A very dark fantasy. Neville Elder/Corbis via Getty Images.
In the literary world this week, a hackneyed writing genre got an unexpected revival: the stern-faced #MeToo callout. Fearlessly exposing a famous person’s sexual impropriety for the scandalised enjoyment of all, the long read in New York Magazine took as its subject the extremely successful “dark fantasy” writer Neil Gaiman. Sensible readers had already guessed the ending: that the overindulged manbaby in black, with his wild gothic imagination and propensity to hitch himself to splashy feminist causes, would turn out to be a priapic creep. Still, it was worth slogging through the piece for the inadvertent light it shed upon the strangeness of modern sexual mores.
Alongside Gaiman, the main protagonist — also in the Tortoise podcast series which preceded it, containing some of the same allegations — was New Zealander Scarlett Pavlovich, now a mature student in the UK. We first encounter her as someone with a major crush on the performance artist Amanda Palmer, who also happens to be Gaiman’s wife and the mother of his child. Pavlovich is 24 when she first meets Gaiman, having been hanging out with Palmer for two years following a chance encounter on an Auckland street. Hours after arriving at his house to babysit, he inveigles Pavlovich into taking what she wrongly presumes will be a solo bath in an outdoor tub. He then allegedly subjects her to unexpected acts of nudity, digital penetration and facial ejaculation, and tells her to call him “master”.
Next, Palmer invites Pavlovich to live with her at a nearby property, and she enters into a loose nannying arrangement with the couple, albeit unpaid. Over the next few months there are further allegations of traumatic encounters with the lecherous sexagenarian: episodes of unexpected and forceful sex, as well as beatings with a belt, and the unwilling ingestion of various disgusting bodily fluids.
Gaiman’s penchant for sadism has been confirmed to the magazine by various former partners, with one woman saying he was always “pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her”. Equally, though, the magazine related that “all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him”. In a statement on his website, Gaiman wrote this week that he has “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone”. Though Pavlovich sent texts which suggested compliance with at least some of what was happening to her, she now says it most definitely was not consensual, describing it as rape and assault.
From this distance, it is impossible to say who is right, though the general grotesque opportunism of Gaiman’s behaviour seems clear. The arguments about specifics will run and run, and I have no intention of getting involved. I simply point out that ascertaining the truth here is surely complicated by blithe acceptance of a thing called “BDSM”, a practice believed to possess the magical transformative powers of turning scatological acts of torture and degradation into a fun and sexy stolen afternoon.
The author of the Gaiman article, a journalist called Lily Shapiro, nicely sums up the ludicrousness of the prevailing cultural position. Straight after a description of a violent, physically painful encounter, Shapiro explains that “Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which [Pavlovich] says they had not done”. Later, she describes BDSM as “a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it”.
We are supposed to believe this, Shapiro declares, because there are experts that tell us so: “practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture”, who “have stressed over decades” that active consent “is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse”. Say what you like about the progressive’s tendency to think the worst of people, but the image of the sadist carefully doing his homework, underlining passages from dog-eared texts before venturing off to buy handcuffs and muzzles, surely speaks to a refreshing strain of optimism about human nature.
The fantasy that violence somehow becomes neutral or even good when accompanied by a resounding “yes” is crazy when you actually think about it; and is also belied by the heavy emphasis in the sexpert rulebook upon obtaining resounding expressions of consent at every stage, making it look more like a liability waiver than a responsible exploration of what participants really want. Meanwhile, back on earth, the whole point of BDSM is to mess around in the borderlands between yes and no; for what else does dominance and submission mean? Strictly speaking, it doesn’t count as either of these things if consent is fully and unambiguously present.
Aficionados might protest that what is sought is a pretence or play of dominance and submission, rather than the real thing — but presumably not too loudly or often, for fear of losing their erections. In order to be lost in the moment, it helps if you can mentally distance yourself from the recollected “yes” and focus only on the present “no”. And that’s not a fact about BDSM specifically, but more about the limits of immersive pretence; no theatregoer transported to Elizabethan times appreciates a mobile phone going off.
This preferred gap between the submissive’s vocalisation of consent and the act itself makes the whole process somewhat risky for the sadist, as Gaiman has learnt to his cost. Even in the best-case scenario, between these two moments there is likely to be enough time for the other to inwardly change her mind and so mentally retract her “yes” — thereby rendering what comes next as a violation according to BDSM health and safety protocols. And there is a further complication, relating not to the moment of the sexual act, but later. Namely, given the nature of what is often being done, submitting to a sadist (whether in “play” or otherwise) tends to produce certain desires in the submissive person that are particularly apt for later disavowal, after the fog of masochism has cleared.
This is because psychological as well as physical domination is a conventional part of the modern sadist’s repertoire. (For some reason, academia has an enormous interest in these transactions, thereby offering ample proof.) Verbal aggression and humiliation, insults, gaslighting, negging, and other pressuring tactics are all often priced into the erotic buffet along with pain, and here too the thrill apparently lies in pushing boundaries. Yet in other contexts — for instance, those said to involve coercive control — prolonged exposure to such strategies is recognised as likely to undermine a person’s secure sense of self. Some philosophers even argue that a person’s desires are “unfree” and not part of her “true self” whenever they are induced by such underhand and manipulative methods.
If this is right, there’s little reason to think the same tools must operate differently in explicitly sadistic relationships; a fact which leaves the “yeses” of submissive partners especially vulnerable to later retraction in the cold light of day. Perhaps even worse for ongoing mental stability, the gospel according to sexperts says that acts of punishment are supposed to be alternated with moments of solicitous affection from the sadist: what is grimly known as “aftercare”. Unless you are completely dissociated, it’s hard to think of a more deranging pattern of emotional engagement. Shapiro laments in her article that Gaiman didn’t offer any aftercare to victims, but it was surely a blessing.
Delving into the past, and trying to remember what you actually wanted in some particular situation from months or years ago, is usually not just a matter of fishing about for the memory of some inner feeling. Most of us don’t have good memories for this sort of thing anyway. It is much more likely you will try to consider the situation you were once in with fresh eyes, and work out from first principles what was actually desirable about it (or otherwise). And if now, in retrospect, you find the situation you are recalling positively undesirable — if, say, you now realise you were being manipulated and pressured into doing things which, you now see, were really very bad for you — then there is a chance you might now say you never truly desired them in the first place, even though at the time you said (even “eagerly and clearly”) that you did. And you might even have a point.
To be clear: this couldn’t work as a legal argument, and nor is it an attempt to adjudicate Gaiman’s guilt or innocence. But it is certainly an argument against getting involved in sadomasochism in general. More often than not, it is very bad for the submissive in the scenario — not just because it leads her to physically dangerous situations, but also because it tends to put her in a state of mind in which agency is undermined and subsequent choices aren’t those of her true self, however confidently things started out. Meanwhile, for the sadist — and especially the famous one, as Gaiman has discovered — it leaves your good reputation a hostage to fortune, hoping that those with whom you had degrading sex in the past never properly get to know their own minds.
Excellent points throughout, like this:
And while consent may take the punishable criminality away from brutal and degrading acts, it can’t remove the brutality and degradation. (Not groundbreaking I realize). Is anyone surprised that a “feminist sadist” overstepped?
Clearly, participating in humiliation rituals, in whichever role, excites a lot of people. But it course it’s unlikely to be, much less stay benign, for the dominator or the dominated. Maybe there’s a version of BDSM that’s empowering or cathartic, or something—I don’t have any related experience to draw on. It does seem that overindulging a fetish invites escalation into real perversity, where people get hurt whether there’s a crime or not. [end squeamish little sermon]
You bring to mind a criminal case from years ago which involved a group of gay men who indulged extreme BDSM. Like, ahem, nailing body parts to pieces of wood (fortunately, I don’t remember other acts).
My recollection is that they were found to be criminal acts and received convictions even though they were all fully consenting. There seems to be a line beyond which society cannot accept that people can consert to certain acts and while I feel quite comfortable with extreme pain being unnacceptable, I wonder if that line could be drawn elsewhere.
For example, the problem with, say, casual heterosexual sex is a danger of unwanted pregnancy; this is a very significant complication. Quite honestly, I would have found that a life changing event. Perhaps, the line should be drawn to forbid this (especially while drunk).
I don’t believe so. I think people should enjoy sex whether in a committed relationship or not but casual sex is not without serious problems. Drawing a line is (as ever) fraught with problems.
I agree. Casual sex has an allure, especially for the young and for most men of all ages. Like getting drunk or stuffing yourself to the point of a “food coma”, the allure has a dark side and a price to pay the following day, sometimes a lasting one. The line for things short of existing crimes should be drawn by the individual, not lawmakers or censorious busybodies.
