I’m going to finish cleaning up, shut down the computer, pack it into one of my bags, pack the modem and stow it someplace my friend can come get it on Wednesday, and nap. Then I’ll wake up, shower, and take my bags out to wait for the shuttle to the airport.
I have a large red bag, two brown bags, one small white carry-on that I’ve managed to stuff, a sewing machine, and a sewing machine tote stuffed to the zippers with shoes and stuff.
I’ll see you on the other side of the planet, Tumblr.
Robert Pattinson (via rpattztalks)
Maybe celebrities should do this instead of hire security guards.
(via eshusplayground)
When I was thirteen, my grandmother told me a story about the Second World War. She was a nurse at a military hospital in Sydney, Australia. For two years, she healed and comforted American and Australian soldiers.
One day, she tended to a wounded Maori soldier, who had lost his legs to an artillery attack. He was very dark-skinned. His hair was black and curly and his eyes were black and warm. His face was covered with bright tattoos.
‘Are you Maori?’ he asked my grandmother.
‘No,” she said. ‘I’m Spokane Indian. From the United States.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I have heard of your tribes. But you are the first American Indian I have ever met.’
‘There’s a lot of Indian soldiers fighting for the United States,’ she said. “I have a brother fighting in Germany, and I lost another brother on Okinawa.’
‘I am sorry,” he said. ‘I was on Okinawa as well. It was terrible.’
‘I am sorry about your legs,’ my grandmother said.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘What’s funny?’
‘How we brown people are killing other brown people so white people will remain free.’
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
‘Well, sometimes I think of it that way. And other times I think of it the way they want me to think of it. I get confused.’
” —Sherman Alexie - “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” (via swintons)Did you see this piece Jezebel did about the reddit “other side of the rape story” thread? This is why we can’t have nice things. Quote from the article:
“We have to acknowledge that the people telling these stories and making these decisions are the men (and women) next door, not necessarily inhuman savages. Otherwise, anti-rape campaigns will continue to tell victims to dress and act differently as a matter of “prevention,” college campuses will continue to report high rates of sexual assault, and people will continue to take advantage of others without even looking them in the eye while doing so.”
Yes, Jezebel, that’s right. Sympathy for rapists is what will really solve the problem here. Instead of acknowledging the dehumanization of the victims, let’s just focus on the dehumanization of the victimizers.
Okay, so some people in the reblogs for this post have said that this article is not rape apologia ad nauseum, and that someone should at least give it a read to see what they are trying to say. So I did. Here are some specific parts that I want to reply to:
But it’s impossible to talk about the reasons people rape without involving rapists in the discussion.
Wrong. You can discuss rape and the reasons why people rape without involving rapists. Indeed, given the emotionally volatile (and sometimes physically dangerous) nature of survival, it is a necessity 95% of the time. Otherwise, most of us would never speak out to begin with.
Criminologists and sociologists have discussed these issues for several decades now by studying convicted rapists in controlled settings— interviews, journals, one-on-one counseling, memoirs, etc.— and it has given us enough information already. This has informed the majority of discourse that we have today surrounding anti-sexual violence activism. Through an academic and professional lens that summarizes the gathered information, there is no need for anyone who has survived these things to have to directly (and traumatically) read it first-hand. Furthermore, professionals have already profiled rapist archetypes tens of thousands of times; these archetypes encompass 99% of all assailants out there. Again, there is no need for anyone who has survived sexual violence to have to hear these things directly. To suggest that a space needs to be made for these stories (without massive critique and social penalty) is absolutely a type of apologism.
It’s a mistake to think we’re justifying rapists’ actions by listening to their stories. Some of them are tough to read, but their brutal honesty effectively illustrates how a lack of communication and education perpetuates rape culture. Ignoring or dismissing these men (and women) out of hand may be an effective coping strategy for a given individual, but not for society. It gets us nowhere.
The huge flaw in this argument is that Western culture at large is already a space for rapists to talk about “their side of the story”, period. If you don’t get that then you should not be talking about sexual violence, at all.
