mystique (and their expense in markets) is the shortness of their season and the difficulty of finding them. That they are acknowledged as so elusive I’m sure adds to their saveur.

One must be prepared to suffer a bit to come to the morel, for they grow in messy circumstances – windfall, bramble, nettle, muskeg – not a natural place for a featherless biped such as myself. Regardless of the success of any morel expedition, the seeker will come away with bootloads of muck and myriad small violations of integument (mercifully it’s too early for mosquitoes right now). Attention to this aspect of the quest merely confounds recognition of the mushroom’s greeting, which is what it does when you let it see you.

A morel is a charming and unlikely denizen of the forest bottom it inhabits – one would not expect the best of anything to emerge from so unlikely and inhospitable a biome. Yet, as soon as one gives up the search and simply lets all creation as it has arranged itself be what and how it actually is, without wishing it, the mushroom, or oneself (sulfurous goo, thistle burns, battered shins and all) were any different, the morel reveals itself, and it is like a revelation, often in profusion, indeed tilting toward you in deference. Its combed ribbing, brinded gray confirmations and conical cap practically conspire in salutation, as though you were the one they had come topside to meet and offer themselves to. They know that their lot is to be treasured, to be used reverently and with respect and skill. Less perspicacious creatures avoid them. They’re waiting for the one who trusts and who is willing to be displaced, persistent, patient and perhaps a bit discomforted. The morel appreciates your suffering and rewards you with the full, happy and unresisting offering of everything it is, and will be in the violence you have yet to visit upon it.

Gently courted from its redoubt it maintains its beauty, dignity and composure as you suffocate, cut, compress and burn it, emerging on the far side of your depredations ever more desirable, seeping and fulsome, and now completely vulnerable. Every morel, like every mushroom, wants to be your last, wants to give itself ahead of others, wants to taste like nothing ever has nor will again.

It is a blessing worth thinking about that the little delicacy and I are enzymatically compatible, that for a tiny quirk of chemistry my precious and I can meet and have a loving relationship whereas it might so easily have been lethal otherwise. She wants me to find her, and as much as says so when we appear to each other, but she has no intention of making it either easy or hard on me. All she asks is that I stray a bit from where I know I can get around easily, stay awake to where I am, be willing to suffer a bit and, most importantly, not to bother looking for her.

That’s when your heart’s desire shows up, and it sure beats shopping.

The How, Who, and Some of the Why

As those closest to me would tell you, the question of "why?" is to me surpassingly unimportant. Any psychic or emotional energy spent on satisfying for "why?" is pure profligacy with respect to getting on with anything worth doing or which may properly be said to be actual living. "Why?" Feh.

However, "why?" is, as perhaps one might discern in this series of posts, central to the academic Weltanschauung. If what academic endeavoring came to was purely descriptive, most of the humanities (including my beloved philosophy) would promptly whither and die. "Why?" is a critical tool in the way of science, with its substantiation of theory and testability of hypotheses (Nietzsche took a very dim view of philosophizing with the scientific method - his preferred tool was a hammer). In word "why?" is rarely to be found, but as subtext it's often comically apparent. See what you think of the next few questions.

• How do you let potential partners know about your BDSM interests?

Since I undertook to have multiple partners, BDSM has been the exclusive interest which prompts a liaison in the first place. In my case, it's given that potential partners are interested in me in the first instance at least as an extension of their antecedent interest in BDSM.

With respect to the particulars of my interests in BDSM (that being principally, of course, the “B”), interested parties are either similarly inclined or have determined that they would like to experiment with bondage to enhance their overall experience or pervy résumé. I have suspended several people for whom the rigors of hanging in rope was challenging in a way they were drawn to, but the attractiveness of being bound purely for its own sake was minimal.

The circumstance of my meeting a new partner usually governs their knowledge of my BDSM interests.

• At what point after meeting a potential partner do you tell them about your BDSM interests?

If they are known by me to be kinky but are not aware that bondage is what I do, then I will query their orientation inside BDSM, which will inevitably be reciprocated. This is usually covered within the first few minutes of discovering we have kink in common.

• Are you “only” involved in relationships where BDSM is present?

Yes, although I am still involved in one relationship that has tempered its kink component and now favors straight sex. She was deeply interested in being tied up in the early going, but has since determined that the greater attraction was my passion for bondage, and it was that passion she found most compelling. In the end bondage itself did not suit her sex style. We still speak of rope with plenty of animation and enthusiasm, and she still enjoys other alternative sexual activities (which I would not characterize as BDSM in nature), but our companionship has tapered off significantly as a function of bondage having fallen out of it.

• If yes, how is BDSM used in your relationship?

In all my current relationships outside my marriage, bondage is the leitmotif upon which the relationship is founded. The interest and passion for rope is entirely reciprocal and the roles are very clearly complimentary, otherwise the connection reliably fades. Although rope is a prominent feature of my history with my wife, the foundation of our relationship is far more diverse and chambered. Our sex life would be unrecognizable without bondage, but our larger relationship is built on the notion of YES, of positive affirmation of the other’s interests and aspirations, and of making the contour of our lives according to our own designs. Thus do I believe that the relationship has neither static or durable aspect, but is an endogenous property of the continual friction of two people expressing without limit, the evanescent spark as it were. We have the pleasure of being fascinated by who the other is and is becoming, again and again, in the process of stoking the fires of aspiration and then walking into them.

The elective challenge of bondage impresses us every time we turn to it as an especially apt metaphor for how we live life. My position in my wife’s life is to make things “difficult” for her, to give her an honest and impassioned reaction to who and how she is, to challenge her assumptions about the world and herself, and to offer informed critique. As an artist this informs her professional activities (she readily acknowledges) to good effect. For her part, she puts down before me the requirement that I be in, acknowledge and accept the power that I am capable of expressing, which I extend profitably into many another area of my life. To paraphrase Anne Desclos in the epigraph to Story of O:

“You ought never have accepted the mantle of deity if you are unwilling to execute the office faithfully, and we all know the ways of gods are not all that gentle, don’t we?”

Before anyone gets it in mind that I consider myself a demiurge in some unique sense for having cited that bit of wisdom, let me say that I believe we are all perfectly capable of manifesting the divine, and that bondage (and SM more generally) is something of a fast track to that quality of experience.