But here’s where I tend to agree with people who are more socially conservative than I am overall: The unqualified celebration of kinks or total sexual indulgence is a mistake, especially when adolescents or very young adults are concerned. (Explaining alternative/fringe/deviant sexual practices to young children is a worse mistake. Most have no developed sexual identity and there’s no need to rush them. I understand the point of basic sexual education for 12-plus children, since some will “go there” whether they understand the dangers or not. Even then the lessons should be mindful of such innocence as children have left in these times. Let them be kids!).
I think it’s good to remove the shame from consensual sex—with exceptions we can think of without needing to list them—yet not to pretend that there is no danger in much of it. Even with a “vanilla” version of casual sex, like two healthy 20-year-olds of either sex—especially for women. I don’t think that imbalance reflects how it ought to be, but how it still is, even in the West.
I’m very dubious about sex education in school; how we have babies, types of contraception and avoid nasty infections are fair enough but it’s beyond that, it’s virtually how to do it and how to conduct relationships.
Srange how we managed to figure it out before sex and relationships education. Of course, things went wrong, seriously wrong but I find it hard to believe lectures from some worthy young teacher will prevent that.
Substituting “intercourse” for “violence”, both of which we hopefully can agree are abominable without consent.
Being accompanied by a resounding “yes” (versus being unwanted) CAN dramatically change the morality of a given action.
The main exceptions have to do with the lack of ability to effectively consent, for example with children, or due to mental impairments. But I would be wary of using a broad brush to dismiss active consent from an adult as not having the power to greatly change the moral calculus.
I am looking beyond just the sexual realm, however, in this regard. How about a person of sound mind refusing a potentially life saving treatment (for whatever reasons, there are many possible ones). Is that too crazy for society to allow as well?
Good to see your “handle” again. I agree it changes the moral calculus. And gets entangled in a web of human motives and contradictions. Indentured servitude is less wrong than chattel slavery. But how much less? A voluntary, temporary bondage, was of course often entered into under duress, and somewhat dependent on the individual master’s forbearance. What stopped a 17th-century New World settler from working his (usually white) servant to death in the last year of a 7, 14, or 21-year contract?
I think you should be allowed to refuse specific medical interventions, and in the U.S. you are, at least if you are considered mentally competent, or have net worth you remain in control of.
These questions are all on the table these days, including legally assisted dying. In my birth country of Canada, there have been some instances of younger people with severe depression or pain but no imminent terminal diagnosis getting MAID (ghoulish acronym: “Time to call the MAID?”). And suggestions from some that poor underschooled people might take that exit, and get out of the way of the more fortunate.
But even though I am uncomfortable with his choice, I can understand why my Canadian uncle took that exit last year at age 85. He’d battled prostrate cancer for about 25 years—and I mean battled. With chemo, radiation and an experimental drug that worked for many years, then stopped working. He was in some form of agony on most days with a prognosis of between a couple of weeks and a few months to live.
And I watched my beloved Grandma wither away in her last years before dying on Valentine’s Day, 2020 at 94. For the last several months she was mentally unraveled and rarely left her bed. It was quite a bit different when we could still take her to church or even wheel her around the block. I have a different attitude toward assisted death than I did 5 years ago.
I think you’d agree that questions about how much liberty individuals should have as legal adults can’t really be answered in the abstract. Or conclusively answered at all. But we can’t refuse to confront the questions. I don’t have children but I think it’s often useful to consider what sort of world we want for our sons and daughters, or in my case my 2-year-old niece.
Of course even the firmest opinion on a life-and-death issue like abortion, the death penalty, or assisted suicide doesn’t remove the moral and spiritual complexity. At least not for our society as a whole.
Agreed.
But I’d go a bit further… overindulging ANYTHING (sexually fetishistic or not) invites escalation into perversity… whether it’s an appetite for hamburgers (and nothing ever other than hamburgers, 3 time/day, 7 days/week), bondage, chocolate, Facebook, smart phone incessant scrolling, toe-licking, BASE-jumping, you name it.
Obsession pretty much always leads down a dangerous path in which true life priorities are abandoned and replaced by an artificiality which ‘rings’ our particular Pavlovian bell, over and over and over again. (the old and perhaps apocryphal story of rats pressing levers which trigger dopamine release to the point of starvation).
That being said, always good to keep in mind that one person’s ‘degrading act’ is another’s ‘raindrops on roses & whiskers on kittens’.
[Due to a weird level of editing below this article my reply will probably be delayed for about 12 hours].
Good point. Almost any behavior carries a risk of obsession, compulsiveness, and overindulgence, with real-life examples of people who’ve taken it too far. Once you’re into that disordered territory, things more meaningful than constantly cleaning the same surface over and over, or getting tied up and whipped, will get de-prioritized, or even abandoned. The first type of behavior is likelier to be called OCD, the second a kink or perversion. But that doesn’t establish a true distinction. And I agree that my or anybody else thinking a certain behavior is scary, strange, or disgusting doesn’t make that a fact, let alone something people have to take seriously.
Playing with the hot stove of intentional pain and humiliation does seem to be more of a likely fast lane toward excess and abandonment than a bad burger habit. But how bad? 21 a week is a lot! At some level all obsessive behaviors seek to fill a void or quiet an itch that the substance or behavior in question can’t soothe, not really.
My Irish grandmother was always a source of wisdom in borderline situations in which the now mewling Gaiman finds himself. She was never eligible to earn ridiculous sums from a University, Sunday newspaper or Woman’s magazine. She would have laid her glass of porter on the table and declared, “Dirty dogs, they are all dirty dogs”. Perhaps we should consider Nana’s assessment of the actors in this tittilating drama rather than the constipated diagnoses and pathology coming from expert virgins. As usual a fascinating and enjoyable article Kathleen. Thank you.
Wise woman. Call me a reactionary prude, but I don’t believe there is such thing as healthy BDSM, even if it is all apparently consensual and above board. You’re feeding a monster that will eventually devour you and others. It’s similar to those who consume animated or AI generated child pornography and claim that it’s fine because no real kids are involved.
First, I may be obtuse, but I’m missing the similarity.
Second it depends on what you mean by BDSM. I don’t think spanking the missus sometimes because it turns her on is “feeding a monster that will eventually devour you and others”.
Sexual violence, domination and humiliation is going a bit further than giving your partner a slap on the bum. The similarity I’m getting at is that something that is ostensibly victimless can be harmful in the long-term.
I’m not suggesting we should make BDSM illegal; what consenting adults get up to is their own business. But perhaps as a society we should move away from the idea that it is liberating to satiate our every desire. Some desires are best put back in their box.
Obviously I used that for effect. No doubt there are limits beyond which we should not go. I think most of us would agree that nothing should cause serious and lasting harm.
That said, masturbation, homosexuality and various other practices have been considered in the past to cause such harm.
For many adults, this is the only area in which genuine play takes place, and I think that is harmless enough. For people for whom this is an obsession, or the only way they can enjoy sex, it is perhaps more risky. Perhaps then therapy might be an idea.
I think it’s related, but dissimilar in two ways, which I’ll point out though it’s not news to you or any likely reader: 1) they represent children 2) they aren’t real people of any kind. One makes it far worse, two makes it less blameworthy in some way, but far from fine. I hadn’t even heard of the specific genre you mention; can’t say I’m shocked, just disgusted in a tired and tiring way.
“Feeding a monster” is right to the point. Or a “hungry ghost”. What about playing ultraviolent video games or watching graphic slasher films all day? There’s certainly matters of degree and frequency of exposure, and of the individual involved. Largely a case by case question. On one side lies something like a single bad meal, on the other long-term self-poisoning. Let the viewer beware. And don’t go promoting it as if it’s health food.
My wife and I have been pretty adventurous and yet, I agree completely.
BDSM seems a form of sex for people who don’t like sex. At best, the theatrical quality of BDSM masks the very simple delights of sex. At worst, well, the dangers for sadist and masochist alike are catastrohpic.
It’s possible to take a ‘dominant’ role in what the writer refers to as sado-masochist sex play while being turned on by the ‘submissive’ female’s sexual excitement . If you get off on , say, spanking a female sex partner to orgasm , then how is that even sadism ?
I think there is some doubt over whether the people playing the dominant role in these scenarios are genuine sadists. What you describe is a rather strange form of empathy, or even care.
I think it’s Douglas Murray who said that the worst thing that can happen to a masochist is to fall into the hands of a genuine sadist.
And when alls said and done, fifty shades was rather popular with the female reading public.
