Let’s briefly look at two comparisons of the US government’s justifications for its torture program and the way sadomasochistic subcultural rhetoric about BDSM practices are discussed.
Comparison 1: “How far is too far?”
Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the books, “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror,” as well as “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation,” provides the necessary background for the issue of government-run torture programs:
The psychologists [employed by the military] are critical, but they’re critical because psychological torture is, in effect, enshrined within U.S. law. When the United States finally ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, we did so subject to certain qualifications, known in diplomatic parlance as “reservations.” And basically, the four reservations that we introduced modified our approval, our ratification of that convention, everything in it except: We redefined the U.N. definition of what torture was—extreme pain—and we called it “prolonged mental harm,” that for an act to rise to the level of torture, it had to become, in U.S. parlance, in those reservations, prolonged mental harm.
Now, those three words are critical. First of all, “mental.” That meant that the United States was effectively splitting the U.N. convention down the middle. The convention barred both physical and psychological torture. We were saying, “We accept the ban on physical torture, but we’re exempting the ban on psychological torture. And we are qualifying that ban because in order for an act to rise to the level of torture, of psychological torture, it has to inflict prolonged mental harm upon the victim.”
Now, what is “prolonged”? How long is “prolonged”? That’s not defined. It’s a huge loophole. And what constitutes “harm”? That’s another huge loophole. And that, of course, opened the door for that notorious memo by the Office of Legal Counsel, its leader then Jay Bybee, to say that for something to rise to the level of harm, the pain must be sufficient or equivalent to organ failure. In other words, torture, psychological torture up to but not including death, is legally acceptable in U.S. law.
(Emphasis mine.)
Meanwhile, even the most casual Google search about BDSM will reveal copious writings about “the difference between hurt and harm.” Here are just a sample.
From “A Submissive’s Journey,” quoting cishet BDSM figurehead Jay Wiseman:
Jay Wiseman recently published a definition of hurt vs. harm that has been kicking around local BDSM circles for many years. […] Generally, if the person who has been permanently marked actively consented to the mark, it isn’t considered harm. If the person wasn’t expecting to be permanently marked or scarred and it’s done to them anyways, it’s generally considered to be harm.
From Letherati, a popular Gay Leather online portal:
hurt and harm are different: hurt is temporary, but harm is lasting — whether it’s physical, like loss of a limb or function; psychological, like PTSD or reduced self-esteem; or spiritual, such as despair. What makes avoiding harm suitable as the master principle for BDSM (though not of all ethics) is precisely that it doesn’t prescribe what people should find pleasurable or conducive to their happiness. Whatever your turn-ons and sources of satisfaction — and everyone’s are different — harm is lasting damage that diminishes your ability to enjoy life or pursue happiness. In other words, the principle of avoiding harm helps us decide how far is too far to go with a clean conscience in BDSM play or relationships.
Does this mean that things like degradation, objectification, or dehumanization have no place in ethical BDSM? Not necessarily: making someone physically, mentally, or spiritually less than before can be okay — and may even, paradoxically, empower the “victim” — when it’s a temporary, reversible effect.
(Emphasis in original.)
In both contexts, there is a strong focus on discerning “how far is too far” with respect to damage caused. If any questions are raised, the questions in both contexts are ones arising from a legalistic foundation for consent. These questions sound like, “What counts as ‘torture,’ or ‘harm’?”, “Under what circumstances is it acceptable to torture or harm someone?”, and “In the case of a dispute, what evidence is needed to prove that damage rose to the level of torture or harm?”
In neither context do the torturers or consensual hurt-enjoyers(??) deny that there is, in fact, physical or psychological or both kinds of damage being caused. The denials only come later, once objections are raised. For now, they just want to lawyer about whether the damage was “legitimate” torture or abuse.
Comparison 2: “That is not who we are.”
Of course, for obvious reasons, there have been numerous objections raised against torture as well as BDSM from many different sources. In both contexts, I think it’s safe to say that the most convincing arguments against each practice have come from the people who have intimate knowledge of them. In the case of the torture program, this means victims who have survived being tortured, as well as government and military employees who participated in but have since spoken out against the torture program. In the case of BDSM, this means BDSM’ers themselves, and especially Submissives or bottoms, who are the practitioners most often on the receiving end of physical and psychological trauma and abuse.
How do torturers react when they are confronted by such objections? Here’s what Dick Cheney said during his interview last Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD [INTERVIEWER]: Let me go to Gul Rahman. He was chained to the wall of his cell, doused with water, froze to death in C.I.A. custody. And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.
DICK CHENEY: –right. But the problem I had is with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield. […] I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.
CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.
DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are– […]
CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You’re okay with that margin for error?
DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
There’s a few different threads to unpack here, but for now let’s focus simply on the repeated invocations of the “bad guys” versus “good guys” (binary/black and white, etc.) worldview, a common refrain in the tactic of political melodrama.
