Rolequeer porn? “Multivalent if cornered. Malevolent when dominated.”
Given the political meanings of the word ‘queer’, is it a matter of time before rolequeerness splits into a political ‘rolequeer’ group and a non-political/liberal ‘role-diverse’ group?
Already right now it seems to be attractive to some kinksters who have zero interest in the political side of queer.
I’m gonna emphasize something more from the piece above:
I wrote “Consent as a Felt Sense” from the standpoint of giving Submissives (and when I capitalize ‘Submissive, I’m always doing so in order to suggest a rolequeer orientation toward submission) the power to fundamentally reject Dominant control. I explicitly wanted the notion of rolequeerness to strike fear into the hearts of abusive Doms, because I wanted them to begin to see anyone who identified as Submissive in a radical way as someone who might retroactively “take back consent” at any time — i.e. as dangerous to play with and a threat to their power.
This is important because it cuts directly into the heart of the BDSM’er lie that there are “kinky people” on one side and “vanilla people” on the other, and since you have had fantasies about coercive things, you have already chosen to be a BDSM’er whether you admit or not.
That is insulting. It is paternalizing. And it is a false dichotomy. There is no such “kind of” people.
It’s actually kind of refreshing to notice that when I argue with BDSM’ers, especially the relatively younger folks, even ones who call themselves “real life subs” (looking at you, jennytrout), they will inevitably make the claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about. They ignore and discard, either intentionally or ignorantly, the literal lifetime of experiences I’ve had deeply entrenched in BDSM communities. What’s refreshing about this is not the dripping condescension in their tones, it’s the reliable predictability of such a bad argument, and the reminder that even after more than a decade, no one defending the pro-rape and anti-consent BDSM mindset has been able to offer anything of substance beyond obvious logical fallacies.
I think that’s really good news.
When unquietpirate and I started talking, BDSM and consent were at the core of our conversations. The result of those conversations are what we’ve articulated as rolequeerness and Consent as a Felt Sense.
In other words, when BDSM’ers argue that we don’t know what we’re talking about with respect to BDSM, and that the anti-BDSM argument is made by people who don’t have the slightest clue about what consent is really about, they are betraying the willfulness of their ignorance. Like frightened homophobic men who fear the possibility of other men suddenly treating them the way they treat women, BDSM’ers are—and rightfully should be—suddenly afraid of being treated by other people the way they treat submissives.
That’s why our articulations of understanding consent as retroactively revokable scares men and dominants—and especially dominant men—so much. It was always intended to scare them. And taking for ourselves a power that scares an oppressor is a kind of liberation.
That has nothing to do with porn. Or politics. Except that it has everything to do with porn. And politics. Because everything is always and already political. And everything is always and already fodder for eroticism.
Rolequeers are not the kind of “good boys and girls” BDSM’ers want because we are not obedient to their authority. When a dominant says “what a good boy,” what they mean is “what an obedient boy.” It has nothing to do with being good. Rolequeers recognize that and are intentionally malevolent in the face of domination.
So, rolequeer porn, as I understand it, would eroticize disobedience to authority. It would eroticize Submissives taking care of themselves and each other. It would valorize Dominants who are traitors or whistleblowers or turncoats to themselves and other Dominants. It would eroticize Submissives being good *for* themselves and each other, not just good *to* the people with power over them.
I have no idea how that porn would look in visual form. I don’t even know if it can be explicated in only a picture. Because what makes porny images porny is the multivalence of their interpretations.
After all, like every thoughtful person knows, change the context, and you can change the nature of the image without touching the picture itself. So maybe, instead of scrutinizing “rolequeer porn” for looking too similar or too different than other “porny things” we see everywhere else, we should instead be focusing on what narratives we are projecting onto what we’re seeing.
And if we got really good at that, then that, more than anything else I can think of, that would empower us to queer the roles we are expected to conform ourselves to and are familiar with taking on ourselves.
(via maymay)