BDSM under security: Radical resistance via contingent subjectivities

Abstract

In recent decades, BDSM communities have engaged in a political struggle for rights by separating their practices from the oppressive gaze of legal and medical praxis, seeking to legitimize BDSM discourse and actions under the slogan of "safe, sane, and consensual." The espousal of principles governed primarily by health and safety nonetheless carries a normalizing overtone, apparently trapping the community within the epistemic codes against which they struggle. This paper suggests that the security mechanism Foucault identifies as forming part of biopower can serve as a critical analytic capable of arbitrating between BDSM as a form of political resistance to hegemonic sexual norms and the restraints imposed by the "safe, sane, and consensual" code itself. We argue that communities using health and safety codes shift the political struggle from direct resistance to sovereign power to the transgression of hegemonic regimes of truth through contingent sexual identification and practice.

BDSM as trauma play: An autoethnographic investigation

“…Although, as noted, BDSM practitioners are no more likely than the general population to have experienced trauma or abuse (Powls and Davies, 2012; Richters et al., 2008; Sandnabba et al., 2002), the popular association surely remains. At the same time, it is also important to recognize that even the act of challenging these “pathologising discourses” can itself normalize “the legal and medical praxis” on which they are built (Parchev and Langdridge, 2018: 194; see Downing, 2004, 2007; Langdridge and Parchev, 2018). As such, I suspect that this article will make some people uncomfortable, not only because of the research topic, and not only because it “outs” a sex researcher (and thus, at least from the perspective of some, undermines the credibility and objectivity of scholars who study BDSM and other forms of sexual diversity), but also and especially because it potentially reifies the structures and powers it seeks to resist.…”

History, culture and practice of puppy play

“…As a theoretical framework, we follow Greener and Hollands (2006) in using aspects of subcultural and post-subcultural theories to examine puppy play as a cultural affiliation, and use Irwin's (1973) concept of 'the scene' to offer a sociohistorical overview of the scene's development. In addition, we critically examine tensions within the UK community regarding the sexual versus non-sexual nature of this practice that have recently emerged in the context of literature on BDSM, technologies of the self, transgression and citizenship (Cossman, 2002;Dymock, 2013;Langdridge, 2006;Langdridge and Parchev, 2018;Parchev and Langdridge, 2018;Weiss, 2011), as well as discussion about the dangers of a 'politics of respectability' (Cruz, 2016a(Cruz, , 2016b.…”

Transgression and (sexual) citizenship: the political struggle for self-determination within BDSM communities

“…Downing (2007) and Weiss (2011), whose writings are some of the few theoretical papers to be written to date on this issue, present two distinct critical positions. While Downing (2007) identifies the risk that the normalization mechanism poses to identities constructed around safety codes, Weiss (2011) recognizes the ways in which contingent self and collective identities may be realized under this community constraint (see also Parchev & Langdridge, 2018). Weeks (1998) argued that there are two moments within sexual citizenship: transgression and acceptance.…”