The writer here uses an incredibly patronizing tone: “some of them are tough to read”…they clearly have no understanding of how triggering content works. That they can even suggest that people can read this content without having violent and/or physically/emotionally dangerous reactions reeks of privilege. The editors of Jezebel have flat-out refused to provide trigger warnings for any of their content in the past, so it’s no surprise.
As I said in the response to the previous section, not reading these stories is not “ignoring” anything; again, these stories and perspectives have been studied to death.
Also note the cissexist language which erases non-binary folk who are assaulted.
Charlotte Shane put it well in a recent essay for The New Inquiry on moving past rape by being able to talk about it in non-victimizing terms:
And here we see Jezebel being utterly prescriptivist and suggesting that there is one right way to deal with rape or sexual violence, implying that those who have not moved to this point (or who cannot) are somehow wrong or flawed. If that is not rape apologism and victim-blaming then I don’t know what is.
The rest of this article is basically the same old, same old that has been said 1000000000 times before by anti rape/SA activists. The problem is not that there are these poor ol’ misunderstood rapists out there who just need to be heard; the problem is that people are not listening to the survivors and victims of these predators. All of the information is out there, and all of the research has been done. We just need to make it more widely known.
I leave you with my hierarchy of discussion when it comes to these issues (because for the sake of safety and protection of those who need it the most, there absolutely must be one in these situations):
- Survivors/victims
- Close friends/family/peers of survivors
- Police, academics, other officials invested in anti SA work
- …
- …
- …
- Anyone who may have been missed
- …
- …
- …
- Rapists
THAT is how a discussion on sexual violence should go. Those directly affected speak first and above all others, because they alone know the experience and can offer the most valuable insight. By talking over these people, you are devaluing the wisdom of their experiences and effectively contributing to how these people are not taken seriously.
Jezebel would ideally fall along 3 or 4 here, except they really don’t give a shit about these issues so it’s more like a 10; they are a business first and foremost, and their corporate ties and blatant racism, sexism, and transphobia have always been obvious.
These are all very excellent critiques of the article and of Jezebel in general. I would like to make a couple of points and clarify a few things:
1. The groups you have listed in 1-11 are not distinct and very often overlap. For instance, many of the academics I have studied criminology with are also survivors. Not to mention that a certain percentage of rapists have been victimised themselves.
2. I really think this comment needs to be revised: “All of the information is out there, and all of the research has been done. We just need to make it more widely known.” Yes, criminology and psychology have made plenty of inroads into understanding why rape happens but a lot of the research has been done by white, cis, radical feminists (Dworkin, et al). It’s the ideas pioneered by such people that really need to be reframed and rewritten, and a lot of current criminological work is seeking to do just that. This is one of the main reasons we can’t say that we know everything there is to know. The other reason being that - even with this ongoing research - that are still gaps in our understanding of who rapes and why, and how to best counteract/prevent rape.
My general thoughts on the Jezebel article:
1. A distinction needs to be made between understanding someone’s actions and sympathising with what led them to act that way; the former involves analysis and the latter involves apology. Considering where society is at present with rape culture (i.e. saturated in it) we cannot afford to take the mainstream focus away from survivors. It is because victims are silenced and ignored that we need to reverse that dynamic. We need to reverse whose voices are heard. That should be our primary focus as a society if we want to dismantle rape culture.
2. There are risks when society dehumanises offenders (rapists or otherwise). Once you have dehumanised someone you remove all hope of changing that behaviour. Dehumanisation involves complete dismissal of the fact that behaviour is socially constructed (and can therefore be socially deconstructed). Dehumanisation means the offender is cast as unable to control or change their behaviour. And once you accept the premise that someone is a monster or non-human, the focus then becomes “how can we prevent these attacks by changing the victims’ behaviour”. The focus then becomes on how potential rape victims can avoid being raped. And that is rape culture. Perhaps the most pertinent distinction should be made between survivors dehumanising their rapists (completely and utterly okay) and society as a whole dehumanising rapists (arguably obfuscating the issues that really need to be addressed like our culture of entitlement that produces rapists in the first place).
