Opinions On BDSM Culture

// March 5th, 2009 // BDSM Articles

The EPE-community is a very deversified community with many different, and quite often very outspoken, opinions. Below are several different views on wether or not there is or should be an EPE culture, taken from various Internet-debates on the subject. The quotes and opinions have not been edited to preserve their authenticity and do not necessarilly represent our personal viewpoints.

• I do not think that it is worthwhile getting hung up on “scientific” definitions of culture/subculture/community. There are some serious methodological problems with all of these, particularly as applied to social goupings withing larger social groups. I would instead apply simpler tests, such as: do the members use a special vocabulary and/or communicate in special ways; do the members socialize together separately from the larger society; is the “group” in part defined by forms of ostracism from the larger social group; to what extent do the members’ attitudes and beliefs operate their life, much of the time or just occasionally; do the members view themselves as a separate group from the larger society? If the answers to these are “yes” then I would say that basically the BDSM “community” is a separate culture/subculture/community. I will say that I think it fairly clear that those who practice a 7/24 lifestyle would more clearly fit these criteria than those who are only cyber.

• I think that people who go to scene clubs have a whole different set of expectations from a couple who does some bondage and owns a flogger or two. As you pointed out, gay male submissives might have very different expectations from straight female submissives. There are at least three sets of “scene ettiquette” that I can think of: Full Gorean, non-gorean but gorean-like, and the basic rules for dungeon behavior (and some people ignore them all and act like just-plain-folks). Submissive women in committed relationships who are also feminists have different expectations from those who buy into “The man wears the pants around the house” socioeconomic structures. And so on.Most heavy public players, and books by heavy public players, should tell you how to behave at a public play session. The basic rules are that those people not actively playing should shrink into the woodwork, and the dungeon master is god. Gor is based on a series of 25 books by John Norman set on a planet of that name. There’s a warrior code for the men, and almost all women are presumed to be slaves. All slaves address all free men as “master”; slaves refer to themselves in the third person as “this girl” and generally keep announcing how insignificant they are; and so on. This is popular in cyberspace, where words are the only form of D&S available. What I meant by “gorean-like” was the idea that all submissive women owe deference to all dominant men, including in the form of titles (“Sir”, etc.), capitalization of written names and pronouns (capitalized for doms, lower-case for submissives) and so on. Except for the writing part, it can and often is acted out in real-life too. Certain proponents of these rules assert that they are the “right”, “proper”, “true”, or “appropriate” way to behave. Their history is sometimes traced either to a gay “leathermen” culture of 15-50 years ago, or to a supposedly age-old tradition of (usually secret) European “houses” that has a lot in common with modern vampire fiction.
• To the culture thread, though I do not find sufficient points of similarity to fully acknowledge a membership in a perceived ‘culture’ of BDSMr’s….I will/would like to suggest a development of the concept ‘interest group’. This ‘interest group’ has sufficient special interests to warrant the setting aside of political, social and privacy differences and focusing on the similarities for the promotion of the common good. As with any (so called) sexual subculture/special interest group, the suspension of idealogical differences and concentration on the perceived similarities allows a greater number of divergent persons to join efforts towards a common goal. The gay community is a good example of this, though that unity was decidedly hard won. Having been a card-carrying activist in the 70′s, the dividing line even between the gay male and lesbian population was a very broad one until AIDS made ‘the community’ one entity.Similarly, though I have no desire nor intent to march on Washington or wear declarative little t-shirts (I do have one that says “I’m into S & M” small print….shopping and men), I do have a hearty interest in getting and keeping the varietal governments the hell out of my bedroom and keeping them out. Notwithstanding, I also have a healthy interest in getting them out of my pocketbook too, though the scheme to deprive us of our financial freedom appears to be a much deeper conspiracy. Uniting for the chievement of a common goal may well imply some sort of ‘lobbyist’ focus, but here in the U.S., such may well be required to counteract those right wing religionists that are doing just that, lobbying to legislate our morality/sexual rights.

  The education and socialization of acceptance of sexual and lifestyle orientations can benefit everyone (even the general population – oral sex anyone?) and the commitment amongst the BDSM ‘community/culture/special interests’ to further this effort can have beneficial impact on those of us at the perceived ‘extreme’ of the sexual spectrum.

