I'm taking a course on feminist criticism, for which I wrote this paper. In terms of my own brand of feminism, I think of myself as loosely belonging to the "third wave," and as staunchly -- 'militantly,' even -- pro-sex. That's why I'm posting this paper. It's not the best paper in the world, but it argues for something that means a lot to me: sexual freedom, even in terms of practices looked on as repugnant by (some) conservatives and (some) feminists alike.
One apology: to those LGBT, particularly the trans folks, who are mentioned only peripherally in the paper. If I had it to do over again and I could find more research on the matter, I'd have said a lot more. On that note, I'd also have like to say more about race and BDSM, since it is an issue which often figures prominently. Maybe someday I'll try to write a better, more comprehensive paper on these issues.
Well, here it is:
The Distribution of Power: Sadomasochism and Feminism
In her article “How Ordinary (Sexist) Discourse Resists Radical (Feminist) Critique,” Terry Winant discusses an advertisement for the film Bloodline. Her critique hinges upon the idea that the image in the advertisement portrays a conflation of sex and violence. Since the image is ambiguous (neither definitively violent nor definitively sexual), it defies immediate criticism. The context in which the ad’s message is coherent, therefore, is a society in which violence, specifically violence against women, is “second nature” in conceptions of sex (Winant 58). I argue that the ad portrays a particular brand of sexuality, namely sadomasochism, and that this sexual practice is not in and of itself harmful to gender equality. Because, however, it is inconceivable for the ad to cast anyone other than a female as its subject, it does reflect our society’s readiness to ascribe femininity to submission, and is, on these grounds, sexist.
The Bloodline ad displays a woman’s neck, mouth, and torso, leaving her remaining parts out of frame. She has a red ribbon wound tightly around her neck. The tagline reads, “The line between love and death is the Bloodline” (Winant 57). Winant constructs a seven-premise argument that she suggests should have been used by the organization Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) to combat the ad:
1) The Bloodline ad, considered as a communicative act, is ambiguous
between sex and violence.
2) While an explicit identification of sex with violence would be overtly
repulsive, the ad, by implicitly identifying them, deprives its audience
of the opportunity to assess the truth of the claim ‘sex is violence.’
3) The intelligibility of the ad (together with its effectiveness as an
advertisement) depends on is audience’s readiness to identify sex with
violence.
4) Only in a society in which the perpetration of violence on one’s sex
partners is second nature would there be such a readiness to identify
sex with violence.
5) Only the explicit calling of our attention to this identification can, by
providing the opportunity to assign a truth value, dislodge violent sex
from its position as ‘second nature’, and thus allow its repulsiveness to
play a leading role in its elimination.
From this it follows that
6) Paramount Pictures’ Bloodline publicity depends on this fact about our
society: it is a matter of course that sex involves violence, and that
7) The Bloodline publicity helps sustain the position of sexual violence as
‘a matter of course in our sexist society’(Winant 58).
Here, she itemizes the objections she thinks should be leveled against the ad. She emphasizes its intentional ambiguity, going on to describe the way in which the ribbon resembles a slit throat, and that it is difficult to interpret whether the woman’s face displays pain or pleasure (Winant 59). She claims that this ambiguity can remain unchallenged because it presents an “erotic gory image,” or one that is never viewed as purely violent (Winant 61).
This conflation, however, is one that exists in many consensual sex practices. Such practices contain elements of physical or psychological violence that are gratifying to both of the act’s constituents. These acts, while common within human sexuality, are considered taboo or deviant in relation to sexual convention (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 385). Sadomasochistic sex, or SM, contains two components: a dominant and a submissive. Weinberg, Williams and Moser define the relationship between these two roles as “the rule of one partner over another,” wherein one person dominates the other with given consent. In addition to consent, the necessary elements that define SM are: role-play relevant to dominance and submission within a sexual context, as well as mutually agreed upon definitions of SM sex play. Typically, however, SM role-play involves the illusion of non-consent, with the submissive pretending to resist the will of the dominant (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 381). In this paper, I define sadomasochism strictly as a consensual sexual practice rather than a larger social phenomenon.
