Preaching to the Perverted: How Did I Miss This Film?!

Last night I watched the fantastic British comedy film Preaching to the Perverted (1997), of which I had been blissfully unaware until a brilliant lady in the kink community recommended it to me. 

My first reaction was "HOW did I miss this? This film includes EVERYTHING I wrote Thinking Kink about, and yet I didn't know about it til now!" My second was to laugh, hoot, snort, raise eyebrows and repeatedly think how accurate and incisive this colourful, anarchic film is.

Here's what I liked in particular:

1) It quickly moves beyond the obvious tropes

In the first five minutes, when the House of Thwax is being accused of spreading filth and feminists are condemning it as exploitative of the female form, Ricky Tomlinson's character pipes up and points out he's seen "more men's hairy arses" in the secret film from inside a kink club, than any naked female bodies. And he's spot on. If you step inside any BDSM event, you will see bodies of ALL shapes, sizes, genders and ages. Yes, the scene is agonizingly white and could do a lot more to be ethnically diverse. But it has no rules on who's allowed to take their clothes off and parade around for others. Which is great, because it means we see plenty of old, male, chunky, skinny, hairy, wobbly and generally real-looking bodies in the kink scene. It really is time pop culture caught up to this, instead of opting to show rail thin white females in black PVC every time kink is mentioned.

"Gentle Face" by istoletheTV, via Creative Commons

2) It's very, VERY British

The majority of pop culture artefacts I looked at in Thinking Kink are from America, because that's from where the majority of our mainstream TV shows, movies and music originates. This is slowly changing, but British movies, TV shows and art are still lagging behind when it comes to global recognition--with some notable exceptions such as Dr Who and Sherlock, but they have the weight of the mighty BBC behind them. So it was incredibly refreshing to see a British-made film full of actual British actors running around grimy streets and stately homes in THIS COUNTRY. A lot of kinks are very specific to Britain: caning and spanking have strong connections to the disciplinarian boarding schools of yesteryear, as do the corresponding schoolboy/girl fantasies. The idea of a buttoned-up, repressed people who secretly love to wear stockings and bend people over desks is also extremely British, and is explored heartily in the film.

3) It nails the hypocrisy behind British laws

As someone who has just written 75,000 words on the insane state of Britain's obscenity law, it was fantastic to watch a film that points out how much of an ass our laws still are when they try to prevent consenting adults seeking pleasure. In this film, the kinksters, freaks, pervs and dominatrices are pitted against the government, the police and a press eager to humiliate people for a headline. Obviously the real situation is much more nuanced, as the protagonist Peter discovers, but when the law comes for you and your sexual freedom, you have to decide what you care about more - money and public image, or personal integrity. Preaching to the Perverted nails this perfectly.

4) It shows the value of group living

The House of Thwax comprises a huge warehouse/living space where a lead dominatrix is served by a houseful of slaves. It's the kind of efficient, clean and well-ordered set-up that most of us can only dream of enjoying at home or work, but because everyone knows their role, it functions smoothly. That's not to say there aren't malcontents, complaints, misplaced affections and a fair bit of topping from the bottom, but that's life and that's human beings; this film does a great job of showing that even 24/7 kink has its limits. However, when a baby is brought into the equation, everyone in the house takes turns to look after it, rather than the responsibility all falling on to the knackered mother's shoulders. Yes, the baby is being walked around a house full of chains, crosses and spanking benches, but it's receiving love and attention from multiple caring adults who clearly adore it. Why isn't this kind of parenting shown to us more often?!

5) It emphasises consent and safety

Naive and young protagonist Peter enters the kink world undercover and soon ends up out of his comfort zone, clad in PVC and getting his nipples pierced in order to blend in. However, he is regularly asked what he does and doesn't want to do, and when he says he is afraid of pain, his mistress respects this. When he says he is a virgin, she also respects this. She regularly tells him he is free to leave or say no if he does not want to participate. Although this should be bleeding obvious to both kinksters and vanilla folk, there clearly is a problem with how pop culture and wider Western society understand consent. It's rarely shown as an ongoing conversation that involves regular check-ins. We're still struggling to get to the point where all men believe no means no, rather than "try harder because women play games, you see", let alone the point where sexual partners are seeking active, enthusiastic consent from women ("yes means yes" and anything else should be seen as no). So it's mighty important for films, books, music videos, and any other art depicting kink to keep emphasising: YOU DON'T JUST GRAB SOMEONE AND START WHIPPING THEM. YOU ASK. AND ASK. AND ASK. AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. AND YOU RESPECT WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU, OR YOU ARE AN ABUSER AND A CRIMINAL.

6) It shows a variety of genders in a variety of roles

Images of submissive men, beautiful male bodies naked, chained, roped, guys being humiliated and strong women whose bodies aren't served up for the male gaze are still far too often absent from pop culture portrayals of BDSM. Not so in this film! The House of Thwax is decorated by chained, muscular male subs, the kink parties have plenty of older, saggy male flesh on show (much like your average real BDSM play party!), and apart from the mistress herself and her shaven-headed female slave, we see very few female bodies throughout the film. We also see plenty of young Peter in compromising positions, which makes a refreshing change from filmmakers' persistent belief that 'sexy' only means 'what straight men find arousing.'

7) It's just bloody funny

Lines such as "Stop electrocuting Peter! We were wrong to leave him in the road," had me hooting and snorting throughout. This is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously, and recognises that a sense of humour is essential to survival in the BDSM world. Sometimes you'll spill the poppers, knot the rope wrongly, trip over the spanking bench or end up look at a ball sack covered in clothes pegs when you really didn't want to see it. You have to be able to laugh, first of all at yourself, but also generally at this crazy community where we gather together to humiliate and beat each other, and then have a cup of tea and chat about it afterwards. Preaching to the Perverted shows that BDSM players are regular folk with jobs, lives and bills to pay, but they simply get their kicks from playing on the edge; not unlike anyone who does extreme sports, or--as someone points out in the opening scenes--boxing, a pursuit from which no law or government has ever tried to save men.

So what are you waiting for? You can buy the remastered version of the film here. Watch and enjoy!

Abuse in BDSM and why people need to stop blaming That Book for it

Perhaps it's a refreshing testament to free speech that I spend a lot of my professional life defending a book I don't even like. I spent 8 weeks writing a blog series about BDSM, feminism and pop culture precisely because I was tired of people using the popularity of said book as an excuse to come out with all manner of ill-informed speculations about people, especially women, who practice kink, or even just like to read books about it. Two years later, it seemed that wasn't enough and I ended up writing a whole book on the subject. The book I so often end up defending has become so ubiquitous in the pop culture discussion of BDSM that I refused to even name it in my work, less it become a distracting albatross, and just referred to it as that book (or that trilogy). You don't need to me to say the name. You know what I'm talking about. And you know that because it seems the blame for every ill of our culture -- domestic violence and rape and apologism/glamourisation of them, coercive relationships in and outside of the BDSM community, unrealistic expectations about sex, relationships that echo patriarchal structures too closely for our comfort -- gets laid at the feet of it.

