Photo by Flickr user robotclaw. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A reader with the pen name Slap Unhappy asked Em & Lo for advice with the following situation.

My wife and I have been together just over five years. The other night while having sex, she asked me to slap her in the face. Repeatedly. I was raised not to lay a hand down on a woman, and now I am being asked to. We are pretty active and broad in our sexual tastes, but this one is kind of weird to me. Thoughts, ideas?

– Slap Unhappy

Source: Em & Lo

First of all, I recommend reading E&L's response, which is both informative and thoughtful.  But the question brings up another dimension that I don't think is explored often enough.

Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s I ended up breaking up with someone early in a relationship because she wanted me to slap her. It just totally freaked me out. A few years later I was really freaked out when a partner told me she was terribly turned on by spanking.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about BDSM. In fact I’d done a fair amount of bondage and coercion role-playing. But neither of those partners had seemed the least bit interested — they’d just had previous partners who’d done it to them and they’d discovered they liked it.

My loss in retrospect, and of course theirs too.

What I didn’t understand at the time, and it’s really important for Slap Unhappy too, is that boundaries and respect for boundaries are really important not just to protect the sub, and in more gendered terms they’re not there just to protect the woman.

You’re absolutely right that, especially when we’re turned on, people can withstand far more “impact” than their partners may be psychologically or even physically comfortable giving. (Psychologically as in Unhappy’s and my case where hitting someone went against ingrained upbringing. And physically it often hurts one’s hand more to spank someone than it hurts the spankee’s bottom.)

So anyway, while it might be Unhappy’s partner’s wildest turn on to be slapped, if it’s a turn-off for him then she needs to a) recognize that it’s a boundary issue for him, b) negotiate to see if there’s a way to make him comfortable enough to consent, and if not then c) respect his boundary and his decision not to participate.

Oh, and possibly if he goes ahead anyway then she may also need to d) help work with him through what I’m going to call potential “top drop” afterwards. Because what he might agree to try he might still be bummed about after.

Bottom line: We don’t usually think of boundaries and consent as moving in the direction of the top, or in heterosexual relationships as working towards the man. But boundaries are boundaries and consent is consent and when they’re confronted it’s important that they be respected regardless of who’s boundaries they are or who’s consent is required.

It’s always ok to say no.

Another inexplicably finished but unpublished post from last July. Made timely by another very good post by Lindsay Beyerstein at Big Think.

Earlier this summer an anonymous writer at 25 Things About My Sexuality said something obvious enough about BDSM that I probably don’t need to excerpt it. But, just in case…

15. I like anal and pee and being tied up. This does not mean I like degradation. In fact, it’s the worst idea imaginable for me. I would hate to be called names or slapped and spat on during sex. I write this so that people know that things like rope-play can be done in a mutually-reinforcing way, and it’s not always about a BDSM or rape-fantasy scenario. I like the ropes ‘cause I am forced to not worry about moving or being active. Physically, I can be completely passive, and let my mind do all the work. And I’m not thinking about being an unwilling participant, ever. But that’s still OK for those who do…

She said it here.

It’s probably easier than it should be to forget that either extolling of or condemning “BDSM” is approximately as nonspecific as admiring or complaining about “Asia.” To do so reveals more about one’s unfamiliarity and/or stereotypes and/or narrow preferences than it says about the actual subject in question.

My first realistic introduction to bondage came from the nominally “vanilla” Joy of Sex, which said the great thing about restraints is that it lets the unbound partner excite the bound partner beyond the point where they’d just impatiently jump the other’s bones. And, indeed, it really can! Similarly, as the author says, bondage can be a great way to let go of one’s various possible inhibitions about unilaterally receiving.

And here’s a little trick — if that was all you knew about BDSM you’d be entirely baffled that anyone would have any objection to it at all. Sort of like if all you knew about Asia was the Ukraine*.

But here’s the bigger trick. If you only knew about BDSM from stories peddled by, say, Donna M. Hughes and Melanie Shapiro, you’d be baffled and almost-certainly outraged that anyone tolerated the least hint of it. Sort of like if all you knew about Asia was North Korea.

*: Or Luxembourg or Belgium! Despite Eurocentric protestations of cultural exceptionalism Asia is one very big continent!