3. One of the most unsettling things I found when I started interacting with rapists and child sex offenders is how normal they are; how indistinguishable they are from non-rapists. That is a scary and really fucking difficult thing to come to terms with because it involves the realisation that anyone has the potential to become a rapist if the right conditions are met. And it’s crucial that we understand those conditions so we can prevent these conditions from producing other rapists (note this isn’t the same as saying we need to understand the rapist as a person, or that their feelings should be taken into account).
I’m sure we both agree though, that this conversation/research is only appropriate for certain contexts, and that survivors shouldn’t have that discussion imposed on them unless they wish to participate.
4. Jezebel says:
It’s a mistake to think we’re justifying rapists’ actions by listening to their stories. Some of them are tough to read, but their brutal honesty effectively illustrates how a lack of communication and education perpetuates rape culture. Ignoring or dismissing these men (and women) out of hand may be an effective coping strategy for a given individual, but not for society. It gets us nowhere.
No, it isn’t a mistake. When you listen to someone’s “stories” you are sympathising with their behaviour. What’s more, rapists are hardly ever “brutally honest”. In fact, almost every rapist and sex offender will continually and repeatedly deny, minimise, justify, shift responsibility and concoct bullshit to avoid owning up to their actions. Most rapists don’t even think of themselves as rapists so we should definitely not be listening to their stories. We should, however, be analysing their thought process so we can change/prevent it.
5. All of the quotes presented in that Jezebel article are revolting, rape supportive and should never be given public airtime. They tell us nothing we don’t already know and they tell us nothing that isn’t already being said by survivors and victims (that rapists rape because they feel entitled to use someone else’s body). And they tell us nothing about how to prevent rape (it isn’t an individual’s job to prevent rape; it is a rapist’s). What I’m trying to say is this: rapists and their behaviour should be critiqued and analysed but they should never be listened to or validated. They should never be heard.
6. The best thing we can do to prevent rape is to deconstruct and remove the pervading culture of sexual entitlement. We need to teach active consent. We need to restrict how the media report sexual violence. We need to prioritise the voices of survivors. We need to legitimise the act of survival. We need to teach people that there are no circumstances where it is okay to infringe on the bodily autonomy of other people. We need to enforce physical boundaries. We need to stop reinforcing bullshit like the friendzone. We need to eradicate the concept of implied or non-verbal consent. There are a million things we need to do but none of them should involve publishing quotes from rapists in a popular culture forum.
7. I want to end by reiterating a few of the excellent comments made on this thread:
Through an academic and professional lens that summarizes the gathered information, there is no need for anyone who has survived these things to have to directly (and traumatically) read it first-hand.
You can discuss rape and the reasons why people rape without involving rapists. Indeed, given the emotionally volatile (and sometimes physically dangerous) nature of survival, it is a necessity 95% of the time. Otherwise, most of us would never speak out to begin with.
There are a lot of people out there who absolutely must have proper warning before any discussion of abusers. There are also people who cannot have a safe space to talk about their experiences, period, if abusers are let in.
[…]
There’s 1) absolutely no reason to post them without some sort of proper warning, 2) Very little good reason to do it en masse when society is already giving space to these people 95% of the time, and 3) Even less good reason to when these archetypes have been expressed and studied thoroughly and can be processed without having to delve into horrifying, blaming bullshit.
You personally want to understand where these people come from. I do too. But the tone in that article explicitly shames other people who, for very good reasons of self-preservation, do not ever want to have to learn about the people who hurt them. Ever. There are people out there who cannot even think about their abusers without risking serious personal danger and self-harm; that you wrote that off as “political correctness” is just fucked up and 1000 kinds of terrible.
Some survivors literally cannot deal with even the concept of giving their abuser(s) some kind of humanity. Some people might be this way their whole lives. That is not anything that we should be shaming them for, and it certainly doesn’t encourage more abuse :\
At work this morning a white coworker asked if I spoke Spanish and when I said no she lamented that it’s so convenient having Spanish speakers around.
Which, undoubtedly, is true. I’m super jealous of multilingual folks for a number of reasons, but phrasing it that way in the context of white supremacy along with my personal history was not only annoying but actually hurt.
