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Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation
An Interview with Audre Lorde
By Susan Leigh Star
(As published in
A Burst of Light: Essays by Audre Lorde, 1988, Firebrand Books)
Without a rigorous and consistent evaluation of what kind of a future we wish to create, and a scrupulous examination of the expressions of power we choose to incorporate into all our relationships including our most private ones, we are not progressing, but merely recasting our own characters in the same old weary drama…S/M is not the sharing of power, it is merely a depressing replay of the old and destructive dominant/subordinate mode of human relating and one-sided power, which is even now grinding our earth and our human consciousness into dust.
Audre Lorde(1)
I spent June and July of 1980 in rural Vermont, an idyllic, green, vital world, alive in a short summer season. I teach there summers and winters. One afternoon, Sue (another teacher) and I lay sunbathing on a dock in the middle of a small pond. I suddenly imagined what it would be like to see someone dressed in black leather and chains, trotting through the meadow, as I am accustomed to seeing in my urban neighborhood in San Francisco I started laughing as one of the parameters of the theater of sadomasochism became clear; it is about cities and a created culture, like punk rock, which is sustained by a particularly urban technology.
Later in the week, Sue and I drove over bumpy dirt roads far into the Northeast Kingdom, the most rural area of Vermont, to interview Audre Lorde. Again, I was struck by the incongruity of sitting in the radiant sunshine, with radiant Audre and Frances and Sue, listening to bobwhites and watching the haze lift far down in the valley, and the subject of our conversation seemed to belong to another world.
I include this description of our physical surroundings because it seems important to me to recognize that all conversations about sadomasochism take place in particular places and at particular historical times, which ought to be noted and compared.
Leigh: How do you see the phenomenon of sadomasochism in the lesbian community?
Audre: Sadomasochism in the lesbian-feminist community cannot be seen as separate from the larger economic and social issues surrounding our communities. It
is reflective of a whole social and economic trend of this country.
Sadly, sadomasochism feels comfortable to some people in this period of development. What is the nature of this allure? Why an emphasis on sadomasochism in the straight media? Sadomasochism is congruent with other developments going on in this country that have to do with dominance and submission, with disparate power—politically, culturally, and economically.
The attention that Samois (the San Francisco-based lesbian s/m organization) is getting is probably out of proportion to the representation of sadomasochism in the lesbian community. Because s/m is a theme in the dominant culture, an attempt to "reclaim" it rather than question it is an excuse not to look at the content of the behavior. For instance, "We are lesbians doing this extreme thing and you're criticizing
us!" Thus, sadomasochism is used to delegitimize lesbian-feminism, lesbianism, and feminism.
Leigh: So you're saying that the straight media both helps amplify the phenomenon within the lesbian community and that they focus on lesbians in particular as a way of not dealing with the larger implications and the very existence of the phenomenon in the world?
Audre: Yes. And because this power perspective is so much a part of the larger world, it is difficult to critique in isolation. As Erich Fromm once said, "The fact that millions of people take part in a delusion doesn't make it sane."
Leigh: What about the doctrine of "live and let live" and civil liberties issues?
Audre: I don't see that as the point. I'm not questioning anyone's right to live. I'm saying we must observe the implications of our lives. If what we are talking about is feminism, then the personal is political and we can subject everything in our lives to scrutiny. We have been nurtured in a sick, abnormal society, and we should be about the process of reclaiming ourselves as well as the terms of that society. This is complex.
I speak not about condemnation but about recognizing what is happening and questioning what it means. I'm not willing to regiment
anyone's life, but if we are to scrutinize our human relationships, we must be willing to scrutinize all aspects of those relationships. The subject of revolution is ourselves, is our lives.
Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And, it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance.
Even in play, to affirm that the exertion of power over powerlessness is erotic, is empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially, and economically.
Sadomasochism feeds the belief that domination is inevitable and legitimately enjoyable. It can be compared to the phenomenon of worshipping a godhead with two faces, and worshipping only the white part on the full moon and the black part on the dark of the moon, as if totally separate. But you cannot corral any aspect within your life, divorce its implications, whether it's what you eat for breakfast or how you say good-bye. This is what
integrity means.
Leigh: That relates to two central arguments put forth by the women of Samois: that liberal tolerance is necessary in the realm of sexuality and that the
power over part of the relationship is confined to the bedroom. I feel, as you do, that it is dangerous to try to cordon off such a vital part of our lives in this way.
