Grey Is A Kinder Color
February 10th,Oh, ambivalence. Creature of my fondest fantasies. A friend of mine once used the word “bittersweet”; she referred not to the blending of the flavors, she said, but to the tension held between them.
Debauchette and Marcelle Manhattan, easily two of the best writers on my blogroll, take on the same topic this week. Debauchette: “Fucktoyism“; Marcelle, “Sex-Ambivalent (Redux)” and the previous essay, “Sex-Ambivalent“.
I knew one could, theoretically, enjoy a rape. Perhaps one’s body might respond. But one never really enjoyed a rape, really wanted it to happen, or if it had happened, were glad. That was how you knew the difference. Rape fantasies were common, harmless. Real rapes were violent and asexual crimes.
Debauchette said that her “faux-rape” made her wet.
Her story shook me up so much I didn’t know how to reply. She’d been raped, and she had liked it. I had never heard such a thing. She could as easily have called the sky green. Her story recalled to me Marcelle’s about John, the abusive man she dated. Her stories were thigh-squeezingly compelling. What she described was abuse, and she acknowledged it was abuse, and also that she had enjoyed it.
I couldn’t parse that. In the world I knew, pleasure and violation were mutually exclusive. To go from hot sex to abuse, you needed to shift the carpet, declaim your experience with a revisionist history. Abuse wasn’t sexy. If you thought you’d liked it, you were deluded.
Maybe, just maybe, a belief system that holds me (us?) to be stupid and blind is not an accurate one.
In my various jobs I have had to come down firmly on the side of the good. I deny making the choice to be exploited or degraded. If I were, then I could not enjoy it (which I do), and my choice to do it would be invalid. One or the other: pleasure or violation. Pick wisely!
No matter that adult actors are actually quite underpaid, and that sex work laughs at labor laws, and that being told I’m “too smart for this place” nibbles at my soul. By these rules, I mustn’t say that: any dissatisfaction reflects badly on We the Sex Workers, the empowered heroes of new-wave feminism, as if we can control our treatment and our emotions alike. Yet we have miles to go on sex worker rights… hell, the right to work without fear of arrest would be a damn nice start. Maybe, just maybe, self-censorship is a bad plan.
I’ve been going around on the issue all day, and I think the either/or mentality is insidious. To hide its insufficiencies, we have to take them all upon ourselves. If empowerment needs a veneer of perfection, than perfection we will have. If pleasure needs to come without doubt or mistakes, we may pretend it does. Given the two options, who would ‘fess up? How bad would things have to get for us, the “empowered”, before we buckle and own up to failures of exploitation that were never ours? It’s a sick path, this dichotomy, a downward spiral of shame.
To really bring this argument where I do it best — peeved and selfish — we deserve pleasure even if we cannot get it perfect. This is a fucked-up world, and maybe it’s impossible to unwind all the wrongs from the rights, but I’m going to keep trying and fucking anyway.
Our rules should give us permission to live. It’s easy to forget that we are who feminism is trying to save.
February 10th, at 7:19 pm
I think you hit that on the head.
Theory and ethics and morals and intellectualism are all fine however they are overlays which we choose to view the world Sometimes abuse isn’t a bad thing, depends on the context and even then the world is never black and white to many shades of Grey.
Sometime people are just objects and wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
February 10th, at 7:31 pm
The part that kinda sums it all up for me is her response to one of the many comments to that particular post
“debauchette on February 8, said:
And I imagine this post is disturbing to some because it crosses from fantasy to reality, from a dark lust to a real disruption of order between the sexes.
The fact remains that when I think about this event, I get wet.”
I think that sums it up nicely
February 10th, at 7:46 pm
I wouldn’t venture to say abuse can be good, but it’s no crime to take pleasure where we find it.
February 10th, at 10:31 pm
A delicate way to put it indeed!
I am always reminded in these discussions of the this dialogue from the movie “The Big Chill”
Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
I think whats needs to be adressed is simply what exactly is Abuse and what is ment by Abuse or being Abusive.
In the so called Hetro normal world SM and many other forms of kinky sex and lifestyles are considered Abuse with out any hesitiation or second thought.
Even in the community I think the word abuse is over used and missunderstood as well as missused by many depending on who is involved as well as what type of relationship people have with each other.
Nothing is more ironic than listening to a bunch of scene people discssing what aspects of somone elses play or lifestyle is absuive.
When we slide along the edge we play and live in we need more understanding of what that label means. debauchette was definatley Abused in the classic sense of the word, however its a ride I think she would like a second helping of.
February 10th, at 11:03 pm
Great. Thanks. I am still trying to recover from the harddrive crash and you write something like THIS so I have to think about sex blogging again. *smile*
Dov - OK then, I’ll bite. Define abuse for me. Because either you are willing to define it (and yes, you can define it on a continuum) or you are going to end up saying no one is ever allowed to ever judge anyone’s behaviour.
Calico - “The perfect is often the enemy of the good.” An old saying, and relevant in more than just the political scenario I first encountered it.
