Newmahr, gender and SM - my Chapter 5 responses

Moving backwards, we leave behind the part of Newmahr's book called "Edges" and start at the end of the part labelled "Play", with chapter 5.

In this chapter, Newmahr seeks to make a connection with BDSM roles and gender performance, such that topping and bottoming come to replace traditional gender identification in constructing gendered identity. This then feeds back into a feminist analysis of the role of gender in BDSM versus that in mainstream society.

Chapter 5: Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs – Gender Performances

In one of the early chapters, Newmahr observes that many BDSM practitioners do not conform physically to mainstream definitions of their supposed gender, leading to what she calls an "incidental androgyny" in the community. This is simply "the consequences of not 'doing' gender quite so fully or quite so well," rather than a "deliberate gender identity project." Newmahr writes that, "In this analysis, gender becomes an addition, something above and beyond what exists prior to gender performance," which implies that gender has to be added on to BDSM. Newmahr's contention appears to be that top and bottom represent the means by which gender is re-enacted as an addition to the "incidental androgyny" norm.

Topping, Bottoming, and Performance

Newmahr discusses briefly Judith Butler's casting of gender as something that comes into being by virtue of continued presentation of gender: "The performances with which Butler is concerned are constitutive; they are intended to become by way of being, and to be by way of repeat performance."

Newmahr starts by drawing a distinction between these gendered performances and those of topping and bottoming:

Because play occupies a liminal space between authenticity and role play, the performances of topping and bottoming are not quite real and not quite mimickry.

[The nature of that "liminal space" appears in a chapter earlier than this one, meaning that in this backwards journey we will get to it in due course]

SM play instead becomes a symbolic performance:

A man whipping a woman during an SM scene is a different kind of masculine performance from a man ordering her dinner and from a man rushing into a burning building. It does not conform to a cultural expectation of masculinity, but instead symbolizes a (discursively) unacceptable masculinity. In this sense, it is a hyperbolic masculinity that is represented – but not constituted – through topping.

...

Similarly, … , [bottoming] is symbolically hyper-feminine.

This immediately raises a question for me in the light of "Payoff pain" as discussed in Chapter 6, which is identified as a masculine discourse for the bottom.

Similarly, I do not associate my bottoming enjoyment with femininity even on a symbolic level. Although there is a tendency in society to see everything in binaries and associate one side with "feminine" and the other with "masculine" (the common understanding, at least in Western society, of the yin-yang dichotomy), while bottoming certainly would fit the "yin" and topping the "yang" category, it does not follow that all yin is symbolically feminine, and all yang is symbolically masculine.

I think it is true that weak gender associations of this kind appear in a number of ways in the communities of which I am aware; I also find that they mess up my personal expression of both topping and bottoming in symbolic ways. These issues come into further focus in this chapter, but it is worth noting here that Newmahr observes that:

Community members distinguish between SM activities in which they may engage and the particular identities they choose to adopt or construct. Gender shapes and constrains these choices in important ways. A self-identified male top who sometimes bottoms, for example, is more likely to claim identity as a top than as a switch. A woman with the same inclinations is likelier in Caeden to consider herself a switch. Even within the complex and gendered identity choices made by the members of the community, SM play itself reveals interesting relationships between gender and play.

I identify as a top who sometimes bottoms, but not as a switch!

The next section is one of my favourites, because it's another classification scheme devised by Newmahr.

Archetypal Strategies

The strategies in SM play are informed by several gendered archetypes… I frame these archetypes in terms of their use during play, rather than as kinds of players. Most play incorporates at least some aspects of more than one type. It is important to note that topping and bottoming are not understood this way in Caeden (or in any SM community, so far as I am aware); these are my own analytic categories, not actual SM identifications.

So at this point, my ears pricked up and I started asking, "Where do I fit in with this?" Bearing in mind that it is about roles within individual scenes, rather than consistent roles throughout all play, I was still interested to see if I saw myself reflected.

- BADASS TOPPING -

For reference, I'll call this one "BAT". It is, in essence, the "evil meanie" performance, and Newmahr gives as an example a brief scene description in which her request for water ends up with her receiving it splashed across her face. She observes that:

Elements of badass topping are found in nearly all topping, for it is most effective at constructing and upholding illusions of power and powerlessness. The more authentic the top's enjoyment of her or his effect on the bottom appears, the more s/he appropriates this archetype.

