Califia and Anderson

Posted: Tue, Oct 8, 2024

The Controversy over Lesbian Sadomasochism

Context:

  • 1995 was the peak of the AIDS epidemic: ~50,000 deaths in the U.S. that year.
  • The influence of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982): care-based feminine morality vs. rights-based masculine morality.
  • Bitterness toward the feminist movement: “queers of the queer”
    • Butch/femme, trans people, BDSM, etc. were seen as part of the patriarchy to be smashed (“reproducing” or “internalizing” patriarchy, perpetuating “male violence,” etc.).
  • Move toward respectability politics: lesbian as a subcultural social system that organizes sexuality -> lesbian as a political identity -> lesbian as a desexualized individual trait.

The irony: the “sexual revolution” aimed to transform our relationships and our sexualities, but then when somebody actually did it people got really upset.

Contemporary influences:

  • The focus on pleasure and agency.
  • The language we use to describe sexual desires (e.g., top/vers/bottom vs. dominant/switch/submissive vs. masculine/feminine).
  • Models of sexual consent (Anderson).

Historically: lack of utmost resistance = consent.

Two contemporary proposals:

  • “No means no”: utterance of “no” = non-consent
    • This presumes consent unless and until “no” is uttered.
  • “Yes means yes”: utterance of “yes” = consent
    • This presumes non-consent unless and until “yes” is uttered.

Problems for both models:

  • If nonverbal communication does not count:
    • The No Model: physical paralysis, dissociation, etc.
    • The Yes Model: bodily communication.
  • If nonverbal communication does count:
    • The No Model: falls back to the use of physical resistance as non-consent -> still subject to physical paralysis, dissociation, etc.
    • The Yes Model: men systematically misinterpret clothing, drinking, eye contact, causal touch, flirting, hugging, kissing, petting, etc. as consent.
  • The ambiguity of what is being consented to: kissing and petting can be separate and independent sexual acts on their own without having to lead to penetration.
  • To give consent is to give permission to be acted upon: this puts women in a passive position for men to act on.

Anderson’s alternative:

  • Negotiation: “an active consultation with someone else to come to a mutual agreement”
  • The Negotiation Model requires “meaningful consultation” between the parties prior to the sex in order to arrive at a mutual agreement.
  • Negotiation -> agreement -> sex (+ use of safe words).
  • Nonverbal negotiation only workable within long-term relationships.