Originally appeared in the anthology SOME WOMEN, edited by Laura Antoniou, Masquerade Books, 1994.

Well, I understand you are worried about me now that you know I'm a woman into SM. You want to keep me from becoming a victim of violence and psychological damage. But let me assure you, my involvment in SM has made me less susceptible to violence and damage, not more. SM has taught me valuable things about emotional safety and my rights as an individual that all the anti-rape education in the world didn't teach me.

First off, I know you worry because I am a masochist. Self-destructive, dangerous! you think. Let me put it in a different light. Masochism, for the self-assured masochist, is what makes some people successful. It is the knowledge that you can suffer through anything, whether it is long hours at the office, all-nighters for end of term projects, long distance running, and ENJOY it in the process. When I put myself through something rigorous, I enjoy it, whether it is running in a long-distance race, or pulling an all-nighter to meet a deadline, or tackling a plate full of the hottest tacos this side of Texas. I think most athletes are this type of accomplished masochist. There are the physiological effects, like endorphin production they call 'runner's high,' but there is also a deeper psychological satisfaction in it, an assurance, a confidence. There is something about us that feels whole when we have gone through rigor, something akin to the job well done.

Now, to take that type of masochism into the erotic realm. You've heard the words consent, consensual, consensuality, all meaning that the bottom fully agrees to receive the attention the top will give her. A masochist is looking to be put through the wringer, and wants a top who can give her the kind of physical experience she craves. (By the way, should I point out that there are just as many men on the bottom as there are women? This is not a male-oppresses-female issue.) The bottom receives the experience, which triggers the physiological response and the resulting emotional satisfaction. We haven't yet begun to talk about control. The illusion is that the top is 100% in control, while the bottom (perhaps bound up, blindfolded, etc...) has none whatsoever. This is not the actual case. In a fully consensual situation, the bottom has the power to say stop or go.

Now, to go one step further. Say I'm in a scene in which I am getting flogged. I know I have the ultimate power to say stop if at any time I feel like I'm not enjoying myself or I'm not happy (say, if I got a cramp in my foot, or if my poison ivy makes the flogging annoying rather than pleasurable). As a masochist, I am trying to push myself, to see how much I can take, like seeing how far one can run before the legs give out. Just like when running, one can push onesself farther when someone else is involved, either a jogging partner or a coach. In the case of the flogging, the someone else is the person doing the flogging. If she is reading me well, she will be able to guide me along further than I "know" I can go, she'll know when to slow down, and when to try for one more lap. Here the bottom lets the top have control, trusting the top the way the athlete trusts the coach. The top takes the bottom places that the bottom couldn't go alone. So, although the bottom has the ultimate control (the power to say no), the bottom allows the top to be the guide. This is the great fun of being an SM bottom, is finding these new places the top can take you.

Now the step beyond that. If I allow a top to take me somewhere through a scene, I am giving my cooperation. The step beyond cooperation is obedience. And the step beyond mere obedience, in which the bottom truly gives up her will-power, is submission.

I am going to describe a scene in which I was not obedient, not in the least, but in the end, I did submit. This was at a play party, an occassion where SM folk get together for the sake of possibly whacking one another for all's mutual pleasure. We were about 25 friends, we all knew one another, and there was one person in particular I had been attracted to. He and I had been flirting for months, and even knew quite a lot about each other's tastes and preferences, but a good opportunity to play had never come up.That is, until one moment when we were sitting on the floor in the living room, admiring some implements a friend of ours had made: suede floggers, ping pong paddles covered in leather, and so on. I picked up one flogger (a kind of short whip with ten or fifteen "tails" dangling off) made from very stiff leather and said "Oo, this one looks scary." It did, in a thrilling sort of way. My keen interest in it was evident from my provocative tone of voice and coy facial expression.

He took it from me, matching my interest. "Oh really? Beg me for five lashes with it."

So, of course I refused, but in the most provocative way possible. I believe I stuck out my tongue, daring him to hit me with it. It was obvious that we were playing around and that I was not seriously refusing, but rather daring him to punish me for defying his order. So we roughhoused a little and I let him "overpower" me and eventually he got me into a position where he could whack me on the butt with it. Which he did, saying that was for my insolence. Then he repeated the order to beg for five lashes.

Again I said no, very disobedient of me, and again he whacked me with it. It went on like this, in which I knew that if I refused, I would get whacked, and if I went along with his request, the scene would end. In that way I had control of the gas and the brakes all along. Well, I was having fun, and didn't want to stop. In fact, I decided he ought to whack me even harder. So I said, in my most defiant tone possible, "You're going to have to hit me a lot harder than that to break me." I was hoping to make him mad. In this way I was trying to manipulate him, to control his actions.

And he read me, and wouldn't play into that. "Ah, but I'm not interested in breaking you, only in bending your will to mine," he replied.

