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

Abstract

There has beenand continues to bea tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalised sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow, and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorisation of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.

History, culture and practice of puppy play

“…That is, the risk of association with bestiality, a concern that is expressed by members of the subculture (Wignall and McCormack, 2017), is ostensibly reduced through this focus on play, especially if the sexual is also rendered invisible through its privatisation (Cossman, 2002) or disavowal. Serious leisure (sexual) activities work well within (and help sustain) Late Capitalism for they demand an active engagement with consumption (Parchev and Langdridge, 2018; Weiss, 2011). The possession of (often very expensive) gear becomes central to the creation of the sexual subject (‘becoming a pup’), and mastery of the self (Weiss, 2011).…”

“…The danger here is the ready embrace of a (highly individualistic) queer liberalism of the kind that Eng (2010) argues is complicit in the forgetting of race and the denial of difference. This position sees the search for – and claims around – fundamental human rights at the heart of the liberal project, such as the right to a private sexual life unfettered by state control, as inherently oppositional to a more intersectional framework that acknowledges the complex material conditions of people's lives in framing their choices and available options (Langdridge and Parchev, 2018; Sabsay, 2012; Weiss, 2011). The ‘everyone is welcome’ discourse inadvertently – and paradoxically – fails to attend to barriers concerning power, access and difference in a way that may genuinely open up this practice and community to all (see Weiss, 2011).…”

“…Further, they explore the ways that individuals within communities act to police the boundaries of acceptability and permissibility through a neo-liberal politics in which citizenship is contingent upon abstract individualist ethics. This ‘struggle for self-determination’ (Langdridge and Parchev, 2018), between transgression and citizenship, is also at the heart of some recent tensions within the puppy play community, albeit in a somewhat different form than that discussed in the extant BDSM literature.…”

“…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 socio-historical 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, 2016b).…”

The Psychology of Puppy Play: A Phenomenological Investigation

“…This is a limitation of this study and also something of a concern about this rapidly developing sexual subculture. The intersection of class, ethnicity, gender and also role as leisure practitioner or professional sex worker is critical with BDSM (see, for instance, Langdridge & Parchev, 2018), albeit as yet with no evidence of puppy specific sex work practitioners. It does appear that puppy play remains a form of leisure sex at present (Wignall & McCormack, 2017), and one that is predominantly white and gay, albeit with some evidence of a growing interest from women.…”