BDSM and Community Development

by Virgo, Co-Founder of the Dominant submissive Society of Manitoba, Canada (DsSM) and Columnist

vvirgo@hotmail.com 
http://www.dssm.org/ 
Virgo's essays can be found at:
http://www.dssm.org/Essays.htm 

 
I care about community development. There is nothing more powerful in my eyes than meeting other people who have the same kinks and interests, and sharing information regarding the lifestyle in honest and open ways. To this end, I have contributed to my local community by running a discussion group that is topic based and down to Earth, as well as organizing demos, workshops, in person discussions, and other functions of this nature. In my eyes, the greatest gift that people can give is knowledge, whether it is "how to" based information regarding techniques or "I've been there too" information about issues that come up as people navigate through this lifestyle.

As I have worked to help develop my community, several issues seem to pop up on a fairly regular basis. Some people feel that BDSM is being "watered down" as a direct result of the growth spurt BDSM has experienced as people move out of the kinky closet and into public communities. The second issue, which follows closely to the first, stems from the "splintering" that many BDSM communities experience as more and more people enter into the scene and form their own subgroups. The third issue is one of definition, where a debate has evolved between the Old Guard and New Guard over the role of mentorship, and terms such as Total Power Exchange, and what it means to be 24/7.

In order to sort through these issues I'm going to draw examples from the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, academia, and religion. My main argument is that what we see within BDSM communities as they grow and develop is really not unique, but a normal process of community development. Understanding the process of community building can give us insight into where we have been, where we are going, what the main issues are, and what our main concerns as a group should be.



1. United We Stand



In terms of community formation and development, feminism and BDSM have had strikingly similar histories. The first stage in the process of community development has the dual purpose of bringing people who are alike together, and attempting to unify them under one banner. Regardless of era or epoch, there have always been a number of women who have been unhappy with their socially prescribed roles. Likewise, a certain number of people have had a kinky streak regardless of whether the context was the Dark Ages in England, the heyday of the Roman Empire, or the Ming period in China. However, unhappy women who isolated from each other, or people playing bondage games in secret in their bedrooms, do not constitute a community.

The glue that brings, and holds, people together is similar interests, similar needs, or similar troubles. In the case of feminism, while it is possible to trace the ideas and issues represented in much feminist thought to Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) or even earlier, they did not take hold on a larger scale until larger social forces provided a suitable context. At the point where Betty Friedan talked about the "problem without a name" (1963), North American society, in general, was at a point where the single income family was crumbling. Many women had worked during the Second World War, and did not like being forced back into the homes once the men came back to reclaim their old jobs. On a societal scale, women had a taste of independence and wanted more, and the idea that men could work and bring home a paycheck that was big enough to maintain a house, car, and kids was turning into an unattainable myth for most families.

Many people credit the Marquis de Sade with "creating" BDSM, but the reality is that his stories are more a philosophy of the nature of capitalism than a blueprint for real life BDSM. For example, he describes a "scene" in which a woman's throat is slowly cut while she is being sodomized so that as she is dying the muscles in her anus contract in such a way as to maximize pleasure for the male. This sounds more like Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the marketplace" (i.e. if we all just look out for ourselves and not concern ourselves with anyone else, naked self interest will somehow protect us all) than a viable way of treating each other during BDSM play. Although Sade was widely read through the 19th Century, he had very little impact on BDSM community building beyond exposing the fact that a lot of people are interested in buying kinky books. The Libertine movement, which started in Europe in the late 19th Century and moved to North America at the beginning of the 20th Century, had less to do with Sade and his teaching than with promoting sexual openness (i.e. swinging). The Libertines were a closed group, and were mainly hidden away for fear of legal repercussions. Despite the fact that they were closeted and cloaked (sometimes literally!), the Libertines probably represent the first community in North America that was BDSM friendly.

BDSM communities (much like feminism) did not really become organized on a larger scale until the 60's and 70's, and most of this was a byproduct of the gay rights movement, which, in turn, was a byproduct of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution was ushered in by Kinsey's reports on male (1948) and female (1953) sexuality. The reason why these reports are so vital is that they expose that what people were actually doing in their bedrooms was drastically different from the ideals and assumptions of the time. The ripple effect of these reports indirectly helped the establishment of feminism (by challenging old definitions of what it means to be a "good girl" and presenting the case that most women have premarital sex as well as several sexual partners in their lifetime), and the start of the gay rights movement (by presenting evidence that 40% of men will have a homosexual experience leading to orgasm in their lifetime).

