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"Danger Dr. Smith,
Danger!" Hidden Perils of the BDSM Scene
Dr. Smith and my hero Robot from Lost in Space
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com
If "Robot," the much loved personality of the television show Lost
in Space were here, he might be shouting "Danger Sensuous
Sadie, Danger!" I was warned early of the big dangers in the BDSM
scene not by Robot, but by my friend Bruce who told me the story about
how he went to a Dominant’s house on their first meeting. Once he was
fully gagged and tied up, he discovered that she had been recently
divorced and had some unresolved hostility toward men. She beat the
living hell out of him, ignored his garbled safeword, and sent him home.
Knowing he’d probably be laughed out of the police station, he never
reported the incident.
The Insidious Danger
While a warning story like this is important to hear, it only deals
with the most overt kind of risk. There are a number of emotional and
spiritual issues that can create a far more insidious danger,
particularly for novices. Because these are so often ignored in
contemporary discourse, I'd like to look at them in three sections. The
first looks at some of the emotional complexities of practicing BDSM.
The second discusses the community itself, and what kind of people are
attracted to it. The third deals with the challenges that individuals
face in exploring their sexuality in a culture where sexuality is both
glorified and simultaneously demonized. While I am not trying to scare
anyone away from the scene, I hope to demystify these issues and offer a
structure to think through some of the challenges we face.
Messy Emotional Elements of BDSM
The key element that makes BDSM more than just another sexual
interest is that it can connect us to our deepest animal self. It's not
that making love in the vanilla way cannot do this, rather that the goal
of scene play is often less about intercourse and more about alternative
sexual and other practices. The challenge is that not everyone is
prepared personally or psychologically to cope with the places that BDSM
can take you. For example, when Griffin and I were exploring orgasm
control, I found that my emotions got quite out of control. I simply did
not have coping skills to deal with the unfamiliar and very intense
feelings that I was experiencing.
Another element is that while the scene does attract well-balanced
dominant and submissive people, it also attracts less-balanced dominant
and submissive people who become the bad apples of the bunch. Dominants
who mistake aggression for dominance and Submissives who mistake passive
helplessness for submission are not uncommon. Some of these same
Dominants use the scene as a cover for their bad behavior, particularly
with novices. My friend Jonathan puts it this way, "In the BDSM
world, it’s permission to be the asshole you’ve always been."
And some of those Submissives use the scene as a cover for their own
inability to manage their lives.
The power exchange also creates an environment that makes people more
vulnerable emotionally. Love itself can put us in a delicate position,
but turning over your body and mind to another human being requires a
greater exposure of your inner self, a unique faith. When we give up
control over our selves, we experience something that has no parallel in
the vanilla paradigm. This also means that when our relationships fail,
the fallout can be more devastating, particularly to those with low self
esteem. It’s one thing to make love casually, where the biggest risk
is a sexually transmitted disease or a pregnancy. It is a whole other
thing in a D/s relationship which often not only absorbs those hazards,
but includes the significant emotional risks of either being totally
helpless, or totally in control.
For many Submissives, their Dominant is often far more than just a
girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse, and can even become the compass of
their life. A situation like this is tailor-made for tragedy when the
relationship ends. Even though few would really call me a
"submissive Submissive," I was devastated when my Dominant
Griffin surgically removed me (his words) from his life. Had he been
just another lover I probably would have groused for a while, but
replaced him soon enough. Because I had trusted him in the most profound
way, having him reject me that way was far more destructive. Even this
is nothing compared to a Master/Mistress & Slave relationship where
the Slave is likely to be far more dependant than I ever was. What might
have been simply a rotten thing to happen in Vanillaland can easily
become a traumatic event in the scene. And what was quite awful in a
loving Dominant/Submissive relationship like the one I had, can become a
mental health risk when a Slave has given up much of their own self
determination.
Communing in a Fringe Community
One of the things that I have observed is that the BDSM community,
which is by definition a fringe community, attracts people who also live
fringe lifestyles in other ways. What I mean by this is that when I
compare the scene with the other communities I belong to such as my
friends at work, it seems that more members of the lifestyle are
transitory and unstable in their work, relationships, and emotional
lives. My friend Stacey says that, "The problem comes when you get
a group of people who identify themselves and their community by their
sexuality, because communities that focus primarily on sexuality are
going to attract those who are less stable."