Because, first of all, if it’s really such a hindrance on this person’s life, there is no reason why she cannot take it upon herself to learn Spanish, rather than waiting around for a brown person whose knowledge she can tokenize and utilize for her own benefit. Conversely, in the context of white supremacy, white and white-passing people who do know Spanish and English are seen as interesting, knowledgeable, intelligent, etc., while darker skinned brown people are discriminated against for speaking Spanish, even if they also know English.
And it hurts because my disconnection with my culture is a direct result of the impact racism and white supremacy had on my parents and relatives growing up. They actively lost and forgot our culture in order to better fit into this system. So I was never able to talk to my dad’s parents when they were alive because they didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish. I can’t communicate with my still living great-grandmother, who only speaks Spanish. I recognize that I have control over this too and want to and do try to reconnect with this part of me, but it’s really hard and intimidating when I still feel like such an outsider even around Spanish-speaking Xican@s, whose code-switching leaves me behind. There is this weird double-edged sword, where I can feel the effects of racism but get few benefits of the culture.
And comments like that are fucked in their attempt to prove to be ~down with the brown folks~ without recognizing the privilege of complacency with white supremacy, proving to me I can’t trust you and won’t be able to let my guard down around you.
I’ll just quote Teen Voices’ website (http://www.teenvoices.com/:
Teen Voices need your help. Because of a recent decrease in funding, we’re at a crisis. We must raise $300,000 by August 1. Yes, it’s that bad.
For nearly 25 years, girls and young women in Boston and beyond have counted on Teen Voices to provide a positive, girl-friendly space to grow as writers and leaders. We are not going down without a fight.
You know us, and you know our work—our girl-generated magazine is the only publication of its kind. Thousands of girls around the globe count on Teen Voices to publish their work and offer honest, positive stories that address real issues in their lives.
The good news is our magazine and our afterschool program are stronger than ever. We’ve produced two excellent issues in the past year and over 225 online articles—including interviews with inspiring girls in action and powerful leading ladies like Donna Brazile, Jennifer Buffett, and Maria Hinojosa. We consistently have a waiting list for our afterschool and summer journalism program, and our Boston-based teens consistently show growth in perseverance, social efficacy, and acceptance of others.
With a strong and dedicated staff and an army of passionate teens and volunteers, we are poised to take Teen Voices to the next level in 2013, reaching many more girls worldwide. We have a vision to increase our web traffic tenfold and become the go-to place for smart girl media. We have plans—and even a grant!—to make teenvoices.com an interactive, smartphone-friendly forum for girls to amplify their voices.
It’s all within reach.
But right now, we need funds to get around this challenging corner and move our organization to a stronger future. With your help, Teen Voices can partner and transform to amplify the voices of girls. Whether you can afford $5, $50 or $5,000, every donation brings us closer.
You can send a safe and secure contribution through PayPal:
Or mail a check to:
Teen Voices
80 Summer St, Suite 400
Boston MA 02110
We need your donations by August 1!
Please forward this message to every person you know who believes that girls can change the world. And thank you for investing in the power of teen girls’ voices!
The Teen Voices team For updates on our campaign, like “Teen Voices Magazine” on Facebook and join the conversation on Twitter @teenvoices #notwithoutafight
To read our latest and greatest girl-generated media, visit www.teenvoices.com.“So what?” You say. “Why should I care? It’s just a nonprofit in Boston.”
No, it’s not. I would know. I interned there. It was my first internship and in fact my first experience in any sort of feminist institution. I read just about every issue of Teen Voices—and that’s a lot of magazines—because I had to organize the archives. And those magazines were what eventually led to this blog.
Teen Voices was not “a feminist magazine”. It was a magazine by (primarily) young WOC in Boston during an after-school mentoring program. These girls were awesome. They were funny, kind, and the magazines they created cast light on issues that—if you have been reading this blog, you know—are invisible in popular media. Everything from trans* issues, suicide, surviving assault, foster family life, great restaurants run by women in Boston, interviews with CIBO MATTO (YES THE CIBO MATTO THAT DID “Know your Chicken” and “Birthday Cake”, it was in one of the old magazines, I told you Teen Voices is badass!!!1). At the back of the magazines was this awesome section where they took an advertisement from TV or a magazine and described in articulate terms just how it was objectifying a woman’s body or using sex to sell a product. Bam.