We can instantly connect this with the comment on autotelic (enjoying it for its own sake) pain in Chapter 6, that: "Tops who frame pain this way are often desired as play partners precisely because of their sadism; the stronger the belief that the top enjoys the actual infliction of pain, the more authentic the scene becomes for bottoms." I am planning a post after this one in which I try to relate, or cross-reference, the "pain discourses" from chapter 6 with the play archetypes from this chapter.

Since I identified with the autotelic pain discourse, my readers can quickly surmise that I do quite a lot of BAT. One of the phrases I hear most often is, "That's so MEAN!" (or "CRUEL!" or other synonym). I usually just smile and say, "What do you expect? I'm a sadist!" Although if it happens often enough, I just say "Six letter word, begins with 'S'..." It's a big reason why my sex blog is called "And You Thought I Was Sweet?"

It should be noted that BAT archetype is described as a performance of liking to cause suffering, whereas autotelic pain discourse is about actually enjoying it on some level.

- BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIP -

(BD in future references)

... an exchange of obedience for protectiveness ... Topping is understood as simultaneously nurturing and authoritarian. Often the dynamics are not restricted to SM play and are part of a broader D/s relationship.

...

...at once protector, hero and decision-maker.

Probably most clearly seen in the non-ageplay related forms of "Daddy/girl" power exchange in terms of D/s, although a lot of other forms of D/s and M/s include strong elements of this type of framing of a relationship. In terms of D/s, this is probably my strongest archetypal role, with BAT coming more into play when actually playing. Strictness being a big part of what I do (and having a tag on this blog of "benevolent tyrannical overlord"!), this seems to be where that role of disciplinarian comes in.

In fact, it is hard for me to conceive of any D/s relationship that does not in some way involve this archetype, and it makes me wonder if its usefulness is limited to the public SM communities and less so in discussing BDSM in other contexts?

- SERVICE TOPPING -

(Reference abbreviation: ST)

Centred around a desire to please the bottom, and/or an acknowledgement that the bottom gets to call the shots, Newmahr describes this as the only archetype that is discussed in the community.

Newmahr also notes the bad reputation that the term has:

Because service topping threatens the fantasy of the top's absolute power and the bottom's powerlessness, 'service top' is occasionally used as a vaguely pejorative description, by both tops and bottoms.

Personally, I do not see the problem with service topping, but I cannot deny that the community views it in the way Newmahr describes. I thought for some time about my own relation to service topping, and whether or not I do it. I think there is some element in which I do, which is that there are times that I just want to give my bottom what she wants. On the other hand, even in those circumstances, I am sure to make certain that she asks specifically: the power discourse remains in my favour as a top, because I emphasise that I could, if I so chose, deny her. There is also the chance of it tipping over into "BAT" whereby the script becomes, "Alright, you asked for it!"

From here, we move on to the bottoming archetypes:

- MARTYRDOM -

Newmahr describes this as having a goal of relinquishment of responsibility for the bottom's own suffering.

Martyr bottoming therefore involves performances and experiences of helplessness and victimization, but conceptualizes this as a sacrifice for the good of another.

This ties in neatly with the "Sacrificial pain" discourse from Chapter 6

From my bottoming perspective, I cannot relate to this at all, and I suspect this may be why I reject the term "switch".

As a top, on the other hand, I have an odd relationship to the Martyr. For me, I find it difficult if someone is playing Martyr to my BAT; if Martyr is playing then I need to be in BD mode. This seems contradictory, since the BAT and Autotelic top ought to relish the Martyr's suffering most. However, a too-convincing performance of "I don't want this" ties into my fears about consent and messes with the BAT performance. Instead, I tend to play a second-level "meta-BAT" in which the aim is to induce humiliation and suffering on that level, by forcing the bottom to admit that she is not, after all, a martyr but that really, deep down, she wants it. In other words, to dispel the Martyr archetype.

This "meta-BAT", and the subsequent "anti-Martyr" (a-M) bottoming role, do not seem to fit well into the classifications outlined by Newmahr, but I shall compare "anti-Martyr" to the other bottoming archetypes to demonstrate this.