To the extent that unconventional communities naturally attract
non-traditional members of the general population, there seems to be far
less focus on career, spirituality, and community involvement. Stacey
adds that, "I don't identify with the bdsm community, mainly
because I think those who do identify themselves primarily by their
sexuality are on the fringes. Dominants should use their inherent
strength and power to make the world a better place; be a leader in the
community, politics, the world, rather than trying to make as many
people cum as they can. Submissives should use their power, whether it's
power or nurturing or whatever, to make the world a better place. The
goal of life should not be to see how tight you can lace your
corset." Obviously, people can do both and enjoy both. What is
unfortunate is only that so few do. Consider even how our own support
organizations like the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, Immediate
Family, or the Leather Archives & Museum have to struggle for
support.
Sexuality Going Amok on the Individual and Cultural Level
People who are less grounded in the bigger areas of life, say work,
family, friends, and so on, tend to bring an instability to their
sexuality as well. The result is that many people enter the BDSM scene
and go a little berserk. Consider my friend Lex who joined the community
a few years ago. After a lifetime of serial monogamy, Lex discovered
that he could go to play parties every weekend and pretty much do anyone
he pleased. There he was, living the fantasy of half the men on the
planet, a kid gone crazy in a candy store. The challenge was that he
also had a committed relationship, and there developed a tension between
his desire to be a wild and crazy guy and his competing desire to relish
the depth that a commitment offers. Lex is not all that unique; plenty
of people suit up and join up, play with anyone who has a pulse, then
burn out in high drama. Unfortunately many are simply not prepared to
deal with the fallout from their own bright comet. If you don't have
sufficient emotional and relationship skills, engaging in multiple open
relationships can only result in hurting the people you are involved
with.
There is also an important factor on the cultural level. American
culture traces its history back to the days of Columbus, where the
pilgrims settled on our shores, or rather you might say they invaded the
Native American shores. Regardless, that group followed a very
conservative approach to religion and sex, an approach witnessed by the
story The Scarlet Letter which told the story of a woman
adulterer who was banished from her town and made to wear a scarlet
"A" on her clothing to show her shame. Although things have
come a long way since that time, our society continues to approach
sexual issues with a great deal of shame and embarrassment. This
approach means that people in our community must often overcome a
lifetime of negative messages about sex. It creates a situation that
almost invites novices to the scene to go overboard. Considering that
high schools are still debating the wisdom of teaching contraception,
it's pretty understandable that we might not have the skills or wisdom
ourselves to leap into a sexually charged sub-culture and land on our
feet.
This is complicated by the advent of the internet
which has also affected an essential cultural change. BDSM is now
available to anyone, whether or not they join a community. It offers
unprecedented access to information and titillation for a culture that
has been sexually repressed since Plymouth Rock. There is a built in
challenge to a culture when access to information changes faster than
the culture can keep up with it. This is not to say that the Internet is
a bad thing; in fact I think it’s an incredible equalizer. But it does
create a situation where an entire culture has the opportunity and the
means to ignore our own good common sense about love, sex, and
relationships.
Let me be absolutely clear here. I am not saying that everyone in the
scene is a whack job. But each of us has parts to our personality which
are still a bit, well, messy. Just so you know that I don't think I’m
above the fracas, I’ll illustrate my point with a story from my own
life. A friend recently asked me what I looked for in a partner and I
replied that I wanted a man who is "wildly creative." She
commented that most women in our culture look for a partner who is
dependable, a good provider, and a responsible parent. She pointed out
that men who are "wildly creative" also tend to also be wildly
emotionally unstable, a point which I agree with based on my own
experience. While my job and personal life may be settled, in my
relationships I too fit some of my own community profile.
So What if People Run Amok!
There are plenty of people who run amok in the BDSM scene and are
none the worse for wear. The problems I am looking at here are not about
individual people and whether or not they are emotionally stable. What
I'm really looking at are the emotional and spiritual consequences of
putting people who have been raised in our culture in a situation where
they are simply not prepared to deal with the ensuing complexity. I was
unprepared for this complexity when we were practicing the orgasm
control exercises that I mentioned earlier. Since we had no guidance on
how to proceed, we simply decided to drastically cut back the training
because my mental health was clearly at risk. Fortunately I have a good
sense of self-preservation and was aware that the feelings I was
experiencing were not healthy. Sadly, not everyone has such a strong
sense of self-preservation. The result for many is that they get burned
out with the scene and leave, often suddenly and without explanation.