The Bloodline ad greatly resembles this definition. The ribbon constricts the woman’s neck tightly, but her mouth is not contorted in a grimace or a scream; rather, her lips are gently parted, more closely resembling orgasm than pain or distress. She does not have a rope or a chain around her neck, but, as Winant rightly notes, it is a red ribbon. Rather than resembling a wound as Winant suggests, the visible vein in her neck causes it to look more as if she is being strangled or tightly restrained. We see no bruises, cuts, or other injuries that might indicate death or struggle. A ribbon could easily be used as a method to constrict, but avoid causing real harm in a consensual sex game. The small bow on the left side of the ribbon further suggests sensuality rather than malice. The tagline evokes the terms “love” and “death” and suggests that there is a line between the two, something frequently explored through fantasy in SM.
Not only does this reinterpretation of the image define more firmly the violence that is enacted in it, it also suggests that there is something pleasurable about this violence. For these purposes, I define “violence” as an act of aggression and dominance, not necessarily precipitating true harm. Erotic strangulation and restraint are common elements of SM and, while they are done with the consent of both parties, some of the eroticism results from feigned non-consent after discussion and agreement sometime prior to the sex act (Weinberg, Williams, Moser 382). When viewed this way, the image becomes unequivocally sexual and violent. In other words, she experiences a sort of violence to which she submits willingly, and from which she yields sexual gratification.
If this is true, the ad is less ambiguous than Winant claims. Further, premise two of her argument is no longer valid because, actually, a significant subset of people (an estimated 5 – 10 percent of the U.S. population “on at least an occasional basis”) regard an overt pairing of sex and violence to be arousing rather than repulsive (Reinisch and Beasley 162). The “readiness” required of the viewer that she outlines in her third premise is also suspect in light of this new interpretation. If the image is at once definitively sexual and definitively violent, it does not rely upon as much inference on the part of the audience. It is intelligible not because it utilizes a natural association between sex and violence, but rather because it exploits a known sexual variant, or what some would term a “deviance.” Weinberg, Williams, and Moser describe this in their study on sadomasochism: “Most people relate sex to feelings of love, tenderness, and affection, not the hate and callousness that SM implies” (379). It is not ‘a matter of course’ to consider sex violent. In fact, the opposite is true, in that sadomasochistic tendencies have historically been considered a pathological condition (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 380). The provocativeness of the subject is what titillates and serves to sell the film, not the assumption that all (heterosexual) sex is essentially violent.
This presents a question, however: Is the ad sexist and, if so, how? This has partly to do with the way in which gender operates in SM sex play. It might appear that SM is an inherently gendered activity. By “gendered” I mean that roles are assigned according to the gender with which one identifies. Because sadomasochistic sex, by definition, involves the existence of control and dominance over a submissive element, it is easy to assume that a dominant must be male and a submissive must be female. This is untrue, however. SM exists within heterosexual, homosexual, and transgender sex. The dominant and submissive roles are determined according to inclination, and only have to do with traditional female/male dynamics if the couple chooses to include this in the subject of their role-play (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 382). In fact, SM often contravenes traditional gender roles. It is not at all uncommon for a female to adopt the dominant role, controlling and humiliating her male submissive (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 382). This can be seen in a typical, almost clichéd image of SM, the dominatrix and her slave. The subject of sadomasochism has traditionally been controversial in the world of feminism (Chancer 84). At the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, a dispute ensued over whether or not a pro-sadomasochism group called SAMOIS should legitimately participate in the event’s panel (Chancer 83). Although the group was made up exclusively of lesbian members, this began a larger debate over the merits of any and all sadomasochism. Those who are against sadomasochism claim that it reflects harmful gender stereotypes and institutionalized power struggles (regardless of the gender of the relationship’s constituents) and can naturally extend outside of a sexual context and into everyday life (Chancer 83 – 84). In her article “From Pornography to Sadomasochism: Reconciling Feminist Differences,” Lynn S. Chancer suggests a reasonable approach to this problem:
Therefore, it seems again that a third position is required that would be capable of incorporating two perspectives at once. In this second example, a more synthetic approach would neither repressively judge women who enjoy sadomasochistic sex consensually explored in the present nor ignore the seriousness of coercive social situations bequeathed to women (and men) from the past (Chancer 84).