• There is another take on the word “culture” from the organisation theory arena, whereby culture is defined as the set of: values, myths, norms, conventions, beliefs, ideals, taboos, etc… that are common to a group of people. In that sense I think we are a culture, however diverse and however many subcultures there are within the set.
• I think we all need to be activists, in the way that is appropriate for each of us. This could be from sharing about EPE when the appropriate occasion arises, with one or more people/friends, etc., to an all-out public awareness campaign. I can see problems with a campaign though. The first being putting it together. We are so diverse that, IMO (still not humble after all these years), we could disagree forever on what should be presented and how. Let alone getting the non-EPE public to accept us as diverse.
• First let us define terms. CULTURE according to Random Houses American College Dictionary, is defined (when one leaves out the agricultural, medical, and scientific meanings) as .. A particular state of or stage of civilization, as in the case of certain nation or period: Greek culture .. and .. The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from generation to generation. So the answer is NO, we are not a culture.
• 1. SHOULD there be…Any time someone “shoulds” me my initial response is “fuck you” … like I “should” marry a jewess and not a gentile to prevent assimilation from finishing the job Hitler started, or iI”should” serve in Vietnam cause my country right or wrong … so my age and generation are showing here…but seriously, I think that people have an obligation to be true to their personal and individual callings…and thats about it. Conservative republican blacks like Justice Clarence Thomas have just as much right to distance themselves from the liberal dominated black movement in this country as Jesse Jackson does to lead it. Gays who want to stay in the closet don’t owe ANYONE an explanation … and it is an outrage for others to “out” them by rationalizing that they OWE the gay community their support (the Jodie Foster business comes quickly to mind…now Kevin Spacey is apparently a target too).

  2. IS there….

  Well, it might be more accurate to say that there is a BDSM SUBculture … in fact one of the most interesting sociological phenomena of the proliferation of the info age, and MOST especially the web has been just that … to make people who share common interests, whether it be a rare childhood disease, bdsm or cooking with elephant shit, to get together, exchange ideas, become friends and even get married…in other words, to carve out a subculture from the larger culture we live in.

  So yes, of course there IS some kind of (sub)culture here…people who hang here (in the virtual or real BDSM space) share common language, ideas, beliefs, etc. that are not shared by the larger culture. Generally, the larger culture looks at us with the same anthropolocal wonder (or disgust?) as they would the bushmen of Africa.

  Paradoxically as the world shrinks into a global village it is simultaneously more balkanized (to the chagrin of politicians both republican and democrat in the USA at least) … so that it becomes increasingly difficult to identify constituencies and count on votes. An article in US News about 2 years ago posited that there are now 9 basic sociological groupings in the USA where there used to be two. The last election was decided, at least in part, by the so called soccer moms…a group of suburban woman who typically identify with the republicans … but their OTHER subcultural leanings towards moderate feminism made them reject the republicans because of the anti-abortion message in the republican platform.

  Even subcultures have subcultures … for example, in the republican world there is tremendous tension between the social conservatives who want a bible centered platform, and the yuppie conservatives who reject the concept of legislated private morality, but want a fiscally conservative platform…in the feminist world there has been (at least in the past) great divides over the issue of power exchange … thus the emergence of the very vocal dyke leather subculture…folks like Pat Califa who pushed back hard against some of the puritanical and repressive messages being sent out by certain feminist leaders … Califa (and others) said, essentially, fuck you, I’ll whip anyone I want to and I’m STILL a feminist. That is not a nasty patristic thing to do … it’s my personal kink … and leave it alone.

• If we are to try to segment BDSMers, I don’t think that sexual orientation is where I’d start. Two dimensions that seem much more closely related to the purposes:A. How intensely do you like to play at S&M?

  If it’s just bondage, teasing, and light spankings, I don’t think you have much of a discrimination problem now. Throw in some unarguably SSC floggings and a lot of leather, and you may be viewed about like gays — most folks will agree that you’re probably harmless, but they get a little queasy, and wouldn’t want you as their kids’ third-grade teacher.If you’re into heavy edge play, you’ve got a serious discriminatory problem — it’s hard to write laws that guard against abusers without also prohibiting some sorts of edge play, and not too many vanilla folks see that as a problem.[Of course, YLCSMV -- Your Local Community's Standards May Vary]

  B. How intense is the D&S element of your everyday life?

  If your BDSM is purely confined to the bedroom, you probably have one set of views. If the D&S is about as intense as the prototypical 1950s marriage, you have another set of views and issues. If the inside of your house has a hypergate to Planet Gor, but the outside is in Peoria, you may have severe problems explaining yourself to your neighbors.

  I don’t think any particular sexual orientation, including male-dom-female-submissive, is anything CLOSE to uniform along either of these two dimensions. A possible exception may be female-domme-male-submissive, but I’d bet that’s only the case in the subset that relies on by-the-hour pro-domme arrangements.