While it's impossible to measure how much damage is done on a community
level, the challenges that this situation poses to individuals is
inherently destructive to a person's friends and family, not to mention
their own mental health.
I believe that BDSM "play" is a misnomer, that it is in fact
intimacy at its best. I also believe that intimacy cannot by definition
be "casual." Whether there is genital sex or orgasm or not is
irrelevant. When play is approached in a way that doesn't honor this
depth, the emotional and spiritual fallout can be very destructive. I
also believe that relating to other human beings in a way that doesn't
connect with their humanity separates us from God. In lieu of anything
measurable on the destruction scale, I can only say that for me, running
amok in the scene, or anywhere, is a very bad thing.
How is this Different From Other Hobbies?
You might ask then, how is this different than getting involved in
some other alternative sexuality community such as polyamory, or perhaps
even a non-sexually oriented community such as the Society of Creative
Anachronism (SCA), both of which have a large overlapping membership
with the scene? After all, if a person is infatuated in their approach
to new interests, it might not matter which hobby they pick. While it’s
true that an emotionally unbalanced person is going to respond the same
way to any community, there are far less dangers in the swinging
community for example, because the focus is not on the power exchange.
Sleeping with multiple partners may well create a risk for sexually
transmitted diseases, as well as the usual emotional risks of multiple
relationships. But neither of these are as potent, emotionally speaking,
as the feelings that often manifest in BDSM relationships. Similarly if
you become fanatical about swing dancing, the worst you’ll probably
face will be a sprained ankle.
What Then?
The combination of a sexual orientation that is so complex, a
community that attracts people who are less stable overall, and
individuals who are more likely to swim in uncharted waters creates a
fertile ground for internal chaos. It’s easy for the books to tell us
that "if you don’t know who you are, then don’t do BDSM,"
but the reality is that all of us are works in progress, and few would
consider not exploring their sexuality because they are at the same time
dealing with personal growth.
These are extremely complex issues, and ones that go
deep in our cultural history, and so there are no easy answers. You
might ask then, "whacha gonna do about it?" I’m not sure
that anything here needs to be fixed so much as I want to make explicit
some of the complexities that go mostly unspoken within our community.
For myself, I've been taking things slower with people I meet in the
scene, in part because I know I tend to choose emotionally unbalanced
men, but also because I know that in the aggregate, more of the
potential Dominants available will not be able to offer the stability I
seek. In the meantime, I hope you will take Robot's warning to heart and
take things as slow as the fervor and intensity of the BDSM scene
permit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REFERENCES
National Coalition for Sexual Freedom
http://www.ncsfreedom.org/
Read the SCENEprofiles interview with NCSF Founder
Susan Wright
Read the SCENEprofiles interview with Barbara
Nitke who, in conjunction with the NCSF, has a
current suit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the U.S.
government, challenging the CDA's use of "local community
standards" to define what can be considered obscene on the
Internet.
Immediate Family
http://www.immediatefamily.org/
Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Kajira
Jewel of Immediate Family
Immediate Family provides non-discriminatory
non-medical acute crisis intervention, shelter, information and/or
program referrals to persons in qualified emergency situations
regardless of gender identification, race, creed, religion, color,
sexual preference, or handicap for a 3 to 7day period. Immediate Family
Inc. creates an atmosphere that is safe, open and accepting encouraging
self-reliance, promoting safety in a supporting family environment,
which assists in personal and professional restructuring and growth.
Leather Archives & Museum
http://www.leatherarchives.org/
The Leather Archives and Museum is a vital institution
for the future of the Leather Communities of the world. In the
collections, libraries and archives housed by the LA&M, generations
of leather men and women will find the stories, artifacts and
information of their forebears. They will be allowed to build on, rather
than reinvent, the traditions and truths of those who lived
leather/SM/fetish lives before their own.
Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and
Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt at http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html
. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn,
Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as
well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com
or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com
. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information
freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing
in most venues.
Copyright 2004 Sadie Sez Publications
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