Following on from this are the statements by James Mitchell, one of two key psychologists who devised the torture program, in a recent VICE News interview:
To me, it seems completely insensible that slapping KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] is bad, but sending a Hellfire missile into a family’s picnic and killing all the children and, you know, killing Granny and killing everyone is OK, for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is: What about that collateral loss of life? And the other is, is that if you kill them, you can’t question them.
[…]
It’s a lot more humane, even if you are going to subject them to harsh techniques, to question them while they are still alive, than it is to kill them and their children and their neighbors with a drone.
This is a rather revealing statement, both considering that, contrary to his description of it, drone warfare is supposedly “surgically precise,” and that “slapping” is not a description of what people are upset about happening to Kalid Sheikh Mohammed. Regardless, Cheney’s themes are replicated here. But Mitchell takes Cheney’s absurd logic one step further; Mitchell asserts it’s better (“more humane”) to torture people than to kill them.
Now that’s just sadistic, isn’t it?
And how do BDSM’ers and their enablers talk about “What It Is That We Do”? It’s an endless refrain of the same: BDSM’ers are “good guys,” not like those “bad guy” abusers.
Again, a casual Google search will turn up countless articles and blog posts from BDSM’ers about the difference between “BDSM,” which is A-okay (and not-harm, remember?) versus “abuse,” which no real BDSM’er does, because then it’s not abuse, it’s BDSM (and that’s totally not a No True Scotsman argument, nope, definitely not that).
Even some professional psychologists (*cough*like Mitchell*cough*) are playing along. The Associated Press consulted Dr. Keely Kolmes, “a San Francisco-based psychologist who sees patients who practice BDSM,” for a story about Ed Bagley and his wife who “coerced a young woman to become a sex slave and sexually tortured her in their home in Lebanon Mo.”. Kolmes “said that many of the acts listed in the indictment can be part of consensual activities. But others might indicate Bagley was an abuser, such as allegations that he shot animals the woman cared about to prove he could kill her and that he refused to stop immediately when the woman used a ‘safe word.‘”
So while the progressive, sex-positive, pro-BDSM feminist who assures everyone it’s all okay as long as safe words are respected may find this fact hard to stomach, in truth their position is not all that different from Dick Cheney’s. If it’s different at all, it’s different in degree, not in kind. In journalist Nicole Hemmer’s words, “We’re All Dick Cheney”:
Our comfort with torture is not a result of immediate post-attack fear, but something that goes far deeper. President Barack Obama has denounced torture many times in his presidency, saying, “That is not who we are.” But Obama is wrong. We condone torture, both overtly and in our unwillingness to bring those complicit in torture to justice. And worse, we cling to an American exceptionalism that says our nation is a force of good in the world (which it is) that is uniquely untouched by baser human impulses (which it is not) – this despite our record, in every single war, of violating civil and human rights.
That unwillingness to see ourselves as we are, that failure to recognize the American capacity not only for wrongdoing but for evil, prevents us from properly reckoning with the true costs of our wars, propelling us to go off in search of monsters to destroy without first confronting the monster within.
She may be more correct than she knows. Beyond the explicit pro-torture policies our federal government enacts, our municipal police forces have the same history. For example, in Chicago, it’s well known that police officers tortured at least 110 Black men to elicit false confessions, and in New York City, a bevy of “isolated incidents” that all share common characteristics, like the torture and rape of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn police station, are all examples from recent memory.
But institutions such as governments like ours or, analogously, companies like these are not entities unto themselves. They’re made of people. And those people, these torturers, don’t exist in a vacuum whose boundaries are impermeable and separate from the everyday lives of everyday citizens. The same pattern, the same cycle of abuse, the same justifications for torture, are plainly visible at every level of American society—just ask any survivor of government torture, or any survivor of BDSM abuse.
In both the “national security” and the “sex-positive (BDSM)” context, I think it’s long past time for us to start asking ourselves whether “because freedom” is a sufficient justification for torture.
THIS. FUCKING THIS. READ NOW.
![maymay:
The 8 White Identities
by [Associate Professor of African American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology] Barnor Hesse
There is a regime of whiteness, and there are action-oriented white identities. People who identify with whiteness are one of these. Itÿs about time we build an ethnography of whiteness, since white people have been the ones writing about governing Others.
White Supremacist; Clearly marked white society that preserves, names, and values white superiority.