The Nicole Kidman film “Baby Girl” seems to be rocking the same boat. Less leather, same kink.
“More often than not, it is very bad for the submissive in the scenario — not just because it leads her to physically dangerous situations, …” A casual assumption that the submissive is always female.
There seems to have been no consideration given to the role of Gaiman’s wife. Could she really not have been aware of what her husband was doing? Did she find some vicarious pleasure in her husband’s abuse of other women? Did she play submissive to him too?
Pavlovich would do well to consider the following questions about herself. Why did she let herself be talked into taking a bath and the acts of abuse, when she was meant to be baby-sitting? Most 16-year-olds know how to fend off the advances of creepy fathers. (Not that they should have to). It is credible that Pavlovich was so unassertive that she did this once. Why then did she return? Why did she agree to live close to Gaiman and his wife? What was his wife’s role exactly? Was she willingly and knowingly finding a ‘submissive’ for her husband?
“Why then did she return? Why did she agree to live close to Gaiman and his wife? What was his wife’s role exactly?”
14 down votes so far and rising, from people who clearly consider expecting accountability and responsibility from grown women to be distasteful.
Interesting on the contradictions inherent in these sorts of relationships, but isn’t the purpose of “safe words” to overcome some of the immediate issues of consent. It allows the submissive to say no without saying “no”. Or rather to say “no” while having another word mean no!
Indeed, though there seems to be a shockingly large number of people who struggle with expressing a no, in whatever way. Which is why it’s a good idea to practice it with a partner. When someone does not hesitate with their no you can also trust their yes.
Presumably it is also the case that someone may consent to something, indeed actively want it, and seek it out – and yet still feel guilt and shame afterwards. This might lead them to later reconstrue their active consent as in some way constrained.
Of course we could say: don’t do anything sexually which leads to guilt and shame – but at various points in our past, this might have ruled out the act of procreation in its entirety, and certainly things we now consider normal.
Well said. A friend once told me that she used to lock herself in her house and eat prodigious amounts amounts of chocolate (3 dozen Mars bars for example), then throw up and feel nothing but guilt and shame for days. Then do it again.
Clearly in this case there was no coercion at all. However, the overpowering desire (her words) to put herself in a position of shame was hard to resist. Knowing how she would feel afterwards in no way reduced the desire to do it.
Whilst I know nothing personally about the subject being discussed, I do wonder to what extent the submissive person is powerfully drawn to put themselves in a position they know they will later regret. Also, to what extent does the dominant person feel guilt and shame at their actions.
I do think that describing what took place as an abuser and a victim is simplistic and unhelpful.
but the example you choose clearly illustrates someone with a psychological problem and the point surely is that someone who wants to hurt and someone who consents to being hurt has something not quite right about them. And in the case of the hurter they prey on this weakness for their pleasure, and I suspect strongly they get more pleasure, so to that extent it is abuse. And in NG’s case clearly using power of fame and money and age.
Insightful response Glyn
I agree that simple divisions like abuser and victim are unhelpful, in most of these cases. Not too simplistic with an adult and a child, for example. But it’s also obtuse or simplistic for bondage experts and humiliation advocates (if you will) to claim that whatever isn’t coercive is fine. That stance is Stock’s main target here. Not whether you have the freedom to do it, but to be careful about exercising such a freedom. And not to put all the burden of (likely) later regret onto others.
Since you’ve opened up the topic in a helpful way: In your friend’s case there was no coercion, but some kind of compulsion. Maybe she desired that self-shaming ritual for reasons she wasn’t quite aware of herself, and it gave her something of value at that time in her life, even in an unhealthy way. But we can all agree it’s better she doesn’t do that anymore.
A severe binge-drinker may imbibe for several consecutive days or to the point of blackout, followed by a nasty, multi-day hangover. Does he or she like that feeling? Maybe. Is it an inherited or acquired physiological urge? Maybe. But examining one’s own history and motives in the way Stock suggests is probably a good idea for such unfortunates. Even for those who really love getting hammered to the point of oblivion, ‘whiskey bent and hell bound’.
Nope, I’m pretty sure that BDSM proponents agree, along with everybody else, that compulsive behavior and addiction are not “fine.” Maybe don’t straw man the argument, which is that you have no basis for asserting that an activity is harmful by comparing it to other, completely unrelated, activities that are harmful. I can say that yelling at a football game is the same as yelling at your child, but that doesn’t make it true– one is fine; the other is not.
It’s probably a good idea for doing anything of any consequence, including getting into a romantic relationship or having a child.
The assumption that BDSMers haven’t done this is, to put it lightly, patronizing as hell. If you would never challenge somebody for getting engaged, maybe apply the same charity and respect to someone engaged in a practice that affects you not at all, and has not been shown to impact people more harmfully than, certainly, having a child.
It’s not my intention to offend you or judge what you as an individual do with other individuals in a private, consensual setting. But the way the culture treats fetish or hedonistic indulgences does affect me, if only at a remove.
I wouldn’t want “consensual binge drinking” promoted either. A little drinking, for adults? Sure, but alcohol kind of promotes itself, and is a bit easier to indulge in without causing a social reaction, warranted or not. The use of “such unfortunates” is an allusion to the AA Big Book, in connection with John Wilkes’ friend who binged chocolate. His comparison is far from one-to-one, but I don’t think it’s accurate to call it “completely unrelated”. All of the behaviors (eating sweets, drinking alcohol, non-procreative “hook-up” sex) are pleasurable indulgences that present a danger that is manageable within certain limits that vary from person to person. All have a heightened tendency to become compulsive in a way that is truly unrelated to having a child.
The experts mentioned in the article Stock cites, Dossie Eaton and Janet W. Hardy, do seem to use consent as a single metric, or smokescreen for safety: consent at every turn…fine; any lapse in explicit consent…bad.
I have no idea if this is a fair characterization or not. It’s probably tilted for argument’s sake. But in a cultural moment where simulated sexual violence, “throuples”, pan-sexuality, and sex with machines have so many proud advocates, a think a few more dissenting prudes—and I admit that I am one about certain things—should speak up. Why not, does that harm you or force your defensive hackles to rise?
Though easy access to extreme pornography for everyone, including many children, or the growth of fetish subcultures doesn’t actively impede my rights, I don’t have to like it. Neither does my inexpert opinionating and commentary impede your behavioral rights or freedom of conscience. But you’re welcome to hate it, which you clearly do.
First off– arguing with you doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, yours, or mine, or somebody else’s. If you don’t like arguing, you can simply stop at any time.
Nor do I “hate” your “opinionating” and commentary. Arguing with a claim does not amount to hating it, or the person making it. I don’t hate you– I think you’re wrong, and I’ve given you the respect of explaining how.
Secondly, a behavior doesn’t have to be compulsive in order to be risky, with potentially grave consequences. Even a compulsive drinker is not putting their health in danger as immediately as a woman gestating and giving birth to a child: 296 women died in 2020-22 during pregnancy, or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy in the UK, adding a bit of extra irony to your portrayal of “non-procreative” sex as a dangerous thing. I’m not sure if there is, actually, a more risky and yet more socially-encouraged activity for a woman than choosing to bear a child. Well, unless you count having relationships with men, since women are 73.5% of the victims of domestic abuse-related crimes, and 67.3% of domestic homicides.
Thirdly, literally every activity carries a risk, but you have to reach for compulsion to make an argument that drinking alcohol, eating sweets, and “hook up” sex, are significantly dangerous. I suppose by the same token someone could claim that compulsive BDSM is dangerous, but again, literally activity could be performed compulsively, and that includes far more risky behaviors such as hang-gliding, mountain-climbing, bungee-jumping, and so on.
So where does that leave your argument? You can’t legitimately compare BDSM to drinking or “hook up sex,” except by stressing that those are bad when they’re compulsive, and yet you haven’t even tried to portray BDSM as compulsive. You’re just assuming “bad” to begin with, and trying to substantiate that claim by appealing to the dangerous nature of other things (again, when they become compulsive) rather than how BDSM, specifically, is bad.
Lastly, I do actually think that commentary like yours is harmful, because it contributes to a stigma that isn’t fair and, itself, leads to grave consequences, such as legal prosecution for BDSM participants. I don’t know if you’re a compulsive moral panic-spreader or not, but I hope you don’t consider it a pleasurable activity that could just get out of hand.
Ok. Good point about pregnancy. “Non-procreative” was off topic; “hookup” or casual was not. Committed loving relationships seem better to me—everything else being equal. I acknowledge both that BDSM can occur within such a relationship, and that things can go very wrong within a more conventional, or seemingly ideal relationship. Also, I admit I’ve had casual sex multiple times over the years; some regrettable, some not.