Audre: If it is confined to the bedroom, then why was the Samois booklet (
What Color is Your Handkerchief?: A Lesbian S/M Sexuality Reader) printed? If it is not, then what does that mean? It is in the interest of a capitalist profit system for us to privatize much of our experience. In order to make integrated life choices, we must open the sluice gates in our lives, create emotional consistency. This is not to say that we act the same way, or do not change and grow, but that there is an underlying integrity that asserts itself in all of our actions. None of us is perfect, or born with that integrity, but we can work toward it as a goal.
The erotic weaves through our lives, and integrity is a basic condition that we aspire to. If we do not have the lessons of our journeys toward that condition, then we have nothing. From that life-vision, one is free to examine varying paths of behavior. But integrity has to be a basis for the journey.
Certain things in every society are defined as totally destructive. For instance, the old example of crying "fire" in a crowded theater. Liberalism allows pornography and has allowed wife-beating as First Amendment rights. But this doesn't fit them into my life-vision, and they are both an immediate threat to my life.
The question I ask, over and over, is
who is profiting from this? When sadomasochism gets presented on center stage as a conflict in the feminist movement, I ask, what conflicts are
not being presented?
Leigh: How do you think sadomasochism starts? What are its roots?
Audre: In the superior/inferior mold which is inculcated within us at the deepest levels. The learned intolerance of differences.
Those involved with sadomasochism are acting out the intolerance of differences which we all learn: superiority and thereby the right to dominate. The conflict is supposedly self-limiting because it happens behind bedroom doors. Can this be so, when the erotic empowers, nourishes, and permeates all of our lives?
I ask myself, under close scrutiny, whether I am puritanical about this—and I have asked myself this very carefully—and the answer is no. I feel that we work toward making integrated life-decisions about the networks of our lives, and those decisions lead us to other decisions and commitments—certain ways of viewing the world, looking for change. If they don't lead us toward growth and change, we have nothing to build upon, no future.
Leigh: Do you think sadomasochism is different for gay men than for lesbians?
Audre: Who profits from lesbians beating each other? White men have been raised to believe that they're God; most gay white men are marginal in only one respect. Much of the gay white movement seeks to be included in the American dream and is angered when they do not receive the standard white male privileges, misnamed as "American democracy."
Often, white gay men are working
not to change the system. This is one of the reasons why the gay male movement is as white as it is. Black gay men recognize, again by the facts of survival, that being Black, they are not going to be included in the same way. The Black/white gay male division is being examined and explored by some. Recently, for instance, there was a meeting of Third World lesbians and gays in Washington. It was recognized that there are things we do not share with white lesbians and gay men, as well as things that we do, and that clarification of goals is necessary between white gays and lesbians, and Third World gays and lesbians.
I see no essential battle between many gay men and the white male establishment. To be sure, there are gay men who do not view their oppressions as isolated, and who work for a future. But it is a matter of majority politics; many gay white males are being pulled by the same strings as other white men in this society. You do not get people to work against what they have identified as their basic self-interest.
Leigh: So one of the things that you're saying is that the politics of s/m are connected with the politics of the larger movements?
Audre: I do not believe that sexuality is separate from living. As a minority woman, I know dominance and subordination are not bedroom issues. In the same way that rape is not about sex, s/m is not about sex but about how we use power. If it were only about personal sexual exchange or private taste, why would it be presented as a political issue?
Leigh: I often feel that there's a kind of tyranny about the whole concept of
feelings, as though, if you feel something then you must act on it.
Audre: You don't
feel a tank or a war—you feel hate or love. Feelings are not wrong, but you are accountable for the behavior you use to satisfy those feelings.
Leigh: What about how Samois and other lesbian sadomasochists use the concept of power?
Audre: The s/m concept of "vanilla" sex is sex devoid of passion. They are saying that there can be no passion without unequal power. That feels very sad and lonely to me, and destructive. The linkage of passion to dominance/subordination is the prototype of the heterosexual image of male-female relationships, one which justifies pornography. Women are supposed to love being brutalized. This is also the prototypical justification of all relationships of oppression—that the subordinate one who is "different" enjoys the inferior position.