White Voyeurism; Wouldnÿt challenge a white supremacist; desires non-whiteness because itÿs interesting, pleasurable; seeks to control the consumption and appropriation of non-whiteness; fascination with culture (ex: consuming Black culture without the burden of Blackness)
White Privilege; May critique supremacy, but a deep investment in questions of fairness/equality under the normalization of whiteness and the white rule; sworn goal of ?diversityÿ
White Benefit; Sympathetic to a set of issues but only privately; wonÿt speak/act in solidarity publicly because benefiting through whiteness in public (some POC are in this category as well)
White Confessional; Some exposure of whiteness takes place, but as a way of being accountable to POC after; seek validation from POC
White Critical; Take on board critiques of whiteness and invest in exposing/marking the white regime; refuses to be complicit with the regime; whiteness speaking back to whiteness.
White Traitor; Actively refuses complicity; names whatÿs going on; intention is to subvert white authority and tell the truth at whatever cost; need them to dismantle institutions.
White Abolitionist; Changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.
I find a number of things in Barnor Hesseÿs ´The 8 White Identities¡ highly relevant and important.
First among them is Professor Hesseÿs focus on ´action-oriented identities.¡ This take on identity stands in remarkably sharp contrast to the typical (oxymoronic ´white anti-racist¡) understanding of identity politics. Hesseÿs schema focuses almost exclusively on what people actually do, rather than on what people say they do, which should be, like, critical thinking 101 but isnÿt because most people are intentionally (mis-)educated out of the ability to think critically by a white supremacist and actively genocidal system of forced schooling.
This point of ´action-oriented identities¡ is actively relevant to rolequeer conversations right now, as this excerpt from Thinking Rolequeer: Stepping Outside the Charmed Circle makes clear:
[The concept of] kyriarchical positionality is about identity, whereas [Gayle Rubinÿs] Charmed Circle is about actions. To think about and criticize power and powerful structures effectively, we must first deeply internalize the difference between these two things [identities and actions] and apply them both at the same time in any analysis of a given situation. This two-pronged approach is important because, for starters, ´power¡ is not merely some abstract idea, but the application of force placed in time and space.
Most current discourse about sex and power has been totally overwhelmed by these ultimately unhelpful questions: Are you what you do? Are you only what you do? More crudely: Are you gay because you have gay sex? Or are you having gay sex because you are gay? Is it a choice? Or were you born that way? While politically expedient, I believe these questions dissecting the justifications for a given act are derailing distractions from the real issue: in what ways do our identities or actions threaten the ability of The Powers That Be to define our boundaries on our behalf?
Rolequeerness is a mental tool (that is, it is an idea) enabling us to more easily merge the two interrogatory approaches outlined in intersectional feminist analysis (kyriarchy, queer theory, etc.) described above in order to help us focus on actions whose impacts actually undermine power.
(Emphasis added.)
Another key point in Hesseÿs schema is the way it implicit widens the scope of what is considered ´complicity¡ with white supremacy by virtue of gradating such identities on a spectrum rather than a simple dichotomy of ´racist¡ and ´not racist.¡ Hesse makes this explicit in his description of ´White Confessional¡ where he describes the point of action as one where ´Some exposure of whiteness takes place, but as a way of being accountable to POC after,¡ which I read to mean after complicity in white supremacy has caused harm.
This point of placing complicit actions at a precise moment in time is something I heavily elaborated on in my essay, ´Complicity in Abuse: 101-level information social justice hobbyists are dangerously ignorant of,¡ such as in this excerpt:
One way to understand awareness of complicity more fully is by contrasting it with a related and equally misunderstood idea: ´being accountable.¡ Frustratingly, ´accountability¡ has become an all but meaningless buzzword for social justice hobbyists (that is, people who engage in what I call ´pop social justice¡), such as those on Tumblr.
In the pitiable Internet social justice filter bubble where you may currently be having most of these conversations, ´being accountable¡ means publicly accepting responsibility for some abusive or otherwise oppressive behavior. Itÿs also used to mean acknowledging a privilege (such as ´male¡ or ´white¡) through a rigidly prescribed set of social rituals. Importantly, this ´accepting accountability for¡ is definitionally something one does after one commits some abusive act or claims some oppressor identity. This is in sharp contrast to ´awareness of complicity,¡ which is definitionally something we are trying to do to prevent abusive or oppressive behavior from existing in the first place as much as possible.
I also think that even the name of this category, ´White Confessional,¡ is important to this point. It locates white guilt by metaphorical coordinates in the dominant moral belief system of religion by its name: Confession. Despite whatever honest intent may have birthed this peculiar social ritual, it has been undeniably perverted into an act of abusive complicity and is now used as a psychological bludgeon by the majority of ´social justice activists.¡ In my ´Complicity in Abuse¡ essay, I quote Andrea Smith on this point:
Itÿs also important to understand the purpose of these rigidly prescribed social rituals, because they are one way many people are complicit in abuse. The rituals that activism hobbyists perform together was perhaps best summarized by Andrea Smith in her essay, The Problem with Privilege:
In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing projects over the years, I frequently found myself participating in various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their gender/race/sexuality/class/etc. privilege. These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: ´I am so and so, and I have x privilege.¡ It was never quite clear what the point of these confessions were. It was not as if other participants did not know the confessor in question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It did not appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political project themselves. The benefits of these confessions seemed to be ephemeral. For the instant the confession took place, those who do not have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of power as the hearer of the confession who could grant absolution and forgiveness. The sayer of the confession could then be granted temporary forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and relief from white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits of this ritual, there was generally little critique of the fact that in the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of domination it was supposed to resist.