I’m surprised you don’t at least acknowledge the compulsive aspect of fetishized sex. In the case of BDSM, I think the built-in secrecy and shame are part of the appeal. Don’t you? Perhaps vigorous arguments in defense of its essential harmlessness like yours will reduce that appeal. Or make it more common to try among young people, like choking or “facials”are. BDSM is far from unique as a kink, with its heightened potential for harm versus sex that doesn’t involve violence and humiliation (not a fact, I realize), however staged. But it enjoys a raging popularity, though largely at the level of books and film—and in its prominent place within the Porn Industrial Complex. I do think we’re amusing ourselves into danger, and I don’t exempt myself on that. I’m far from a total innocent, let alone a see-no-speak-no-hear-no-evil monkey about porn.
The idea that my comments doing little more than defending an article already published above promotes “moral panic” sounds absurd to me. I do think it’s fair, even correct, to introduce the larger question of hedonistic indulgence, including eating and drinking.
I didn’t “go there” here first, but find it to be a part of the larger discussion. I’m glad, for example, that teenage binge drinking is down compared to late last century, when I indulged in some of it myself. I’m not glad, for example, that some extreme sex practices are more common among the same age group.
I’m glad you don’t hate me or the very fact of my opinion-making. Same to you. It’s hard to read tone and intention in typed characters. I did feel a bit attacked, with you sort of demanding proof to support my opinion—one that I believe is far from farfetched, and even quite common-sense evident to a degree—and exploding the whole thing into a axiomatic counterclaim: All life on Earth involves risk. I agree, but not an identical level of risk.
Thanks for the engagement. I gave you an upvote. Have a good week.
I really can’t be bothered to trawl through the tawdry catalogue of claims and rebuttals between Gaiman and his accusers.
Regardless of anything else Gaiman stands revealed as just another Progressive-bro whose performative feminism and “ally-ship” is the worst kind of hypocritical self-promotion. And he is intelligent enough to have known this.
Is he
Something only touched on here, but in the background, is the idea of the BDSM community as being exemplary in terms of consent.
The idea, roughly, is that if the BDSM community, in spite of all its inner contradictions, can make everything explicitly and verbally subject to consent, then why can’t the rest of us. Why should we feel that asking for permission to kiss spoils the moment, if a dominant in a BDSM relationship can ask for the submissives permission without this spoiling everything.
I think there must be more emphasis on consent when the danger levels – physically and mentally, are higher. You wouldn’t prepare for Everest the same as for Hawk Mountain in Allentown PA.
This is the only comment that actually makes a sense but surprised no likes- because most people do not want to know. You said, there is a group that has figured out how consent truly works in a very unusual context. Maybe we need to learn from them so these kind of things do not happen so often or at least. We transcend in some levels.
What this article is not saying, however, is that consent operates in two areas: legal and social. The legal aspect is what everyone talks about, but the social aspect is something we don’t learn as children and many people remain unaware of. This aspect is deeply connected to the human body, Yet, we are not allowed to have that narrative or use the language.
‘Why should we feel that asking for permission to kiss spoils the moment?”
Because it does.
Because ‘asking for advance permission for a first kiss, let alone a second or a third is not how ‘the game’ is played between men and women, not usually, not typically, not per normal & highly desired practice & fashion. “And when he walked me home that night…All the stars were shining bright and then he kissed me… He kissed me in a way that I’ve never been kissed before…he kissed me In a way that I want to be kissed forever moooooore!”
As e.e.cummings put it, “since feeling is first….who pays any attention…to the syntax of things… will never wholly kiss you.”
It is, however, per this report, how the BDSM Game is played: full of protocols, commands, titles & rules that lead to specifically defined characters being played in pretend dungeons (with even the occasional dragon) in a prescribed way. To NOT ask permission violates the rules of this game…in the same way that asking permission violates the rules and expectations of the First & Primary Game.
In any case, the act of ‘Asking for Permission’ is not, in and of itself, exemplary. It does not deserve honor, respect, or admiration. It is simply the correct formula used when playing BDSM in the same way, ‘I accuse Professor Plum, with the Lead Pipe, in the Study’ is the correct formula when playing Clue.
Well observed. I love that cummings, defier of capitalization and syntax, made that claim. But can’t we pay some attention to it and prove him wrong? A great, often underrated American poet in any case.
“my father moved through dooms of love / through sames of am through haves of give / singing each morning out of each night / my father moved through depths of height…”
Good to have a reminder about the sometimes thin line between domination & abuse. This said, article seems to conflate the despicable seeming actions of one individual with a strong argument against any domination submission dynamic at all. As a young man I had no interest or even much awareness of said dynamic. It was my long term girlfriend at the time who explicitly encouraged me to be more dominant. After a bit of research, was lucky enough to see the danger of escalating to more harmful activity, hence as a life long practice I’ve drew the line at mild spanking as a regular activity, indulging in moderate spanking at most twice a year. There’s some women who might be repulsed by even mild benign domination – but both from research & (limited) experience of different women, its generally most appreciated. As is punishment “alternated with moments of solicitous affection” (though I guess this depends on lots of things, especially the psychology of the women in question and the punishment being something harmless that’s actually desired). As often the case, the untold tragedy here probably relates to men missing out. About 4 in 10 men lean submissive according to studies, but only about 1 in 10 women lean dominant, hence in this sense few submissive men can find a complementary partner. This said, not to take anything away from the strongly made point that men need to be careful about exerting dominance even if they have apparent consent, and that even soft core benign dominance can be creepy & distressing to some women.
I think most of us have had one of those “everything you’ve been told about women is only true of some women” moments. Usually courtesy of a wild girlfriend.
Some people are so gullible and greedy, that scaming them should be considered a social good. These women should give thanks to Neil Gaiman for having started them on the road to self knowledge and maturity. See Chaucer and Boccaccio for better written examples.
This entire story smells wrong somehow. Pavlovich effectively volunteered for this treatment but now calls it rape. To call what happened here by the same name as what was done to all those children in our northern towns seems insulting to those genuine victims.
Be interesting to see how it plays out in court – though i guess if in NZ we’ll never know as i suppose their courts are as ludicrous as the UK. US courta can be absurd but there are also good ones. I note the TV has another “lets get Marilyn Manson” season coming. He is as yet unconvicted of anything. The guy is clearly into way out and wacky stuff be it sex, drugs, art etc. Note his previous partners who are also into his oevre are not upset, but those with different tastes are. Meanwhile the music and movie industry carries on as normal – following the Weinsten protocol. Of more note than what Mr Warner (Manson) has been up to are the allegations against his band mate Geordie White and what went on back in what, 1997?. I realise recollections may vary but if you told me that drugged up musos out on tour may forget normal sexual etiquette i would add that there are strong rumours of Pope John Paul 2’s Catholicism. ( Though obvs not the current Pope)
“effectively volunteered for this treatment but now calls it rape”
Welcome to the brave new world, where a grown woman voluntarily accepting and continuing with the activity, often for months or years, exchanging messages with the “rapist”….is rape because she says so suddenly years later.
But underage 12-15 year old girls in Rotherham or Hamburg being subjected to the “attentions” of groups of men she never met before, under horrific conditions – all hunky dory, don’t talk about it and spread hate.
That’s what the article is about. What is consent. Yes the person clearly put themselves in a situation where this abuse [ of age, power and fame ] took place but is that a different to any [ over 18 ] female getting drunk, stoned in a short skirt and her assillant then saying she “effectively volunteered”?
The point is NG should know better.
p.s. rape sadly comes in many ways,, more or less violent, and only you are comparing it to the grooming gangs rapes.
Yes, it is different. Like it is different whether you forget your car keys in your car, or whether you give them to someone at the bar and say “Here, take a drive”.
So, there is a point at which personal responsibility is important. A man who “takes advantage” of a drunk woman is a disgrace. And, yet, what would we say for drunk runover by a car.
Older powerful and famous men can exploit impressionable young women but fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on you.
One final thought is that can attractive young women never exploit older, powerful (and horny) men for money, gifts, opportunities?
Another way of asking it is – of the genders were reversed, if a man had sex after being drunk and stoned, or had sex with a woman with more age / power /.fame
All willingly, and then afterwards started whining about being “raped”.
Would the female “rapist’ be in jail and/or disgrace?
You know the answer to that one, don’t you,?
So either stop taking about women’s”equality ‘ and start treating them as children, or man up and accept it if you voluntary, willingly ended up in someone’s bed.
No. What I’m saying is that what has happened to this woman is qualitatively different from what has happened to the victims of the rape (let’s not call it ‘grooming’ please) and should not be described with the same name.