The other thing is, if I am going to play BAT to a Martyr, then it has to be understood either that "I want to be pushed" or "I will definitely use my safeword if I need to". My interest in consensual nonconsent is the first of these; most play falls into the second and I will try to make sure we have that understanding of safeword usage before going there. This almost feels like a meta-ST, with the script:

Martyr: I want to be made to do things I don't want to.
Meta-ST: I will force you, to please you.

However, the Autotelic discourse from chapter 6 means that I cannot quite identify with the Meta-ST's role in that exchange!

The relationship of BD/Martyr is also interesting, and I think it indicates overlap with Martyr and the next archetype, the "Indispensable Service" bottom. Where the Martyr suffers for the BAT because BAT enjoys the suffering, the Martyr suffers for the BD because Martyr is being given difficult tasks and being disciplined. But this sounds a lot like:

- INDISPENSABLE SERVICE -

(ISB in future references)

Newmahr says that the goal here is, "the successful fulfilling of the expectations of the top." It is also, "often thought of as a kind of submission."

The distinction between the BD/Martyr and ISB is given by Newmahr's statement that:

Unlike martyrdom, the discourse of service is one in which providing pleasure or utility or otherwise being of value is enjoyable for the bottom

For the Martyr bottoming to a BD, it is about control: i.e. "I suffer because I am being made to perform this arduous task." For the ISB, however, it is "I take pleasure in performing this arduous task, though I may suffer in my efforts to do so."

In my first reading, I wondered whether ISB was specific to performances of reactions in play, or whether it was a wider performance in D/s. In email conversations, Newmahr confirmed that ISB relates to D/s-based play (as opposed to wider D/s relationships, on which she does not have the same reference basis). On my first reading, I related ISB to BAT, in which the "arduous task" of the script mentioned is the direct infliction of pain, and responding to it:

BAT: I want to hurt you!
ISB: I will show you how much it hurts me

Now, the next question is, does my "anti-Martyr" fit the ISB archetype? Since the basis of a-M is turning "I don't want it" into "I do want it", the performance of expectations is not directly involved. The Martyr is the selfless sufferer, and the end-point of a-M is proclaimed desire for oneself. So there is not really a way in to painting a-M as a form of ISB.

Finally - how do I, personally, relate to the ISB? As a top, pretty much in the ways described above: in BD mode, I will put the ISB through arduous tasks for her pleasure in performing them to the best of hir ability. In BAT/Autotelic mode, the service of (performing) suffering so that I can "hear you scream" is very welcome.

As a bottom, I think I am drawn to ISB in a D/s sense, but I would not play ISB for a BAT in the way I outlined above. So bottoming, I believe I have an interest (although rarely gone there) in playing ISB to a BD. However, I do not really associate my bottoming with service as such.

This leaves the final archetype in Newmahr's outline:

- BADASS BOTTOMING -

(What else could it be, but "BAB"?)

Badass bottoming approaches SM play competitively. It is an explicit dare, either to self or other. It can be internally competitive, in which the bottom seeks to withstand or endure more than ever before or more than the bottom thinks he or she can. It can also, though less commonly, seek to outlast the top or exceed the top's physical or ethical limits.

This ties in with the discussions of Payoff pain in chapter 6 and with edgeplay as edgework in chapter 7.

There are some pejorative terms that skirt around the edges of this conception, such as "SAM" and "brat" (both of which refer to various ways of acting up in order to receive punishment - an implicit "dare" to the top). These terms refer directly to the element of "seeking to outlast the top or exceed the top's ... limits." Obviously, tops who are deliberately pushed in that way tend not to like it very much.

BAB therefore needs to be broken down further: first, there are the "pushy" types - such as the SAM and "brat" - who seek to manipulate a top into hurting them. Then there is the "Give me your best shot!" type, who negotiates the challenge openly as "I bet I can outlast you". As a top, I do not relate well to "pushy" bottoms: if I feel manipulated, then I withdraw from a scene, and the more they act up, the less I engage. "Give me your best shot!" also does not work well for me, because my "best shot" is the Red Beast of Fire. I am scared of my best shot, except in much safer conditions than usually are available.

