Oh, and since I seem to be operating in full prudish-libertine form lately, WTF is up with the promotional text for Kink.com’s latest offering?
What is Public Disgrace?
Public Disgrace is the best public sex and BDSM site on the web. Women are bound, stripped, and punished in public. PublicDisgrace.com features porn with public nudity, public spanking, and public fucking at a new level.
...
Our amazing director takes hot girls into public and humiliates them. ... The girls are made a public disgrace, public female humiliation at its best.
Public sex? Cool. BDSM? Sounds like fun. Binding and stripping? Sure, why not? Humiliation? Not so much my thing but I know it stirs other people’s paint so go for it.
But punished?
Punished for what, exactly?
If it turns you on to participate then where does the punishment angle come in? And if it doesn’t turn you on then what, exactly, makes it sex?
I mean… punishment is something you want to happen to Dick Cheney or Phillip Markoff. Punishment is something you want to happen to the umpire for calling your favorite base-runner out at home. Punishment is something you want to happen to your neighbor’s child for saying “I’m sorry you’re a pooter” when you tell them to apologize for saying you’re a pooter. I would be profoundly disturbed, however, to learn you connected punishing Cheney, Markoff, an umpire, or your neighbor’s child with anything having to do with sex at all.
And what the ski-jumping jimminies does punishment have to do with sex?
I mean, I don’t want to be an old stick in the mud or anything. And dear sweet mother of pearl I’m acutely aware that the production side of Kink.com is consensual, sensitive, labor-friendly, well-paying, boundaries-articulating-and-respecting, and civic minded enterprise. And yes, I know sex-bloggers reliably catch more grief for criticizing Kink.com than Republicans get for criticizing Rush Limbaugh.
But c’mon! Whatever big group hug they’ve got going behind the scenes they sure seem awfully willing to deliberately to grow the market for people who don’t think public sex, aggressive sex, BDSM sex, and male-top/female-bottom sex is hot but because it’s degrading punishment.
Call me a prudish libertine. Call me a curmudgeon. Tell me Kink.com really isn’t thiiiiiis close to jumping the shark anyway. But it’s kind of annoying to spend time and effort trying to create the idea that sex is not punishment, that it’s not unwanted, that it’s not degrading “even when women do it,” that even rough, “extreme” sex is cool for people who enjoy it. And I just don’t see a lot of common ground between me and the kind of people who’s promotional text appears to be actively recruiting adherents to the no-sex class ideology for customers.
Sheesh! What’s their next “BDSM” adventure gonna be? “Hot and Housebound?” Where generically butch-looking men with shaved heads chain women in peekaboo wedding dresses to stoves and force them to cook bacon and clean hot ovens naked? Oh wait! (Note: the link is blandly work-safe but c’mon!)
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 11:46.
I have long wondered about this. I teach in a college. In my classes, we discuss culture, ethics, and all kinds of humanistic topics, including sex. My students often come in with a very relativistic attitude about what people do and how they treat each other, and at some point in the discussion they come to realize that cultural relativism has its limits; cultures may sanction things, like rape or mutilation, that can't simply be chalked up to the ubiquitous "that's just the way they are" excuse. I think of myself as a sex-positive person, but I'll be damned if I can find it in me to be a humiliation-positive person. Where is the line between respecting the particular sexual expressions of others and condoning emotional abuse? I understand that there's some sort of consent involved, but is that really the only consideration? I don't know the answers...I'm still figuring it all out.
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 12:28.
Figleaf, I totally share your misgivings about punishment. But you say humiliation is fine since it stirs some people's paint. I don't see how you reconcile this.
Do you seriously think you can draw a clear, bright line between punishment and humiliation? Isn't a lot of humiliation all about "you're a dirty slut and so you deserve what you're getting?" How is humiliation okay if, as you also argue, sex shouldn't be about degradation, and particularly not about degrading women, and even more not about *eroticizing* degradation? Is humiliation OK only because you know people who get off on it - but if so, wouldn't that justify *any* consensual practice? I understand humiliation is "play" (although I'd question that too, when it comes to people who enact this dynamic 24/7), but isn't the "punishment" trope just as much an exercise in role-playing?