So I was a bit disappointed to see this post, shared by the excellent Whores of Yore Twitter account, and then the Twitter conversation surrounding it, immediately linking that book to abuse within BDSM. Now, the post itself is an important and brave piece written by someone who got themselves out of a terribly abusive relationship and is reflecting on the awful treatment they put up with. It identifies correctly that adding a kinky relationship to the mix when domestic abuse is already so underreported muddies the waters even further, because there are already enough myths in the vanilla world that women "provoke" or "exaggerate" abuse, that if you've ever voluntarily asked your partner to hurt you, you stand very little chance of the police or a jury being able to distinguish between that and non-consensual abuse.

So I don't want to detract from the act of bravery inherent in 'Bee''s piece; she has shared what sounds like a deeply traumatic experience and hopefully, writing about it will be part of a healing process for her. It will also hopefully give others the strength to identify and reject kink in abusive relationships. And it does raise the complicated and at present unanswerable questions of how we can deal with abuse that flies under the radar of BDSM when our society remains crap enough at dealing with abuse in the vanilla mainstream, never mind in less respected or understood subcultures.

But, it feels like there is also a lot of context and illustration missing from the piece, and instead 'Bee' just goes straight for the far-too-simplistic option of "blame that book." She writes 

I don't think it's unfair to summarise that the largely women following of FSOG were sold the excitement of being "owned" by a handsome Dominant lover.

Mmm...I do think it's unfair, actually, if you're making the unjustified leap from the popularity of a book to presuming you know anything about the readers' lifestyle choices. Whether that book sold women an unrealistic picture of BDSM, an unrealistic picture of (heterosexual) relationships per se, or just gave them some quality masturbation material, we'll never know - not without asking the millions of them who bought and enjoyed it. Pride and Prejudice romanticises submitting to a relationship with a man who has previously been rude and dismissive towards you, who has told you he's ashamed of you and your family, has deliberately meddled in your sister's relationship to destroy it, and will financially own and control you for the rest of your life. Yet that's considered a 'great romance', loved again by millions of women. Funnily enough, in a world where we treat women like adults, those who really believe in feminism tend to avoid policing women's reading choices because we don't assume that they are so stupid they can't distinguish between fiction and reality.

And as 'Bee' herself goes on to point out, she was no wide-eyed novice in the kink world anyway.

I've never classed myself as a submissive. Yes, I enjoyed my men to take control but I was no novice in the world of kink and BDSM. I was very comfortable with my sexuality and my wants and needs.

So why would she, and other Twitter commenters, insult other women by implying that they must all be naive enough to interpret that book as a how-to manual for BDSM relationships, or not recognise the problematic aspects of it? As someone who has spent way too much time answering back to the furious criticisms of women who accuse me of defending the glamourisation of abuse every time I even dare to suggest that book isn't the cause of all misogyny, I can tell you, plenty of women recognise the problems inherent in the relationship depicted (and I think it cannot be said enough that most of them have very little to do with kink).

Yes, it's important to talk about abuse in the kink community. Really important. I dedicate a whole chapter in my book to safe words, and examine the harrowing stories of women who had their safe words violated in BDSM exchanges. Both these articles I've linked to pre-date the publication of that book, as will - sadly - countless other people's stories of awful, shit-stain excuse for human beings who used kink as a cover for their abusive practices. Look at Jian Ghomeshi. His (alleged) abuses of partners under the guise of "But I'm kinky!!" date back to a decade before anyone had even heard the name C*******n G**y. But you know what effect that book had on conversations about abuse within kink? It gave them a huge signal boost. It gave me a chance to publicise them, first in the Thinking Kink blog series, then in my book about it. It resulted in someone actually coming forward on my blog post about safe words to comment that my piece had helped them realised that their experience of having their safe word violated was abuse, and was not their fault. That book also helped a lot of people simply come out as kinky, an act of enablement whose importance cannot be underestimated in a world where there is still so much shame and mental violence enacted upon those who deviate from sexual norms. Lord knows that book has given me a safe, relatively unthreatening shorthand to mention when vanilla folk ask me what I write about. Hey, I could even tell my mum I'd been to a BDSM club just by saying, "You know F***y S****s? It's that sort of place," and she barely batted an eyelid (my mum is pretty unflappable anyway, but you see my point.) And I do feel like a lot of the reason it gets so much shit flung at it when there are way heavier, darker depictions of kink in pop culture that get a pass is because at its core, it's just a trashy novel.

As I wrote in my review of the film last year:

I can’t help but feel that some of the outrage over [that book] is both selective and elitist. [That book] faces the same kind of criticism that’s lobbed at romance in general: “Oh, look at those uneducated women and their trashy reads! Bless them for not knowing that classier books exist!” I wonder if many critics care less about misrepresentations of kink in the book and more about saving the undiscerning masses from themselves.

Because why else would people say things like this about it

@XO_BB_XO @WhoresofYore FSOG takes a relationship EXACTLY LIKE THIS but sells it as romance. It is dangerous.

— Merry Fran-mas (@LollyWheeks) December 21, 2016

 while ignoring, say, Secretary, a film often hailed as a much better representation of kink, yet which shows a boss harassing and intimidating a vulnerable subordinate, not using safewords, and not negotiating a kink scene or getting consent beforehand? Or The Story of O, in which a young woman submits to gangbangs, anal stretching, labia piercing, and iron manacles being permanently welded to her body, just out of love for her partner who abandons her at a palace for various anonymous men to abuse her? Both have been around a lot longer and have many fans in the kinky world. They have not been accused of romanticising abuse, or showing people how to do kink "wrong," even though both have massively problematic areas in which consent, respect or level playing field on which the woman makes the decision to submit are not at all clear. 

So the outrage aimed at that book feels very arbitrary, and ill-reserached. It also implies we consider some people too uneducated or easily led to distinguish between fiction and real-life (and I can't help but feel there are strong links there to some serious snobbery regarding social class and level of education). It's also overly simplistic; that book is not without merit. It doesn't get everything about kink wrong. Yes, it bears about as much resemblance to real BDSM as the movie Whip It does to real roller derby (as a derby skater I can confirm that movie is SO inaccurate it's not even funny), but funnily enough no one turns up to a roller derby bout thinking they can give a fellow player a bloody nose just because they saw it done to Drew Barrymore on DVD. The point is, something can be a signpost to something you're interested in (which chances are, you were already interested in before you came across this particular book/film/whatever) without being taken as a rulebook. Thinking women incapable of making the distinction is as patronising as the narratives that fail to distinguish between independent sex workers and trafficked women, that presume female sexuality is naturally softer, gentler and more moral and that therefore women could never like nasty filthy things like porn or BDSM (both my personal experiences and my research indicate a giant HA! to that notion). And you know what those narratives run dangerously close to reinforcing? Every sexist trope out there about women being stupid, weak and incapable of autonomy. I don't doubt that anyone wanting to protect women from abuse in BDSM considers themselves a feminist; but this ain't the way to further female freedom.