Any similarities to the Bauer case?
Bauer?
I don’t pretend to know (or care) much about the Gaiman business but KS’s views on consent are just weird.
Specifically, her position that meaningful consent to risky, painful or humiliating activities is inherently murky seems extremely prim and it would be hilarious in almost any non-sexual context.
Can you meaningfully consent to a boxing match? Of course. Can one meaningfully consent to the risks involved in joing the army? Or hang-gliding? Or going on Love Island?
Of course we can. That doesn’t mean that there might be moments when we wish we hadn’t done so – either in the moment or later. But what a small view we would be taking of human capacity if we were to fret about all forms of consent to risk in the way that KS frets about BDSM here. Explicit consent is a form of indemnity. It does fundamentally alter the nature of the act.
The difference between boxing and GBH is consent. Forcing someone to do a bungy jump against their will would be awful – even if they came to no physical harm. And there is a massive difference between an Army recruitment campaign and a press gang. etc. etc.
And, let’s be honest, I suspect that even KS finds herself a lot less troubled by the inherent slipperiness of consent when the genders and power dynamics are reversed.
In a parallel universe, where NG had found himself exposed as someone who paid a great deal of money to have women tie him up and flog him to within an inch of his life, would KS really be wondering whether he could ever really consent to such a violation? Was that the issue uppermost in KS’s mind when Max Moseley’s proclivities came to light? I doubt it
I’m more willing to give KS the benefit of the doubt on the last point, but I very much agree overall. This was one of her weaker articles, not just due to her take on consent.
It seems to me that she is letting her distaste for certain acts colour her judgment. “More often than not, it is very bad for the submissive in the scenario” – given how widespread BDSM activities are, that’s rather unlikely. I don’t think she has a leg to stand on in her views on aftercare, either. And the concept of a “true self” is deeply suspect when you think about it.
I can understand your point, but aren’t you fretting over her concerns too, or what you perceive as her onesided primness? Her analysis of consent in this context strikes me as true to human experience for most of humanity, not a one size fits all, nor a bad for the goose but not the gander thing.
Also, to put it mildly, there’s plenty of lewdness in the world these days, so a little primness doesn’t hurt. It’s fair to question, for instance, the value of eating filth for kicks. Those who disagree can revoke their
consensualvoluntary attention as readers, or even detour by about two clicks and watch an extreme version of the behavior under scolding review.“all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him”
For someone who was a labour voting, guardian reading liberal at one time (long, long back, thankfully).
Two things I learnt with age.
Firstly, a lot of the restrictions and rules society and religion placed on people’s behaviour, and especially women’s behaviour, stuff like insisting on marriage, shaming certain behaviours..there was a reason for that.
Secondly, whenever I hear either “male feminists” or “modern” women talk about being “liberated”, equality, girl power blah blah, I roll my eyes in exasperation.
All good in theory, until you are confronted with grooming gangs, military drafts or someone like Gaiman, and women are damsels in distress at the flick of a switch.
Bear in mind that the grooming gangs were formed from (a subset of) people raised in a much more restriction and shame-filled culture than is found in most pockets of the West. There is great, often built-in hypocrisy among many in something close to a true patriarchy, like Islamic theocracies or 14th-Century England. Outgroups and those who stray from the flock get treated like fair game, deserving targets. A woman is a precious darling or a w h o r e, with little in between.
There can be a sensible balance, where we neither pretend that women had it great in the Good Old Days, or that all protection and social pressure can be removed without making life into a different kind of nightmare for many women.
I lost all respect for him ages ago when he turned out to be a dirty old gender activist. These new revelations just add fuel to the fire.
Stieg Larsson had a horrific character in the first Lisbeth Salander book who can’t be doing with BDSM because it’s consensual and therefore not ‘real’.
Paying prostitutes to put up with awful treatment they hate on a purely commercial basis doesn’t work for him either as it’s still not ‘real’.
Grey areas abound, no doubt, but I doubt consensual BDSM players would look sympathetically on that fellow’s problem even if an external observer might ultimately doubt even their safety practice.
First, this is fiction.
Second, Larsson puts evil male characters in his books in order to justify the sadistic violence meted out by his heroines – to make it righteous. It also makes for enjoyable reading and viewing by his fans, because they can indulge in, and enjoy, fantasies of sadistic violence against their preferred hate group without feeling guilt.
You’ll find the same structure in all hate fiction, including that from a dark period in recent German history. The hated group brings it upon themselves through their actions. The avengers are often portrayed as long suffering and put up with a lot of this before unleashing the sadistic violence which would otherwise seem out of all proportion.
Not sure about that.
There was only one violent female character, and she never unleashed for the sake of the violence. She wasn’t getting off on it, though in the case of the character I describe above, who had raped her, there was an element of payback. And she was that way because of what had happened to her and her mother at the hands of men. The mirror behavior was her falling in love with a ‘peaceful liberal’ male who respects her.
The enjoyment when she turns the tables on Bjurman is surely the ‘justice’ of it rather than a ‘fantasy of sadistic violence’. I didn’t get the impression Larsson wanted to write a violent female character so invented loathsome creeps for her to please his fans by hurting.
You are forgetting one very important thing. It’s a work of fiction! All of the actions were invented by the author. The whole point is that the heroine must seem right and justified. Without that she would be a monster. And without that the readers could not enjoy their hate without guilt.
Clever insight.
Just knew he was going to be a vocal and public ‘feminist’.
Isn’t this a case of ” your drug is worse than my drug”?? To extrapolate the flavours of the accused sexuality is to miss the point that he is alleged to have disregarded safety, sanity and in terms, consensuality. There is a large kink and chem-sex scene these days. The vast majority stay on the right side of sanity & legality and i expect its more important for them than for more vanilla sex scenes. I think this means a lot more time talking and building trust in the pre bedroom stage than the average one night stand. I know a lot of folks in BDSM and chem-sex have some mental issues, and for some that sort of thing helps. However of all people i thought Kathleen Stock might understand the concept of deed not breed. If the allegations against Gaiman are true the fault is the entitlement to sex without consent – not the type of sex. We hear a lot from lefties and fake TSs about how bad feminists are, and how gay feminists are worse. This article simply mirrors that prejudice from another viewpoint.
Given that Mr Gaiman is a happy rider of the ‘trans’ train, with full support for all its dark alleyways, perhaps his own tendencies tie in with those indulged in by the strange creatures who engage in forced feminisation & sissy porn. Lovely stuff..
Given that Mr Gaiman is a happy rider of the ‘trans’ train
Ah, didn’t know that. May also be the reason he’s coping some Terf flak. Otherwise this piece seems a bit odd, and not what you’d normally expect from KS.
Always enjoy KS ‘s contributions. The BDSM world is not one I have much familiarity but I would be interested in KS thoughts where it encroaches on ‘the arts’ such as in Angela Carter’s non fiction book ‘ The Sadian Woman’ or Peter Strickland’s film ‘ The Duke of Burgundy’ . Not sure ‘ Fight Club’ qualifies but her thoughts would be as ever interesting.
The absolute key point not spoken of here is, if some rich famous funky feminist bro asks you to take bath in their house, don’t do it for Christ’s sake, just say no and scram!
For crying out loud! If some act doesn’t actually reward you somehow then do something else, and then be more careful about who you make friends with. Complaining your friends are horrible to you after you have done whatever it is you did is a one time/one person thing. Walk away and don’t go back. Don’t nanny for them, for heaven’s sake. Dear God.
These people – and by that, I mostly mean the New York Magazine author and various “experts” – cannot decide if they want to be Puritans or libertines, often acting as if both are possible. These folks work to normalize the aberrant on one hand, then take advantage of a salacious story to act like moral scolds on the other.
I always thought that with BDSM, the submissive had a safe word that was to be honored by the other party to avoid things getting more out of control than they already may be. Because even practitioners acknowledge the potential for that.
It’s quite easy, actually– be accepting of practices between consenting adults, and strenuously object when consent is absent. Any indecision you may detect is regarding whether consent was present or not. Consensual BDSM = fine, Nonconsensual “BDSM” = battery. A safe word is not to “prevent things getting more out of control,” per se, but to signal “I no longer consent.” Seems entirely obvious when not tangled up in the moral panic over whether BDSM in itself is acceptable.
Never heard of this person until today.
“So, your Honour, I have a signed consent form from Miss X agreeing to sex play of specified types. She now says she has changed her mind but I have nothing in writing withdrawing her earlier consent.”
Doesn’t seem likely does it?
Right, far more likely that the dom will be prosecuted regardless of what Miss X may or may not have signed
Gaiman and Palmer remind me of Sartre and de Beauvoir.