That was my first internship, and it was years ago, but I still have a couple of magazines on my shelf. They are evergreen. They’re filled with art people sent in, letters, advice, and positivity. There is no end of positivity in this awesome magazine.
TEEN VOICES NEEDS TO STAY ALIVE. Teen Voices’ slogan was “because you’re more than a pretty face” and now it’s “changing the world for girls through media” which fits what they do better.
I’m sounding like an infomercial now, but don’t take my word for it. Go to teenvoices.com right now, you’ll see what’s awesome about them. They recently interviewed a member of the Olympic Swimming Team in a great article. They have a review about a movie focusing on sexual assault in the military up right now, worth a look. Poetry, fiction, music reviews, art, photography—all by teen girls. You can read their magazine, which goes out to learning centers, schools, and many other institutions, online or in print if you donate for a subscription.
I KNOW MY FOLLOWERS ARE PROBABLY NOT RICH. BUT PLEASE, REBLOG THIS AND DONATE WHAT YOU CAN. TEEN VOICES IS NEEDED, NOT JUST IN BOSTON, BUT NONPROFITS LIKE THIS SHOULD EXIST EVERYWHERE FOR GIRLS ALL OVER THE PLACE. MAYBE GET YOUR EMPLOYER TO MATCH A DONATION WITH YOU. THIS IS A NONPROFIT, SO YOU CAN DEDUCT ANY DONATION ON YOUR TAX RETURN. THIS LINK I’M POSTING GOES TO THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE WITH A PAYPAL LINK.
http://www.teenvoices.com/2012/07/20/teen-voices-needs-your-help/
Thank you for reading this far. We now return to your scheduled programming where I call mean people bad words.Signal. Boost.
I’m going to ask you guys to please signal boost (and donate if you can!)
I got my start with Teen Voices both in terms of getting my art published and finding a voice as a WoC. I’ve still got my old issues.
Teen Voices is an excellent formative influence for me, and it’ll be a shame if future generations aren’t able to have something so excellent in their lives!
Posting this again because I want it to have over one thousand notes. Please reblog this as much as you can, everyone, the date is August 1 and that’s why I’m bothering you again. This is a bizarre deadline. I can’t imagine being without Teen Voices, I still get the newsletter in my inbox and everything. Please reblog for girls everywhere. Please donate what you can and talk to other people/institutions or your employer about matching a donation with you. Some will do it. It’s a nonprofit so you can deduct it fully from your tax return. Please reblog or donate.
I have this really neat black T-shirt with the Chinese character for dragon in white, in the shape of a dragon even. I dig this shirt a lot.
Except no space of course.
So I’m going to donate it and maybe someone will recognize the character and hopefully someone in need will receive it and get some strength from it.
Ahem.
So I’m selling off some of my clothes on friendlyfashion.my, a site where Malaysians can sell, swap or give away clothes they don’t wear anymore. I often go there to hunt for cheap buys. But now I’m selling my stuff there as well because I’ve been feeling poor :P More will be up in a while!
Do check it out!
I had no idea that such a site existed!!! How exciting! I bet most things on there are way too small and it doesn’t have the same joy of browsing on racks but still, very cool, thanks for sharing!
So some white 14yo kid got “corrective surgery” to pin back her ears because kids at school were bullying her and calling her “Dumbo.”
As in, she got legit free plastic surgery so she could get her ears pinned back, to escape bullying. A surgery that cost $40,000. Covered by a foundation called Little Baby Face. Which did more than just pin back her ears, it also reduced the size of her nose and altered her chin.
So white people are whinging about how universal healthcare takes taxpayer money to pay for (mostly not-white and poor) people’s health insurance so they can get proper medical care.
While some foundation with money probably falling out of they asses spends FORTY. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. On cosmetic surgery for a teen who’s getting bullied for her looks.
Which I get can be pretty traumatic, I’m still bitter about people mocking my name as a kid, but GEE WILLIKERS TALK ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS.