Wanting to push the conversation about BDSM and abuse is admirable. It should be happening. I'm pleased to report that I've never experienced violations of consent from any of my BDSM play partners (all of whom have been cis men and have unfailingly respected safe words, hard limits, the need for prior negotiation, communication, active ongoing consent and the need for aftercare), but that doesn't mean I haven't experienced kinksters who bring shitty sexism and misogyny into the scene. I write in my book about being touched without my consent on three different occasions, one by the event organiser who had written the goddamn rules which said "no touching without consent" stuck to the wall of the bar. I write about the self-proclaimed 'misogynist' who thought he was so hilarious and edgy by constantly referring to women as 'cunts' in person and in his online profile, excused his behaviour on the grounds that "I'm a sadist," and interrupted a rope scene to shout "kick her in cunt!" about the woman being tied up. I write about seeing people jumping to criticise or ostracise the person who complained about someone caning her feet without consent while she was suspended at a play party. As Cliff Pervocracy writes "The kink community talks big about consent, but they also talk big about not having "drama." It's a theme that would sadly recur across my research for Thinking Kink. But the fact it was being talked about, and there was pushback against it, was enough to give me hope.

And part of the reason those conversations can happen is that book. Remember that next time you're tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Books don't cause abuse any more than short skirts cause rape. Don't let abusers off the hook by not focusing on their actions and instead shaming women for their reading choices. Rather, as these tweeter points out, remember the real enemies:

@XO_BB_XO @LollyWheeks @IndigoAugust the next president thinks it's ok to grab women by the pussy without their permission, now that's harm.

— R2D2awillow (@rawillow2202) December 21, 2016

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Subversive or Complicit? The Female Dominant in Popular Culture (Extract from "Thinking Kink")

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Women on Leashes: Kink In The Public Eye

Ah, women being walked on leashes. One may have thought that since Snoop Dogg announced he is now going to respect women (having claimed that he only called them bitches and whores in the past because he didn't know any better, bless him) there'd be no more public displays of such imagery for anyone to get up in arms about. Yet this past week I ended up seeing two stories about this within a few days of each other, and since I've like, written a book on how BDSM is portrayed in pop culture and its implications for feminism, I thought it behooved me to take a closer look at these tales and how they're framed.

The first, a story on Complex.com, a pop culture news site, kicked off with the headline "Australian Playboy Calls Himself Candyman and Walks Women on Leashes." I have to say, before I encountered this story I had never heard of Travers Beynon, who is apparently "known as Australia's Hugh Hefner", so I'm immediately wondering if this piece is going to actually provide more of the oxygen of publicity to someone relatively unknown outside their native country. 

In somewhat prurient and scandalised tones, the article goes on to say "On Instagram, Beynon frequently posts photos from his multimillion-dollar "Candy Shop Mansion," where women who've auditioned to be his "angels" pose for photos, sometimes as furniture. There's this photo where women serve as chairs and tables for a game of chess. (How civilized!)" There follows a video where we can see plenty more exposed female flesh on show in Beynon's flashy mansion, including sushi being eaten off a naked woman's body, and a man (not Beynon, perhaps one of his staff?) walking two bikini-clad women on leashes, one of whom is apparently Beynon's wife. The reporter mentions that the grandparents of his wife are concerned that this is a 'toxic' environment for her two children. Beynon's defence is that he's a hardworking family man, and the imagery he's posting on Instagram are merely promotion for his tobacco company.

The reporter says "This is arguably not OK, and I'm glad that Beynon is coming under fire for posting pictures of human beings on leashes. While he claims that his wife is impressed by his lifestyle and is laughing her head off at all the media attention that his home is receiving, I still have to wonder if everyone in this photo [shows photo of three men sitting on the backs of women who are on all fours] is comfortable with what's going on."

There's a lot going on here, but as often seems to be the case, there's still a fairly predictable template being followed:

1) Get outraged at the treatment of women by X, while simultaneously giving more publicity to X and also showing as many pictures as possible of the supposedly degrading treatment and exposed butts, boobs, thighs, cracks and cleavages.

2) Dismiss the possibility that any of the women involved have agency and/or free choice.

3) Play the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" card

4) Impose own values on to the behaviour of consenting adults

If this seems like lazy 'choice' feminism to you, I think it's worth adding that I would love to live in a world where I never had to be assaulted by another bronzed female butt crack or cleavage on my TV, computer or in a magazine or on a billboard, ever, ever again. The commodification of the female form both sickens and exhausts me. I would love it if music videos were about music, adverts were about the products they were trying to sell, and that the biggest ripples in global news were caused by genuinely amazing events that indicated progress for the human race, rather than the fact that Kacey Cuomo has dyed her eyebrows pink. However, as a pop culture commentator, I know that's not the world we live in. Under capitalism, everyone's trying to hustle, and earn money the quickest way they can. For Travers Beynon, that way is apparently by running a tobacco company, buffing up his body til he resembles a condom full of walnuts, building a kitsch, gilded bubblegum palace of bling and babes, and showing it to the world. Apparently, it's working. There are still many men out there who secretly think Hugh Hefner has got it made, even though plenty more of us consider him a pretty sad and creepy old man unable to deal with women as equals. Beynon is apparently appealing to the first category through his Instagram account, and if he gets some public criticism along the way, well, it's just more exposure, right?

Then there's the women who participate in the supposedly oh-so-shocking pictures. We need to stop to consider that they may also be hustling the best way they see fit. Are we to assume they are in those pictures under duress? That they are coerced into the lifestyle they enjoy in the big blinging mansion? FFS, there are plenty of women who consent to be walked on leashes or serve as human furniture out in the real world, and if you go into a BDSM club or look on Fetlife you'll soon meet them. You'll find they're regular women with jobs, children, partners, bills to pay, and you'll find that they all choose to do what they're doing. They just don't turn up on Instagram for pop culture commentators to disapprove of in the name of feminism, but they remain adults in control of their own lives and I believe Beynon's female companions do too, even if the former group's actions may be more about private pleasure and the latter more about creating public ripples to ultimately generate more income.  

This brings me onto the second story which I saw on Jezebel a few days later, which tells a bit of a non-story about a couple who were asked to leave a New York mall because the man was walking his female companion on a leash. There's an accompanying photo of the woman, wearing a thick collar with large spikes, kneeling on the pavement. You can only see the legs of her male companion. She's fully clothed and smiling. I found it hard to know how to feel about the story because I generally fell between two stools - I couldn't fully agree with the outraged commentators who wrote "Keep it in the bedroom, assholes," or sarcastically referred to "the public degradation of another human, shockingly, and soo unexpectedly, a woman," or went straight for the "What about children who saw this?!" line (see how it keeps coming up? How much time and energy is expended on fretting about what kids might actually think when kids spend so little time thinking about anything than the Frozen song?), but nor could I get totally on board with the writer's groovy, laid-back, "I'm from San Francisco where anything goes," attitude which adds up to: what they were doing isn't inherently sexual, kids who saw the couple will understand it was just make-believe, and it's not as bad as some weird stuff she's seen in public, including a man defecating on her porch. Hmmmm.

Both stories raise the questions, which has reared its head again and again in my writing on kink, on how far it's acceptable to inflict BDSM play on a viewing public. In the case of the first story, I doubt that the instance of the women being walked on leashes has nearly as much to do with BDSM, as it does with getting as many hits as possible on Instagram. Maybe the man and two women in the picture are genuinely playing a kinky game that they all find pleasurable, but I somehow doubt it - it just comes across as too staged. The couple in the second story do seem more like they are enjoying the thrill of public play, inadvertently yet crucially showing how the hottest kink scenes can take place when everyone is fully clothed and there's not a bikini or bum crack in sight, but as someone points out in the comments, there's no way to get the consent of everyone who has to view them, and if some people find it offensive or upsetting, that goes against the SSC (safe, sane, consensual) or RACK (risk aware consensual kink) mantras that are the foundation of the BDSM community.