• Personally I don’t buy the notion that there was no recognition of the maledom/female submissive community until Powererotics and other web sites came along. On the contrary, I’ve been involved with groups for years that, even though they claimed to be pansexual, were heavily maledom/female submissive oriented. This is, if anything, increasingly true as online services like Prodigy and AOL have de-mystified BDSM. During the nineties, folks who either never dreamt they could find a partner for their secret kinky desires, or even folks who never particularly had such desires have come pouring into the scene. And most of them are traditional folks brought up in traditional sex roles — i.e., men who like dominance and women who like submission.Personally, I hope all the straights who are suddenly “into leather” will not focus exclusively on issues that concern male dominants and female submissives. Indeed, one of the things I’ve always admired most about the leather scene is that despite all the personal and political conflicts that tend to arise, most folks (warning: generalization alert) seem to be more open-minded and tolerant than a similar cross-section vanilla folks who’ve never had their most fundamental ideas about sexuality challenged. It gives me a real sense of joy and pride to go into an SM club and see dominants and submissives, tops and bottoms, gay and straight, male and female and transexuals, black and white, religious and agnostic, even liberal and conversative all united by their passion for erotic power exchange.

  Sure, I can relate most easily to the other heterosexuals who are, like my master and me, are involved in male dominant/female submissive relationships. But I still feel a powerful bond with all those other folks, and I would never want to be a part of a community that deliberately marginalized that rich sense of diversity that is the historical legacy of the leather community.

• Very few people are born into BDSM; so it’s not a culture in the sense that Japanese or French or Quebecois or Southern US culture is a culture. Only house-bound TPEers and a very few others live their lives in BDSM, surrounded only by other BDSMers. That disqualifies it from another valid definition of “culture”.I don’t dispute that there are valid definitions of culture which would put most people on this list in that BDSM group. But I’m less clear on the benefit of making that point to the outside world. It may be that, to use the gay analogy again, discrimination against gays went down in the mainstream world AFTER it was understood that there were reasonably healthy and large true gay communities. But I don’t totally see the cause and effect. And, unless focusing people’s attention on the gay “community” or “culture” indeed was a cause of the greater tolerance, I don’t see what the benefit of making the community/culture claim is?
• There are countless good reasons to do all that we can to see that the BDSM culture gains wider acceptance by the broader culture around it. Some of us are less susceptible to external prejudices and the legal/financial ramifications of taking our lifestyles public — and it is to that extent that those of us who may should seriously consider being more visible to “outsiders.”Where I get a little lost in terms and I hope I am not just being dense, is in what way(s) has the gay community made being gay a lifestyle with less emphasis on the sexual aspects of its culture? I mean, I understand that there is more to a gay relationship than sex; is it being suggested that somehow people at large do not understand that members of the BDSM community have similarly non-sexual aspects to their relationships? To further clarify, I am sure that people still think that gays engage in the less fully accepted sexual practices they always did (i.e. anal, oral, same gender sex). By using certain key euphemisms, does anyone really think we are gonna get the “outsiders” to think we are not engaging in whipping, flogging, dominating, submitting, etc?

  I recently suggested that certain terms in current use among us have exactly the meanings one would assume they have according to a common English dictionary. To attempt to gain greater mainstream understanding by changing our terminology seems kind of small thinking to me — it is a mere symptom of the greater misunderstanding we are up against. We need to consider how to get the message of who we are out by gaining greater presence in the mainstream culture — not just making it sound nice. In fact, I can’t think of any way in which the gay community changed their terminology to suit “outsiders,” but I would be happy to be informed of the things of which I may be ignorant.

  What I see as key to the success of the gay community, and therefore useful to us, is their ability to focus less on the dissimilarities with mainstream culture, and more on what is held in common with the culture at large. To be blunt, they focused less on assfucking and more on marriage/employment rights, less on AIDS as gay problem and more as a human problem, etc. The message to stress, in my view, is: We are like y’all in all the ways that matter to y’all, and different in the ways that matter only to us. That is what the gay community has managed to achieve, by and large, IMHO.

• While it doesn’t offend me to be called a part of this “community”, it certainly is not how I define myself. Do you think that I (or others) have some sort of duty to this community? And what would it be? I certainly don’t view those outside the BDSM community as an enemy. Nor do I have a large stake in having the non-BDSM world understand what bdsm is about. I really don’t care whether others think I’m a pervert, but I tend to keep my private affairs to myself anyway. The professional indignants and the easily offended will always be with us. Now I realize that others may have more at risk than I, related to exposure of private sexual activities. It seems to me that the only real significance in having the outside world “understand” would be related to eliminating the use of force, i.e., laws and regulations that directly impact those who choose to engage in SSC bdsm activities.