Charting the Issues of SM - really?

This is a response to some of the ideas in an essay written by Claudia Card, which forms a chapter in a book called Lesbian Choices. The chapter is called "Consensual Sadomasochism - Charting the Issues". I was made aware of this when TrinityVA posted about it at SM-feminists.

Obviously, not being a lesbian myself, I am not the direct subject of this writing. However, the terms in which Ms Card constructs her arguments are for the most part completely gender-neutral, and we may assume can be applied equally to heterosexual as well as lesbian relationships (it feels harder to know whether gay relationships can be approached in the same way, but I would hazard that they can; the essay only touches very briefly on gay relationships compared to the attention given to lesbian and straight relationships).

I am not going to touch on every point I found questionable, but pick out (if I can) the main threads that I found to be flawed.

Ms Card starts by saying that masochism is confusing, but sadism is "ethically more troubling". She concedes that modern SM "...refers to a contractual relationship between two (or more) parties." She also defines her terms of reference thus:

"Sadomasochism" in this chapter refers to certain pleasures of erotic or sexual desire and erotic or sexual behavior, not to general hostility or self-destructiveness. I have elected to treat lesbian sadomasochism not as an example of horizontal hostility but as a puzzling set of practices whose participants generally wish each other well and respect each other's choices.

This far, I have no quarrel with these statements of simple definitions of terms (one or two other passages, including a quoted passage, felt to me to be somewhat questionable). I suppose I might take exception to SM being described as "puzzling" (after all, some people might describe lesbianism itself as "puzzling", and I am sure lesbians would object to that quite vociferously) but other than that I have no particular challenges to make. If we accept these terms of reference, then, where does that lead?

Well, it immediately answers Ms Card's very next sentence after the passage quoted above: "It is a matter of concern, however, that the only things distinguishing the behavior of an S from battery and other abuse may be the motivations of the parties and the consent of the M." (NB - S here and in all quoted passages from the essay refers to Sadist, and M to Masochist; not, as is the usual custom in BDSM culture, to "Slave" and "Master/Mistress")

The answer is given by this element of Ms Card's definition: "participants generally wish each other well." While at first glance, that looks like "motivations of the parties", I think it carries key differences for the manner in which activities are carried out. When the intention is to cause harm, control is much less required, and this is evident in a person's behaviour. Similarly, when there is an imperative from one's own desires, not to cause harm, control and care are required and must be exhibited in the ways in which activities are carried out. While to outside observers, the activities might look the same, that does not mean that either participant conducts hirself in the same way as they would in a situation of battery or assault.

Ms Card provides an incomplete discussion of masochism, looking first at the endorphin theory of pleasure-from-pain, and then looking at the "service-sub" theory of masochism (which to my mind is not masochism, but part of submission). Not mentioned are the "endurance" theory (e.g. "hey, I survived that, yay me!") or the sense-stimulation theory (e.g. "feeling pain proves I'm alive, maaan!") or any of the other explanations that various masochists have expounded over the years. My only real problem with this is the incompleteness of the analysis, but an interesting discussion of "higher' and "lower" level desires to explain how pain or humiliation can also be desired is presented:

Wanting to be humiliated or violated in ways that do not involve physical pain can be understood analogously to desiring pain. To value being humiliated is to value (higher order) a thwarting of one's (relatively lower order) self-esteem. To choose to be violated is a higher order choice to allow certain of one's lower order choices to be violated or to allow certain of one's boundaries to be crossed without one's lower order consent.

A sadomasochistic sexual contract expresses higher order choices. Mutually agreed upon "safe words" (to be discussed more below) used by an M to signal an S to stop or cease escalating activity, make possible further higher order choices. So understood, masochism is conceptually no more paradoxical than legislation or the idea of a social contract.

Which is all very nice and neatly wraps up Ms Card's "confusion", but feels a bit cold compared to what I actually experience when enjoying pain.

Ms Card spends most of her essay on discussing sadism, and why really, honesty, it is wrong, honest!

She starts by asking, "How can it be right to cause unnecessary suffering deliberately? The fact that someone is unnecessarily being made to suffer creates a presumption that the person is being wronged." Generally, I would like for the person themselves to determine whether or not they feel "wronged", and in what sense, and by whom. Again, the term "unnecessarily" seems to be slightly loaded. For those who are "orientationally" masochist, the "suffering" is entirely necessary to the desired aim of sexual pleasure! Even for the non-orientational masochist, for certain types of pleasure, certain types of stimulus are "necessary". While we might argue that the desired outcome is "unnecessary", by this point in the discussion we have drifted away from the rightness or wrongness of the sadist's actions, and into the rightness or wrongness of the masochist's desired objectives.