However, I think it's important to ask ourselves why these images are potentially offensive. In response to the commenter who calls the mall couple's act degrading, another commenter immediately calls them on their assumption that the leashed woman feels degraded rather than empowered. This simplistic statement also obscures the fact that there can be empowerment/pleasure/erotic thrills found in that which we are supposed to find degrading, precisely because they are roles which are considered humiliating and which we are therefore not supposed to desire. One wonders if there would have been similar outcry if the gender roles had been reversed, if a woman had been thrown out of a mall for walking a man on a leash (would that even have happened?), or if Travers Beynon was a female feathering her nest with a bevy of thong-clad men on leashes? I understand that it's not as simple as that, because we're not talking about a simple and equal switch of positions. There is no equivalent history to that of male violence against and oppression of women. There is no equivalent culture of objectification and dehumanisation of the male form. It's just not the same. People get uncomfortable seeing women in positions of sexual submission to men because it's too close to what is still sadly really going on out there at times - rape, sexual violence, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, enslavement, trafficking. But what is really, really important to remember is that the existence of the latter should not lead to the censorship or condemnation of the former. That does not help any of us. Treating content, consenting adult women like they need to be protected does not help protect the women who really are in danger. Assuming that women don't know what they really want or like and sneering oh my god how could they really be comfortable doing such a thing merely echoes the voices of misogynists who want to portray us as brainless playthings and then use that to excuse their violence against their female form. 

It's tricky, though. I'd still probably be on the side of the mall cop who thew the couple out, because I do believe in a time and a place for things, and I think it's disingenuous to imply that there isn't at least some kind of sexual element to collar/leash play. Even if it's not sexual for that particular couple, it's undeniably BDSM-themed, and definitely originates from a place that's going to be tricky to explain to kids - or, for that matter, a lot of older people (trying to explain the BDSM acronym to my mum, who's in her 60s, has been fun - she's asked me on about 6 occasions to remind her what it stands for and what it actually means). I don't subscribe to the argument that "Kids are going to see it and think that's how it's OK to treat women," because that kind of epistemic leap involves enough mental gymnastics when you're an adult, let alone for a child. Listening to The Prodigy's Firestarter at age 12 didn't make me believe that arson was a great idea, reading The Story of O at age 19 didn't make me think that it was normal or expected that a woman should run off and submit to a palace full of perverts, and no one or ten or hundred images makes a child think it's OK to treat a woman like crap. With regards to the mall couple, I do generally agree that it runs counter to BDSM ethics to inflict kink play on an unsuspecting public, although I wonder if Travers Beynon's Instagram feed comes with any kind of warning. I'd guess that the type of people who want to follow him are probably used to, ready for, or actively seeking the kind of images he puts out there. I probably have more truck with those criticising him, who are happy to reproduce his images with no kind of warning just so they can add a disapproving commentary, therefore giving more exposure to depictions of women that they claim to find demeaning.

***To read more essays on BDSM, feminism and pop culture, check out my new book "Thinking Kink," which is now out in the US and the UK. Available in both paperback and eBook***

BDSM and feminism: Kink-shaming and victim-blaming

Defending BDSM is a fraught process for feminists. On the one hand, you have misogynists and rape apologists telling you that women are just 'asking' to be assaulted, coerced, violated, beaten and raped, an insidious culture that makes any woman who enjoys consensual kink feel like she is a traitor all female victims of violence. On the other, you have (some) feminists telling you that while they support your right to choose whatever sexual practices you find pleasurable, if you like BDSM (especially as a submissive/masochist) it's probably just due to toxic patriarchal social conditioning and you should probably "work to change that" (genuine quote from a feminist discussing BDSM).

Then you have stories like the awful Jian Ghomeshi allegations that continue to emerge, whereby an alleged abuser is trying to mitigate the charges against him by claiming they took place under the umbrella of consensual kink. His accusers say differently. Rape apologists say "well, it's their word against his." Feminists say #IBelieverHer but suspect that these women are merely going to be dragged through the mill of being disbelieved, scrutinised and publicly attacked and possibly not see any justice at the end of it, because we know that's what happens to the majority of sexual assault victims. Radical feminists say What do you expect? and That's what happens when you say BDSM is OK, it becomes a cover for assault. Of course, there are quite a few radfems out there who believe that all BDSM is assault anyway, and that any woman who claims she consents to it is just brainwashed by the patriarchy into believing she actually wants to participate in this activity. 

This is where I encounter a particular logic fail with feminist criticism of BDSM. Does it not seem paradoxical to anyone else to be part of a movement that fights for women's right to be seen as full, autonomous, intelligent beings with agency while claiming that women who make sexual choices you don't agree with are too stupid to know what they're doing? As Margaret Hunt writes in her excellent "Report on a Conference on Feminism, Sexuality and Power: The Elect Clash with the Perverse," "leaps of logic like these only make sense if one really believes that adult women who choose to be the bottom in an S/M exchange are equivalent to children, while their tops are equivalent to pathological murderers." Yet it's not just the obvious corners of anti-sex work, anti-pornography, radical feminism that such viewpoints emerge. I was seriously disappointed to read this recent article by Emer O' Toole "This murder in Ireland has made me rethink my sexual practices," (The Guardian, 31st March 2015) where O' Toole claims that, despite having happily participated in BDSM previously, she now finds it difficult to reconcile with the fact a woman was murdered by a man she was in a BDSM relationship with. The tagline is "I wonder if we can continue to deny any links between kinky sex and wider societal abuse of women," the accompanying picture is a still from F**** S**** o* G*** and the caption to that claims that in that movie "a reluctant, inexperienced and infatuated young girl is controlled and beaten by a rich sadist" - read here to see why I believe that's a total mischaracterisation of that particular storyline.

From the outset of O' Toole's piece I got the sense that this was going to be yet another anti-kink article, this time more cleverly concealed than the usual feminist condemnation by the fact the author claims she is a BDSM practitioner. Sadly, I wasn't wrong. She starts by demanding that we examine "the social context that allowed a man to convince a woman that his sexual desire to stab and kill her was within the bounds of the acceptable," as if it's somehow a foregone conclusion that "social context" was what drove Graham Dwyer to murder his partner. This is followed by an epistemic leap so vast it requires a parachute to accompany it, when O' Toole says that this means we also need to pay "attention to the cultural mainstreaming of BDSM."

I probably should have stopped reading there, because my responses were already descending into teenage grunts. My response to that particular sentence was Why? and Says who? After the Columbine killings, hysterical hand-wringers told us to look to Marilyn Manson and violent films/video games for the source of the senseless violence that two 15 year-olds visited upon their classmates and teachers. Anyone with half a brain said no, I will not resort to such blind, simplistic scapegoating. Music doesn't kill people, video games don't kill people. And consensual play with ropes, floggers, gags and cuffs doesn't cause the rape and murder of women, Whenever we blame anything but the rapist for the rape, the murderer for the murder, we shift responsibility from the criminal and to something else (sadly, as happens far too often in the case of sexual assault, we shift it on to the victim). If you're a feminist, you know that short skirts, drinking and flirting don't cause rape. So why are you suddenly training your sights on PVC outfits and erotic power play and claiming that they are responsible for domestic violence and murder?