As for this: I’ve been going around on the issue all day, and I think the either/or mentality is insidious.
I am inclined to agree. We rationalize and compromise all the time, and that is not in and of itself wrong. It is part of what Dworkin was talking about in Intercourse (and which has sadly been misrepresented as “all heterosexual sex is rape”.
As it is late and I *really* need to go to bed (I am only here because a lover who has decided she likes playing to my “consent fetish” by pointing out to me interesting writings on consent sent me) I haven’t read debauchette’s piece yet - I will tomorrow.
February 11th, at 12:07 am
” OK then, I’ll bite. Define abuse for me.”
No Not my job to do so.
All ive asked is a question which keeps coming up lately with anyone ive been talking about in regards to kink and scene stuff and especialy when people are dealing in femenist theory.
What never gets dsicussed is abuse itself and the fact that it has to be considered on a continum or sliding scale as well as in context.
You seem to be assuming that I am going to say that no one can judge others behaviors which i am not.
I am saying that abuse may not be a bad thing under the right circumstances You shoud read the whole post by by debauchette before you ask me to define Abuse.
Lets define context
February 11th, at 12:52 am
I think this post illustrates very well the absolutely vital importance of allowing people to present to us how they feel. To analyze their situation themselves, come to their own conclusions, and express them, without facing a firing squad of judgment.
What works for one does not work for another. That one person’s body responds to humiliation or even rape is not justification to subject others to those things.
Sexuality is far more complicated than some feminists want to give it credit for. It makes theories messy when you realize it can’t/doesn’t apply to everyone. All any of us can do is speak our own truths and try to create a society/community that empowers all of us, even in disagreement.
February 11th, at 1:23 am
As has been demonstrated by previous responses, the actual mechanism by which debauchette turns what, I’m fairly sure, 99% of the rest of us cannot fathom. For the rest of us, it’s a simple ‘does not compute’.
I believe that on issues like this, where two absolute opposites, in the beholder’s perspective, are combined by someone else(referred to here as ‘person 2), that beholder has 3 options: reject it outright as some defect of person 2(mental illness/Satan/etc), live with the ‘does not compute’(i.e. not being able to understanding it, but still being ok with that lack of understanding), or finding some rationale to explain it. The last option, I should note, will almost never come close to resembling the process by which person 2 came to the original view. An example would be someone listening to Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printeps and hearing only noise in the dissonance of the music, but being able to rationally understand the music, rather than feeling it.
The result of the previous paragraph is that these options can be applied to any scenario where one observes what one views as absolute opposites existing in the same time and place, peacefully or violently. For the hardcore Christians and staunch science proponents, it’s Evolution vs Creationism. For the West and Muslim extremists it’s the perfection Allah’s Law vs the secular equality of man’s law. It’s the issue of Social Security in American Politics, people who hate having their time wasted but don’t notice how they waste other’s time, Yankees and Red Sox in sports, in food it’s Vegetarians who eat fish(or some other meat).
Wherever you are, in whatever community or sub-culture you inhabit, there inevitably is an issue that has two complete opposites either community based or individual based. Both opposites may be equally represented, there may be a majority of one and a minority of another, or it may be 99.9% vs .1%. For kink and sex in general, the highest issue of our community is that consent must take place, somewhere, on some level. There are people who hash out where they think that line is, but for 99.9% that line exists somewhere. Debauchette is the .1% who brought one of the highest rewards of this community, pleasure, together with the antithesis of what 99.9% consider their highest precept, consent.
:: Insert Fembot Style Head Explosions Here ::
This all boils down to a few statements that can be made. Debauchette is able to do something most of us cannot.
This puzzles some, angers others and is explained away by further others.
Remaining puzzled or getting angry do not resolve the issue.
Rationalizing will give us inner peace, but not give us real understanding of Debauchette’s experience.
Thus, if we can’t naturally understand it as Debauchette does, and our attempts to rationalize it will never come close, we may as well move on and work on crafting our own internal music, than analyzing the perceived dissonance of another’s tune.
February 11th, at 2:08 am
I’m with whatsername.
I’m talking about things that are actually wrong (rape, abuse, exploitation) that happen to coincide with pleasure. I’d like if we could acknowledge the pleasure — hey, it happens, despite our bravest American efforts to the contrary — while also acknowledging the wrong.
In other words: saying “It’s not OK” doesn’t always keep it from being hot, and saying “it was hot” doesn’t make it OK.
February 11th, at 10:57 am
What is ‘actually wrong’? In any group there are ‘actually wrong’ things, but all of them are based on the beliefs of that group. In the end, you can either say things are ‘actually wrong’ because some higher power says they are wrong, and therefore the must be wrong(invoking god) or you can say something is wrong without invoking a higher power, in which case it is a person or people who says it is wrong, and people are quite fallible. In terms of legal or religious questions, the former is acceptable(Something is wrong because God/the majority of citizens or their representatives in this city/state/country say it is wrong).