There follows a short discussion of the "service top" role within BDSM (although it is not identified as such), and even here Ms Card offers no succour: "...the sadist is not off the hook simply by claiming that she aims only to please. Her aim to cause suffering is no more incidental to her aim to please than the masochist's aim to submit to suffering is incidental to hers."

After this, Ms Card starts to blur her definitions, and starts bringing in the realm of power, rather than pain, as a motivating force. As good BDSMers know, D/s and SM are two different dimensions. However, Ms Card makes it clear that she is talking about bondage rather than D/s (but again, bondage is another dimension distinct from D/s or SM).

To start with, we are given a definition of terms concerning two different ways of using the word "power":

"Power" is ambiguous between a more general sense and a narrower sense. For evaluating the sadism of sadomasochism, it matters what happens with power in each of these senses. In the most abstract sense, power is potency, the ability to act. "Energy" and "vitality" are near synonyms of "power" in this sense. In a narrower sense, power refers to "control," the more specific abilities to determine or check the flow of energy or to determine its direction toward various goals.

The discussion that follows this definition of terms is frustrating, however, because it becomes rather mechanical.

Abdication of lower level choice by an M need not be disempowering. Carrying out another's orders may require considerable energy. However, some classic activities of sadomasochism, such as bondage, do curb agency, not simply control, at least temporarily. Being tied and gagged with a hood over one's head severely impedes communication.

While this refers to physical power, it ignores the "near synonyms" mentioned above; the experience of being restrained or subjected to sensory deprivation (e.g. a blindfold) can stimulate the senses and can be experienced as energising and invigorating; while physical power may be lost, one's sense of one's own power on a mental or even spiritual level can be enhanced. One reason it feels good can be because of that ethereal power sensation.

Because the S is supposed to submit to the M's safe words, and because the M often writes the script, some maintain that the M has more power. However, that is not obvious, either. Who can best protect herself when things go wrong? When the other party, through anger, frustration, or ineptitude, violates the contract? Aside from withholding information, who is in the best position to violate it?

This is one of the most frustrating elements of Ms Card's piece, because it carries the tacit assumption that only strangers play and SM/bondage games. The golden thread of trust is completely absent from this line of questioning. Ms Card continues to reason, "Where a particular kind of sadomasochistic activity diminishes a lesbian M's agency, placing her at the mercy of the S's scruples and competence, the exchange is critically unequal", as though there are no other circumstances in which it might be the case that one puts oneself at the mercy of another's "scruples and competence". Instantly springing to mind are things like rock climbing, diving, parachuting... I am sure my readers can come up with their own suggestions of leisure activities that involve risk of a similar nature. Perhaps, then, Ms Card believes the key element is "scruples", because after all, causing suffering is the pleasurable element for a sadist, so might not a sadist be tempted to continue even when a safeword has been used? And indeed, we see that Ms Card does indeed doubt the safeword's effectiveness: "As long as a lesbian M can rely on the safe word convention, she has its power at her disposal. But what makes that convention reliable? What power backs it?"

In her discussion on this matter, she writes, "The usual response of lesbian sadomasochists has been that an S who does not respect an M's limits soon finds herself partnerless (which may be cold comfort to an individual M)." and goes on to reason that this provides scant protection to the individual masochist, but provides some collective protection to masochists in general. This is a misleading and heavily economics-based argument, it seems to me. It ignores that one cannot easily replace one masochist with another. That BDSM is about relationships between loving individuals, for the most part.

Thus, we can understand that what makes the safeword convention reliable in most cases is that the sadist does not want to cause harm to someone zie loves or has a powerfully bonded relationship with. As the Doctor says in the episode Battlefield, "Exotic alien swords are easy to come by; Aces are few and far between." ("Ace" being the name of his travelling companion in that episode). Ultimately, this is no different from the reason that people trust lovers in non-SM relationships, and taken to its logical conclusion, Ms Card's argument could equally apply to non-SM relationships. They trust them because they believe that the shared emotions are strong enough to prevent impulses that would cause them harm. As in vanilla life, there are a few who do not behave in this way, but in both vanilla and SM life, they are called psychopaths; the thing about BDSM is that we tend to be much more alert to the risks involved. It is normal to take one's time before submitting oneself to the mercy of another.

Ms Card's final section deals with what she calls "social consequences". It starts with a very questionable statement, which I present here with my immediate reaction:

From a contract to undergo surgery, the expected consequence is the patient's improved health (and a sizeable fee for the surgeon). The expected consequences of sadomasochism, however, other than sexual pleasure, are a subject of much dispute. - But... why should there be assumed to be any other consequences!?