Although it is relatively uncommon for consensual SM to extend beyond the sexual and into relationship dynamics outside the bedroom (Weinberg, Williams, and Moser 384), it is wise to remain cognizant of the institutions which influence a lot of SM play. In other words, enjoyment of SM is not detrimental to the feminist cause, but to allow the opiate of sexual desire to distract us from the female oppression that has inspired many SM fantasies is.
It is, however, important to resist the urge to automatically associate gender with a particular role. In a lesbian relationship, for example, wherein one woman adopts a dominant role and the other a submissive one, it would be easy to assume (as anti-SM feminists apparently did in 1982) that the dominant fulfills the “male” role and that the submissive the “female” role. This assumption suggests that there is something inherently masculine about the desire for sexual dominance, and something inherently feminine about the enjoyment of submission. These gender roles may play a part in the execution of any couple’s SM play, but it need not necessarily be so, and SM often deliberately deviates from what are thought of as traditional female/male roles. Jessica Benjamin says in her article “The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination:” “But the slave of love is not always a woman or only a heterosexual; the fantasy of erotic domination permeates all sexual imagery in our culture” (144). So, while SM is certainly related to gender, practitioners of SM have a choice in the way in which it figures into their experience.
The ad, if it portrays a SM scenario, is not sexist due to the fact of its violence alone. It is sexist in the context of a society that would categorically reject the ad if it displayed the image of someone other than a female. Winant also makes this point: “It is not only with violence, but with violence perpetrated against women that sex is identified: the erotic gory image is an image of a woman, and needs to be” (62). Although I have demonstrated why I think that the image is erotic but not gory, she is correct in suggesting that the advertisement would fail if the image were male. She goes on to say that, if the image were of an androgynous person, its audience would assume the subject were female (62). This is the underlying source of the ad’s sexism. A male in a similarly erotic and violent image would be seen as homosexual, as the concept of a woman in the role of the dominant is one with which the general public is largely either unacquainted or unwilling to accept. This is also related to the way in which images of distinctly feminine women are used to sell sex in the media, almost to the exclusion of distinctly male, or androgynous persons. In this way, the ad exploits the assumption that women are categorically sexually submissive and desirous of someone by whom they can be dominated. This rigid societal definition of dominance and submission requires revision, because it is this rigidity that implies the submission of women in realms outside that of consensual SM.
The ad is provocative, exploitive, and sexist, yet it is not so because it implies that sex is violence. Rather, it implies that some sex is consensually violent, and that, yes, the practitioners of this sexual violence find it sexy. It does, however, exist within a societal framework that rejects the presence of submissive males and, by extension, dominant females in mainstream Hollywood advertisements. This framework perpetrates both oppression and sexual repression on women, and on all those who would defy the roles with which they have been prescribed.
Works Cited
Benjamin, Jessica. “The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination.”
Feminist Studies. Spring 1980. 144 – 174. Print.
Bloodline Advertisement. Web. Mar. 14 2011.
Chancer, Lynn S. “From Pornography to Sadomasochism: Reconciling Feminist
Differences.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Sept. 2000. 77-88. Print.
Reinisch, June M., and Ruth Beasley. The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Print.
Weinberg, Martin S., Colin J. Williams, and Charles Moser. “The Social Constituents of
Sadomasochism.” Social Problems. Apr. 1984. 379 – 389. Print.
Winant, Terry. “How Ordinary (Sexist) Discourse Resists Radical (Feminist) Critique.”
Hypatia Reborn. Ed. Azizah Y. Hibri and Margaret A. Simons. Hypatia, Inc., 1990. 54 – 69. Print.