The other side is the self-dare. This does not break down so easily into different versions, since "how much can I take?" does not hinge on challenging the other and drawing a response in the same way.

One of my favourite scenes was with SNS, in which she asked me for "a really long spanking session with all your toys". I happily obliged, and pushed her hard. A lot of her requests to me during our relationship were centred around pushing her farther and harder, not to challenge me but to test her own levels. I mention this first to show that I like, as a top, to say "Okay, I will test you and push you," but also to make a distinction.

SNS had never played in real life before, so everything was a new experience and could be framed as, "seeking to withstand or endure more than ever before." When you have never done anything before, seeking to try anything is "more than ever before." So there must be a distinction between the BAB archetype and the "exploratory bottoming" that is familiar to both SNS and me. The "exploratory bottom" experience is not, "How far can I go?" but, "How will I take this - good, or bad? Can I take it at all?" The exploratory bottom relates most closely to the BD archetype (protection, guidance and discipline), whereas BAB challenges the BAT or asks the ST to challenge hir.

The a-M role that I identified earlier does not fit here either, because here the challenge is made by the bottom. The a-M bottom has been challenged to admit to wanting it, but has not necessarily been challenged (and has not challenged hirself) to test limits or endurance.

The competitive aspect to BAB is what makes me reject it as a way of explaining my own bottoming. I am not interested in challenging another to out-top me, nor am I interested (most of the time) in pushing against my endurance limits. I just want to enjoy the pain and temporary loss of control.

My understanding of Newmahr's system of archetypes is that they are not meant to be exhaustive; she identifies these common themes as running through SM, but it is possible to fall outside of them. Reflecting on them is interesting and certainly sheds light on some of the inner workings of my kink, but it is a little bit frustrating to find that (as a bottom anyway) I do not appear much in the archetypes she identifies. The "anti-Martyr" and "exploratory bottoming" roles that I have identified may or may not be common (I think exploratory bottoming is very common - as noted, I think that it pairs neatly with the Benevolent Dictator archetype) but certainly intrigue me in terms of how they relate to the rest of this.

***

Having produced these archetypes, Newmahr prceeds to explore them as gender performances:

SM and Gender Symbolism

While recognising the importance of the distinction between a consensual performance of victimisation and the real thing, Newmahr writes of these archetypes:

Beyond performances of powerful and powerless circumstances, they are active representations of being powerful and powerless, or of victimizing and being victimized.

This, says Newmahr, means that they are gender stereotypes, even though the categories of "man" and "woman" are not directly involved. Newmahr states that, "it is the existence and cultural coding of victimization that gives these performances meaning."

Looking back at the definitions of topping as "hyper-masculinity" and bottoming as "hyper-femininity", this produces associations:

When Newmahr writes, "Bottoming performs either victimization or powerlessness or both," we appear to be being invited to accept that these are understood as inherently feminine.

Similarly, being powerful, and victimising, are apparently to be understood as being inherently masculine as well as part of the topping performances.

If I follow the reasoning correctly, this comes about because in Patriarchal society, women currently have the role of victims, therefore we must understand all performances of victimhood as being in some way feminine or influenced by constructions of femininity. (That is, the "cultural coding" creates the feminine "meaning".) Later in this section, Newmahr writes:

The process by which we have come to understand and experience the erotic as such is inseparable from gendered power relations, so that all understandings and experiences of eroticism, are, on the ground, currently gendered.

Given the later discussion of the duality of violence and eroticism, it seems pertinent to at least question whether that association holds, at least in the same ways, for the SM community.

After all, there are other dimensions of power and victimhood that can also provide reference points for understanding BDSM archetypes.

In a post titled "Forms of Power", Trinity @ Let Them Eat Pro-SM Feminist Safe Spaces writes:

The thing is, I don't think that all of us magically outgrow relations in which consensual hierarchy or consensual power dynamics exist. Yes, most of us leave school at some point in our lives, but plenty of us still learn things, take classes, put ourselves under the informal tutelage of friends. We all have limitations, things that others we know do better than we do. We all have situations in which we want to be sheltered and comforted, and to lose ourselves at least in the illusion that a more powerful loved one can protect us. We all -- I hope -- have situations arise in which others respect us as trusted authorities too, whether as wise bosses, senior members of organizations, or even just good givers of advice.

