Out of the Safety Zone:

Codes of Conduct and Identity in SM Communities

by Alison M. Moore

This is a copy of the talk I delivered at the Bob Buckley memorial discussion for Sydney Leather Pride week, April 25 2002. Since it was written for verbal delivery it does not include references, however if anyone would like to know my sources for any statement, please feel free to email me.

Alison M. Moore

Judgment and hypocrisy in BDSM/Leather communities takes many forms; the variety that concerns me is that concerning the term 'Safe Sane and Consensual', as well as other attempts to codify and regulate behavior in our communities world-wide. By this I mean the practice of avoiding the terms 'sadism' and 'masochism' in certain parts of the community; also the use of the term 'Leather' to avoid explicit discussion of the nature of our desires. To me, it is highly dubious for any part of a BDSM or Leather subculture to dictate to its members what is safe and acceptable behavior. (I'm not talking about play-party etiquette or safer-sex recommendations, but about generalized definitions, slogans and how-to manuals telling us how to do SM play). From the moment that sadomasochistic sexuality has been named and identified by Western medicine and psychology, it has been categorized as a psychological illness, as a violent and destructive form of sexuality, as the fantasy that is responsible for rape, assault and premeditated murder. In the effort to differentiate what we do from these misunderstandings, some elements in BDSM and Leather communities have felt it necessary to codify SM behavior, to invent slogans that advertise our moderation in play and our rejection of the slippages often assumed between SM and other non-consensual forms of abuse. Some of the judgments of others that I see in our community are, I believe, based upon a series of confusions about the medical, psychiatric and legal definitions that we react against; they are also based on a series of confusions about the historical origins of SM and about the relationship between non-consensual violence and abuse, and what it is that we do.

I would like firstly to discuss how terms such as SSC came to be so pervasive throughout SM communities and what this trend really means for pervs. What I will be trying to show is that, as individuals struggling to feel free, we need to engage with medical, psychiatric and legal definitions of our perversion; we need to deconstruct these definitions in a way that makes it clear what our desire really means to us. I believe that any attempt to take refuge from the judgment that society has of us by creating our own objects of judgment within the community is merely a tactic of avoidance or what American Gay theorist Leo Bersani calls "aversion displacement", the practice of describing a sexual preference in a way that avoids explicit revelation of the nature of our desires. Names like "Leather Pride"; connote nothing of the approach to sex shared by many sadomasochists; we're not all into leather, we don't all see leather as symbol of the lusts that drive us. Many of us do indeed identify as sadists and masochists. Anything that verges on a facile sanitization of the unadulterated filth of our most beautifully twisted fantasies will ultimately doom us to both a deeper misunderstanding from society, and to a putrid division of our community between apologist spokespeople who claim to represent us, and those who play in inspiring and original ways but whose wisdom remains invisible both to newly arriving members and to those outside it who want to understand what we are about. Subculture communities often follow the onion-ring pattern in this regard: we are cast as 'Other' by society at large firstly because of our gender or our sexual preference; we create movements to protest this marginalization; within this community we then mark someone else as the Other (such as SM pervs have often felt within the gay and lesbian communities); as SM pervs we create our own communities to protest this marginalization; then we too cast someone else as the Other. We purchase our status from those we too name as unacceptable (the unsafe, the insane, the un-consensual). We spontaneously seek to distance ourselves from those behaviors that we are often incorrectly associated with, but without stopping to consider the consequences of our dissociation; We are not the reckless ones, We are not 'insane', We are not driven by the same passions that drive those 'Others' to violence and abuse. The hypocrisy of this SM aversion-displacement, though often well intentioned, represents a sexless self-consciousness based on a series of intellectual and spiritual misunderstandings. I want to dissect some of these misunderstandings in order to create room for alternative approaches as to how we might treat issues of responsibility and ethics in our community. I'm not aiming to condemn anyone or to argue that we have fucked anything up as a community. I believe these issues are actually inherent to the problems faced by anyone attempting to construct new identities based on sexual difference, hence some of the parallels between the political issues in SM communities and those faced by the larger gay and lesbian community. What many of us really desire is precisely new ways of loving, new ways of fucking, new pleasures, new pains, something that truly frees us from the old dichotomies and opens inside us the space to be who we truly are. There is no rule-book and trying to pretend that there is one, or that there should be one is a tragic misdiversion of our intelligence and of our sexual exuberance.