When it comes to our community, we are not a cohesive body, nor are we guided by some specific law book set down by god. We have no jurisdiction, no jails, cops or judges. And even if we had those things, it wouldn’t stop Debauchette from feeling what she felt. The only recourse(a meager one at that) is to engage the harm principle. If Debauchette was harmed by these feelings(couldn’t carry on a conversation, wouldn’t have another scene again despite wanting to) then we would have atleast some reason to intervene and try to explain it as wrong or not ok. But she claims that she is not harmed(in her blog). She took a situation that would be harmful to nearly everyone else and removed the long-term psychological damaging effects. She was raped, had power and sex taken from her without consent. But instead of doing what the rest of us would, feeling continually weak and having her view of sex tainted by this act, she beat this wall by running straight through it, full speed.
This does not make the entire act ‘ok’. Rape is illegal(higher power deeming it bad), and she is very lucky to be alive and, by her accounts, relatively uninjured(the harm principle). This whole question is about her method of dealing with the trauma.
Since she can’t go back in time and stop this from happening, all she can do is to limit it’s effect on her in the future. She has done that, to a startling degree, and with a mechanism that others in this community find puzzling or distasteful. But so long as she continues to be ‘ok’ with how she perceived the rape, and as long as she doesn’t start a philosophy that the highest pleasure in bdsm comes in the absence of consent(that’s just my own personal view there, don’t need more Gorean types), I think we can’t judge her methods of coping with the rape as ‘ok’ or not. It works for her, doesn’t improperly affect us, so let’s not judge her for it, and thus improperly affect her.
February 11th, at 11:11 am
I think changing that statement to
“In other words: saying “It’s not OK” doesn’t always keep it from being hot, and saying “it was hot” doesn’t always make it OK.”
whatsername gets it very right indeed however you still stick to the having to acknowledge the wrong. Okay so its wrong, so what! the problem with sexuality as she pointed out is its messy just as life is.
If anything pushing the fact that it was wrong makes it even hotter
There are instances where such absolutes exist but in many cases its more what you do after the incident. debauchette leaves the story open ended she doesn’t tell if she went to the police or if she continued on her way and waited for him to take her anytime he wanted.
Someone living in fear of being beaten or raped and abused where they are afraid to go to the police is one thing and is the very definition of Bad and wrong. But thats not what were talking about here.
February 11th, at 10:42 pm
I’ve got long answers from Dov and Patrick to get to (and my own post to write) but the essential bit is (not surprisingly) that I agree with Calico on this.
It can be wrong and hot.
The simple fact is that MANY people respond to rape with bodily pleasure. That fact is a serious mind fuck for many rape victims. There’s a writer I know with a story about that in her desk drawer. This isn’t even an uncommon response to rape, and is one of the reasons there is often so much shame about “my body betraying me”.
February 11th, at 10:46 pm
Nine years ago, in the cab of a semi at a rest stop in Scranton, PA, a butch held my nipple and told me that I could do anything I wanted with anybody I wanted, but that nipple was hers–and if I let anybody else touch it, she’d cut it off. And she meant it. I should have been afraid, angry, outraged, incensed. I should have beaten her off me, grabbed my stuff, and left. Instead I fucked her all night like those were the last orgasms I was ever going to have. Later, I wondered what was wrong with me. Later, we Had A Conversation about it. Today, I search for lovers who will threaten me like she did, using that tone of voice she used, only they’re not supposed to mean it… mostly.
February 12th, at 12:57 am
Dov:
“What never gets dsicussed is abuse itself and the fact that it has to be considered on a continum or sliding scale as well as in context.”
Where does that not get discussed? I think we’re talking past each other. That abuse is a continuum is enough of a definition for me to know what you’re getting at here.
I agree, the fact she keeps it open-ended leaves the whole thing even more ambiguous.
February 12th, at 10:29 pm
I agree on the talking past each other Victor
Yeah its hard to tell if the entire incident wasn’t staged, not a bad thing but I think her point of the story was to deal with how we react to it not if the story is true or not
February 13th, at 9:09 am
The way I read Debauchette’s story, it was consensual:
“there was a moment when I knew I could’ve made myself clear, in any language, but I chose not to. I wanted to see what would happen.”
She. Wanted. To. See. What. Would. Happen.
And later in comments, she reinforced that.
So I don’t understand why some people in this discussion insist on calling what happened to her “rape”.
February 13th, at 5:01 pm
I may have to read all of this again to get it straight in my head, but my intuition is that if you try to group everything into “It’s OK” or “It’s Not OK”, then you will find things that are neither, and things that are both. Maybe you could squint at those things, and force them into one group or another. I think, however, if it’s a gut-wrenching call, it’s both, and if you can’t really get steamed up about it, it’s neither.
February 13th, at 11:46 pm
Sometimes there comes a point where you know that something is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so you pretend that you have a choice in the matter by telling yourself that you just want to see what will happen if you go along with it.