Ms Card's analysis instead looks at two competing, and inaccurate (or incomplete), models to assess these putative other "expected consequences". These are the "catharsis" and "addiction" models.

On the catharsis view, sadomasochistic desires are thought to have sources external to the sadomasochistic drama itself--for example, in mistreatment suffered or witnessed involuntarily by the agent early in life--and sadomasochistic play is said to be a way to get rid of hostility safely.

While it is true that some people engage in SM play for cathartic reasons, it is neither true that all SM practitioners have suffered abuse or trauma in the past, nor that all those SM practitioners who have suffered such trauma participate in SM for those reasons. BDSM folks tend to be very aware of their own backgrounds, often more so than comparable folks not into BDSM; the constant barrage of demands to "examine" mean that many of us already have some understanding of where it all comes from, at least for our own personal instance. Furthermore, it is self-evidently not true that all victims of trauma or abuse end up as SM practitioners or similar.

The addiction hypothesis, on the contrary, holds that sadomasochistic play itself gives rise to sadomasochistic desires, intensifying those enacted with a frightening potential to reinforce real hostility.

This is such an absurd claim. The suggestion appears to be that any sexual practice outside the norm could be an "addiction" that could somehow spill over into everyday life. While the brain chemical dopamine is in fact associated both with sex and with addiction, and while there are indeed some people who are termed "sex addicts", there is no correlation of sex addiction with deviant sexualities, and there is no wild spate of BDSM-inspired crimes - although those crimes that do happen are widely reported, they are few and far between; most sexual crimes are far more prosaic (if such a word could legitimately be used about rape!) The BDSM serial killer is far more a character from fiction than he (it is almost always a he, though there are female BDSM killers in fiction as well) is in real life.

The cathartic view may be valid for a small subsection of the BDSM community; the addiction model to almost none (where it appears to be valid seems to be only when attempted suppression of deep-rooted desires causes a pathological psychic structure to form, leading to compulsive and destructive behaviours). Various models to explain where BDSM "comes from" work for various groups of people within BDSM, but no one explanation can cover the whole of BDSM.

Ms Card continues:

Thinking of sadomasochism as a sexual preference suggests the liberal view that participants have only the responsibility not to visit unwanted harm on others, that the exercise of their preferences is otherwise a matter of individual liberty, nothing for others to be concerned about, as long as participants are consenting adults acting in private. Thus the liberal view encourages a nonjudgmental attitude or toleration within limits. It also assumes that participants can keep from visiting unwanted harm on others, an assumption that seems unwarranted as long as the sources of such desires are not understood.

Assumption, you say? Perhaps it is more of the order of an observed fact! This statement by Ms Card is a completely dishonest presentation of sadomasochism (and sadism in particular in the BDSM culture), deliberately casting doubt upon the self-control of people purely because their sexuality differs from the norm. Ms Card claims, "I have not participated in sadomasochist culture. My knowledge of it comes from participants' writings." If this is true, then she would surely know that there is a clear, qualitative, difference in the minds of sadists between the willing partner and the unwilling victim. They are simply not alike in terms of a sadist's pleasure. Only to the small subcategory of criminal, psychopathic, sadists is the distinction lacking. Ms Card's argument depends upon denying to sadomasochists the same socialisation and controls that other human beings share - that is, to a certain degree, it relies upon denying our humanity.

Ms Card's final criticism of BDSM is that it somehow makes participants more politically pliable or willing to accept subjugation. From her "addiction view", she ponders, "Will they find themselves enjoying real domination or subordination in oppressive societies, domination and subordination without consent? Will sadomasochistic play foster make-believe with respect to real power imbalances and oppression, encouraging indulgence of the fantasy that the power of others is held by consent of the dominated?" Later, quoting an argument from Sarah Hoagland, she writes, "[sadomasochism is] an irresponsible illusion whereby we get to play at having power over each other instead of seeking the real political power needed to end oppression. If [Hoagland] is right, sadomasochism can sublimate desires for real political power."

To me, this almost seems like clutching at straws to say, "SM must be bad for people somehow, and I've tried everything else!" Certainly, it bears no relationship to what I find as the political aspirations and attitudes of kinky folks of my acquaintance.

Firstly, I think we should observe that the majority of folks in the 'nilla world are not particularly politically active. For sure there are plenty who are, but as a percentage it's quite small. I don't think there is any difference in that regard between BDSM and non-BDSM folks. But most of the politically motivated BDSM folks I know are libertarian of one sort or another. Whether expressed as leftwing or rightwing, concepts of freedom, informed consent and choice are the key elements of BDSM values that spill out into their political lives; if anything, BDSM energises and activates people's desire to fight oppression wherever it is found.