To ask Radical Feminists about their views on BDSM?

I think a person who gains any pleasure from knowingly inflicting pain or fear in another person is disturbed and potentially dangerous and should probably devote their efforts to extinguishing that impulse rather than cultivating it. Even if that takes a lifetime

What you give your attention to grows......it does not recede.

Slightly off the exact topic, but the sheer numbers of men we now see being prosecuted for accessing images of child abuse - is a clear indication, if ever one was needed, that exposure to certain types of imagery or experience, leads into an inevitable negative spiral.

The idea that you can heal yourself from repeated exposure to the original site of the trauma - just doesn't wash. What it really does is numb you to the pain and its consequences - thus the need to forever keep pushing at boundaries in search of response and feeling.

If the participants of BDSM are responsible, regardless if it's people in a relationship, sexwork (a professional dominatrix and client) or just people who meet up to engage in it then they will communicate with each before doing anything to make it clear what each person wants and doesn't want, and things like safewords and limits etc

If someone does something the other person doesn't want or keeps doing something after the other person wants them to stop, then that would be abuse (or rape if it happens to involves sex).

IMO BDSM itself isn't a problem, the problem can be people who are abusive by intentionally doing something against the wishes of another or people who may mean well but are just irresponsible and haven't researched or communicated properly.

If you want to whip/be whipped for example, the person doing the whipping needs to take into consideration all the types of whips (make sure it's designed for BDSM and not an equestrian whip designed for a thick-skinned horse for example!) and which would be best suited, the areas of the body suitable for whipping (eg avoid the lower back where the kidneys are), and exactly what the recipient wants.

IMO it's one of these things where an outright ban just wouldn't work as there are lots of people and a wide variety of people who like to take part and are going to take part regardless. I think better education, a "harm reduction" approach on how to get the most out of it with minimal risk would be the best approach.

I saw a yt clip of a young woman (on webcam) discussing choking with men. She said she liked it. One of the men asked, with a chuckle, yeah but what if she "doesn't come back"? Is that like a euphemism for "what if I kill her?" WTF. The flippant attitude to potentially killing a woman was pretty disgusting.

www.verywellmind.com/how-bdsm-might-benefit-your-health-and-your-relationship-4846462

Apparently it's good for us

BeeDeeEssEm I'm wondering why my opinion would be more valid than your Mums? What does she think about BDSM, and have you asked her why she thinks that, or did you just assume she's too vanilla to know what she's talking about?

I agree Barracker. This push back against "kink shaming" is a boon for abusers. Rather than encouraging BDSM and getting deeper into it, both the abuser and the person being abused should try to resolve what they are doing.

The ones who are playing at abuse with safe words etc. should consider why they want to act out other people's real life abuse for an orgasm.

I think a person who gains any pleasure from knowingly inflicting pain or fear in another person is disturbed and potentially dangerous and should probably devote their efforts to extinguishing that impulse rather than cultivating it. Even if that takes a lifetime.

Starting reading the Shark Cage, referenced above, got to the point where the author ponders that a hunting 'sharks' would have listened Jordan Peterson. What's he like, that Jordan Peterson and his many helpful practical tips to roving apex predator abusers. What a hoot !

So this started on AIBU - how did it end up on FWR - there is no 'message from above'?

I agree with @CaraDuneRedux.
I'd also add that the video games and cartoons I watched seemed to usually feature a female character who was so ravishing or helpless she was captured. The hero usually saved her (or in the 80s sometimes she saved herself).
Princess Peach, Penelope Pitstop, Thumbelina, Princess Jasmine, Belle etc.

@BeeDeeEssEm don't worry about discussing your own experiences - someone upthread quoted Audre Lourde, "The personal is the political."

I agree with whoever it was upthread who asked you to think about what sort of man you're attracting? Ursula Benstead's shark cage metaphor is really useful. A past history of abuse (especially during childhood) means you either never got help building/ now have a damaged shark cage. And abusers are like sharks - they can smell blood in the water from miles away.

Back when I was about 30 I had a breakdown and a bad period of depression. I can honestly say that in that (mercifully short) period I had more male attention than in the rest of my life put together. And every single one was a wrong 'un! It honestly felt like I was wandering around with "damaged, vulnerable woman - abusers form an orderly queue here" tattooed across my forehead.