The numbers of people voting to support charities to give kids plastic surgery and would take their kids to have plastic surgery to avoid bullying in those polls are disgusting.
White Americans need to fix themselves. I don’t care that not all of you “are like this”, when the possibility of this sort of foundation actually being valid and then carried out occurs, SOMETHING IN YOUR CULTURE IS BROKEN, YOU ARE PART OF IT, AND YOU NEED TO FIX YOURSELVES!
Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to hire some thugs to beat the shit out of her bullies? Just sayin’.
I’m not sure how you think violence towards other children helps the situation, when it is cheaper in the long run to address the root causes of bullying, which is to address how the larger culture fetishes power, especially violent power of all kinds, at the expense of humanity but I guess in the immediate situation it might’ve been cheaper, jail and bail and fines and a criminal record notwithstanding.
So some white 14yo kid got “corrective surgery” to pin back her ears because kids at school were bullying her and calling her “Dumbo.”
As in, she got legit free plastic surgery so she could get her ears pinned back, to escape bullying. A surgery that cost $40,000. Covered by a foundation called Little Baby Face. Which did more than just pin back her ears, it also reduced the size of her nose and altered her chin.
So white people are whinging about how universal healthcare takes taxpayer money to pay for (mostly not-white and poor) people’s health insurance so they can get proper medical care.
While some foundation with money probably falling out of they asses spends FORTY. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. On cosmetic surgery for a teen who’s getting bullied for her looks.
Which I get can be pretty traumatic, I’m still bitter about people mocking my name as a kid, but GEE WILLIKERS TALK ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS.
The numbers of people voting to support charities to give kids plastic surgery and would take their kids to have plastic surgery to avoid bullying in those polls are disgusting.
White Americans need to fix themselves. I don’t care that not all of you “are like this”, when the possibility of this sort of foundation actually being valid and then carried out occurs, SOMETHING IN YOUR CULTURE IS BROKEN, YOU ARE PART OF IT, AND YOU NEED TO FIX YOURSELVES!
when older men are like “yeah baby, I love teaching new girls about submission” and they talk about “true subs” and “true doms” and try to corner you into a full-time power-exchange dynamic off the bat?
run. I am not even kidding. don’t do it, those men are dangerous.
a responsible dom/domme will talk a lot about limits and boundaries with anyone, especially someone who says they’re new to bdsm. they won’t try to get you into a 24/7 thing right off the bat (even if that’s something you both want eventually). and ANYONE who defines “true sub” or “true dom” as ANYTHING other than “someone who identifies themselves a sub or dom” is unreservedly full of shit. people use “oh, you’re not a true sub” ALL THE TIME to disrespect kinky women’s boundaries. be aware of this. “a true sub would let me push her hard limits” — NO. that is not and never will be true.
I have seen, at least in new england, some burgeoning efforts to weed out abusers and foster consent culture in the bdsm community, which is fantastic. but it’s still important to know some of the bullshit that abusers will pull. because it is bullshit.
Fifty Shades & The “Philadelphia Incident”
I’m not really sure if this is the best place to voice these opinions and concerns. And I’m not really sure if it’s my place to be voicing them at all. This whole topic isn’t easy for me to discuss (it’s very personal) but I’ve never been very good at keeping my mouth shut when I think I have a point to make.
So - I’ve found over recent weeks two different hot topics that I’ve been paying attention to have apparently dovetailed.
I’m talking about the Fifty Shades of Grey series, an adapted Twilight- fan fiction which has been published and hit the New York Times Bestsellers list, and what people in the BDSM community have been calling the “Philadelphia Incident”.
To briefly bring those not familiar with either topic up to date; Fifty Shades of Grey is a story that deals with a young, naive virgin who enters into a domination and submission relationship with an older, powerful, controlling man. Eventually she manages to bring out his softer side and the two fall in love.
The “Philadelphia Incident” concerns a younger, inexperienced female submissive who entered into a domination and submission relationship with an older dominant man. Her limits were violated and she was forced to enter into oral sex with the man against her will. Some people in the BDSM community are calling this rape. Some people have suggested that the submissive woman consented. Others have criticised the submissive woman for not fully understanding what she was getting herself into. The young woman has now been run out of her home due to the criticism, publicity and notoriety she has faced.
