Has Consent Been Erased?

This article on TruthOut by Jill D. Weinberg got me thinking about consent, vanilla sex, BDSM, and the portrayals each "side" creates of each other.  The article looks at the entire "Fifty Shade" brand in regards to how it might be harmful to folks who are starting to engage in S&M (and it's associated forms of sexuality or sexual play) and those who have been doing it for some time. While I think the article makes some good points it leaves out an honest look at the history of and the current culture of BDSM so I want to address that as someone who has been doing all of this for over 24 years now and who has done some research into the history of the Scene and a lot of talking/reading about the changes to the Scene over these two and a half decades.

"Fifty Shades" may be more honest about how some kinky relationships work than we want to believe.



While I have no doubt that Weinberg's subjects (52 of them according to the post) told her that consent was really important, very common, and taken very seriously, I've seen many online discussions and even live debates about the need (or not) for safewords and contracts growing over the past decade.  The correct answer you are "supposed" to give to any researcher is that these (safewords, contracts, negotiation) are important because you don't want to show the community or yourself in a poor light.  This correct not only because "we" want to prove we aren't crazies or serial killers but because the idea that we are better than vanillas is touted in every Scene community I've been part of or visited.  Vanilla (folks who don't identify as part of BDSM/SM/Kink) aren't as self-aware, they don't discuss things, they don't think things through, they just fly on instinct and tradition or so we tell ourselves repeatedly.

Abuse happens in the Scene, it happens every day.  Even though I applaud the NCSF's attempt to research issues of abuse I have my worries about how honest people will be even in a blind study. Their previous study on the value of consent vs. the reality can be found here.  The NCSF discovered rate of consent violations in that study isn't the 2 out of 52 that Weinberg reports but over 30%!

It simply isn't true that most people use contracts any more.  That I do makes me an oddity and even then my current contact is not ideal in any sense of the word but it is the outgrowth of doing all of this for years and years with one partner; we are not role-models for new relationships. I have my doubts that the majority ever did use contracts even though the value of them was promoted back in the early to mid-1990s when I was starting into the public community. Repeated today we are told how unlegal our contracts are, that they are more a matter of mutual honor or a why to lay things out so you both know what you are getting into.  Well, duh!  I was never told our contracts were legal documents and these discussions often have the tone of warning about them -- don't be fooled into thinking you can't leave just because you have a contract, little girl.

At the other edge of the contract discussion though are those who report on ways they have legally found to tie their partner to them.  Doing these things (and we aren't talking legal marriage, folks) is said to make things more "real" and take away the slave's right to just walk away.  I have my doubts about such advice since most of the documents being discussed would require the submissive to be proven to be mentally unable to make decisions... in that case how are they making the decision to be in the relationship in the first place?

If you pay attention to these discussions going around the Scene today it feels like consent and safewords are what "real" masters/slaves don't need or are only for the newbies.  Sure we tell the younguns that they need a safeword, maybe even a safecall though I've found that less and less discussed, but they are also told not to use it "control the scene."  This idea confuses safewords as being all the same and that wasn't what I taught many years back.  Safewords are ways to give information but the anti-safeword folks often say "just communicate" ignoring the fact that some folks want to say things in Scene that would communicate that things should stop even if that isn't what they want.  The Scene can be linguistically complicated, safewords were an idea to address those complications.  Safewords then become tools for the newest members or for those too unskilled in communication.

Then there are the safewords are for fake folks.  This idea can primarily be found on master-slave boards online.  Here people brag about how they don't have safewords or that having one would make them unreal.  I totally get bragging about how little your partner may need to use a safeword after years together as a sign of how well you've gotten to know each other but bragging that not having any way to communicate beyond the linguistic complications makes you more real seems odd to me.  Of course these folks also tend to preach that real slaves can't leave, can't make choices, and furthermore never want to do so.  I agree with the Weinberg article that I mentioned first in this essay -- having a slave stay because he choses to is far more sexy than having one who feels they have no choice. But there are folks in BDSM who strongly disagree.

So if folks in the community are currently disagreeing about the need or value of safewords, contracts, and even ongoing consent do they at least agree that rape and assault can happen and should be avoided?

I have seen many discussions online, in organizations, and at events about the rate of sexual assault (and whether or not it is real, an insult to say the least to those who have been assaulted) in the Scene and the responsibility of the community to do anything about it other than educate and provide resources for "victims."  People who speak up about violations of their limits or flat out assaults and rapes are often warned by those in charge to stop and sometimes they are kicked off of online and meatlife communities.  As a "community" I have seen far more accused believed than accusers even when the accuser have bruises, hospital records, and evidence of threats to back up their claims.  The standard lines I've read and heard from those poo pooing the claims -- you just weren't a good enough slave, you could have walked away any time, and even that you want to get revenge on your ex.