"Ha! Never!" I spat, and earned more lashes for it, still not as hard as I would have liked. Things continued on that way and I began to think he was hitting me so lightly on purpose, that is he wouldn't give me what I really wanted until I begged for it. Aha, I thought, if that's his game, then he won't really let loose on me until I do beg him for it. So, I begged, I made the illusion of giving over will, when really I was just cooperating so I could get what I wanted, some real hard whacks.

But, then, he very gently touched me five times, and that was all. In that moment I realized that I had given over my will to him, not merely cooperated. He was right, he couldn't "break" me, but I did bend of my own accord. Ultimately, what it proved to me is that no one can "take" control away from you in a scene, you can only give it away. I gave my will freely in that moment, which was real, not an illusion. There can only be the illusion of "taking" control in a scene. (When someone really takes control, that's what I call rape, and that's not what we do.)

The trappings of bondage, of SM, are all about that illusion of one person taking control from the other. We love that illusion, that's the thrill that tugs at our guts. We are reenacting a fantasy of the top taking control from the bottom. The unfortunate consequence for us is that this is a textbook definition "rape fantasy." And some feminists seem to think that in some way this condones actual rape, that we want unwilling participants to suffer sexual abuses. This makes about as much sense as saying that because I want to run the marathon, I condone forcing people to run the way they did in Nazi prison camps, or, perhaps truer to the notion of fantasy, that because I write a book about the fictitious end of the world, I want the world to end.

So let us accept that fantasy and reality are two different things. Because I understand the inner workings of power exchange I can play with will-power and feel confident that I am safe when I do so. It is only through SM and hands-on contact with consensuality that I am able to understand the workings so clearly. When you say you worry that playing this way I am likely to suffer psychological damage, I find rather that it is more likely that people (women especially) injure themselves when they enter erotic situations without any understanding of the exchange of power. It is these situations that lead to date rape, to victimization.

Consensuality goes beyond the mere agreement of both partners to participate in a will-power role play. It embraces a larger obligation on the part of the partners to communicate, to inform one another, to cooperate. In addition, within the S/M community, people know that they have a right to say "stop" or

"no." A _right_ in the sense that it is a community enforced standard, available to all, not just a priveleged few. Consensuality is not just about sex, it is about interaction on many levels. In an SM scene, if one partner said something that the other didn't like, that made her cringe or feel badly, she would stop the scene to talk about it before going on. But how many wives stop their husbands in the middle of dinner to say "When you say that you make me feel like a child" or "Don't talk about my parents that way"? Not enough of them. I know S/M couples who have a safeword they use when they get into a meaningless bickering session. Now, what if everyone had that?

It makes sense that the S/M fringe developed this respect for emotional safety as well as physical safety. We who play on the edge, who play with fire, are most likely to get burned. We have developed the reflexes necessary to allow ourselves to play in the dangerous areas. It is a bit like seat belts. Originally designed to protect race car drivers and other daredevils, now we have them in all our cars. Could the lessons the S/M community has learned someday be transmitted to the world at large?

Imagine if the women's community at large embraced this right--the right to say stop or no at any time. How many date rapes happen not because the woman says "no" and her partner does not stop, but because she never said ANYTHING AT ALL? Many. It happened to me when I was young and didn't know my rights. Now I know better. Armed with the knowledge that I do have the right to say no, I do not feel victimized by the date rape in my past. It was an unfortunate incident that I have grown beyond, because I have learned a better way.

More women need to learn this way, the dynamics of power exchange, the confidence and assurance that come with it. Women need to demand the rights of informed consent and negotiation. Men aren't going to come around to granting us this right on their own. It is something all women, all people need to claim for themselves, and to do that, they need to understand it.

Sadly, it seems to be feminists who are keeping them from understanding. The lessons of emotional safety that the SM community has learned and refined can not be transmitted to others so long as we are attacked for being unsafe, for doing psychic damage to women, for being evil. Feminists who condemn S/M as violence against women are cutting off the one missing piece in their struggle for equality.

Modes of social interaction, like language, must be learned through experience, through the group-mind. We can talk about this concept of consensuality all day, but the SM community is the only place where it lives and breathes, where it is learned by all who pass through the community by example, by osmosis, by sociological pressure. I welcome women into my community as often as I can, but most of them are fearful and full of misconceptions because they have been told, oftem by feminists, that SM is violence against women, SM perpetuates oppression, SM will damage you. If women were more aware that safeguards, consensuality and negotiation were the basis of the scene, less of them would be afraid to try it.

I can only hope that you feminists will someday stop spreading the myths and overcome your fear long enough to pass through our doors yourselves and come out as empowered as I have. My sister, my friend, my lover, my mother, I am concerned for your safety, now.

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