Let me take you all on a brief historical journey, a journey back to the moment when we perverts were first named, we "sadists", we "masochists"; we "coprolagniacs", "urophiles", and "fetishists"; we "homosexuals", "bisexuals", "transvestites" and "nymphomaniacs". The practice of widespread consensual erotic flagellation (to name just one aspect of our desire) can be documented as far back as the early seventeenth century. Medical tracts from this period recommended spanking of the buttocks as a normative form of sex-play designed to stimulate the circulation of sexual fluids and intensify arousal. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth-century (just over 100 years ago) that doctors and theorists became concerned with such practices, concerned with any practice that did not follow a structure of pleasure beginning with arousal and finishing with orgasm, concerned with any practice that did not result in reproduction, and concerned above all with naming such practices and emphasizing their dangers to this thing called 'civilized' society. The classic text in this naming is the Psychopathia Sexualis by the Viennese urologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing who invented the terms sadism and masochism based on the name of his contemporary, the writer Leopold von Sacher Masoch, and on the name of the notorious Marquis de Sade. The Psychopathia Sexualis (like most of the writing about sexual perversion throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) attempted to show that such practices were a form of barbarism or degeneration, that they were expressions of the savage lust which must be repressed in the human psyche in order for civilization to progress. Hence this process of the naming of our desire had, from the very beginning, a distinct politics.

Contemporary Psychiatric definitions of sexual perversity are based on a politics too. Although homosexuality was abolished as a category of psychopathology in the 1973 edition of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatric disorders, sadism and masochism remain there still, and are regarded as psychological 'illnesses' still dubiously confused with the psychic disturbances that result in domestic violence, rape, murder and other forms of non-consensual abuse. From the very moment when the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry and sexology came into being at the end of the nineteenth-century they have been primarily concerned with one fundamental issue: what are the drives that allow us to construct this thing called 'civilization' and which other drives must be repressed in this process? These 'Other'; drives have been named under all sorts of rubrics. The other is barbarous, degenerate, retrograde, the other is racially different, sexually insatiable, contagious, diseased, pathological, insane... sadism and masochism were named, defined and categorized as part of this process by which our drives were colonized, were carved in two; sexual perversity from the moment of its birth into nominalization and conceptualization has been cast as part of that 'Other' self that must be repressed for the Civilized, the Sane, the Safe to exist. The notion of consent was also fundamental to this concept of civilization. Psychoanalysts and anthropologists of the interwar period saw this as one of the defining features of 'civilized Man': that whereas feudal and primitive societies must enforce authority, in Modern European culture authority is interjected into the Self; we exercise control over our own behavior, chastise ourselves, consent to the latent violence upon which social authority and class structures depend. My point is that the psychiatric pathologization and the legal criminalization of sadism and masochism were invented at a moment in Western history when all sorts of other human relationships were being codified and categorized. It was the historical moment when 'insanity' came into conceptual being as a concern of the State, as a variety of criminality based on the notion of an unfortunate sickness as opposed to moral iniquity. It was this discourse that first assumed sexual SM to be the same as abuse and non-consensual violence; it was is this discourse that always assumed, and still does, that sadistic and masochistic desires belonged in that category of psychological illness, of unacceptable behavior that was a manifestation of that which spills out from the boundaries of the Legitimate. Our protest as I see it, should not just be against the fact that we got lumped into that category, but should also be about the way this category was constructed in the first place. My primary concern as an academic researcher is with why it is that in Modern Western societies the Other is always conceived as an illness. What I want to show is that we can't avoid being pathologized by dodging the psychiatric and legal definitions altogether. It is us they're talking about. What is required instead is a healthy suspiciousness of the categories of pathology that our behavior and many other diverse behaviors have been lumped into. It doesn't take any profound intellectual finesse to ask these questions; it is also a question of humanitarian instinct: if someone says to you "you're all wrong and you're just like all those other people who are all wrong... " what is your instinct? Do you deny that you have anything to do with those others while agreeing with their condemnation? Or rather do you discern what makes you unique while critiquing the dynamics that resulted in the marking of anyone as this Other? There is another example I like to use to illustrate this approach. Heterosexual men who enjoy being fucked up the arse often fear exposing this desire because they believe that if they do, others will think they are gay. I often explain to such men that the solitary equation of anal pleasure with male homosexuality is a sort of myth, but I also encourage them to consider why it threatens them to have others think they might be gay. There's nothing wrong with a discernment that reveals who we truly are, but if these distinctions are bought at the cost of someone else's place in the sun, then it is time to ask some serious questions about what it is we are fighting for: is it the freedom for everyone to be who they want to be, or is it just the freedom for us (whoever we are) to be who we want to be???