OK – but which one’s which?
I concede your point.
A very bad argument, which contains one good point: The rather preachy BDSM insistence on enthusiastic consent for every step is neither realistic nor sufficient. Some very hardcore BDSM practitioners (in stable relationships) made the point that they did not use safewords because they were not reliable. In the heat of the moment you cannot rely on the submissive saying stop or refusing consent when things are getting psychologically dangerous. That means the Dom cannot assume things are OK just because there is no stop word, and must stop when *he* sees it it getting too much. Which of course requires remarkable levels of people skills, self-control, and a genuine commitment to the long-term well-being of the sub – none of which can be taken for granted. Stop words and explicit negotiations are useful tools to deal with a situation when the normal limits and warning signs have been voided, but BDSM remains dangerous. Also because, as KS says, it will change you.
That said, you can certainly consent to it. You should just know what you are doing. Indeed, what makes KS think that she knows better than the people involved what consent is real, and what expresses their ‘authentic selves’? Why is the rejection after the fact – by a person disappointed, rejected, and thwarted in love and dreams, more ‘authentic’ than the original acceptance back when she was in love, and trying to fulfil her fantasies? People are never free from being conditioned by circumstances and people around them. All our decisions are made under pressure from where we are, and from how circumstances have formed us. If we are to count as adults capable of taking decisions, the best we can do is to think things through beforehand, and then accept responsibility for the consequences. If we go into BDSM that includes accepting that this is a dangerous sport, and that the person holding the whip cannot be expected to protect us 100% from things going badly, let alone knowing better than ourselves what will ultimately be good for us.
Does that mean one of them is kept in a stable?
😉
No, just that these are regular pairings who know each other well. The same attitude would be pretty irresponsible if applied to one night stands between strangers.
Actual horse-like LOL! A welcome dose of humour.
It means they like horsing around and getting bits between their teeth I guess.
While you make an excellent point about the human condition, I think you’ve mischaracterized Stock’s argument. She is saying that a legally or morally valid bar of consent can be cleared without making risky kinks fun or fine, especially once you’re deep into the pit (torture dungeon?). An adult is not prevented from playing with fire–to a point. They’ll be no prosecution if he burns himself or his own stuff–excepting insurance fraud or something–but that doesn’t make it worthwhile, nor the fault of some “pyromania porn” he may have watched. Let the flameholder and spectators beware. As I read it, Stock is saying: be careful of touching a hot stove, and look in the mirror first when you feel badly burned.
Well, except that she has yet to demonstrate that the stove is actually hot. Saying “but it is!” over and over doesn’t count, certainly not over and against people who have actually touched the stove and testify that isn’t
Yes, this wasn’t a double blind, peer reviewed trial, but an opinion piece. Yet do you seriously contend that no one is getting burned, at least if they do it right? Perhaps you can prove to me that regular participation in bondage-discipline / dominance-submission / sadist-masochist activity is only, on average, as dangerous or harmful as sex that isn’t violent or “violence adjacent”.
Are the writings and documented actions of the Marquis de Sade without harm or victims? I read an important book called Forbidden Knowledge, in which some of the sickest, most violent and cruel passages of De Sade’s are examined, in making the case for keeping some kinds of “knowing” off-limits to ourselves, for our own well-being. Like the author, Roger Shattuck, part of me wants to know what he said and did, to understand who and what those who celebrate de Sade are celebrating. But on balance I’d rather have remained ignorant of all of it.
Of course not. But asserting that it’s hot assumes that it’s hot for everyone. If you’re looking for an unfair generalization, you could’ve stopped with that one. “The oven is hot for some people but not others” is more accurate, but far less pithy.
Perhaps I have no need of doing such a thing, because it’s not my job to delegitimize your stereotypes– and realistically I can’t do so anyway. “You can’t reason someone out of a position they weren’t reasoned into, to begin with.”
That’s fair enough. I don’t believe in all my opinions as if they are fact, nor expect others to adopt them as their own. Still, I don’t think it’s unreasonable, for example, to detect heightened danger in sex that involves intentional pain and humiliation, even without dispositive proof of that extra risk.
I was simply returning your own unreasonable standard of proof to you. Some with first hand knowledge have testified to a hot stove too. It isn’t a settled issue, nor one in which opinion and preference are easily separated from the discussion, for you or me.
I’m just sorry that the late Terry Pratchett colluded with him on a couple of projects.
All these weird dark fantasists are often working out their own twisted thoughts in book form. It seems to be the done thing nowadays.
I bet Stephen King is another one if truth be known. Working out his fantasies I mean and not necessarily a closet sadist!
Still, if it stops someone becoming a serial killer.
As for the girls; yes of course they are complicit. Hanging round someone until they pick you up and agreeing to join in is complicit. They are not children like the poor victims of rape and torture gangs in this country.
No amount of new age philosophy will alter that.
Evolution by its very nature creates variation around a mean. Gaiman and his ilk exist at the least beneficial end of that spectrum.
Lolled at this ” Say what you like about the progressive’s tendency to think the worst of people, but the image of the sadist carefully doing his homework, underlining passages from dog-eared texts before venturing off to buy handcuffs and muzzles, surely speaks to a refreshing strain of optimism about human nature.”
Never mind that this factually true in many cases, no optimism required.
“Meanwhile, back on earth, the whole point of BDSM is to mess around in the borderlands between yes and no; for what else does dominance and submission mean? Strictly speaking, it doesn’t count as either of these things if consent is fully and unambiguously present.”
THIS ^^^^ I am so exhausted and literally sick of having to respect all these perversions. It’s time for the perverts – the BDSM, crossdressers, polyamorous freaks, and furries to go back into hiding.
We need to re-establish SO many boundaries we have erased between healthy behavior and sickness.
There is healthy behaviour, there is sickness and then there is boredom. For many couples the excitement and interest of sex is not maintained long term by love alone. Perhaps a bit of kinkiness is better than boredom – and a lot better than the pain of infidelity.
It seems to me that in these activities the submissive is in the driving seat, being able to dictate exactly what they will and will not consent to, with their supposed dominant partner having to carefully abide by the submissive’s rules!
But once the “fun” starts, I gather the most important thing is for the submissive to remember their “safe word”, to halt the proceedings if it shows signs of getting out of hand. Otherwise it could get too painful for comfort: “Ouch, groan, Now what was that damned safe word again?!, ouch, OUCH, …”
Umm, yeah?
Here’s a secret: safe words are barely ever used. Because they’re barely ever necessary, but also because “yellow light” and “red light” are universal indications of “I definitely want to ramp this down,” and “I definitely want this to stop,” respectively.
The rhetoric of feminism undermines female agency as a matter of course
The final paragraph is somewhat revealing: the assumption that the submissive is a woman and the dominant a man. There are are a great many women who have lucrative careers dominating men, and some of the things I’ve heard about aren’t fit to be described. There is also the financial domination thing, in which it is the mere act of having to hand over the money to the mistress that is the actual payoff for the poor fool in question – no, I don’t get it either – and I’ve heard one or two stories about men ending up bankrupt because of it. Surely this sort of thing is a concern too? Silly me of course not: when women do it to men there’s never any question of possible lack of consent.
However I do have a lot of sympathy with the general scepticism expressed above towards BDSM and consent. I remember years ago being shocked when I read the Story of O, and what got to me the most wasn’t the graphic descriptions involved, but the first-person perspective of O herself as she experienced the degradations and pain described: it sounded, to me, like the voice of a slave who had long ago surrendered any hope of freedom or recognition as human. It was very uncomfortable to read, I thought. I won’t go as far as claiming that any person willing to say yes to domination is by definition incapable of giving real consent, that would be taking it too far. But I do think there comes a point that might well sit inside the present legal boundary, where things could happen that a wholly rational and in-control adult would not accept and could not be persuaded to agree to. (But this really could just be me not getting it too, I accept. Like most other people I do not “get” BDSM, so cannot comment from a first-hand perspective).
Finally, I recall a funny Speccie article a couple of years ago in which the author had met a young lady at a dinner party who professed to be into BDSM and after an initial thrill when she opened up and started to talk about it, he realised that for her at least, BDSM was a displacement activity coping with the fact that she didn’t actually like sex itself. I think about that, too, whenever this subject comes up.
Maybe that’s not because of what women are doing to men vs. the inverse, but the fact that in these cases, men are literally paying for it. That’s generally indicative of consent.
You make a fair point, however the example I give above of financial domination does appear, at least too me, to involve men whose emotional capacity to protect the self is in some way damaged. By the standards of the emerging arguments that seek to alter the definition of consent, I would say that those men qualify for inclusion.