The other day Ezra Klein mentioned that

In states with lower percentages of people that endorse spanking and washing kids’ mouths out with soap, which is the case in New England and much of the Middle Atlantic, Obama did very well. In states with higher percentages, like Wyoming, Idaho, and Alabama, McCain won big.

Read the quote in context here.

So… a lot of people out there seem dead certain that all BDSM is an attempt to paper over domestic violence. I guess one way to clarify that would be an inquiry into how many BDSM adherents spank or beat their children.

I know only a very small subset of everyone who’s overtly into BDSM but I’d say by and large they’re less likely to use corporal punishment on their children. Some way less.

It could just be that most of the people I know aren’t interested in spanking their children anyway. But I’ve still got a hunch that on average people in BDSM are less likely to spank their children than, say, the average “vanilla” voter in Wyoming, Idaho, or Alabama. I mean, if you’re aware it turns you on to spank a partner how likely are you to spank your child? Same if instead being spanked turns you on? Meanwhile, if you either have no earthly clue or, worse, you’re unwilling to admit it to yourself…

Like I say, it’s an only anecdotally substantiated hunch. That’s not the same as saying I have no idea at all. But if you’ve got something more solid to either confirm or refute I’d love to hear about it.

Miss Calico of Dominatrix Next Door put on her BDSM submissive hat and conducted an alternative-medicine experiment.

Arnica cream: Last summer, I put my body on the line for science: I wanted to test the efficacy of topical arnica montana.  We’ve all heard that arnica makes bruises go away faster.  I wanted to believe it, because I could really use it, but I am an enormous skeptic when it comes to alternative medicine. Actually, you could end that sentence after “skeptic”.

The effective methods I know are preventative: ice, elevate, and avoid aspirin. Bruises go away on their own, and much faster if you have been bruised repeatedly in the same place. If there were a miracle bruise cure, I’m pretty sure it would be under patent by Pfizer or Merck and cost much more than six or eight dollars a tube.  Blindly applying sticky herbal-smelling bruise cream three times a day to no effect was not doing it for me.

I would have just ignored the stuff, save my rampant annoyance at being assured it works and would solve all my problems. Anecdotal evidence, psssh. How do you actually know it works? How do you know your bruises wouldn’t have gone away that fast anyway?  Have you heard, by any chance, that homeopathy is an utter crock of shit?

I decided I’d conduct my own experiment: I’d make two identical bruises and use arnica on one. I admit this experiment was, perhaps, lacking in scientific rigor, but not devoid of entertainment value.

Unless BDSM triggers you (she gave herself big bruises) you can read about her methodology and conclusions here.

Bottom line: she got her associates to thump the tops of each leg until they were equally bruised and then for a week she put arnica on one bruise but not the other. Both bruises faded at the same rate, although both possibly faded faster than usual. Her conclusion

...after a week of using arnica three times a day, the results were unimpressive. I couldn’t tell any difference at all. They faded out after a week and a half, looking identical to the end.

Ten days is fast for a bruise of that gruesomeness. I’m sure if I’d used arnica on both, I’d have wholly credited the healing time to the stuff.

Technically, this doesn’t prove that arnica doesn’t work. But it fails to prove that it does work, either.

That’s a great conclusion to draw by the way. Arnica is supposed to be local and topical: you get a bruise on your elbow you’re supposed to rub it on your elbow. Calico’s experiment clearly shows that rubbing it on one of two equal bruises doesn’t make the treated bruise go away faster. But without surrendering her skepticism she correctly states that her experiment neither proves nor rules out the possibility that arnica might offer systemic instead of local benefit. You’d need a different experiment for that… but without Calico’s prior experiment you might not have imagined such an experiment would be needed to prove whether arnica is good for bruises.

Pretty cool.

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I mention this in part because I’ve been thinking a lot about how easy and how common it is to “other” each other. The fact of Calico’s experiment challenges all manner of such “othering.” What we “know” about BDSM and masochism practitioners as others, what we “know” about women as others, what we “know” about sex workers as others, even what we “know” about skeptics and scientists as others…

and, especially, what we “know” about bloggers as others who… never do original reporting.