(As an aside - to the poster who said "I had these interests by the age of 20, before I even knew BDSM was a thing": the eroticisation of male violence and female submission to male violence is ubiquitous. Even if all you've seen as a kid is James Bond films from the Connery era it's all around you. Your urges probably didn't come from nowhere, they were part of a culture that surrounds all of us. There may well be more to it physiologically that means you responded to this culture - but seriously, it's not that you can unequivocally say "it must be innate because I'd never even heard of BDSM." Even if you'd never heard the phrase BDSM, you were exposed to the concept. It's everywhere - from Rhett Butler carrying Scarlet upstairs mid row to "ravish her into submission" through to Bond throwing Pussy Galore into the hay and raping her - a rape that she - surprise, surprise -enjoys).

@veeeeh
This morning I read a few articles about this case. Hair raising stuff.

Sorry OP I didn’t mean to suggest that you should wheesht. What you have to say is very interesting, I just meant that I didn’t want to steamroll your thread with text but it seems I did.

Great thread everyone to all who have been victims of abuse or despair

Thanks Flora, I haven't come across Leidholt before, I'll have a look.

May have been said already, but look up Graham Dwyer. She died, he is in prison for hopefully a long time now. He was the Master, she was the slave, but the poor girl had issues. Bless her.

He is appealing of course at taxpayers funding. Ireland for those who may not have heard. Yes Holy Catholic Ireland. Who knew?

Great comment @PoleToPole. @BeeDeeEssEm all the best to you and I hope you find peace and healing in the future 💐

Hecate interesting points.

In her essay, Leidholtd says something along the lines that people could be socialised to eroticise banging their head on a wall. I agree with that.

Those essays are from the "sex wars" period between radical and "sex positive" feminists, which the SPs undoubtedly won. The most disappointing aspect of that is the use of feminism by the porn industry to portray BDSM as fresh or "empowering". It's as old as the hills and both reflects and reinforces male domination against women.

Sorry, its been a long day and I didn`t word that very well. By tied together I meant that they will always be at odds, how can they not be? Its also pretty disturbing that the idea of not wanting women to be abused constitutes radical feminism. Protecting women from being killed and maimed? What a novel idea!

OP , recovery is always possible, there is not always a way back, but there can be a new path forwards. Nobody is the same person after trauma, but that doesnt mean you cant be happy with yourself.

Honestly, I think a lot of BDSM and rad feminism are very tied together, I do not know a single one of my female colleagues who would ever see it as anything other than abuse, and disgusting.

You just cannot try and patch women up day after day, see their trauma over and over and listen to their distress and not find it utterly revolting, knowing that some creep somewhere got off on doing this to them.

I don`t have words for how sick that is, and how much these poor women are taken advantage of. It would be a huge red flag to me if anyone got off on hurting or wanting to hurt people.

For all those with relatives, friends or themselves abused in such situations you have my heartfelt sympathies, not that it counts for much from a stranger on the internet.

OP 

There are many excellent posts here and I hope you find them helpful. I also hope you are able to tap in to what truly makes you happy and fulfilled in your sexual relationships.

I fear we are all of us too conditioned to believe that force is an attractive, even necessary aspect of sexual relations. I believe this is because of centuries of patriarchy. I believe rape has been used to control and subordinate women and in subordinating women you are able to remove them from power structures. I think rape and ravishment was as much a means of control in BC Rome, or medieval France as it is in modern (20th/21st century culture). It is the rape in Tess of the Durbevilles. It is the romanticisation of the Marquis De Sade. It is the uncomfortable, "passionate" sex scene between Sean Young by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. It is every woman in literature or on screen resisting and then being overcome or acquiescing (there are too many to count). We are all raised to believe that this is sexy, that force is simply a part of the interplay between lovers (particularly those adventurous non boring ones). We are conditioned to believe this is so. What is it supposed to demonstrate to us? That we are weak and men are powerful, that domination is their right and subordination is our natural state. That we must bend. I don't doubt that women find this interplay sexy, but let's not forget that we are taught that it is, conditioned to believe it, from a very young age - it is every "he kissed her too hard" or he "pushed his hand up too far" in teen literature.

As has been pointed out I always thought BDSM was mainly for men who got a sexual kick out subverting those roles. When you're the superior biological sex class there's pleasure in being subordinate for a while, before you put your suit back on and go back to your desk in the city and laud it over everyone again. I don't think the "BDSM" that is so prevalent nowadays, that seems so often to involve choking women (particularly in easily available porn) resembles this. It resembles the same old subordination. Women may find pleasure in their degradation, but they shouldn't be under any illusion that they haven't always been expected to do just that.

"How many women (and possibly men) are agreeing to participate in BDSM because they think it’s expected of them, or because they feel peer / societal pressure to be sexually adventurous and willing to try anything. How many are trying to please a partner who has grown up watching violent porn? How many have watched violent porn themselves and found it becomes normalised?"

Good question Terracottasaur