The second stage of community building is usually fairly radical and utopian. Leaders emerge who attempted to establish a set of goals, expectations, and guidelines. This phase gave birth to radical feminism within academia, and the Old Guard in the context of BDSM. The main issue that groups face in this stage of community building is choosing a direction that captures the essence of the community. In order to keep the group stable and viable, leaders had to be able to answer the fundamental questions: "who are you?" and "what is your group about?"

What normally ends up happening is that the biases of the people involved in this "radical phase" start to show. Within feminism, the main thinkers of this era were university educated, middle-classed, often lesbian, and almost exclusively white, and the nature of their feminism reflected these biases. Within BDSM, the Old Guard also had demographic similarities that had a huge influence on the codes of conduct within the group. The majority of the Old Guard individuals are gay and male (although some heterosexual males, and even fewer females, managed to establish themselves in this tradition). This central feature means that a large percentage of the group did not have day-to-day child care issues (although some did have children through heterosexual marriages earlier in their lives). It is hard to imagine a group instituting the type of rigorous training and apprenticeship required of Old Guard Masters if childcare issues were front and center in the lives of the people involved.

The common thread that I want to stress is that even though both feminists in academia and the Old Guard in BDSM were trying to set up an ideology that they felt was reasonable, they ended up being exclusive in both cases. A black woman living in the Ghetto in America may look at feminist writing in the 70's and think "they are crazy if they think this has anything to do with my world, or if believe it is about liberating me". Similarly, if a dominant male who likes spanking his wife looked at the BDSM community at that time he may think "Why on Earth would I want to learn all of that other stuff when all I want to do is spank?" In both cases community leaders reasoned that they did a good job in outlining the goals and objective of their group, because they reflected the values of those taking part in their respective communities. The blind spot in all of this was that large numbers of people who were interested in women's rights, or BDSM, were not there, because they felt that their needs would not be met.

The zenith of the second stage of community building is marked by people making absolute statements, such as "feminism is freeing women from patriarchal oppression", or "BDSM is living within this lifestyle 24/7, and learning as a bottom first before considering becoming a top, and learning all there is to know about every type of play imaginable."



2. Divided We Fall?



A third stage of community development occurs when people start to stand up to the people who established the communities and say "you don't speak for me, you don't reflect my needs and interests, and we don't believe in the same things, but I have a right to be here". In what is known as Third Wave Feminism, women of color stood up and spoke out against the idea that the views presented mainly by white, mid to upper class academic women had anything to do with what they were personally experiencing. Other groups such as sex trade workers (who felt that they were objectified in feminist literature, existing as passive lumps of flesh instead of as human beings) and butch/fem sadomasochist lesbians (who argued that power exchange isn't bad if it's consensual) spoke out and ridiculed the assumption that the second wave radical feminists spoke for "all women". It was in this movement that questions such as "what if we actually like the idea of staying at home and being with our kids?" started to come out.

There is a huge amount of variation from place to place in terms of how far a BDSM community has developed. Many communities have no public scene, only kinky people who get together for an occasional play party. Other areas have had an Old Guard presence for some time, and the establishment of a heterosexual BDSM community represents a single splinter that has broken away. Communities that have been around for a while are probably in a phase in which splinters develop within the gay/Old Guard groups and within the heterosexual communities themselves.

Despite the fact that many communities in the BDSM world have no yet reached the third phase (i.e. splintering), it seems inevitable that all of them will at some point in the future. Individuals who are interested in BDSM will tend to coalesce into splinter groups with those who share common interests (e.g. being gay and into bondage, being married and into BDSM, having kids and still wanting Ds, etc). The rise of the Internet as a way of safely exploring BDSM and gathering information has generated a huge influx of people into BDSM communities, and has served to speed up the splintering process. It is common today to see information pages, or Email based discussion groups, for "submissives only", or for "Leather Leaders". It is also common to see individuals who are dissatisfied with the status quo in a given community break away and attempt to form their own group. The success or failure of groups like this usually depends on individual factors, such as dedication towards making things happen, and a certain level of charisma that is required to get people to follow a "new vision" of how the community should work.