Partly because it's an interesting and trendy thing to be talking about, I guess, in light of *that film* and *that book*'s popularity, otherwise I doubt The Guardian would have commissioned O' Toole's piece, But her supposedly kink-friendly feminism is just woman-shaming and kink-shaming in a leather disguise. She says "I’m making this critique not as a kink-shamer, but as a challenge to myself: what are my reasons and justifications for inviting or accepting male sexual violence?" Again, the teenager in me responds WHO CARES? Not because I'm being rude or dismissive, but because funnily enough, as a feminist, I don't think we should be asking women to put a disproportionate amount of weight and stress upon themselves by interrogating their desires any more than anyone else does in this society. Why is it always on us as women to analyse ourselves, to scrutinise ourselves, and, according to the great Radical Feminist Handbook of How Acceptable Egalitarian Sex should be done, probably find ourselves wanting? Wherefore the privilege of the unexamined life, the unapologised-for libido? Isn't that something men enjoy? So why are we demanding that women give that up and instead flagellate ourselves (pun so very intended) for the things that give us pleasure in this so-often thankless and joyless life?

Citing one study about self-proclaimed porn addicts as evidence that porn creates a desire for violence (if you read the article, it actually only states that people who are predisposed to already enjoy looking at violent porn tend to seek it out - shocker), O' Toole accepts on one hand that kink gives people a safe space to enjoy desires that are not acceptable to release in everyday life, but then demands that we never forget that a racist, sexist, transphobic, ableist society is still sitting in the kink club with us. Does she really think that any one, apart from those in the most privileged social groups, can ever forget that fact? So why is she asking that we continue to beat ourselves over the head with guilt about the fact our BDSM practices may resemble sexist, racist, transphobic or ableist violence (I remember reading about a disabled man who liked to be called 'cripple' and dragged out of his chair and abused during kink scenes - his play may shock me and many people, but that itself is not reason enough for me to tell him he should not be doing it). What reason is there, apart from the fact that this one horrible murder has clearly made O' Toole feel guilty about her own sexual practices, to demand that we start "conscientiously examining a) the social conditions that have led to our fetishisation of female pain and submission, and b) the ways in which our sexual practices strengthen and reinforce those social conditions?" These very statements imply to me that despite claiming to be a BDSM practitioner, O'Toole has not thought very long or hard about kink or feminism. She assumes there must be a social basis for the desires of any woman who enjoys pain or submission, yet that assumption pretty much at one fell swoop disregards all female sexual agency, the existence of female switches and male submissives, and women who feel their submissive desires exist in spite of, not because of, their upbringing (quote Mollena Williams: "I was taught that being strong was the first thing you had to be, especially ... as a black woman. To be submissive, to be obedient, was NOT acceptable.")  There is also, of course, the underlying assumption that O' Toole's own viewpoint is objective and neutral, rather than coloured, as everyone's must be, by their own experiences and background. As Margaret Hunt writes, in a statement that could be applied to every radical feminist condemnation of women's sexual practices, "The argument that there is no free choice in the world is never all-inclusive. It always admits the existence of a small group which is morally superior to the corrupt mass." And that is where the logic fail happens. If O' Toole believes we are all so easily brainwashed, then how come she has magically managed to avoid the same fate as the rest of us? What exactly is it about her that makes her qualified to say that women's choice to participate in BDSM is somehow linked to, possibly even partially responsible for, one terrible murder? 

If we really want to look at things that have left women likely to be murdered by partners, we could look at: cuts to domestic violence services, slow legal machinery that mean getting injunctions and getting a violent partner removed from the family home could take days or even weeks (now thankfully much improved), victim-blaming narratives ("Why didn't she leave?" "She must have provoked him") and a culture of silence around domestic violence - the very term implies a "private matter" or "just a domestic," a language that seriously needs to change. BDSM did not kill Elaine O' Hara, and I take massive offence at O' Toole's last statement, that O' Hara's "submissive desires left her vulnerable to male aggression in the most tragic way possible." The only thing Elaine O'Hara's submissive desires left her open to, it would seem, was having her sexual preferences blamed for her death rather than her murdering partner. I'll say it again - if you wouldn't blame a short skirt for rape, then don't blame BDSM for a murder. BLAME THE MURDERER. O' Toole is criticising BDSM for somehow making it easier for abuse to go undetected - even though plenty of abuse goes undetected, excused or apologised for in the vanilla world - yet she is playing by the same rulebook of rape apologists by implying that Elaine O'Hara "left herself open" to getting murdered just because she was a submissive.

This is pretty disgusting. It's also ignorant - it disregards the many lengths submissives and masochists go to to protect themselves, precautions that many vanilla people don't bother to take when meeting someone for a date (arranging a 'check-in' call with a friend, letting someone know the name, online username, address of the person you're meeting), it assumes that "submissive as part of kink" = "weak in everyday life" (and anyone making that assumption will get a big, rude shock when they meet some actual subs) and, as I've pointed out above, it presumes that there are things women can and should be doing to protect themselves from male violence. But what could Elaine O' Hara have done? Not been married to this man? Right, well, perhaps it's marriage we should be protesting against, not BDSM. But then she might still have met this man, or dated him, or worked with him, or just walked past him one night in the street. And he still might have violently murdered her. So the best she could do is move to a remote island with no men on, right? Funnily enough, no one ever suggests that. Because that would be silly, that would be extreme. But saying that enjoying a spanking from your partner means you contributed to your own murder? That's fine to say. Even from someone who claims to be feminist, who claims to be pro-kink.

So, no, I'm not going to accept that I am obliged to examine my sexual practices and consider how they contribute to a society that blames rape and murder victims for their own violations, because I think the only thing which contributes to such a society is the belief that it's always down to women to change, behave differently and re-wire ourselves, because that belief is predicated on the mistaken idea that there's anything we can do to avoid violation, and that belief in turn - however well-meant - comes from a solid landscape of victim-blaming. So I let (read: asked) a guy pull my hair, put his hand round my throat, slam me against a wall - so the fuck what? Does it make feminists like O'Toole feel better if they know that this took place with my full consent and enthusiastic desire, while in my own home, wearing clothes of my own choice, that the wall I got slammed against belongs to me, and I paid for it with my own money, that the guy and I laughed and chatted and drank Um Bongo before and after it took place? Does it help if I add that I've never experienced any coercive sexual behaviour from any of the men I've practised BDSM with, whereas I know plenty of women who've experienced the same in vanilla relationships? Do you know, I don't care if it does - because I shouldn't be obliged to state these things just to make my preferences sound 'acceptable' to the feminist anti-kink police. Because what I do in my sex life, however unpalatable or odd it may seem to others, is not hurting anyone, and is bringing me freedom and pleasure. Fuck anyone who tries to shame me for that by using a woman's horrific death as their excuse.

***To read more essays on BDSM, feminism and pop culture, check out my new book "Thinking Kink," which is now out in the US and the UK.***

Thinking Kink: The Book! Coming Soon

Update 1/5/15: US readers can NOW BUY "Thinking Kink..." here or here! UK readers can reserve their copy here.