It is however almost certain that they will not be included: this would not be a desirable outcome at all for those seeking to change the rules.
I could’ve happily gone the rest of my life without reading and learning about the awful life choices of an author whose work I’ve enjoyed, and the sadly neurotic satellite creatures in his orbit.
I’ve come away with a new word “neg” that I will do my utmost to forget at some point in the next day, or so.
While the essay at hand was well written, and presents its facts clearly, I simply do not care about any of these poor people. And, having lived for some 70 years, I no longer find myself surprised, much less titillated, by exposes delineating some sordid aspect of human behavior.
Several analogies in these comments to boxing and other dangerous activities (e.g., bungee jumping) miss the point. A boxer, for example, consents to the possibility of being hit in the face, although he will avoid letting that happen. He does not pretend, after giving initial consent, that being hit is “non-consensual,” nor does he derive some satisfaction from being hit “non-consensually,” neither does his opponent derive gratification from hitting him based on a perception that he is not consenting to it.
It’s the “consensual-nonconsensual” artifice that makes what KS discusses quite different from boxing or other dangerous sports.
Barking.
There was a very interesting video I watched the other day about modern progressive culture’s worship of consent, elevating it as the sole moral principle there is. The whole idea that any action becomes moral if the participants consent. Not only did it point out how frequently and quickly many ardent worshippers of consent are to abandon it completely the moment it conflicts with their goals (wealth redistribution, trans lesbians, etc), but also the times like this where participants consent, but afterwards still feel ashamed, like they did something wrong. But since they believe consent is the only moral principle there is, they feel that somehow their consent must still have been violated. There are of course other moral principles that have since been thrown by the wayside, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still there.
There’s an astute analysis by Gareth Roberts in the Spectator on the Bonnie Blue incident (she’s just had 1000 men in 24 hours), where he quotes Kat Rosenfeld’s arguments on this issue. Now I greatly respect both Roberts and Rosenfeld, but they appear to have forgotten something important, namely that the issue of consent has been partly elevated in importance over other more nuanced considerations by the fact of it having been made into a legal certainty that can be very simply ascertained by reference to a person’s age.
There are very good reasons for this to be the case as well as good reasons to be sometimes concerned about the consequences. It’s the old advice “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” but applied to the law itself. However, the point is this: when it comes to sex, both (or all) parties have to be certain of their legal position: that’s the point. The law doesn’t just make it legal for a 16 year old woman to consent to have sex, it ensures that the person she consents to is certain of the legality of their actions too. And this is really very important, especially in an age where it is clear that at least some people would like to bring into law the power to retrospectively withdraw consent and consequently retrospectively criminalise acts thought to be legal by the participants at the time. I needn’t go into the sociological horror story this mad idea would represent, I’m sure.
And the consenting adults principle implicitly extends past human sexual relations into all areas of adult life: it is the foundation of what gives a person access to the general rights and responsibilities of adulthood. The right to vote, to enter into contracts, to be held answerable for one’s actions etc – these all depend upon an assumption that can safely be made about everyone else based solely upon their age. If we start to decide that the sexual age of consent is no longer a simple enforceable principle based on an objective number, what else about adulthood might become contingent upon a more complex – and therefore necessarily more nebulous and uncertain – set of rules?
But the confusion also seems to stem from confusing morals with the law. Nobody is obliged to do anything intimate with anyone else just because consenting to it would be legal: so the moral aspect to sex lies pretty much where most of us think it should be, namely in the domain of personal choice. Adults get to choose, to say yes or no. The fact that some adults make rash, unfortunate choices they later regret is not a cry to change the law to protect adults from their own bad choices, and should not be treated as such.
Clever point. It’s an example of emotional reasoning. I feel bad, therefore my consent must have been violated.
Emotivated reasoning, perhaps?
In Canada, we have the case of Gian “I like rough sex” Ghomeshi – a top CBC (public radio) star whose on-air voice was a breathy, pseudo-intimate purr. He was accused of abusing women. At the trial his stiletto- heeled top female lawyer brought evidence of consent – emails showing their desire to continue to see him despite having been punched, choked, etc. He was fired from CBC.
Jian Ghomeshi Case | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Eddie Swales stated “The similarity I’m getting at is that something that is ostensibly victimless can be harmful in the long-term.”
yes, true. but to be totally fair,such could include just about anything that in the short term appears ok but in the long term one might conclude that the short term completely consensual act in the long term may be seen as harmful. The only safe way to be sure that one’s act in the short or long term does not hurt self or others is to do nothing. For example, take marriage and divorce- one may freely marry and be sure that said marriage will lead to happiness and contentment, but instead it leads to bitterness resentment and an horrendous divorce and screwed up children. How to have avoided this is to do nothing. The author seems to lack an understanding that sexual decision making is always risky, no matter what one may think at the time,
I disagree. I think she’s a chaste (i.e. monogamous) lesbian, but no naïf or full-scale prig. She suggests, quite plausibly, that behavior involving violence, cruelty, and humiliation—however simulated or real—carries heightened risk.
In many comments, it’s assumed that the submissive is a female. For such commentators, they appear to assume that the submissive cannot be male. I had assumed until now that dominatrixes focused on dominating males. Am I wrong?
I’ve read somewhere that for both women and men masochistic fantasies are more common than sadistic ones. Clearly human sexuality is pretty far ranging – and the link to power seems pretty common, even if hard to explain.
“They are all dirty dogs” wins!
This is the “Cat Person” story all over again. Women participate in sex. Months later, they decide that it was not acceptable. They use blackmail on high-profile males.
It’s bullshit.
“The fantasy that violence somehow becomes neutral or even good when accompanied by a resounding “yes” is crazy when you actually think about it…”
Not really; or at least no crazier than people consenting to be terrified by a horror movie or a high speed roller coaster ride, or wallow in the misery of soul-crushingly sad novels. BDSM isn’t for me; but then neither is the physical agony of running a marathon or engaging in boxing matches. I wouldn’t want a career as a Hollywood stunt man either, but some people clearly do. Personal preference is everything here, and I don’t regard other people’s choices as crazy just because they don’t appeal to me.
That said, while I admire Gaiman’s writing I was never a fan of the man and always thought there was something slightly creepy about him (for context, there isn’t a super-large set of public figures I feel this way about, the only other one who immediately springs to mind being Hugh Grant). Gaiman is obviously highly intelligent and evidently has a very forceful personality, and it’s just an unfortunate reality of human interaction that ‘consent’ becomes an equivocal concept when used by forceful personalities in bullying ways. If the details of this story are accurate, then Gaiman may be exactly this kind of bully. While I couldn’t care less what his sexual preferences are, if he’s manipulating others into gratifying them, then what’s crazy is thinking such infringement on their decision-making autonomy is all right. You don’t bludgeon someone into taking a roller coaster ride with you if it’s clear they don’t really want to do it.
Not sure what this all says about women and agency. I know I made mistakes in my youth, I accepted responsibility for those poor decisions, learned from them, I grew and developed wisdom. Why are we denying ourselves these opportunities? I find it ironic that we have the term Manchild when so many women are refusing to grow up and take responsibility for their poor decisions. If you never accept responsibility, you never learn and grow. You cannot have the freedoms of adults without the responsibility for those freedoms.
if you keep dating idiots, change your type! If you think vanilla is boring, you’re doing it wrong, work harder at doing it right before degrading yourself and then blaming someone else.
Since the advent of ‘Me Too’ movement, too many of those who have been unmasked and dragged through the mud seem to be members of a tribe who tend to excel at everything. Perhaps one should not be surprised to find that they excel at sexual deviancy too.
Here’s a tip: Never assert that people dislike something over and against their own statements, else you risk becoming like an anti-feminist who asserts that feminist women aren’t happy.
Your personal revulsion for an activity does not make it bad. It does not, and should not, determine how other people feel about it, because a) subjective impressions are subjective, and b) disgust is not an argument. Your denial of basic assertions about the appeal of BDSM amounts to simple incredulity– you cannot fathom why someone would be into an activity enjoyed, in fact, by anywhere from 20%-80% of adults. There’s even a popular show on Netflix called How to Build a Sex Room, and spoiler: “sex room” makes a great euphemism for “BDSM dungeon.”
Does my disgust for your comments cancel out your disgust for BDSM? Of course not, but it does demonstrate how utterly useless it is as the basis for moral judgments.
I mostly agree, and in the past lots of things were considered disgusting which everyone now considers normal. But perhaps there is some point at which a sense of disgust is telling us something. Disgust is not an argument, but equally it isn’t a feeling without content – it tells us something, and not just something about ourselves.