Splinter groups that form in the third phase of community development are often met with resistance from those who established and developed the community in the second stage. In feminism, the radical feminists feel that some types of feminism do not go far enough to achieve meaningful political change. They may see those other types of feminism as being "watered down". The same holds true for BDSM, and the Old Guard. As the nature of BDSM communities change and evolve to reflect the influx of new people, many people from the Old Guard see the process as "watering down" what BDSM is all about. Leaders of the newer splinter groups are often identified as malcontents and shit-disturbers, and a rift often develops that is characterized by an "us and them" mentality. At its worst, this rift between groups puts members of the BDSM community in a position where they have to pick between one group and the other.

Whether it is feminism or BDSM, the people who have been around for a while tend to look at the huge numbers of people entering into communities that are not unified under one banner, and predict "the death of the community and what it stands for. This "watering down" is actually a shift from being a small, exclusive group that is relatively homogeneous to being a large, inclusive, heterogeneous group whose members encompass a large array of beliefs, likes, dislikes, interests, and skills.



3. Fragmented Gods



Due to the fact that most people will be exposed to the argument that "BDSM is dying" because of the amount of new people entering into local communities, I think it is worthwhile to examine this argument in a bit of detail. The most common form of the argument basically states that at one point in time the Old Guard demanded that people who called themselves "Master" earned that title. The way that it was earned was from learning from the bottom up, and experiencing life as a bottom before gradually learning how to use all of the toys and tricks of the trade under the guidance of a mentor. In order to make sense of this argument, and figure out where the community is at today, I'm going to draw on the work of a prominent Canadian sociologist by the name of Reginald Bibby who wrote a book called "Fragmented Gods" (1987).

In his examination of religious trends in Canada, Bibby debunks the myth that people are totally moving away from religion, and instead argues that people simply use religion in slightly different, and more selective, way than in the past. While it was once the case that most people went to church on Sundays, attendance for Sunday mass has continually dropped since the end of the Second World War. Less people actively read the Bible, or turn to religion as the source for answers when they examine themselves and the world. Whether it is Catholicism or one of the other major religions, it would appear that the general trend is that religion is slowly losing its hold. Or is it?

Bibby points out that people now tend to follow parts of their religion, and use religion selectively instead of as an all encompassing force in their lives. For example, most individuals will still insist on having a church wedding conducted by a priest. Baptisms, as well as other religious rituals, are still very common. So rather than saying that people don't need religion, or are not involved in religion at all, Bibby argues that the truth is that people have moved towards a "piecemeal" concept of religion in which they pick and choose the parts that fit in with their lives. They take the parts that are important to them personally, and leave out the parts that have no meaning to them as individuals.

This type of fragmentation is quite common in many areas of modern life. In the job market, the overwhelming majority of us no longer expect to work at only one job in our life. Instead, most of us take a series of jobs that will move us in a desired direction. As a person, it is hard to make the statement "I am...". For me, I am a counselor, I am a student, I am a parent, I am thel's Master, I am a son to my parents, I am the owner of an Elist, I am a friend, I am a bastard to those who get on my bad side. Because I am so many things, and fill so many roles, it is hard to believe that one thing (such as religion, or a job, or a community) can meet all of my needs. This is the phenomenon that Nietzsche was taking up when he made the famous statement "God is dead". This statement has less to do with an actual God dying than the fact that people are no longer able to hang on to the concept that there is one supreme overarching way of knowing things, and one way of defining "right" and "wrong".

For most people involved in BDSM it is unreasonable to believe that they will take the time and effort to master absolutely everything. The assumption within some BDSM circles that you have to go through a rigorous apprenticeship is mostly a throwback from a time when BDSM was defined within gay male communities. It is hard to imagine being able to make the sort of commitment to BDSM that the old guard members made if a person has children, a full time job, and school to consider. In my own life, I take time out to learn something new every now and again when I have spare time. What I choose to learn is defined by my own interests, as well as by the things that my slave as expressed an interest in trying out. There are many, many things that I do not know about simply because we are not interested in them. I have taken a piecemeal approach to BDSM, even though when asked I can honestly tell people that I take the BDSM lifestyle very seriously. I see BDSM as a very important part of my life, but I do not see it BDSM as being my entire life.