I'm thrilled to be able to announce that I will be publishing my next book with McFarland Publishers in 2015. The title has been confirmed as "Thinking Kink: The Collision of BDSM, Feminism and Popular Culture" and the book is based on the "Thinking Kink" blog series that I wrote for Bitch magazine back in 2012.

While it will refer to the blog series and the discussions it spawned, the book is all new material and aims to explore the issues raised by the intersection of kink, popular culture and feminism: three concepts which collided heavily when certain cultural commentators interpreted the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey as evidence that feminism had somehow failed.

Looking at examples of popular culture ranging from episodes of "Friends" to The Story of O, from the lyrics of Alice Cooper to the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and from "The Trailer Park Boys" to "Orange is The New Black", the book  takes on the different tropes that kink is often reduced to, how these are represented in books, TV shows, music and the film industry, and the resulting issues raised for feminists.

Chapter list (provisionally titled):

• Subversive or Complicit? The Female Dominant 
• Brave or Pathetic? Masculinity’s Troubled Relationship with the Male Submissive
• Who’s Vanilla, Who’s Edgy and Why It Matters: The Mainstreaming of Kink 
• Billionaires, Bullies and Lost Boys: The Male Dominant 
• Safe Words: BDSM and the Concept of Consent 
• A Heavy Load to Bear: Feminism and the Submissive Female 
• Dykes, Daddies and Drag Queens: How BDSM and LGBT people are Portrayed 
• Consumerism, Switches and Abuse: Different Faces of BDSM
• Blinding Whiteness? Race and BDSM

I will publicise the release date as soon as I have it, and am looking forward to sharing my latest work with you!

Navigating Kink While Feminist: My Presentation from PCA/ACA 2014

I've just spent a wonderful week in Chicago at the American Popular Culture Association's 44th Annual conference. There I was lucky enough to present in a BDSM/Fetish Studies Panel, where I talked about my adventures in kink, feminism and pop culture, three topics I researched in depth when writing my 2012 'Thinking Kink' blog series for Bitch magazine.

My presentation was received very well and I had some fantastic fellow presenters. I also had the honour of seeing my paper being the first to sell out on the 'Scholar Exchange' table, and as a result I promised I would upload my presentation for those who missed out.

 

Here is the text of my speech:

 

And here are the accompanying Powerpoint slides:
 

Feel free to share, but please ensure the work is properly attributed, please do not remove the copyright notice, and do not alter it in any way .

Happy reading and thank you to everyone who took an interest in my work!

Thinking Kink: Is Britney's 'Work Bitch' Video Just More 'Kink-Jacking'?

When I wrote the ‘Thinking Kink’ blog series for Bitch Magazine back in summer 2012, I found myself talking a lot about how "'vanilla' entertainers hijack BDSM imagery to make a quick buck”. Whether it was 30 Seconds to Mars’s Hurricane video implying that there's so much vanilla sex in music videos that only kink can make a video 'edgy' now, or Rihanna’s much-mentioned ‘S & M’ video, it was clear that one thing myself and some amongst the kink community are mighty tired of is a phenomenon I like to call ‘kink-jacking’. As Cliff Pervocracy put it, “The process of discovering you’re kinky…is long and difficult. I hate to see a vanilla entertainer reduce that to some black vinyl and dog chains”.

At first glance, I do feel that’s exactly what Britney Spears is doing in her latest video, ‘Work Bitch’. Slim, long-haired cisgendered women in PVC leotards, eye masks and spike heels? Check. Plenty of girl-on-girl dominating so that no man has to feel threatened and can instead just enjoy the faux-lesbian spectacle put on solely for him? Check. The commercialisation of kink in the form of the inexplicable Pill-speaker bit gag? Check. (Oh, and seriously, what the F is with the inexplicable fake British accent?!)

However, I’m aware of the need to not enact the same kind of presumptuous condemnation that people foisted upon Rihanna for daring to toy with imagery of violent sexual practices when she herself had been a victim of domestic abuse, or perpetuate the patronising idea that women in music videos have no control of their image. Rather than reading the imperative ‘You better get to work, bitch’ as internalised misogyny, we could read it as being declared in the same camp, arch style as RuPaul said it in her ‘Supermodel’ video. Rather than assume that the women of color Britney leads on leashes in her video are unwitting victims of dubious racial tropes, we could remind ourselves that Ciara chose to replicate this image herself in the ‘Love Sex Magic’ video.  While assuming that Britney herself must be nothing more than a marketing man’s plaything, we often forget that it was she who had the idea for the schoolgirl outfit in her very first music video, and therefore may have had more input into her heavily sexualised image than we care to remember.

That said, it remains depressing that the dominant model of sexiness (premised around being slim, white, long-haired, scantily-clad and subject to the male gaze), is still the only thing artists or their teams can think of to resort to when they need to be ‘edgy’. When the most rebellious thing a female artist can do is to remain fully clothed (watch Lorde’s 'Royals' video and try to name another current pop video where a fully clothed woman sings alongside shots of scantily clad men – I guarantee you’ll struggle), you do wonder why the need to ‘express oneself’ always comes down to the need to writhe, pant and pout. Britney’s done so much of the latter in her videos that it stands to reason she would eventually run out of tricks and need to do something new – enter the whips and chains. Yet the way it’s framed doesn’t feel edgy or subversive, it actually feels entirely safe. No men are depicted as submissive in the video, so male dominance isn’t challenged in any way. Instead, a privileged white woman spanks and disciplines her presumably less well-paid dancers.

Now, we might be equally unhappy were Britney portrayed as the submissive in the video,  and maybe that's because we're already tired of the perpetually submissive act from a woman who sang 'I Was Born To Make You Happy'. And maybe that's unfair, because feminism's all about choice, right? - even if that choice is to wear little, say even less and do whatever's going to sell records. But really, why is it so much to ask to see a slightly more nuanced depiction of kink, such as that seen in Madonna’s Human Nature video, where she constantly switches between dominant and submissive roles within a group of men and women. As BDSM educator and feminist porn director Tristan Taormino puts it - "Images of dominance and submission are not anti-feminist in and of themselves, but one of the reasons feminists critique them is because consent is not always explicit and because of the repetition of men dominating women, making it the main type of power exchange we see in [the] mainstream. . ." In a world where female power still feels so precarious, the repeated glorifying of female submission gets very tiresome very quickly, even to those - such as this very author - who enjoy and practice it.

As for the Pill speaker bit-gag, well. The audacious product placement aside, kinksters who get off on being human furniture or treating others as such, might find that particular idea very hot – being turned into a human stereo is not a particularly outrageous idea for many whose kinks include being treated as an object. But the commercialisation of kink does just seem to be another way of wresting it away from those for whom this is a major lifestyle choice - one which has often cost them a great deal to follow - and putting it in the hands of marketing men. Being full-on kinky can be bloody expensive - have you seen the price of a latex outfit, a spanking bench or a fucking machine?! And those who have a vested interest in making us feel that our lifestyles are not sufficiently shiny or sexy will do all they can to try and make us buy more things, as anyone who has walked into Ann Summers and see their 'Shades of Grey' bondage range can attest to. To be blunt, if you really want to gag someone, you can do it without spending a penny (why not use their own underwear?!), and was this bit gag included to actually advance knowledge of kink, or just to objectify the woman wearing it and do some free advertising at the same time? I think you can guess.