Wow!  Those seem very similar to charges that survivors of domestic abuse heard and continue to hear, doesn't it?  Apparently the talk of consent, safewords, and contracts isn't taken seriously when we are smacked in the head by a complaint.  It is easier to fall back onto the ideal of what the Scene is like than to realistically look at the folks we munch with, chat with, and play with.

I've never seen or heard anyone claim that an unpartnered dom or sub should give up safewords or not have their consent respected.  But once you starting using those magic words owner and slave (and the variations of them) suddenly folks come out to say you aren't real if you need safewords, or that they have "moved beyond" the need for safewords or contracts, or that it lessens their dynamic if those are involved.  We talk about these things in brief in our book if you want to check it out:



I see this far more often in the maledom/femsub community than in the femdom/malesub.  Is this a carry over of the idea that men need to be in charge and that women just "naturally" submit to them especially in the bedroom?  If you have tell someone to submit, if you have to show her how to do that, if you have to keep driving home the fact that her uterus makes her less, then it isn't natural.  There are naturally submissive folks out there, there are people who love to serve others, but that's not a gender thing, it's an individual thing.  I can't say how frequent this idea of "no safeword = more real" is in the lesbian or gay communities really but I'd be surprised if these same discussions about the unnecessary safewords and contracts for real owner-slave households aren't going on.

One problem unlining this is the idea that some peoples' relationship are more "real" than others. This might be a type of competitiveness or a way to bolster your own feelings by making yourself seem more important compared to others.  It may also be a romantic view of the past before the advent of the Internet and the popularization of kink into the mainstream -- complaints I hear even more often than arguments about safewords and consent.

If you want to see the past of BDSM then you need to look at the honest histories of the "Old Guard" but also some of the underground clubs and circles that existed prior to the late 1980s when it all started to become more "public". Hopefully next year there will be a history book out about several of these things but for now, for anyone believing in an "golden age of kink" before the Internet debased it all, I recommend you read V.M. Johnson's "To Love, To Obey, To Serve: Diary of an Old Guard Slave" that the tops club I used to run read and discussed soon after it came out.  Not a single person in that club wanted to go back to those "good old days" even though they would have been in the more powerful positions.



That these discussions about consent, the responsibility of the community to police itself, and the "realness" of relationships points out several things about the Scene today.  We are an expanding community and as such the variety of opinions will be greater.  We will also attract people who have no interest in BDSM at all and merely see our meeting spaces as arena in which to hunt for new victims.  One of the most common traits of serial rapists and abusers is their ability to hide very well in mainstream society; in kink communities these people can recite the words, play in public, even take on leadership positions then abuse their "slaves" in private.  Our community is primarily online now ranging from folks who never meet offline to those organizations that have been around for 40+ years using the Internet to communicate.  The Internet allows us to lie, it encourages us to lie, so the self-proclaimed great master can get a following much later than the leather daddy who was a founder member of a Old Guard club.

Lies are the foundation of abuse. Lies strip people's ability to get information they need to give consent or withdraw it.  It is so easy for someone to lie about themselves at any time.  I learned to not tell my potential partners my own limits and interests during initial negotiations after repeated discoveries that things my partners claimed they were into were things they either just tolerated or actually hated.  On occasion that could have been intentional lies but often it was merely adapting their answers to reflect mine because they wanted so badly to get into the Scene or try it out with me.  As a result for many years now I haven't told potentials my limits or preferences in formal negotiations until after we've documented theirs.  (I'm a freak about negotiating as fully informed as possible.)  Regardless of why they lied, the lies damaged any foundation we might have built upon.  Abusers constantly lie to trick their victims and those around them so they can continue their abuse.

I think we can educate all we want but until we tackle the "need" to lie, the need to be in "real" relationship, and even the idea that you must be in a relationship to be kinky we will continue to struggle with abuse in BDSM.  Until we as a greater society deal with our constructed ideals of gender and sex and accept the naturalness of individualism then books like "Fifty Shades" will resonate with some people and reflect the reality of some people's lives.  It isn't erasing consent, it's pointing out the serious problems we have with consent right here, right now.

So those are my thoughts on the reality of kink and consent.  What's your experience?