Hopefully my point is already becoming clear.
In her novels E L James romanticizes the BDSM community, takes elements of ‘play’ out of context and dramatises what many would consider to be extremely unsafe D/s practice. The female in the story enters into ‘scenes’ which she is unsure about, where limits have not been pre-discussed or agreed, and where she is abandoned post-scene on more than one occasion with no after care or conversation about what had happened during the session.
The novel completely ignores elements of safe play that those familiar with the BDSM community would immediately recognise. RACK stands for Risk Aware Consensual Kink. SSC stands for Safe, Sane and Consensual. (Note the repeated word in both anagrams). This topic is completely ignored or glossed over in James’ novels and, considering the reaction they have amassed, this is a concern.
Safe BDSM play can be amazing. I can say this as someone who has both dominated others and submitted to others in a range of situations. It is something that I rarely discuss other than with those in the community for fear of repercussions - BDSM is fairly misunderstood by the wider public. In the right circumstances, with the right forethought, planning, and discussion then there are still hundreds of ways a session can go wrong. I have been mid-session with someone who I love very much, in a safe place, when we were both fully aware of each other’s limits. And I panicked. And ended up vomiting into the toilet and crying into his chest. This was an isolated incident, and we weren’t doing anything particularly risky at the time. But I still panicked. Fortunately my partner was fantastic at releasing me quickly and soothing me afterwards. Even with the best of intentions things can still go very wrong.
Although I have not followed reaction to James’ novel closely, one article I recently read criticising the BDSM elements in the story was met with comments from a reader expressing that the story is fantasy, not unlike the Harry Potter stories or Twilight, and not as a how-to guide of BDSM.
Firstly, thank God this isn’t a how-to guide of BDSM because James clearly has little, if any experience of D/s relationships. Secondly, this point in particular scared me more than any other I read.
If one was to dress in a cloak and wand and pretend to be a wizard, short of poking an eye out there is a limited amount of danger that could occur.
If a young woman with no experience of BDSM was to make her way into the community and play with an older man when she herself was unaware of her own limits, very terrible things can happen, as demonstrated recently in Philadelphia. Comparing Fifty Shades to Harry Potter is simply ludicrous, on many levels. There are many different layers and elements to BDSM, starting at fluffy handcuffs and ending in blood, tears and rape. Someone pretending to be a wizard will not experience these things.
The second point made by the same commenter was that James never intended for the novel to be so popular, it was released for a very small audience only and she was surprised at the reaction it has received. I don’t think this argument holds much weight either. I’m writing this article for the consumption of a very small audience too. I do not expect many people to read or react to it. Does that excuse me from factual accuracy? Not at all. If my article goes viral and thousands of people read it then I am still responsible for the words that I have put out there.
Finally, I want to reiterate that a huge majority of people in the BDSM community recognise our vulnerability (BDSM is actually illegal in the United States - yes, illegal - I’m fortunate to live in the UK) and as such, instances such as the “Philadelphia Incident” are rare. Most people play by the rules of RACK. Most people are responsible for themselves, for their partners, and there is a strong sense of ‘mentoring’ to ensure that newbies to the community are watched and are able to learn from those with more experience. Despite all this, it’s too easy for things to be taken just that one step too far with disastrous results.
I feel like it is my responsibility as one of the people who bridges the gap between the BDSM community and the Fifty Shades readership to speak out against the practices shown in the series. Please, please - if you are a single woman who has read these stories and wants to explore the topics contained therein, do everything you can to not follow in the footsteps of both E L James’ characters and the young girl in Philadelphia. Take your time. Find someone you can trust. Be safe.
(Please feel free to re-blog, re-post, re-tweet, link, copy, plagiarize, do whatever the hell you want with the above. It would be nice if you credited it back to me but in truth, if you want to stick this somewhere else where it might be seen by more people, please, do it. I’m not precious. Spread the word.)
Hey, my dad used a 30-year-old unopened beer for borsch once.