Ultimately, I guess Britney is doing what she can within the very narrow parameters she has been provided, and fair play to her. I'm sure she and her dancers peeled off all the PVC with relief after a hot day writhing around in the desert, and probably went home and put their tracksuit bottoms on, kinky sex being the last thing on their minds. Meanwhile, kinky people all over the world played happily in private or semi-public, displaying body shapes, races and gender identities from all across the spectrum, wearing outfits ranging from jeans and trainers to steel-boned corsets to nothing but clingfilm, and experimenting with power dynamics crossing every boundary imaginable. And that's how you can tell when kink-jacking, rather than a genuine and considered tribute to BDSM, is taking place - it's when none of that beautiful variety is represented.

Rapey lyrics, Thicke and the dangers of oversimplifying

So, I hate pretty much everything about Robin Thicke's song and video, Blurred Lines. What feminist doesn't, right? I don't need to go into everything that's creepy, douchebaggy and borderline rapey about the song and video, because plenty of writers have already helpfully outlined it for me. I don't even need to bother satirising its tired, predictable retro-sexism and insidious endorsement of rape myths, because plenty of humourists have already created their own parody videos, and freakin' hilarious they are too. However, when I read this article, which draws links between the song lyrics and the words of actual rapists, I began to wonder if the Thicke-bashing has gotten a little out of hand.

 

Not that the twatty-sunglassed one doesn't deserve every term of abuse in the book every time he purrs 'I know you want it/But you're a good girl' and endorses the concept of 'blurred lines' that every vile git who claims women all mean 'yes' when they say 'no' uses to justify their misogynistic behaviour. But, I get a little uncomfortable when I read the following - "women, according to Blurred Lines, want to be treated badly.

Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you.
He don’t smack your ass and pull your hair like that.

In this misogynistic fantasy, a woman doesn’t want a “square” who’ll treat her like a human being and with respect. She would rather be degraded and abused for a man’s gratification and amusement."

Yes, I bridle at the notion that it's 'square' not to want to have rough sex - I've written extensively about how being 'vanilla' should not be a source of shame, mockery or used as evidence that you are somehow less sexually 'cool' than people who like it ker-razy in the bedroom. Shaming men who don't want to play rough with their female partners definitely seems to be part of a toxic cult of masculinity that defines manhood only in relation to violence. However, I object to the notion that a guy smacking a woman's backside and pulling her hair equals 'degradation and abuse'. I object to the notion that this could only be done 'for a man's gratification and amusement'. I object to the assumption that this is necessarily non-consensual. I object, overall, to the idea that rough sex is something that is degrading, only ever initiated by men, and only ever forced, non-consensually on female 'victims'. (And yes, I've written about that).

Now, I'd rather spend eternity chewing on broken glass than ever consider sex with a douchebag in Ray-bans who comes on to me by saying 'You're an animal, baby it's in your nature', but that doesn't mean that every single word that said douchebag sings must necessarily be sick, wrong and misogynistic. I also feel that to equate Thicke's lyrics with words that rape victims actually had to hear during their assault (even if some victims were happy to collaborate in this article) is to trivialise their ordeal somewhat. It's also just a bit meaningless. If I say 'I know you want it' next time I temptingly offer a spoonful of ice cream to a friend seated next to me at a restaurant table, am I also guilty of perpetuating rape culture? If one of my roller derby teammates calls me a 'good girl' when I finally get a skating move right after the 74th attempt, is that simply bolstering the 'Madonna/whore' divide? I'm being facetious of course, and I know that what happens in life and what happens in sex can't necessarily be conflated (I know also, of course, that rape is not 'sex'). But Thicke's video isn't sex, either. It's media. Dumbass, lowest-common-denominator media at that. It's three men and three scantily-clad women twatting around in a studio. And whatever terrible things we feel it may reflect or encourage in our society, it's not the worst, or the only perpetrator.

Just off the top of my head, I can straight away think of probably ten different lyrics from popular songs that contain potentially shitty attitudes to women. How's about "Turn around bitch, I got a use for you" from Guns n' Roses It's So Easy? Or the same band's Used to Love Her, subtitled But I Had to Kill Her? We could argue about whether the fact the latter song was apparently written not about a woman, but Axl Rose's pet dog, negates the fact it sounds like an endorsement for murdering your spouse, for as long as we can argue about whether the 'ass-smacking' in Thicke's lyrics is consensual or forced, and I guess we might not get very far. But if, like the author of the Sociological Images article seems to be saying, we're not going to give artists the benefit of the doubt, then I guess I'd better start deleting all my G n' R MP3s. By this logic, I guess we'd better ban Britney Spears' I Was Born To Make You Happy too, not just because it's a godawful song, but because of the female subservience that its title and lyrics are advocating. We should probably also go after Alice Cooper's big-haired, chains n' whips-themed 80s classic, Poison, for the lines "I wanna hurt you just to hear you screaming my name". And maybe we should also take to task Wham's Edge of Heaven for the moment where young George Michael trills, "I would strap you up, but don't worry baby - you know I wouldn't hurt you unless you wanted me to" although at least the violence there is premised on consent and desire.

Which makes me think, where do we draw the lines (and not fuckin' blurred lines, either)? If we're going to cite any song with remotely rapey lyrics as intricately bound up with the traumas of real live women who have been assaulted, it's going to be a very long and sickening journey. Jason DeRulo made the charts in 2010 with a song that contained the lyrics "You'll be screaming 'no'''. Not long after, Dizzee Rascal rapped "I'm not forceful but I'm still hardcore/You're gonna give me everything I ask for". And if we assume that the line "I'm gonna give you something to tear your ass in two" must necessarily refer to 'violent, non-consensual sodomy', then we're gonna have to retrospectively condemn pretty little Pharrell Williams for promising to 'tear your ass up', 10 years ago in his duet with Jay-Z 'Frontin'. Personally, I think this assumption says more about the author's determination to wring every last drop of rapey-ness out of Blurred Lines than it does the actual song. Taken in the context of all the other rapey lyrics, I can see why one would assign this meaning to that particular line, but I don't think the lyric refers to anal rape any more than I think the line 'Burn this woman down' in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest means that McMurphy is actually encouraging Billy Bibbit to set fire to his sexual partner.

 

It sometimes feels like feminists are required to take one of two very simplistic sides when it comes to sexist media - either condemning it utterly, as the SI article does, or jumping to its defence and claming that said media can somehow be twisted to be 'empowering', however much evidence there is to the contrary. I don't want to do either. I want to encourage people to see the utter pile of bollocks that is Robin Thicke, his songs and his videos, in a wider context. I don't think it's helpful or wise to employ the shock tactics of placing rape victims' real-life trauma alongside silly lyrics from a shitty song that is one shitty song amongst millions that will be infecting the airwaves this week. I also don't think it's helpful to anyone, male or female, who enjoys consensual BDSM and is tired of what they enjoy being immediately labelled abuse.

 

Pop culture is powerful, insidious and can influence us all in ways we may never be fully aware of. But like a short skirt or a flirtatious smile, it doesn't cause rape, and neither does a stupid hashtag or a douchebag in sunglasses.

