Celebrating Over 1,000 Years of Cultural Identity Crises
15 March 2011
S&M as Anti-Nature?
To kind of pick up from where I last left, Nietzsche made the declaration in Twilight of the Idols that morality is separate from nature, that morality is not natural. Part of the reasoning is due to the fact that animals don't have a morality, and being that humans are animals, they should follow suit. Excuse the lack of transition, but can the same be said for S&M?
Many early theorists of sexuality such as Krafft-Ebing have looked at this phenomenon as reinforcing the workings of nature. Dominant male overpowers the submissive female. The male arrives at satisfaction at how easily and well he overpowers the female, and the female feels bliss at how well her man has dominated her.
If you've looked at any recent BDSM, then you'll know that this is the furthest thing from the truth of what BDSM actually is. The prevailing fantasy is that of a weak man being overpowered by a dominant female. Not only does this fly in the face of what we collectively consider "nature," but it also flies in the face of gender roles, race roles, and power relationships. The BDSM scene is place to act out the opposite of one's "natural" role. It's a place for the CEO who is used to dominating people to be dominated, or it's a place for a politician who always makes rules to finally be given some, like John Boehner's recent BDSM scandal that the National Enquirer revealed.
So could it be that S&M is really a place to act the opposite of natural tendencies? No, I don't think so. The only thing that the practice of S&M seems to reveal is that there is no true "nature." There is no natural order to power. S&M simply reveals that power roles are socially constructed. A man isn't inherently more dominant than a woman, otherwise Boehner wouldn't want to get all teary eyed as his boner is beaten red by a whip. Women aren't naturally submissive otherwise that huge sex den by LAX wouldn't be operational. The so-called "natural" relationships exist because we were told that that's the way it is. In "private" we can live out how we really feel. The man who has been told that he needs to be dominant can be dressed up like an infant girl in daipers and be spanked over the knee by a woman who is dressed as a man.
I'm all for it. I just wish that people could see the implications of these scandals with regards to power rather than just saying, "Oh, there's another politician having some crazy sex." No, they want to be dominated, and maybe you do too, and that's okay.
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