The fact that BDSM has become more piecemeal, which reflects the complexity of the lives of those involved, has led to all sorts of debate about what it means to have a Total Power Exchange, to live the lifestyle 24/7, and even what it means to be a Master. Is a total power exchange possible when there are kids in the house? Is a Ds relationship 24/7 when the people involved work full time? Can a person be called a Master if he or she has not gone through the Old Guard training? Everyone will answer these questions differently, based on their own biases and expectations. Hopefully, the discussion about community development and splintering will help to establish a context through which people can understand why they have become such huge issues in BDSM today.



4. Conclusion: Moving into the Future



The splintering of BDSM communities into subgroups is not an inherently unhealthy development. The end result is that public BDSM becomes more accessible and inclusive, because if someone does not fit in with one group that person can enter into another. I personally see huge dangers if one small group of people holds all of the power within a community. These dangers include vulnerability, where if the group does not take in new members at a pace that matches the pace at which older members leave the group will die off, and stagnation, where a "way of doing things" is established and never challenged. It is also often the case that when one group controls an entire BDSM scene, the leaders will on some level start to see themselves as "owning" the scene. At it's worst, this mentality can lead to abuses of power such as pressuring new submissives to play with members of the core group for fear of being blackballed.

Ideally, multiple groups serve to keep each other in check because in the end people will "vote with their feet" and attach themselves to the groups that are the best organized, or that fit their needs to the greatest extent. Having more groups in a location usually, at the very least, means that there will be more to do because more events are produced. Different groups will also have different beliefs and ways of doing things, which will lead to a diverse set of events and functions within a community. The reality is that there is a core of people who will attend most of the events regardless of who produces them, while a smaller group of people with particular interests will attend only select events.

Given that communities will continue to splinter and divide, the central questions then become: What do we do next to ensure that BDSM communities survive? What will BDSM communities look like in the future? I firmly believe that the main concern for communities as they fragment is keeping lines of communication between groups open. Rather than seeing emerging new groups as a threat, I feel that a more productive attitude would be for existing leaders to acknowledge that no one "owns" the community, and to establish lines of communication with the new group. The reality is that if there is no demand for the new group it will die a quick death. If there is a demand for it, then it has the right to exist. By opening lines of communication rather than trying to undermine the new group, leaders in the community can coordinate events and event topics. This always results in a vibrant and active community. Leaders also ensure that members of the BDSM community are not placed in the position where they have to pick and choose between groups. I've heard of groups in some areas going so far as to schedule events on the same day so that members have to form a firm allegiance with one side or another. This "us or them" mentality does not do anyone any good, and is childish. It seems ironic to me that the same people who made it their mission to develop the BDSM community can twist towards undermining its growth.

For those who believe that the ideal of BDSM is the Old Guard, I do not think they have to worry that its ways will die off. As community grows and develops, there will be a movement towards re-connecting with the "roots of BDSM". A certain number of people will be drawn towards the Old Guard ways, and I suspect that once a few years pass there will be a large number of people who splinter away and form groups based on Old Guard teachings. Paradoxically, when religion started to decline in North America it led to a counter-revolution where a lot of people became even more devoted to religion and conservative family values. I already see a resurgence of the Old Guard based on the fact that individuals in this group often have a great deal of status and prestige.

When I look into the future of BDSM communities I see growth, potential, and inclusiveness. Given a high level of cooperation between groups, most communities can become exiting and vibrant, catering to the needs of large numbers of people. A large part of my purpose in being involved with BDSM community building to such a large degree is that I firmly believe that growth has to be accompanied with sharing of information and knowledge, if for no other reason than to keep things physically and emotionally safe. I would rather be on the front lines, taking the bull by the horns and helping to establish a positive community in the midst of rapid growth and change, than on the sidelines (prematurely) bemoaning its demise.

 



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Copyright 2004

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