Latest Writing By Me

I've had the extreme pleasure of being at Telegraph Books this week, and here's what I've written for them so far:

A piece on Hilary Mantel's controversial words about Kate Middleton, in which I suggest that the Daily Mail do a little more close reading and a little less hypocritical hand-wringing.

And a piece bemoaning the lack of originality in the current publishing world, as another piece of BDSM-themed Twilight fan-fiction lands a major publishing contract.

It's been an incredible week, I hope to be back with more soon!

Where Do I Stand? The Feminist Pinball...

I remember 7 years ago, when I was at the tender, angry and politicised age of 21, my uncle labelling me the 'political pinball'. "Some of what you come out with is typical of a left-wing, dope smoking hippy," he said, "And some of your other statements wouldn't sound out of place 'in der bunker'". I didn't mind that too much. While I would call myself primarily left-wing, I do think the ability to consider other viewpoints shows I don't just blindly accept whatever the 'side' I'm supposed to be on espouses. And I'd wager that most of us consider ourselves similarly diverse.

I feel similar in regards to my feminism. There are issues on which I seem to be aligned with 'hardline' feminists often termed 'radfems'. Then there are issues on which my views are much closer to those of 'sex positive' feminists. Fortunately, I do think there are many grounds on which we feminists are broadly united. Access to safe, legal abortion and contraception without apology seems to be an aim we can all agree on. Freedom from violence, vast improvements in the way sexual violence is dealt with, and the end to a culture which apologises and covers up for rape and sexual abuse seems to be another. Then there's closing the gender pay gap, improving the visibility of women in public life, and getting women into fields in which they're vastly underrepresented. We may all have different ideas about how to do it, but I think we can say that feminists generally agree those aims are Worth Pursuing.

Then we get onto sex, and all hell breaks loose. Porn, stripping, prostitution, BDSM...these are the issues that seem to divide feminists most violently, and between which there seems so little middle ground. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have trouble getting my head around them too. I definitely would be a hypocrite to condemn all pornography, and it's not something I'm interested in doing. I do believe that a critical approach to the fact porn seems to be getting nastier, more inhumane and more widespread is needed. I'm definitely not happy to stand aside and do nothing about a world where 11 year-olds are learning what 'ass-to-mouth' is. But I don't think knee-jerk responses are the answer, and I do think that where feminists advocate censorship, they risk aligning themselves with the anti-woman right wing (as Catharine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin ended up doing in the 80s). Also, when we start censoring sexual matter, the first to suffer are often the most marginalised groups whose sexuality is deemed 'suspect' (i.e. LGBT people) - after all, why is Diva magazine often on the top shelf in WHSmith when its cover usually depicts a fully clothed woman?

So how can I reconcile the fact that I've viewed pornography that might make the average Sun reader's eyes pop out, and yet still support the No More Page 3 campaign? One answer is that while I don't support censorship, I do support the idea of a time and a place for porn, and I don't think it's unreasonable to state that a newspaper isn't it. I don't think defending the constant use of women's bodies as window dressing to the whole of existence is defending the right of women to be sexual - it's just defending the right of the media to make money, which it will do one way or the other. As I wrote back in 2008, "how would men feel if every time they went to fill up the car, they were confronted with images of muscular, sleek, chiselled men with full heads of hair, stunning skin, powerful bodies as if carved from oak, and of course, ridiculously huge, erect penises peeking out from under the tiny loincloth which is of course, all they are wearing? Pretty shit, I think we can unanimously agree. Yet women are expected to titter, roll their eyes and pretend they don't feel offended, attacked and obnoxiously shown up by the colonising of the female body to sell items that are going to roll off the shelves regardless of whether you use a 17 year old girl or a 70 year old piece of cheese to advertise them."

I'm also tired of being told that the NMP3 campaign is misguided or a waste of feminism's energy. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, "as for the ‘Oh, lads’ mags/women’s magazines/The Daily Mail/Angler’s Weekly are just as bad, why aren’t you campaigning against THEM too?’ argument, this is a classic attempt to try to heap collective responsibility for changing all of society's sexist failings onto feminists’ heads, whilst abrogating everyone else of any responsibility to improve their behaviour. But getting rid of Page 3 would send out a huge message. It would be a game-changer, an altering of the media landscape, the destruction of a sexist institution in place since the 70s. No, it would not immediately destroy all other media sexism. But it might just make other producers of sexist media content stop and wonder how much longer they can get away with objectifying women when a large swathe of the British public has now proudly declared ‘I’m not buying that shit any more’." 

Nicola Carty wrote an interesting piece opposing the No More Page 3 campaign and although I still mostly disagree with her reasons for being against it, I can see her point of view when she says "Working for the only the rights of women who choose not to be especially revealing about their bodies  doesn’t sound like feminism to me... It sounds like women, once again, are being told that they need to behave in a certain way if they want to be treated with respect." It's a provoking thought to this particular feminist, who has read on radfem blogs that my sexual preferences make me a 'dupe of the patriarchy', that by liking BDSM I'm "reinforcing the legitimacy of power imbalances outside the bedroom” and hence damaging the feminist cause. My instinct would be to defend my actions because they are freely chosen, personal and pleasurable - but then Page 3 models would presumably say the same. I might think my choices are 'superior' because I'm not paid for my sexual actions, but feminist sex workers would strongly disagree. I don't agree that there's one 'right way' to have sex whereby monogamous, hetero 'loving' sex is seen as superior to all other kinds, and I don't think it's helpful for feminism to advance that ideology, or confuse it with the NMP3 campaign. Regardless, I have definite ideological problems with how stripping, lap dancing and prostitution are accepted as 'inevitable' responses to 'uncontrollable' male sexuality. The assumption of male entitlement to the female body is what, as a feminist, I find most galling about these industries. Unfortunately that kinda leaves me stuck between a sex positive rock and a hardline feminist hard place.

I do consider myself able to move beyond the simplistic notion that all sex workers are exploited and miserable, because that's as patronising as assuming that I only participate in BDSM because evil men 'force' me to. However, when it comes to the crunch I remain deeply uncomfortable with the notion that a man can buy entry to a woman's vagina, anus or mouth, and find it difficult to defend sex work beyond believing that it should at least be made safer for women. Perhaps jealousy or insecurity is at the root of this - are women worried that if all men can buy sex, they will never have to bother being nice to a woman again, and our society will just descend into the misogynistic state that feminists are trying to hold back the tide against? And is this a valid concern, or simply an excuse for, as one sex worker put it, 'whorephobia'?

I want to admit to my own lack of knowledge and experience in the areas and do something about it. I have never met any sex workers, and I think that'd be a start - because what experience do most of us on this issue have beyond having read the writing of Dr Brooke Magnanti or terrible stories of trafficking and exploitation? So, this is something I'm planning to research more deeply by talking to feminists on all sides of the debate, and will hopefully be back with a piece looking at whether it's possibly to move beyond the divisive, two-sided feminist debate on prostitution. 

In the meantime I'll continue skating down the middle, somewhere between the radfems and the sex pozzies, and accept that every feminist is going to be as unique as a snowflake, but live in hope that one day we might come together to form a patriarchy-smashing snowball.