"That's Not What We Do"

Carnal Nation

In fantasyland, the BDSM community is clearly defined, composed exclusively of ethical people who basically agree on our values, who have polite if lively discourses about safety and risk, and we consistently recognize and exclude people and behaviors that are unethical and unacceptable.
In the real world, the BDSM community is a conceptual construct, not an actual club with a definable membership. Some folks play in public clubs and belong to organizations and go to events and know each other. Some folks don't. Some folks do BDSM with a partner or partners alone in their own homes. Some folks self-identify as BDSMers without doing anything that half of the couples in the US don't do. Some folks do things at the holy-shit end of the sensation and risk spectrums, but don't label themselves or what they do.

It's easy, and too glib, for us to say whenever someone rapes and tortures someone and uses us as an excuse, that they are not "us", that what they do is not what we do. That's true, but if BDSMers want folks who are not BDSMers to understand that, we are going to have to be clearer in explaining it, and we're going to have to be consistent in living by it. We can't pretend that there is a central registry of "us," like a political party, and these people are just not on the list. I'm willing to fight for the right of the woman in Waukesha, Wisconsin who gets flogged and pierced in somebody's basement on a Saturday night to keep her job and her kids, whether she belongs to the organizations and goes to the clubs or not. Therefore, we need to have a clear voice about those people, on the fringes of our community and even in the center of them, who are predators and abusers. Lots of people say "safe, sane & consensual" ("SSC"), or alternatively "risk aware consensual kink" ("RACK"), and those terms have some currency among non-kinksters, but we have to be able to unpack what that means. Our declaration that the abusers are not us has to be more than conclusory. It has to be substantive.

What I'm working my way around to is talking about this. Irin Carmon at Jezebel picked it up, and essentially preemptively presented what is likely to be the consent defense, calling the case "troubling". Lindsay Beyerstein - a better critical thinker would be hard to find - immediately called out that piece, and I appreciate Lindsay's take, which I think is neatly summarized here:

 

It's a bizarre notion that there's any kind of blurry line between a consensual BDSM relationship and this. Either the government's allegations are true, in which case this is a clear-cut case of kidnapping, torture, and near-manslaughter. Or the government's allegations are untrue and we're back to square one. ...