AUGUST 1 — The highly-anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey trailer was released last week, with Beyonce’s sultry reworked hit Crazy in Love transforming the flat, rather amateurish book into something that’s finally sexy.
The trailer provides hints of BDSM (bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadomasochism) in EL James’ bestselling erotic novel — a riding crop on a bare back, a blindfold, some light restraints.
The Fifty Shades trilogy on the dominant-submissive relationship between 27-year-old billionaire Christian Grey and college graduate Anastasia Steele has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide as of February.
The successful “mommy porn” series also sparked debate, primarily in the West, on whether BDSM was compatible with feminism, and how could women striving for equality possibly crave spankings and male dominance in the bedroom.
Some radical feminists in the 1970s and 1980s were against BDSM, especially when it involved women who actively desired to submit to men. American feminist Kathleen Barry wrote in her 1979 book Female Sexual Slavery that BDSM is a “disguise for the act of sexually forcing a woman against her will.”
Dr Diana Russell, a radical feminist from South Africa, dismissed the “consent defence” that BDSM proponents have always stressed in their sexual relationships with their “safe, sane and consensual” motto.
“Boiling candle wax was dripped onto a bound woman’s breasts. Had she consented beforehand? Even if she had, this is a violent act,” Russell wrote in her essay in the 1982 anthology Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis.
A Bitch Magazine article quoted Dr Jocelyn Boryczka as saying in her book Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue and Vice in Backlash Politics that BDSM-practising lesbians are simply replicating “the very masculine power dynamics used to perpetuate women’s oppression.”
So, one view is that patriarchy has brainwashed women into enjoying BDSM, a sexual structure that upholds female oppression and puts women back in their place to counter their fight for equality.
Pro-BDSM feminist Gayle Rubin, however, states that “most people mistake their sexual preferences for a universal system that will or should work for everyone.”
In the American feminist’s collection of writings in Deviations, Rubin criticises the idea of a single ideal sexuality that permeates various systems of thought, like religion and psychology, on sex.
“It is just as objectionable to insist that everyone should be lesbian, non-monogamous, or kinky, as to believe that everyone should be heterosexual, married, or vanilla — though the latter set of opinions are backed by considerably more coercive power than the former,” she writes.
We need such discussions in Malaysia on how BDSM can be compatible with feminism here, especially when the West often perceives Asian women as being “submissive.”
Of course, a local discourse on alternative sexualities would be difficult considering how the government and Muslim NGOs attack the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community as an “un-Islamic” bunch. Premarital sex is still frowned upon and we merely have pro-abstinence sex education that warns of the dangers of copulating before tying the knot.
In my view, it is not inconsistent for feminists to practise BDSM.
Unlike ordinary sexual relationships where women hardly discuss their needs and wants in-depth, engaging in BDSM requires partners to fully explore their desires and boundaries. In Malaysia, it’s fairly common to hear of teenage pregnancies. Young women are barely equipped with knowledge on their sexual rights or reproductive health, much less the full spectrum of sexuality.
Consent is a crucial element of BDSM play.
The so-called violence of sexual spankings, floggings and whippings is completely different from domestic violence. The pain experienced in BDSM can be arousing and cathartic. It occurs within a safe space and the submissive can call for a stop at any time with a safe word if it gets too much. It is not abuse. There is no real intention to hurt, as such. Domestic violence, however, is just plain malicious abuse.
Frankly, it’s also rather condescending to accuse women of mindlessly succumbing to patriarchy for having certain sexual proclivities.
While pornography rarely focuses on female pleasure, it doesn’t automatically mean that women are subscribing to “masculine power dynamics” by liking certain kinds of porn that depict men tying women up, pulling their hair or spanking them. If that were the case, all kinds of heterosexual or penetrative sex, or even fellatio, could be deemed as a tool to oppress women.
A woman’s sexual and reproductive choices — whether she wants to be tied up in bed or prefers having sex only after marriage — should be respected. Feminism is about giving women the autonomy to do what they want without being restricted by their gender.
Just as women can choose to be homemakers, they should likewise be seen as exercising their sexual agency if they choose to be submissive in the bedroom.
Praising “male” values of dominance or career-mindedness, while denigrating so-called “female” traits of co-operation or even the colour pink, is an affront to feminism.
Gender equality does not mean we should aim to be like men; it means having the freedom to make our own choices without being hindered by what lies between our legs.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