We all know in SM communities that what we do is different to non-consensual behaviors. Although we like to toy with the fantasies of non-consent, of violence, of abuse, we all know that at the end of the day, sadists care about masochists. Politically many people in our community have railroaded themselves into a denial of any relationship whatsoever between SM and abuse. In our attempt to communicate that SM is different, some of us have understandably tried to distance ourselves from terms like sadism and masochism that psychiatry and the Law confuse with abuse. We've invented endless lists of euphemisms to describe the filth that turns us on, the nastiness that makes us wet, the sexy hate that makes us hard. "No, no we're not into sadism and masochism, we're into 'dominance and submission', 'bondage and discipline', 'Leather sexuality', 'sensuous magick', 'sexual shamanism', 'fetish sexuality', 'erotic power-exchange'. What we do is 'loving', 'spiritual', 'safe, sane and consensual', 'clean, dry and sober'... ". I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with any of these statements in themselves as a declaration of one's personal outlook on SM. What I do find dubious is the use of these definitions as a way of selling SM to the wider gay and lesbian community or to society in general. I object to the use of these justifications as a means of distancing ourselves from the association of SM with criminal and psychotic behaviors, a means of sanitizing SM, making is palatable, acceptable, legitimate. There will always be someone else we can cast as the Other. Pedophiles are often a popular choice, Arab terrorists have had a good airing in recent years. It doesn't matter if you think that some those designated 'Other' deserve this treatment and while we do not. It is the marking of someone as the Other that is the dynamic that dooms us.

Here are just a few of the reasons why the term Safe, Sane and Consensual often leaves me feeling like I've just swallowed a cup of cold vomit:

'Safe' may be intended to mean not doing anything that will endanger another's life or general wellbeing, but can also have other meanings like: not doing anything that pushes boundaries, challenges one's sense of self, or makes one's soul shudder; like: not engaging in any activities deemed incorrect by those attempting to regulate SM behavior for others based on their own aversions, preferences and fears....

'Sane' may be intended to mean that we take responsibility for our actions and stand by them beyond the heat of the moment, but it can also mean upholding some very dubious psychiatric or other definitions of 'sanity', judging others for things that frighten us and then attempting to justify those fears to ourselves and everyone else...

'Consensual' may be intended to convey that what we do is different from domestic violence, rape or assault, but it can also encourage dynamics where the sub does not truly give up control, is allowed to dictate the scene in a way that undercuts the erotic impetus of the top and turns them into a service provider; it can also mean simplifying what is a very complex relationship: assuming that consent is nothing more than verbal acquiescence (the sub says yes and then you go to work on their carcass)..., as opposed to a constantly shifting dynamic process between players, one that depends upon eye-contact, body-reading, smell, touch, common-sense, intuition and multitude of other levels of perception.

When we invent these sorts of simplistic slogans to differentiate our behavior from non-consensual violence, what we end up with is often a set of definitions that do not reflect anyone's way of doing SM. I've met many people who pronounce their strict adherence to the SSC slogan. But even many of these people don't always use safe-words, don't always feel completely sane when they play, don't always abstain from drugs and alcohol, don't always operate in the black and white zone where a sub always knows that she is clearly consenting, and nor should they. For me the whole beauty of SM play is that it doesn't always make sense, that it does take us outside our 'safety-zone', that it is frightening; it taps into the purest essence of sex which is ultimately chaotic, chthonic, exhilarating, exuberant, a dizzying abyss, an electrifying scream... There is no political slogan to describe this.

