BDSM and Christianity

Found this picture of a tattoo of St. Teresa of Avila from Trinity the other day, and it reminded me that medieval Christianity produced a whole lot of writers and thinkers that, looking at it from my perspective, articulated and understood the masochistic experience in ways far more eloquent than anywhere else I've seen it. St. Theresa. John Donne. It's no accident that the BDSM community has glommed on to a lot of the symbolism and implements of the period, most notably from the flagellants.

And while the masochistic and submissive experiences may be different, I don't think Christianity's kinship to kink is accidental. There's a lot of places you can take Far from it: I don't believe that I would be submissive if I had not been raised Catholic. Fundamentally, Christ made submission noble, and made the submissive a hero.

My supreme role model bore his love in tribulation and his purity in agony, his suffering was virtue and the ultimate expression of his all encompassing love was to die on the cross. If the height of my romantic ideal became one who was willing to suffer for the good of their beloved, it has much to do with this narrative. If we English speakers correctly group together so many different concepts under "love," it should not surprise us that caritas can morph into philia can morph into eros.

My savior preached the nobility of service and the excellence of humility. Despite being the stainless man, who embodied all the virtues and having the essence of the divine within him, despite being the perfect human being, Christ was not too proud to get on his knees and wash his disciples' feet.

More importantly than that, the last shall be first and the first shall be last. The world is turned upside down by the divine revelation; the wisdom of the mighty is the folly of God. The downtrodden can take the mantle of righteousness.

ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἆρα διδακτὸν ἡ ἀρετή

Can unchosen character traits be considered unvirtuous or blameworthy?

The inimitable Bitchy Jones on forced fem once again:

"The best of these is probably ‘Women wear trousers!’ Because when you’re trying to deconstruct and evaluate what the position in femdom of forced feminisation as a way of diminishing men and what kind of ideas about men and women it reflects and endorses there really is nothing like an irrelevant non-sequitur to stop you in your misguided tracks."

It's got Nine Deuce's acrid tang. The "there's some sort of thing wrong with you. It's not your fault (ND'd blame it on patriarchy, god knows what Bitchy would blame it on, but in any case, it's clearly not an aspect of the will), and it may not even be immoral because it's not hurting anyone. But it's not noble. It demonstrates a character flaw, something corrupted within you. Maybe for souls such as yourself, giving in to such desires is the best decision in a bad situation, but don't pretend like it's a good thing."

I've always felt that such an attitude was decidedly unhelpful. Beating yourself up over desires never seemed to do anyone any good. Much better to accept yourself for who you are, right? Much better to find something liberating in being different from the norm, rather than be paralyzed by it.

Yet I have to own that all of those are utilitarian defenses. If one were to consciously adopt beliefs based on expected return, they might work. Perhaps the subconscious does so, but now that they're arrayed in this fashion, it seems an insult to the truth to leave it at where I'd rather the truth be.

Yet it also seems horridly unfair to condemn a fundamentally unchosen trait. The only coherent morality has always seemed to me to only be concerned with acts of the will. Morality consists of correct action, not correct thought.

The difficulty here may be professing a morality based only on the harm principle while still harboring attachments to other commonly accepted principles of morality (the framework I've been exposed to divides traditional morality into the categories of Harm, Purity, Loyalty, Fairness, and Respect for Authority). Such an attachment to the will makes sense in a heavily consequentialist, utilitarian morality based only on the harm principle, but if you're going to accept purity as any basis of morality, purity of thought seems just as important as purity of actions. In that sense, the difficulty may only be an insufficiently rigorous application of my moral principles to my moral intuitions. I, for example, am repulsed by eating dogs, but I'm also able to overcome my revulsion long enough to realize that my moral intuition in this case is invalid. Perhaps then I need only return to my first principles: clearly no one is being directly harmed by people doing what Bitchy describes, so there's no problem. Describing something as bad but not immoral seems like a cop out: you're trying to have your cake and eat it too by indulging a bad moral intuition while trying to soothe your intellect that knows such condemnation is not justified.

Maybe the force of such a case indicates that I ought to examine my principles. If that's the case, well, it's not something I'll get done in the scope of one post!

Rape culture and the anti-gay movement

From the ever awesome Dw3t-Hthr over at safe spaces:

"The primary contributor to "rape culture" is the idea that people -- particularly women -- are not competent definers of their own sexuality. That they 'really want it' even when they don't, or that they only need to be instructed to become fully sexual in the manner their instructor desires, or that their decisions about sexuality in one set of circumstances mandate that they make the same decision in different circumstances."

Amen.

But I'd like to use this as a springboard for another conversation that's likely to piss a few people off.

