You can listen to this musing here or read it below.
I’m currently reading James Miller’s book about Michel Foucault’s life. The part that interests me the most is Foucault’s meeting with the gay leather scene in San Francisco. And how ritualized BDSM practices and drugs probably changed his perception of the world. Much of his work focuses on understanding the subconscious belief systems that shape our actions and how they have changed throughout history. The archelogy of knowledge, as he describes it. One of my favourite examples is how crime and punishment changed from demonstrating power to an-eye-for-an-eye justice to finally reforming behaviour. First, the most spectacular and brutal punishments were to show strength, like pulling limbs off of bodies using pure horsepower and burning people alive. Next, when justice, making peace and “equality” with the victim is the goal, the punishment becomes an eye-for-an-eye or reimbursing an economic loss. Now the public display of brutality is no longer necessary. And finally, when the goal is purely reformative, that is, ensuring that the criminal doesn’t become a re-offender, it’s only about altering a life path—sometimes punishing even before the crime occurs. Here the surveillance society is born, aiming to predict who will develop deviant behaviour and correct it before it happens. The words of crime and punishment remain the same, but the underlying truths change radically.
Michel Foucault sometimes described his BDSM practice as a way to play a game of other realities, so I get curious about what scenarios I play and how they change my reality? Another example is my tea teacher, who says that learning how to serve tea is like learning how to smile. So, of course, one can approach it through posture training of the facial muscles, or instead, one can adopt a reality where serving tea makes me smile.
While musing about this subject, I wrote a list of “BDSM truths”; radically different from how I live my everyday life. And then I wonder, why would anyone be interested in exploring them. I think it’s a structured path towards submission, like a paved trail showing the way. They are based on stories about BDSM that I’ve read and heard and my own exploration. Why explore submission at all is a question I’ve answered a million times by now, but one answer that hopefully can serve for this musing, maybe one fitting after reading Foucault. Allowing another set of truths can allow me to let go of control. And when I stop controlling life, something new can happen, something beyond me. And that is the adventure that I long for, inside the safety of a BDSM session. Sexuality becomes a powerful vehicle for this transformation: intimacy creates trust, and horniness fuels my passion.
And just to be extra complicated, I turned these truths into a poem. So pretentious, I know. Maybe as a way to embrace the mysterious aspect of BDSM, rather than the rational. Or perhaps because I write this after many dreamy slow weeks of vacation. Anyway, here we go.
1: It’s time to admit my shadows
2: and leave my pleasure in the hands of others
3: when I walk this path of sacrifice.
4: I’m proud to exist for others,
5: but know that I’m not unique.
6: I’m an animal of desire.
7: Help me, let go of this false pride,
8: to be filled and emptied, over and over again.
9: Finally, may I offer something of permanence,
10: while something still remains.
Now line by line.
1: It’s time to admit my shadows
The first step is admitting the desire to submit. To oneself and the “world” around. Not really to the entire world, but the temporary space of the BDSM session. Allow mirrors, physical and human, to reflect the new behaviour. Verbalize desires, and put them in writing. Embrace the feelings of becoming someone new.
2: and leave my desires in the hands of others
Next is understanding that these desires are not ones to fulfil. Instead, consciously become dependent on another. Doing this requires safety in knowing that others give pleasure if they want to. It is a challenge to the truth of independence. So one can let go of cravings because realizing them is now in someone else’s hands.
3: when I walk this path of sacrifice.
And the same is true for rejections. They are no longer to be fought or avoided. Instead, another will decide about what sacrifices happen. And the submissive will learn to find them meaningful. So again, stepping away from independence and learning to trust another.
4: I’m proud to exist for others
To find these actions meaningful, it’s important to be proud of them. And therefore, this truth solidifies the previous. To proudly be someone’s fuck toy, favourite pet, or devoted servant. The more people being allowed to witness this pride, the more meaningful it will be.
5: but know that I’m not unique.
There is a codependent fairytale of unconditionally belonging to another and giving them everything when one finally surrenders. And therefore, one must also belong at the centre of their attention. It is a great love story between the dominant and the submissive. And it is what many people are craving. But one way to take things deeper is to give up the idea of being unique and instead becoming part of a collective hierarchy.
6: I’m an animal of desire.
While the collective hierarchy is a divine structure, the opposite is animalistic desire. The carnal and untamed. Thus, one can be kept like an animal inside the collective. Learning to embody one’s animalistic urges, and trusting that the collective will provide the needed boundaries, is another possible progression.
7: Help me, let go of this false pride,
Fear is the biggest killer of intimacy and change; fear of accepting a new truth often disguising itself as pride. The pride to hold on to who I am. Of personality traits serving in a world where one belongs to themself but hurting when the opposite is wanted. But is it pride, or is it fear? The fear of the unknown, letting go and allowing oneself to fall.
8: to be filled and emptied, over and over again.
Diving deeply into BDSM is a repetitive practice, going a little deeper every time. Bondage and pain manipulate the body’s outside, emptying and filling to stimulate the inside. That’s why being penetrated almost always is more vulnerable than penetrating. It is similar to what passes through our bodies. What is put into it, and what is released from it. And from what cavities. It’s like adding and removing from oneself. What is left is what we are. Handing this control over to another requires great surrender.
9: Finally, may I offer something of permanence,
When traversing back from the depth of surrender, one returns to an equal; status quo. So, in a way, nothing has changed, or at least this is something we agree upon. But what if we want something to change, for real, forever? Then let’s make a sacrifice of permanence, a knifes scarring, a collar with a non-reversible lock, something that will stay.
10: while something still remains.
But eventually, everything dies; this could be the only universal truth. So let’s celebrate the end, preferably symbolically, with a burial. Or an entombment in a leather cocoon while softly singing the last hymn; This is our requiem. The senses are lost one by one—sight, smell, hearing, touch until we are floating in the void.
As I’m finishing this breakdown, I wonder why I’m writing this. For me, it’s one path to journey down into BDSM. And writing about it makes me curious to make sessions or workshops that are even more ritualistic and even more explicit in their underlying intention. Whipping, bounding, and sexing are, after all, only the tools and modalities for this journey. And of course, it’s only one path, and while writing this, I’m getting more and more blinded, seeing and believing that this is the one. That isn’t true. But what if I, or we, decide to believe in these truths and then walk this way. I think it would seem so alien from a normative world perspective. To give up control, exist for others, reduce oneself to an object, and offer something of permanence just before ceasing to exist. Metaphorically, of course, because we are not making a crazy suicide cult here.
Maybe the underlying idea that I’m trying to pinpoint in this confused musing is that; if the kinky fantasies are to be another way of relating, different from everyday moral beliefs, then another set of truths must govern the interaction. As Ester Perel says, most dirty dreams are precisely the same things we rebel against during the day. Not admitting that will make the new structure subconscious or reduce BDSM into just a bunch of practical tools and toys.