We are all looking for tactics to rescue us from the disturbing possibility that SM might have something to do with abuse. We do this as Tops in the attempt to make submissives trust us; we do this as bottoms in the attempt to assert ourselves as determining our desire, not just being a doormat, or a passive victim; we do this as a community in the attempt to divert hostility and disrespect from the wider population; we do this within ourselves to fend off the darkness within that makes us doubt sometimes if we don't really just want to die, to kill, to maim, abuse, be taken for granted, be taken advantage of, to take liberties, to take a life... But I am fundamentally suspicious of slogans that try to rescue us, and of identities based on fear and indignation. I believe there is a relationship between SM and abuse (albeit a complex one) and that there is actually nothing wrong with feeling disturbed by this at times.

So what is the relationship between SM and violence? Many people even within SM communities see things like religious flagellation, medieval torture, Nazism and other historical examples of cruelty and violence as instances of some sort of universal sadomasochism. I believe that in fact there is no such thing as a universal sadomasochism. SM is a distinctly historically contextual phenomenon. Things like spanking, biting, and pinching may be found to be pleasurable in all sorts of cultural contexts; cultures in Africa and the Pacific my practice beautifully brutal scarifications; but the notion of these sensations as linked to the domination of one partner over the other, and to the playing out of roles that resemble those of non-consensual violence is a specifically Modern concept as far as Western civilization is concerned. There is no pornographic evidence of it prior to the late eighteenth-century. We invented this form of pleasure in response to the dynamics of violence specific to modern states. SM fantasies clearly parody the dynamics of non-consensual relations: the Dom is a Master, the sub a Slave; the Dom is a cop, the sub a criminal; the Dom is the rider, the sub a pony; the Dom is Mistress, the sub a dog; the Dom is an army officer, the sub a subordinate, the Dom is the Lady of the Manor, the sub is the maid, the Dom is the employer, the sub is an employee; the Dom is the teacher, the sub is the pupil; the Dom is the pimp, the sub is the slut, etc.. etc.. This is precisely my point: there is a relationship between SM and abuse: SM is a playful, sexualized parody of non-consensual abusive dynamics.

Some would say we shouldn't go around admitting this. We all want to clarify the psychiatric and legal misunderstandings about our desire. We all want to see the 'she-asked-for-it' defense taken out of rape trials; we all want our happy little perversions to be taken out of the American DSM; we all want people to realize that a hungry, horny masochist is really a very different kettle of fish to a disempowered victim of domestic violence! Whenever I read court transcripts where a rapist's defense council tries to argue that the victim was really someone who 'likes it rough', I can't help thinking, my god if only they knew just what a demanding, self-proclaiming, self-confident and desirous hussy a real masochist can actually be!!!!

There are important differences between masochists and victims, sadists and abusers: The Nazi Holocaust was not enacted by a bunch of horny sadists, but by bureaucrats, acting coldly, dispassionately, efficiently. Sexual sadists enjoy giving pain to others, with emphasis on the word 'gift';. Why give something to someone who won't appreciate it? Wouldn't we all rather offer our gift of pain to someone who will cherish our wrathful generosity? Masochists choose to submit, even if they do not choose every little thing that happens to them, whereas victims do not generally choose much at all; masochists have sexual agency, even if their fantasy is often based precisely on the idea of not having any agency: the 'I-exist-only-for-the-pleasure-of-the-Dom' scenario. There is nothing wrong with pointing out these sorts of distinctions. However, sanitized, simplified slogans about the difference between SM and abuse will not give us the clarification we seek; what's more, they're big turn-off! It is our fantasy life that is what makes SM sexy. What is SM without fantasy? Most of the acts we engage in are meaningless in themselves. The nature of SM fantasies is that they refer to non-consensual scenarios. We love to think of ourselves as torturers, abusers, murderers, vampires, as victims, slaves, sluts and used things. This is what gets us off in the first place. How can we possibly maintain this nasty passion when there are those trotting around proposing that a top is just a benevolent service-provider instead of a cussing, ball-crushing bitch from hell, and that the masochist is just seeking spiritual catharsis instead of a nice gritty fuck that leaves him with a sore jaw and a bruised arse just the way he likes it? The image of Safe, Sane and Consensual play may make us feel secure in our righteous moral high-ground, it may even illuminate some of the simpler truths about the love that does indeed occur in many SM relationships; but I don't believe in making these gains at the cost of our profoundest longings. To trade acceptability for the fire of our darkest lusts is not, for me, a fair exchange.