I just don't see a real distinction between humiliation and punishment. If there's a solid argument to the contrary, I'd like to know.
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 20:09.
I think the specific word "punishment" is just a code word for general hitting and meanness, in the context of porn it doesn't really mean a punishment FOR anything. For being submissive, I guess.
I think the real problem here (in Kink.com, not in your post) is a confusion between D/s and SM. In D/s the submissive (supposedly...) doesn't really want to be punished and is only punished when they've broken a rule or displeased the dominant. (This actually gives me the screaming ickies when people take it literally, but it is consensual and the submissives do seem happy with it.)
Whereas in SM the bottom is openly asking for it, at least partly controlling it, and enjoys the pain and humiliation straight up. Any "punishment" aspect is straight up roleplay--"this is for being a dirty little slut" sits a lot better with me than "this is for not doing the dishes."
And Kink.com kind of blurs the line. They do scenes that have the brutality of SM but with the seriousness of D/s. Obviously the only thing the model did "wrong" was agree to the shoot, but for the sake of fantasy they imply that they're doing all this "for real" rather than acknowledging any playfulness or back-and-forth, and that's where it gets creepy.
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 20:46.
While I haven't seen the site in question (though I vaguely recall having seen an ad for it somewhere) I'm not seeing much of an issue here. It's basically "punishment play". They pretend that the sub did something bad, then sexually humiliate them as a "punishment". It's sort of like "rape play", where the sub pretends that they really don't want it and fights back (with a safeword, of course, in case it goes too far for them to handle) or "kidnap play" where the sub gets "forced" into a car, taken home, and then "tortured" or "raped". (Kidnap play is a bit risky, though, because occasionally you hear in the news about botched "kidnap" attempts because some witness called the police on them...)
While I can certainly see how someone might be squicked by that sort of thing, I don't see how one can object to "punishment play" but not any similar activities (unless one is unaware of them).
reCaptcha: too RICO (dunno why, seems appropriate somehow)
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 21:14.
I can't figure out the line either.
I mean, the codewords for the site as quoted are a nice laundry list of the things in BDSM that squick me out, so even if I were interested in porn I wouldn't be going there, but I know people who kink on punishment dynamics as well as people who kink on humiliation dynamics.
And I know people who've told me I can't possibly be a real submissive if I don't kink on punishment, and people who've told me I can't possibly be a real submissive if I don't kink on humiliation. In fact, those two plus masochism are the things I see most often conflated (incorrectly, and often obnoxiously) with submission.
I'm kind of boggled as a result that someone could be well-enough acquainted with the people who kink on humiliation to give it a pass and not be aware of punishment dynamics as a kink. (And if I were going to impose my squicks on the universe, I'd be doing it the other way around, anyway.)
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Wed, 2009-05-06 15:35.
for the sake of fantasy they imply that they're doing all this "for real"
But to me that's just it - it's about portraying a fantasy. I don't think Kink.com set out to be ambassadors for BDSM, but (like any porn producers) they seek to portray a fantasy scenario that people find erotic.
The written-word erotica fantasies that some BDSMers write and publish online are equally played "for real", because the fantasy is more enjoyable when it's presented that way.
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Wed, 2009-05-06 15:39.
Humiliation in a BDSM context really isn't abuse. It is an actual source of sexual arousal and enjoyment for the person "suffering" humiliation. talking about it as though it's emotional abuse and "some sort of consent involved" is just recycling the same tropes that are used to target consensual sadomasochism, and with the same limited understanding of the dynamics involved.
Submitted by 2913 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-05-10 14:58.
Figleaf, like other commenters I'm also confused about why you think humiliation is clearly OK and punishment is clearly not OK. My impression is that they would be ethically equivalent: humiliation would be more psychological than physical, but they would both involve actors submitting to acts that they pretend they don't want to do. Assuming that the actors have the freedom to decide whether to participate, it doesn't seem particularly problematic. I get that it plays into the stereotype that women don't really want sex and men have to force them into it, but I don't see how the punishment part is guilty while the humiliation part is innocent. What's the distinction for you?