Which leads me to see power relations in which one person has more power than another as quite natural and, much of the time, rather unremarkable and boring.

This more or less encapsulated why I feel as though the conflation of bottoming in BDSM with femininity is a mistake in analysis. Of course, some performances of topping and bottoming call on specifically gendered power relations to produce their representations of power and victimisation, but it is a mistake to reason as though the association is automatic.

A good example is given by Newmahr's assessment of the BD archetype:

The objectives of ... benevolent dictatorship mirror common characteristics of hegemonic masculinity: ... ultimate discretionary power and the provision of protection.

(snipped out are references to BAT)

This language looks very like the masculine archetype represented in Tarot by the Emperor.

But if we replace "provision of protection" with "nurture", and "ultimate discretionary power" with "guidance" (both are reasonable symbolic substitutions in terms of BDSM archetypes, and are in fact the terms I prefer to use for my own BD role), then arguably we have the archetypal role of the Mother.

When Newmahr claims of her archetypes that:

At the most basic level, of course, they manifest gendered power differentials. Their relative statuses within each group reflect this; on a continuum of masculinity and femininity, the closer topping moves towards bottoming, the lower its status, and vice versa.

I feel as though there is no actual proof that they are specifically gendered power differentials. Is it not the fact that power differentials are an aim of SM (discussed in more detail in Chapter 3) that would most clearly explain such a hierarchy? Recall that:

Because service topping threatens the fantasy of the top's absolute power and the bottom's powerlessness, 'service top' is occasionally used as a vaguely pejorative description, by both tops and bottoms.

Now, Newmahr claims that the focus on pleasing the other makes service topping "feminized".

Newmahr draws this hierarchy on the basis of gender performance, from masculine to feminine:

BAT, BD
ST
BAB
ISB
Martyr

BAB and ST being seen in Newmahr's conception as the most "androgynous" archetypes, and she notes that these are the identities who are most likely to switch, while BAT and BD are much less likely to call it bottoming even if they do.

However, this still does not allow for a gendered interpretation.

The strongest evidence that Newmahr presents is that:

...switching, badass bottoming, and service topping are more common (and higher-status identifications) in subsets of the community in which gender and SM identities are linked less frequently than they are in Caeden. Where SM is queerer, these kinds of play, as sites of gender subversion, proliferate more widely than in the heavily heterosexual male-top, female-bottom community.

My first question is, "who makes that link?" Newmahr introduces the association, and it feels as though this is interpreting the data to fit the theory rather than actually providing proof of the theory. My second question is, "What about heavily heterosexual female-top, male-bottom communities?"

This fundamental question of whether or not there is an intrinsic performance of gender associated with topping and bottoming, I think, is summed up in my note on an element of Newmahr's concluding feminist defence of BDSM power differentials:

SM is constructed around conquest and defeat, dominance and submission, and power and powerlessness. Power differences (whether lived, performed, or fantasized) lie at the core of all SM interaction. Based on this quest for inegalitarian experience, SM is not subversive at the level of gender ideology. Gender is about power, and SM builds on, draws from, romanticizes, and eroticizes power differentials between actors.

My remark in my notes is simply: "But 'gender is about power' does not imply 'power is about gender.'"

(It should also be noted that I do not accept the construction of SM as about "conquest and defeat".)

While the nature of the entanglement of symbolic gender with topping or bottoming performances is clearly a point of difference between Newmahr and me, the outcome of the focus on the top/bottom dichotomy instead of the man/woman dichotomy is the same regardless, and to close this piece, I will leave you with two passages from the end of the chapter with which I have complete agreement:

If, however, it can be feminist to disentangle inegalitarian dynamics and realities from both sex and gender, then there is room for another feminist perspective on SM. SM explicitly rejects gender as an organizing category of social life, often subverts gender roles as normative and sex-based, and contains the potential for further and more extreme subversion. That is, SM often extricates power differentials from genitals and gendered presentations. Further, for many players, this subversion is a conscious objective of SM.

...

Not all SM play is subversive of gender roles, and not all SM participants understand it as such. Many do, however, and their intellectual engagements with issues of gender inequality warrant further study.