But nor should we kid ourselves that these desires really do make us (as academic theorist Karmen McKendrick says) "radical, subversive and unspeakably cool". We need to find ways to talk about our desire that neither sells it out for the benefit of appearing acceptable, nor confuses the fantasy of non-consent with the reality as it occurs (always has occurred and probably always will) to many people throughout the world. If you think that you'd be a match for a real-life violent brute just because some horny masochistic slut let you flog the crap out of her, you're in for a big surprise. To pretend that what we do is anything other than a lovely game is a deep insult to those who truly have no choice about the dynamics of violence and exploitation that control their lives. This is not to say that what we do is not 'real'. Real passions, real desires, real emotions; real control, real submission real pleasures and real pains are all brought into play in SM scenarios, some more than others. But if we walk around pretending to hold the patent on the dark and nasty side of life, this may well turn us on and make for tasty scene later that night, but as a political identity it is pretentious, precious, brittle and phony.

Even if we refrain from negative judgments of others, there are still just as many pitfalls in the positive judgments with which we imbue our own identities. When we set ourselves up as a strict role-model for some form of play, we give ourselves a lot to live up to. If everyone knows you as a big bad sadist, it can make it hard to get a little sub action in those rare moments when this is indeed what even your nasty dominant soul cries out for. When we go around calling ourselves the world's biggest masochist, this can create a frustrating box for us to flap about in at times: not even the heaviest masochist in the world wants pain and humiliation all the time. But more importantly, when we take our naughty hidden desires out of the closet and past them all over the surface of our Selves, we give up a little of their magic and their power. We should think carefully about this cost, about how much we are prepared to sacrifice in the name of societal education. Sexuality as an identity can be a turn-off in itself. If we turn our desires into something that we are supposed to do (because that's what we've told everyone we do) we can easily rob ourselves of the exuberance that only comes from doing that which we're not supposed to do. Let's face it, doing what we're not supposed to do is an important aspect of the fantasy-life of many SM pervs.

I can't suggest any slogans to replace those that I critique here. I do believe in naming a thing for what it is, and in owning our desires whether they are tidy and acceptable or not, or even if they are. I've found that the only mottos that really work for me in negotiating my SM desires and play are these: honor your true desire, ask yourself what do you really want, not what you think you should want, honor the dynamic you actually have with someone (no use trying to make a form of play happen if the chemistry just isn't there), trust your own informed judgments about what is safe for both players, and do a little research before making any sweeping statements about what SM means, where is comes from and what it excludes.

Around the world people have indeed gone to jail, and suffered psychiatric pathologization over their perfectly harmless SM activities. There is a battle to fight and clarifications to be made. Some will no doubt object to what I have said here on the basis that newcomers need simplistic definitions and slogans to guide them to playing well. I believe very strongly in educating others in SM play, but I believe in it as an interpersonal interaction, not as something stuck up on a poster on the wall at a party, or on a website or written into an association's constitution. Experienced players have a responsibility to mentor new arrivals, in a way that makes clear their own agendas and benefits in doing so. We all have a responsibility to clarify the nature of SM as a system of desire that both sadist and masochist choose. But let us do this with patience, intelligence, and honesty. Let us do this without casting ourselves in opposition to some scapegoat via which we can align ourselves with the majority. The conflation of SM with abuse must indeed by dissected, but if we accept the categories of otherness in opposition to which Safe Sane and Consensual play is established, then we play that same old tired game of making someone else the problem. The freedom we desire lies not in the labyrinth of acceptable behaviors but only in the abyss where pain and pleasure fuse, where a blow becomes a fuck, where a cut becomes a cunt, where we hurt the one we love and cherish the one who pains us. SM pervs more than anyone should be able to see this issue for what it is. Ours is the desire that spits in the face of dichotomies. We play with those torrents that fuel the fire within, we teeter on those boundaries where the Self forgets itself, where passions mingle with fears, where desire spills into dread. When we venture into the miasma of political struggle, we do so at the peril of our desire. The only 'safe' sadomasochistic identity is one that does not exist in opposition to some 'Other', but which proclaims itself with the full fruits of its contradictory lust.