On community membership
10/31 '14
I'm seeing people who are connected to BDSM communities post on other social networks or in an op-ed in the Globe and Mail about how "that's not how we do what we do" in respect to the (believable) allegations that Jian Ghomeshi has been abusive to sexual partners, perhaps some in a BDSM context, others fairly clearly not at all.
I don't want to write about Ghomeshi (though I do note that my belief of what happened is in parentheses in the previous paragraph); what I find more interesting has been the "community response", noting that Ghomeshi (likely) doesn't follow standards around consent and safety.
I wonder what fraction of people who practice consensual BDSM are currently, or indeed, have ever been, connected with a "community" of people defined by this behaviour. There was a comment on a Facebook post that I saw where a fellow basically said, "you know, it was much better when it was hard to join the S/M community, back in the '80s", and my biggest thought was that, in a post-"50 Shades of Grey" world, lots of people probably aren't interested in joining such a "community;" they either want to find people to have consensual rough sex with, or (probably more common) they want to incorporate rough sex into their existing monogamous relationship/marriage. Which is fine, of course. Seeing this as a political or community affiliation is a leap, and a leap many won't make. And really don't have to; it's not as though the knowledge that you can spank people while having sex with them (say) requires joining a group to acquire.
This means that the "safe / sane / consensual" motto (or other formulae) that "organized" kinky folk use could be tangential to the experience of many people who have rough sex as part of their relationships.
Obviously, the analogy to queer folk is salient to me; there was probably a high-water mark for gay organizations in the '90s, when AIDS was still killing hundreds a day in the US, our sex lives were illegal, closets were a little scary to leave, and finding sex or romance partners was something people did face-to-face, rather than electronically. Nowadays, the politics are not nearly as lively (in many places, the most important issues really are those involving trans folk, and regrettably, many white gay men are happy enjoying their largely restored privilege rather than working for wider equality rights), and it's much more possible for a young person to come out, have sex, acquire partners, and so on without ever going to a meeting of a single group. Moreover, even during that high-water period, every indicator of privilege (being white, being male, being educated, wealth, living in a city, etc.) meant a disproportionate probability that someone would join "a gay [or LGBT or ...] community group".
I've always been suspicious of "gay people do X". I find I'm suspicious, now, of "kinksters do X", for similar reasons.
