a man: I like to beat women
everyone: okay that’s… kind of fucked up
the man: no no you see, I get off on doing that also
everyone: OH okay! carry on
btw we’ve all had fun with some flippant replies to some of the more asinine responses to this post but what a lot of these people are missing is that the focus of the post is not really on bdsm itself so much as what goes on in the minds of men who get off on harming women. a lot of people would acknowledge that a desire to hit women is troubling (at least in theory–in practice those men are likely to escape without seeing too many consequences), but as soon as that same violence is sexualised, any critique of it mystically, alchemically becomes out of bounds. this isn’t a post about the logistics of bdsm, or its “culture” or w/e, or consent (which I would obviously never claim doesn’t matter, but it’s certainly not the whole story). the post is about the impassible divide that a lot of people, including a lot of self-styled feminists, seem to believe exists between sex & the rest of our lived experiences & material circumstances. but such a division doesn’t exist & it isn’t tenable to act as if it does. to claim that sex, our attitudes towards it, what regulates it and how, etc. has no bearing on gendered oppression is demonstrably, historically false. & just to make it clear in case anyone doesn’t read that link, this is not a moralistic injunction that seeks to regulate anyone’s behaviour but rather it applies to everything relating to sex & our attitudes about it–to try to sort out “morally pure” from “morally impure” sex is to create a no less absurd division than to cordon sex off from everything else
Chelsea G. Summers wrote a really great piece about men, especially self-styled feminist men, who use kink to channel and cover their misogyny (cw for sexual assault):
Even in the context of BDSM, especially in the context of BDSM, why somebody is interested in “rough sex” is an important point that cannot be brushed off.