The gay male movement, for example, is invested in distinguishing between gay s/m pornography and heterosexual pornography. Gay men can allow themselves the luxury of not seeing the consequences. We, as women and as feminists, must scrutinize our actions and see what they imply, and upon what they are based.
As women, we have been trained to follow. We must look at the s/m phenomenon and educate ourselves, at the same time being aware of intricate manipulations from outside and within.
Leigh: How does this relate specifically to lesbian-feminism?
Audre: First, we must ask ourselves, is this whole question of s/m sex in the lesbian community perhaps being used to draw attention and energies away from other more pressing and immediate life-threatening issues facing us as women in this racist, conservative, and repressive period? A red herring? A smoke screen for provocateurs? Second, lesbian s/m is not about what you do in bed, just as lesbianism is not simply a sexual preference. For example, Barbara Smith's work on women-identified women, on "lesbian" experiences in Zora Hurston or Toni Morrison.(2) It is not who I sleep with that defines the quality of these acts, not what we do together, but what life-statements I am led to make as the nature and effect of my erotic relationships percolate throughout my life and my being. As a deep lode of our erotic lives and knowledge, how does our sexuality enrich us and empower our actions?
Notes
1. Audre Lorde, "Letter to the Editor,"
Gay Community News 7:37 (April 12, 1980), p. 4.
2. Barbara Smith, "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,"
Conditions Two (October 1977), pp. 25-44.
via
http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/lordesm.htm
And if I gotta put a 2 cents anywhere into this shit it's: THINGS DO NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM. I don't fuck with folk who can't even wrap their shit around the idea that shit created is not isolated, completely uninformed, uninfluenced, uninspired by the shit around them.
2CENT EDIT ADDENDUM: Like a good fuckin' example being like... assholes who all pride their shit on knowing Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress inspired Star Wars or that fuckin'
Batman was inspired by Zorro and da Vinci's flying contraption but minute you suggest to a motherfucker that the shit they personally like, that might implicate their ass as being complicit, even reinforcing, in a fucked up system beyond the scope of whatever shit they like? All the petulance about it comes pouring out. Cannot, do not fuck with that shallow-ass shit.
lolkbai
******************
KOORI IS SPITEFUL AND PETTY EDIT:
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/f...shades-christian-not-my-kind-of-guy-1.2099674
Born in Holywood, Co Down, Jamie Dornan possesses many of the understated traits one associates with south Belfast and its satellites: dryly amusing, sound-as-a-pound, Ulster brand posh, a real Sport Billy.
Hence, today, he's contemplating his beloved Manchester United's victory over fourth- round FA Cup rivals Cambridge United: "I think it's ours for the taking. Do you know Wayne Rooney has never won an FA Cup? Isn't that unbelievable?"
And today, for the first time in a long time, he's heading for the driving range: "It's been five months since I hit some golf balls," he says.
'Twas ever thus with Jamie Dornan (32), who has a condition that means his adrenaline levels are abnormally high and who, as various viral images attest, can do an impressive planche push-up.
"At my age it's a harder thing to pull off saying you're sporty. It was fine back in the day when you're playing rugby. Ideally, I would love to go around and knock on my mates' doors and have a kick-around. But we're married with kids and jobs."
Perhaps predictably, PE was by far Dornan's best and favourite subject while "studying" at Methodist College in Belfast.
"I don't think it's cool to say it now. I really didn't do any work at school. I had no interest in it whatsoever. I loved school for sports and because that's where I met the friends I have now. But I was not a worker. I couldn't give a fuck. I never revised. I was terrible at exams."
But surely Jamie, the son of obstetrician professor Jim Dornan, had some academic bent?
"No. It was certainly frustrating, particularly for my father. He was always trying to get me to change. Never in a 'you will be a doctor, my son' kind of way. He just did want me to apply myself more. To something that wasn't PE or drama."
Shades of calm
He chats away amiably. Not a bother on him. It's hard to square: isn't he starring in
Fifty Shades of Grey this week? Isn't the movie adaptation of EL James's BDSM
Twilight fan-fiction turned 100 million-unit-shifting blockbuster kind of a big deal? Hasn't that same picture already sold 60,000 tickets in Ireland ahead of release? And something like $60 million worth of tickets worldwide?
"I was just trying to block all that out and just see it as a good job," he shrugs. "It was an opportunity to work with people I admire. I always trying to see it like that, you know? But it can be hard to completely negate the fact that 100 million people have an interest."