Again 90% agree, and think there is quite a bit of prudery in the article.
“Meanwhile, back on earth, the whole point of BDSM is to mess around in the borderlands between yes and no; for what else does dominance and submission mean? Strictly speaking, it doesn’t count as either of these things if consent is fully and unambiguously present.”
You are flat out wrong. Submission, in the BDSM world, is about the trust you have in your partner to take control. Dominance requires such a high level of emotional intuition and knowledge of your partner so as to push your partner to their limits without crossing the line. The whole purpose of a “safe word” is to have a way to signal to your partner that they are about to cross this line, not that it has already been crossed. You DO need full, unambiguous consent and the trust that your partner will stop as soon as this consent is revoked. I am both a victim of sexual assault/coercion (which happened in a rather vanilla sexual relationship, funnily enough) and a practitioner of consensual kink and BDSM. The difference between the two is so vast that I find it insulting to compare the two. Neil Gaiman victimized women because he is an abuser, plain and simple, and to compare consensual BDSM sex to this is to downplay the crimes committed.
It seems to me that we have come to a place in western society where ‘sexual freedom’ has now become the opiate of the people. It is the touch stone of someone’s personal liberation, the distraction from the lessening of other social, economic and political freedoms. It has become a fetish in and of itself… we go from vanilla, to Only Fans, to Sugar Daddies, to BDSM, to Furries, to consensual slavery, to Trans mutilation, on and on, and supposedly the only moral framework that exists is ‘consent’ (note trans medicalisation is centred around affirmation of someone’s consent). And yet, in this cultural space, the very act of consenting is seen to indicate how liberated we are. So how can we refuse? Dare we be called ‘prim’ as some have labelled KS here? Dare we talk about all the various psychological, emotional, financial, political power structures that impact upon any individual who consents in any given scenario? Is it possible for us to consent equally? Do we acknowledge the cultural framework which for centuries has allotted to women a place of submission? (there is a difference to women being submissive, and men being submissive, given historical sex roles. Interestingly, in the Kidman movie, she is depicted in a traditionally male role (the boss) so the submissive role becomes a fantasy, an inversion of her normally powerful role. Imagine the movie if she was the cleaning lady in the office)
I think a very telling point that KS touches upon is that we have to be careful when we are playing with monsters. Sexual energy has been acknowledged as extremely powerful in many disciplines and of course by religions (though that perspective equated powerful with bad). But in truth sex is about the very stuff that creates life. Does our current emphasis and acceptance of recreational sex (akin to sport – many have equated it to boxing in these comments) ignore the very potent force that it absolutely is, with the potential for great good and great evil? In ancient Occult traditions there is a plethora of sexual imagery and ceremony, as it is seen as a gateway to power and enlightenment. Not something to be messed with lightly.
I agree with KS that consent has become to some extent an empty word that convinces people that they are free and liberated, when perhaps they are still acting according to someone else’s script.
“So how can we refuse?”
That’s what consent means– nobody can force you to be trans, or wear a fursuit, or do BDSM, or have an OnlyFans.
Oh wait, did you mean “How can we refuse, as a culture, to accept that these things even exist?” Well, in the same way that furries have to accept that football exists, and football affects all of us far more than any of those practices you named, and is nearly impossible to avoid, unlike the others which basically must be sought out specifically. So yeah, in that context “refusal” makes you a society rather than a person and you only get to be a person, sharing society with people you dislike.
It’s a rhetorical question. If the emphasis in our culture is to be ‘free’ and ‘liberated’, it can put pressure on people to ‘consent’, sometimes without giving true thought or consideration to what they are actually agreeing to. I am sure I am not the only person who has gone along with something because I didn’t want someone else/other people to think I was uncool/uptight/not liberated etc etc etc I don’t follow your comments about society vs person sorry
The “consent” model of BDSM assumes that participants are of sound mind – well adjusted people with slightly exotic proclivities.
Of course this is rubbish. Once you consider that those inclined towards such activities are more likely than not malevolent and/or disturbed in some way, the discussion about “consent” becomes absurd.
Maybe don’t assume one way or another, then, like you do with everyone else about everything else.
Don’t overthink it. My ex-wife had lifelong spanking fantasies and in the early days of the Internet built a thriving business publishing her own and others’ short stories – even entire books – in that genre.
In the course of our marriage I met many of the authors; with perhaps one or two exceptions out of dozens, they were all women, as were nearly all those who purchased their books. Also interestingly, they universally lamented how few men there were out there willing to tan their backsides for them. My theory was that, even though anything involving a young lady with her knickers lowered is Just All Right with most men, a lifetime of “you don’t hit girls” made very few willing to indulge those female fantasies.
I got to know many of these women personally; none expressed any of the childhood trauma or exploitation so popular with the do-gooders. Nobody forced these women to write such; they simply did it for fun, profit, and to scratch one of the innumerable itches in human sexuality.
An excellent article from Kathleen Stock.
The people and processes she analyses are examples of disgusting perversion, which our ‘progressive’ post-modernist era has legitimised and glorified. The last taboo, sex with children, is slowly being eroded (consider the one-time legitimacy of the Paedophile Information Exchange, once affiliated with the National Council of Civil Liberties (whose legal at the time as none other than the ‘progressive’ Harriet Harman).
The people who render these revolting practices as socially acceptable and ‘normal’ are as perverted as the practitioners themselves. Just consider, for example, how the trans movement has inserted its practitioners into childrens’ libraries and classrooms. I’ve nothing but contempt for the lot of them – practitioners and condoners.
So you’re opposed to pedophiles? Then just say that. Except you’ll find that literally everybody agrees with you, and I guess that’s boring, in addition to being completely irrelevant.
What a terrific contribution to the discussion!
THANK YOU. You said in print the argument I’ve been trying to make for decades. The whole Fifty Shades era made me want to wretch. I’ve heard all the arguments, and they all fall flat. Yours, however, soars. Thank you.
What’s your argument? Because wanting to retch isn’t one.
I am a submissive woman. I consent, happily, enthusiastically to all sort of BDSM practices including consensual non consent. You cannot police my sex life. It is my choice.
“And if now, in retrospect, you find the situation you are recalling positively undesirable — if, say, you now realise you were being manipulated and pressured into doing things which, you now see, were really very bad for you — then there is a chance you might now say you never truly desired them in the first place, even though at the time you said (even “eagerly and clearly”) that you did. And you might even have a point.”
No — you absolutely do not have a point. You have, in fact, the furthest thing from a point imaginable.
What you have is a regret…and temporal one at that.
Ms. Stock goes on to note that this new understanding “is certainly an argument against getting involved in (fill in the blank) in general.”
But it isn’t. Not really. And though regret might theoretically lead us to try to avoid — at some future indeterminate place & time — situations that may seem to an objective observer similar… rarely are any of us aware enough or insightful enough or see clearly enough to truly recognize the realities that — in the aftermath — drove the regret we now feel. (Billy is nothing like Jimmy! X is nothing like Y! And zigging is not nearly the same as zagging!)
The Fog of War, indeed.
Dear Abby is filled with such stories…day by day, week by week, ad infinitum.
We struggle to learn the lessons which flow from our own hungers, desires, and predilections…especially those which both feed us & harm us. Addiction is perhaps the most obvious example. No one injects heroin/ketamine mixtures into their bloodstream because they believe it a good thing. Every addict knows full well it can (and probably will) kill them…. but appetite & weakness is appetite and weakness….and right now, today, it (whatever it is) feels good, feels right: too too easy to choose to ‘love the one we’re with’.
“The needle tears a hole… The old familiar sting…Try to kill it all away… But I remember everything… What have I become? … My sweetest friend… Everyone I know goes away … In the end” (Johnny Cash’s version of Reznor’s ‘Hurt’ is amazing & iconic)
Once we move away from the obviously & mortally dangerous addictions…our more mediated desires, camouflaged as any number of ‘feelgoods’ become that much more difficult to recognize…let alone refuse.
As for BDSM…heck, where is the line?
Human Sexuality (and the relationship dynamics which surround it( is a full-contact sport; people get bruised, and bleed (figuratively & literally) all the time. ‘Love hurts; love scars; love wounds and marks any heart’. We are attracted to situations and people maybe we shouldn’t be but we are…and always we think, maybe this time.
We believe…”in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
So what is the choice we wrestle?
“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant…
“What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” (Kundera)
Reznor again…speaking to that very need: “I hurt myself today… To see if I still feel… I focus on the pain… The only thing that’s real.”
As for Gaiman, his sychophantic entourage, and this tritely predictable mess that they made of their lives… Maybe Dear Abby can straighten them all out?! The rest of us all have better things to do.