I recently stumbled across a youtube video published by ‘truly’ as part of their “Extreme Love” series or what we radical feminists call “violence against women”.
The video details the relationship of Jack and Nancy. Within the first few seconds we see Jack use Nancy as a doormat to wipe his feet, then as a footstool, then blowing his nose in her hair. By the 1:25 mark he has already stood on her with his full weight and smacked her across the face. Throughout the video he goes on to make Nancy lick his boots, kicks her in the nose, whips her across the face and much more.
Don’t worry about it though. You see, Jack has an erection while he physically, sexually and verbally torments Nancy and obviously if a man is sexually aroused by something that means it’s inherently positive, natural and exempt from all criticism! It’s not abuse, it’s a kink.
Um well, except for the times when he doesn’t have an erection. See, this is a 24-hour set up for them but again, fear not! It’s okay for Jack to stand on Nancy’s back and strangle her with a dog chain because Nancy consents and as we know, in these cases the onus is always on the one who is beaten. Never on the sadist.
Nancy goes on to explain exactly why it is that she consents to this.
“Having suffered with eating disorders I had a desire to regain power over my body…Giving control to somebody feels very lights”
In other words she has traded in one form of body punishment for another. This is actually quite a common phenomenon and unhealthy coping mechanism found in those who suffer with eating disorders and victims abuse and trauma.
Jack, the gentleman that he is, finds the Italian culture that tells women they must have flat stomachs to be tyrannical. To rescue poor Nancy he beats her up every day, refuses to cuddle her and refers to her as “an inferior subhuman”. Cute, right? Or not. Maybe this is more a case of an abusive man taking advantage of a mentally ill and vulnerable young woman?
Still, many people will claim that this is actually empowering for women and functions to “subvert patriarchal norms”. What norms are being subverted by BDSM though? This response fails to acknowledge that in our culture, male dominance is the norm. The eroticisation of domination is the very basis of patriarchy. Catharine Mackinnon puts it quite succinctly
“Man fucks woman; Subject verb object.”
Sex, as defined by male supremacist culture, is the domination of woman by man. Sex requires the superior “fucker” and the inferior “fuckee”. Women have long been assigned the role of the passive subservient and men have long weaponised their penises and sex against women in order to maintain our subjugation. This structure aims to bolster male superiority through the reinforcement of female inferiority. Men are the human-subjects while women are the fuck-objects.
BDSM and patriarchy echo the exact same sentiment: It’s sexy to hurt women.
This is why it is so baffling to see so many young liberal women considering themselves some sort of revolutionaries for allowing their boyfriend’s to beat them while erect. Fetishising male violence, particularly male violence against women is totally unimaginative and completely conservative. It is the purest form of conformity to patriarchy.
The rise of BDSM’s popularity signifies the ascendance of patriarchy, not it’s dismantlement.
While most people are not taking their sadomasochistic behaviour to the extreme levels Jack and Nancy do, (though one might argue a man hitting, choking and spitting on a woman is pretty extreme) the normalisation of BDSM has led to many problems for women and girls (who are most often the submissives in these dynamics) such as sexual injuries caused by sex acts “their bodies are simply not designed for” and men getting away with physically harming and even murdering their female partners.
One case in particular saw a man get away with raping his partner despite her saying no, pleading for him to stop, crying and even vomiting because she had initially consented and then ended up forgetting the safe-word. Probably because she was terrified of the fully grown man who was close to killing her and couldn’t think straight. It is important to note that in all cases in which the “rough sex defense” has been used it was a man using it to justify his abuse or murder of a woman.
It is clear that consent is not and cannot be considered the be all, end all in these situations. Under law, it is impossible to consent to your own death or bodily harm. Though some courts seem to be ignoring this. It is totally irresponsible to refuse to analyse BDSM dynamics especially when we are ignoring the motivations of the sadist.
The question we need to be asking is what is going on in his mind?
What is wrong with masculinity in our society that rapidly increasing numbers of men require such extreme debasement, misogyny and violence against women to get off? Both in porn and their real lives. How can they even get off on such things?
Call me a prude but I personally have never found the idea of having sex with somebody who is experiencing pain, fear or revulsion all that arousing. Maybe it’s time we start being honest about men’s sadism and really examining where these harmful, misogynist desires are coming from?
We should also be questioning why it is that the vast majority of the time the submissive is female? Usually when this question is posed to the BDSM community, they will either deny it to be true or claim that most women are just like being submissive. This assertion implies that women are natural subordinates who enjoy their own oppression and possess an innate desire to be brutalised by men. This is deeply sexist and should not be entertained. Instead we could try looking at how women are indoctrinated and socialised to be submissive in society as a whole. The increased pressure to self-objectify? The promotion of female masochism as sexual desirability? The mainstreaming of violent porn? Pressure from sexually-entitled sadistic men?
How can we promote healthy relationships if we tell people that violence against women, verbal abuse, coercion and degradation can all be healthy? How can women ever be liberated in a culture that sexualises our subordination and celebrates violence inflicted on us? A culture that says women want to be subordinate and that subordination an inherent part of who we are?
We don’t need to end “kink-shaming”. We don’t need articles that teach men how to strangle their female partners safely (impossible), we don’t need “feminist” BDSM porn and we don’t need a docuseries calling abusive relationships “extreme love”.
What we need is for women to decolonise our sexuality and our bedrooms by rejecting woman-beating men. Even if his clenched fist is accompanied by a hard-on.
Student, 25, Radical Feminist. If you enjoyed her work, donate to this writer.