By performing the confession ritual Smith describes happening in these workshops, people who fancy themselves ´social justice activists¡ engage in a transaction that temporarily trades whatever systemic power they may have had outside of the workshopÿs context (such as the ability to command more cultural and social attention as a result of their whiteness, or to more forcefully direct community governance processes as a result of their maleness, etc.) in exchange for some social accolades (such as acceptance to the workshop space, friendships with the workshop participants, and public recognition from those who already command respect) within the workshop context.
This is a fundamentally corrupt, and corrupting, process.
(Emphasis in original.)
Last (for now) but not least, I also think Hesseÿs naming of a category ´White Traitor,¡ especially as itÿs distinct from ´White Abolitionist¡ but nevertheless paired with it (we ´need them [traitors] to dismantle institutions¡), is important. To be blunt, you can not be a traitor to a cause or institution that you have never supported. A traitor is a turncoat or, depending on your point of view, perhaps a whistleblower. These difficult identities is where acts of (social justice) ´allyship¡ really take place; ´allyship¡ is not present in the guilt-projecting ´confessionals¡ of in-actionable social capitalism wrapped in the flag of identity politics.
This point of traitorous identities also inherently defines a certain relationship that crosses the line between the personal and the political, the individual and the institutional. That relationship is also inherently dangerous, because it actively threatens powerful people, institutions, and political forces. Tumblr user alexispointy succinctly described traitorous white race relations like this:
if you want to really be a useful white race traitor, you gotta refuse the privileges granted to you and interfere with the privileges granted to others for being white. at the very least, use your white privilege to help serve the immediate needs of poc if you canÿt be assed to sacrifice the comforts of your white life.
In numerous essays, unquietpirate also discusses ´traitorous¡ relationships in the contexts of both race and gender. In this post, she brings it back around to how (intentionally?) ineffective most of whatÿs called ´social justice¡ really is, and why the idea of a ´rolequeer politic of action¡ is both so useful and threatening, but is not actually new at all:
Arguably, the most effective thing that a person with privilege can do to dismantle oppression culture is to treat the marginalized people they love respectfully, put their needs first, and do everything possible to make their lives easier, so that those peoplesÿ intimate understanding of how oppression works and how to resist it can come to the fore ? rather than be further buried under the crushing weight of just having to deal with oppression in every situation and relationship in their life every minute of every goddamn day.
This is ultimately the reason why rolequeerness is so important. The radical act Iÿm describing is basically ´submission¡ ? but the key is that itÿs about submitting to someone who is less powerful than you. The traditionalist notion of power relations is that we submit to people because they are more powerful than us, but thatÿs backwards.
Radical people of color and other marginalized folks have been talking about this fairly common sense thing since the 60s and probably long before: the idea that ´allies¡ exist to support a movement in the ways they are asked to, not to run it; that ¡allyship¡ is about putting your privilege into the service of a movement that seeks to dismantle the institution that privileges you. Thatÿs giving your power over to someone for the express purpose of empowering them to hurt you. Thatÿs a submissive relationship to power.
[?]
One of the reasons that contemporary pop social justice folks are so bad at achieving their own stated goals is because they fail to understand that allyship is submission ? and most of the entitled, domist folks in that scene couldnÿt submit to save their lives, even the ones who identify as ´submissive¡ in a BDSM context. See also: The number of people who got all excited about ´rolequeer¡ as a cool, edgy new identity option ? but wigged out about the part of my post that described rolequeers as ´submissive as fuck.¡
´I want to say Iÿm rolequeer, but I donÿt want that to mean people think Iÿm submissive! Eew!¡ is what I heard when I read those posts. And, to me, it just smacked of some heterosexual hipster whoÿs taking a Gender Studies class and wants to identify as ´queer¡ but not ´get mistaken for a fag.¡
Turns out that if you want to ally with people less powerful than you, then you might get ´mistaken¡ for being one of them. And if that assumption that youÿre a traitor to your privileged class is a mistake, youÿre probably ´being an ally¡ for the wrong reasons.
So, as weÿve said before, this is just some of what weÿre trying to talk about when we say that ´rolequeer means a traitorous relationship to oneÿs own placement in a privileged position.¡](https://web.archive.org/web/20160402063133/http://maybemaimed.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/The-8-White-Identities-by-Barnor-Hesse.jpg)