The truth of the matter is, I see a lot of this same mentality in the excoriation of the ex-gay movement. I stand by my position that reparative therapy for homosexuality is in all cases unnecessary, and in most cases traumatic and a poor idea for all involved. But whenever I hear people claiming that the ex-gays can't truly have become heterosexual, I see the same old colonization of other people's sexualities. We queers have a theory, and damnit if we're not going to make every person fit into it in some way or another. I may disagree with their decision, but claiming that deep down they're actually homosexual, that they can't have become heterosexual- well, it strikes me as saying that they're not competent enough to define their own sexuality.

I understand the concerns many people have. Obviously there's considerable pressure to become an ex-gay. Obviously the proponents of the ex-gay movement are doing the same colonization of other's experiences that I'm decrying here. But I think that neither coercion nor oppression invalidates free will. And that neither of those things compromises the individual's perogative to name their own experiences.

Yes.

HarperJean on the latest BDSM and feminism kerfuffle:

"I've been thinking lately that any "examining" relative to sexual desires is better focused on their effects rather than their causes.

We could stipulate, purely for the sake of argument, that someone's desires for dominance and/or submission are the result of bad relationships, bad role models and sexist culture. So what? I don't think feminism is about abstract notion or morality or purity. The relevant question is not where desires come from but where they take you. Do your submissive fantasies and/or experiences leave you feeling good about yourself and your relationships? Do they contribute to safe and satisfying relationships? Do your dominant fantasies and/or experiences lead you to actually denigrate or abuse your partner, or others around you, or have other harmful effects? The Feministing commenter who said it would be better for people's communities if they didn't do BDSM seemed to hint at such an effects-based analysis, but didn't offer anything to support it.

Surely, some people do experience kinky fantasies or play in ways that are harmful to self-esteem, intimacy, personal autonomy or mutual respect. We might say that they're "in it for the wrong reasons," but whatever the reason what's important is that, at least in the ways they're currently doing it, being in it is not good for them or for others.

So, I think it is not helpful and can be hurtful to ask someone to examine and justify where their desires come from. By contrast, at least as a piece of advice, examining how you're going about it and what it is doing for you seems just fine. And in fact that's something how-to writes, presenters and other community figures often do advise.

Of course, either way it could still be used as a bludgeon, because it can still carry the assumption that the examining can only have one result and if you reach a different one you're just wrong."

http://trinityva.livejournal.com/1000547.html

Yes, exactly. I was planning a post along these lines, but she nailed it so well I don't think I have to. Suffice it to say that I've always found "where did this come from?" (which is inevitably the kind of answer feminists are looking for when they ask us to "examine" our desires) to be a singularly unproductive question. A thing's origin has nothing to do with its value, or its morality.

πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.

I will not run away.

If the unexamined life is not worth living, how much more the one without intensity! I've lived a waking sleep, a conscious death, moments cascading before the consciousness without appreciation or purpose. A dull listlessness, the rut of routine, robbing me of the little time I have here.

I will not live that way.

And the way out of that ennui is masochism. The harmonies and dissonances, the pains and the pleasures, the joys and the sorrows: it is the celebration of life, the absolute opposite of the death drive the psychologists have so erroneously imputed to us! What saccharine things are a song full of tonics and fifths, a life spent free from struggle and sorrow! The harmonies and dissonances of pain and pleasure make a sweet symphony for my soul to gorge upon, its intensity screaming with a pressing insistency: I am LIFE, I am wonderful and terrible, and all the better for having the two mixed into one!

I will no longer run away from what gives life its spice and its color, its meaning.

What would one want with heaven, anyway?

Live and learn

Owing to our long distance relationship, my Master and I have an open relationship; we can date other people. One of the people I was considering dating was a good fit for me in many ways, but there was a deal breaker. See, I like doing nice things for friends; I like using my car to drive them places, I like kicking in a bit more than my share of the booze money. I can take charge when it's necessary, but I'm more comfortable following another's lead. for her, all of these things were a sign of weakness, and every encounter was an adversarial one to get the better of the other. Not only did this make interpersonal relations with her troublesome, but it attacked my very sense of identity. I mean, all of these things that I had been taught from birth that made me a good person- my willingness to share, my lack of pushiness, my (at least self percieved) tendency to desire the good of others, sometimes at the expense of my own was to her a sign of weakness. I was pretty emotionally wrecked for awhile trying to win her approval before I realized I should just be comfortable with who I am.

So it will be quite a relief to return to my relationship with my Master, where such traits are celebrated and not denigrated. A space where I can be myself without it being because I'm too weak, but because we have mutually complementary roles that are equal in diginity. A space, in short, where acting what comes most naturally to me is understood as an examined choice and not a sign of weakness, that I would surely act differently if I had the power to be more assertive or assholish.

John Donne rocks my socks

"BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me,'and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me,'untie, or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."

Challenge: write a paper on this without referencing my masochism =)