I have been having a rather astonishing argument at another blog that stems from a flippant remark I made about the rather disastrous Twitter Q&A session that her people arranged for E. L. James, the author of the repulsive 50 Shades of Grey, Considering the, um,... "theme" of the book and its, uh, "plot" it was probably predictable that giving people an opportunity to ask James about her writing would generate such questions as, "Is there a safe word we can use to get you to stop writing such drivel?" "Which do you hate more, women or the English language?" "Do you ever feel guilty that you made so much money from romanticizing sexual abuse and selling it as "erotica romance"? and, getting back to other such woman-hating "chick lit", "Did you see the abusive relationship of Bella and Edward and think "hmm needs more abuse"
My comment was "Well, FINALLY, some good comes out of Fifty Shades. The tweets were the only good thing about the book. Didn't look at the movie, hate movies to start with but it sounds pretty awful for a movie plot." To which a member of the BDSM "community" objected, and objected again and again as I answered their comments. I will say that this happened at what is one of the better feminist blogs, though I have my doubts as to the gender of the "woman" I was having the argument with. If you want to read it I was using the Simels thwarting (though not anymore) pseudonym, "Camera Obscura".
But my point in this post is to say that this is a golden opportunity to point out that there is no shade of gray about this. Bondage, "discipline," sadism and masochism are not just some other variant on sexuality that, as good liberals, we are bound to respect and advocate as just another lifestyle. That point is so obvious that it screams to be addressed as whatever wave of feminism is supposedly washing over us, no matter what assertions relating it to civil rights are claimed on behalf of people promoting or engaged in those behaviors, they are wrong and immoral and the assertion that they are deserving of support by liberals is incoherent and a complete destruction of liberalism, itself.
Take the first word in the acronym, "bondage" as in tying someone up so they can't get away, flee, or defend themselves, putting themselves at the mercy of someone else whose "kindness" is hardly to be counted on and likely not the motive of the "slave master" or whatever other terms for the dominator of the one consenting to be trussed up or handcuffed, controlled, or whatever. Did the entire course of liberalism over the past three centuries struggle against EXACTLY that scenario, shed blood, fight an enormous war, engage in dangerous struggle, endure terror campaigns and murder do it so that exactly what they were struggling against could be adopted as just another means of sexual gratification? Did feminism struggle, not only against the kind of imprisonment of women that was and still is possible in the worst scenarios of men dominating and terrorizing women? Of oppressing them in the worst ways? Not to mention the threat that such possibilities plays in every aspect of the subjugation of women, of intimidating them into accepting the coercion of the merely less bad, the very kind of thing that restricts their movement, their right to self determination? The thing that makes some of them feel so despairingly weak that they'll put themselves in an oppressive relationship or marriage with someone who MIGHT treat them with less violence as they protect them from worse? And to promote that as kewl and sexy? Apparently so. As I've mentioned before, when you include something, no matter how depraved, no matter how unhealthy or dangerous or abusive as a part of sexual arousal, the inverted morality of post-liberalism goes blind to its actual reality in the real world as opposed to its PR fantasy. When did women forget that men treat women that way BECAUSE THEY GET OFF ON IT. Sexual domination by men always had a component of sexual gratification in it, it was part of what feminism had to struggle against.
The next word in the acronym is a lie, a bald faced lie, "Discipline" is a dishonest euphemism for sadistic domination, abuse, terrorizing, hurting, harming and any range of other pain that can enter into the scenario. It infantilizes adults to the status of disobedient children. Of course the infliction of pain as a means of demonstrating and enjoying the ability to control someone else is the purpose of the thing, no matter what ruse of "consent" is asserted on the part of the one who is the target of that exercise of power. One of the more frequent assertions of porn with this theme is the "breaking" of the submissive person so they will accept and want the abuse. I doubt there is any possible and meaningful adult level of consent to submit to such a situation, it is a sign of a damaged mind to tolerate such a situation, never mind freely submit to it. And the mind so damaged is often managed by the one who wants to hurt them. The "grooming" of a victim of pedophile abuse is no different from getting someone to submit to their own abuse, even if that person is nominally an adult.
One of the questions asked of E.L. James was, "Can you confirm that you will be writing the story of Ramsay Bolton from his perspective, showing he is just misunderstood?" I had to look up Ramsay Bolton, a character in Game of Thrones, but there is a more telling question from reality, the excuse of a number of men who murdered women after raping them is that it was "rough sex" gone wrong. That was the defense of the murderer of Jennifer Levin, the infamous preppie murderer, Robert Chambers, his exculpatory narrative sounded exactly like it could have been inspired from BDSM lit, porn, in another word.
Sadism and masochism are the real sicknesses which are the reality of the proposed "vanilla sex" version, B and the D. And those terms arose to describe mental illnesses, pathological behaviors and the mental sickness those arose from. They really are no different and are all so closely related to rape, sexual enslavement and murder that to deny that is, in itself, a mental disorder. The assertion that they are merely another form of consensual sex is as transparently a lie as the assertions that women invite rape and so rape is a myth.
The assertion that this is just another means of jaded people to keep their interest in sex lives alive shows how stupid the topic of sex, and especially sex which is allegedly sophisticated and kewl makes your typical person anxious to be seen as kewl and up to date. Which has nothing much to do with liberalism or of any aspiration to freedom and liberation. That anyone could think that striking that pose is a liberal one is as stupid and irrational as asserting that allowing employers to maintain people in horrible, dangerous working conditions as "right to work" or "free to choose" is also a liberal pose. To assert that people whose choice is coerced or the result of progressive and systematic fear, intimidation and terror is their exercising of their "agency" is such total and rank bull shit that I can't think of any other word to succinctly describe it. Yet such is what is to be taken as not only liberalism but feminism when those very acts violate everything that liberalism exists for and which are the primary means through which women have been subjugated and oppressed. The same goes for the means by which LGBT people have been oppressed, what part of violence and intimidation, inequality and immorality are we supposed to pretend we don't see for what it is in this striving to be kewl and transgressive?
Liberals often wonder why they don't win in politics since the 1960s, why the hard fought progress of, not only decades past, but centuries past is being overturned all around us. It is exactly this, that liberals have been duped into giving up liberalism in the original sense of the word for the indifferent, amoral laissez faire style of liberalism that was asserted in the late 18th and 19th century, the means by which rich men, aristocrats, with no moral restraints could do to workers, to sex objects, what they wanted to. The promotion of BDSM is as neo-liberal as sending jobs to slave labor countries, it turns the people left here into a life of the same kind of desperation, if somewhat less grindingly poor. That is, as well, a theme of 50 Shades of Grey. It was all about the perverted rich man, after all, Christian Grey. His victim had to be groomed to "consent". Liberals gave up this fight through being duped by a series of false equivalencies and a desire to be modern and up to date. There was never any reason for liberals to accept what is a total, basic and complete violation of the only reasons for liberalism to exist, to fight bondage and oppression and the desire of more powerful people to dominate and hurt, to use and destroy other people. That's hard enough without getting duped on behalf of the sex industry and hack writers who substitute the talent they don't have with sexual exotica and the publishers who get rich putting that junk out.
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