This is a companion post (of sorts) to my one from a week ago entitled ‘Smart People Saying Stupid Things‘. That one concerned smart but non-kinky people being stupid about kink. This one features a smart but non-kinky person being insightful and observant. Like that last post, the linked text is lengthy and non-erotic, so if you’re simply looking for visual stimulation I’d suggest skipping to the picture at the bottom.
The smart person in question is Camille Paglia and the article that caught my eye is called ‘Scholars in Bondage‘. It’s a critique of three recent academic books on kink and BDSM by Margot Weiss, Staci Newmahr and Danielle J. Lindemann. All three generated a fair amount of online discussion, particularly the one by Margot Weiss. I think it’d be fair to say that Paglia is less than impressed with them, and her criticisms really resonated for me.
Primarily she attacks their tendency to bury their subjects under ‘a sludge of opaque theorizing’. They start with a fascinating subject, but rather than use the evidence they’ve gathered to illuminate it, they obfuscate it. They write defensively, for the benefit of their academic peers and the theoretical frameworks they’ve been taught, rather than to push our understanding of the subject forward. This is a common tendency in these kind of studies and it always annoys the hell out of me.
Her other major criticism is that they lack historical background. They’re so caught up in the theories of modern gender studies that the cultural context is entirely omitted. From early religious iconography, through Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, up to Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, there’s a rich and important cultural background to understand.
Finally, I particularly liked her closing thoughts on what S&M actually is.
My conclusion … was that sadomasochism is an archaic ritual form that descends from prehistoric nature cults and that erupts in sophisticated “late” phases of culture
Sadomasochism’s punitive hierarchical structure is ultimately a religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Its rhythmic abuse of the body … is paradoxically a reinvigoration, a trancelike magical realignment with natural energies
I’m a non-religious person. I don’t ‘get’ religion and it makes no sense to me. But this remark did resonate. On the surface BDSM play seems sexual and hedonistic, a world away from the purity of religious penance and absolution. Yet, I wonder if the underlying psychology is actually quite similar. A great BDSM scene both focuses and energizes the self, but also liberates from a sense of self. The submissive/sinner is both the center of attention but also the least important person. They are reinvigorated through surrender and acquiescence.
This image is by the Italian photographer Alessio Delfino. It’s from a series entitled Tarots and is called La Papesse. I originally found it on the Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.
Amusingly, when doing a reverse image search to track down the source for the image, I came across this modified version of it. I’m all for people exploring their kinks and creating their own porn, but this is a real WTF. I’m not sure what’s the idea behind combining that image with the additional surreal text (apparently she’s a financial adviser who likes baked oatmeal) and profane text (she likes peeing, shitting and spitting on slaves), but I think it sprained my brain.