He speaks very highly of
Fifty Shades helmer Sam Taylor-Johnson, who he compares favourably with Sofia Coppola, who directed him in
Marie Antoinette in 2006.
"She's one of the coolest people I've ever met. Sam and Sofia are quite alike. They're very, very comfortable in their own skin. Assured of themselves in a very no showy way. And both seriously brilliant directors. It's a really lovely energy to be around."
From the get-go, all eyes have been on the production of
Fifty Shades of Grey. Would drafting in a female Turner Prize nominee such as Taylor-Johnson make the material classy? Or would it just be this year's
Nine 1/2 Weeks?
Inevitably, the words "troubled production" were bandied about. Dornan replaced Charlie Hunnam in the titular role. There were reshoots and murmurs that Dornan and co-star Dakota Johnson, the daughter of actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, were not exactly blazing up the screen together.
Heightened material
Yeah, right, says Dornan. "We've had reshoots on every movie I've ever done. But everything that happened on
Fifty Shades was so heightened. Of course they were going to make a big deal out of it."
But what of the material? Dornan is enough of a
Guardian-reading feminist to have once been described by The
Guardian as a
"Guardian-reading feminist". He lives in London in a house "littered with ukuleles and guitars", which he shares with his wife, the singer-songwriter Amelia Warner, and infant daughter Dulcie. She will not be watching the film any time soon.
"Who the hell wants to see their dad in them kind of scenarios?" laughs Dornan. "I can't ever imagine her turning around and saying, 'oh, I really want to see that'."
Christian Grey is a spanky billionaire who dominates and brutalises his primary love interest. Worse still, he makes her diet and go to the gym. Isn't he kind of a jerk?
"I always say that you have to find something in the character that you can . . . well, I used to say relate to, but that's not quite right. Something you can understand about them. It doesn't mean you have to like them.
"He's not my kind of guy. I don't like the idea of someone telling a girl what she should eat and how much she should exercise and all that stuff. That's not right. Obviously.
"I don't know anyone in Belfast like him at all. None of my mates would carry on like that."
Those same mates gave him "plenty of stick" during his early career as a model for Dior, Armani and Calvin Klein. "There were some dubious poses," he laughs.
Won't they have even more ammunition after
Fifty Shades? "It's an easy target. Lucky none of my mates are funny."
Model tag
Being a male model-turned-actor, particularly one of the planet's best paid male models, isn't any easier than being a similar female hyphenate: "I'm not sure I'm ever going to shake the model-turned-actor tag completely. I understand why. That is the way of things. You just have to let the work do the talking."
Dornan says he never took modelling very seriously. It was the same with acting at first. And then the role of Paul Spector in BBC's
The Fall – bereavement councillor by day, serial killer by night – came along.
"
Marie Antoinette was my first audition and my first job," he says. "I had just got an agent. And I was in a movie by Sofia Coppola, who was rightly a really big deal at the time, shooting in the Palace of Versailles. I had no idea how to approach it.
"I had a bit of an attitude about being an actor. I did no work. Just like at school. It wasn't until
The Fall that I realised, 'Oh fuck, you have to work really hard at this'. Until then I was winging it."
One has to wonder about genetics. Before he took his place in medical school, Dornan's dad was accepted into Rada. Jamie's second cousin once removed was Oscar winner Greer Garson. Did he watch her films growing up?
"I was definitely made aware of her. Movies like
Mrs Miniver and
Goodbye Mr Chipswere often on TV. I was told she was my Nana's first cousin. I remember we eventually found an address for her. This was pre-internet and she had married some Texan oil tycoon. I had drafted a letter. But then we heard on TV that she had died."
Does he remember what he wrote? "I was telling her about winning the drama prize at school. I was 12. It was the only time I was on stage during awards day in 14 years of school. I was the Widow Twanky in
Aladdin."
So even then he was working towards sexual transgression? "Oh, yeah. I was oddly comfortable in that dress." It's hard to imagine that success – or more success – will change Jamie Dornan. But one does wonder how he'll cope with a whole new contingent of maiden aunt fans approaching him on the street?
"I'll be grand," he promises. "Lucky for me I'm a very fast runner." n
Fifty Shades of Grey is on general release. See the review at Irishtimes.com
