Abstract
In recent decades, BDSM as a form of power exchange has gained partial recognition and social inclusion in the public sphere. The inclusive process comes with the price of excluding concrete behaviors and thought patterns that are considered dangerous and pathological. This exclusion/inclusion process is conducted in the framework of the production of consensual biopolitical knowledge and in the context of the normalization of sex. Under these conditions, the total power exchange master/slave relationship, which is realized through a full-time power exchange encounter, suffers from the exclusion mechanism, as it is incompatible with the inclusive reason. In the course of this paper, I will examine the exclusion process of the master/slave total power exchange under the constitutive mechanism of the BDSM discursive rules in order to expose a new form of thinking and behavior that challenges the biopower reason, while simultaneously operating within its limitations.
Introduction
One of the social and cultural practices that has garnered much critical and theoretical research in recent decades is BDSM. This umbrella term is used to describe a variety of behaviors involving an explicit or implicit erotic power exchange through dominance and submission, which includes the infliction of pain or intense stimulation, elements of role-taking or role play, and various levels of bondage (Weiss, 2011). All these practices are determined under a consensual agreement between the participants, which is a prerequisite for the normative and descriptive existence of this phenomenon, thereby distinguishing it from nonconsensual abuse. It encompasses a variety of forms of pleasure production through the exchange of power, some of them physical (flogging, for example), some psychological (master/slave), and some combined (bondage).
In the last few decades, BDSM, especially as a sexual practice, has transitioned from a lack of external recognition and public persecution to social inclusion in various arenas. Indeed, BDSM remains a marginalized sexual practice, in the grip of social stigmatization and suffering from a lack of public consensus regarding its legitimacy as a social practice and discourse (Fanghanel, 2020: 273; Tomazos et al., 2017); however, notwithstanding the controversy concerning its public legitimacy, partial acceptance has been gained in the cultural, legal, and medical spheres. In the medical realm, it has shifted from a mental disorder to a sexual, kinky practice that is legitimized under certain conditions (APA, 2013; Williams, 2017: 70–72); in the legislative sphere, from criminalizing BDSM participants for engaging in abuse to recognizing their right to the production of sexual pleasure under safe conditions (Weiss, 2011: 80–84; Weinberg, 2016); and in the cultural realm as a pattern of behavior and sexual practice, emerging from the narrow realm of the bizarre into the cultural mainstream, enriching marital erotic life, permeating alternative sexual relationships, and occupying a prominent place in literature, film, and media (Weiss, 2011: 1032–1049; Downing, 2004: 62–68; Williams, 2017: 74–77; Cruz, 2019: 152–161).
Consent and sexuality are the primary mechanisms for social inclusion in BDSM relation (Langdridge and Barker, 2007: 41–60; Kleinplatz and Moser, 2011: 1–15; Williams, 2017). Consent as an amiable decision between adults and sexual desire as a pleasurable, sensual feeling distinguishes between BDSM practices and aggressive sadism and humiliating masochism, with their criminal and mental disorders, and marks BDSM as a realization of the participants’ interests and desires. But the possible range of agreement between two adults and the scope of legitimate sexual acts is subject to interpretation and may be used as a mechanism of exclusion. BDSM as a heterogenous discourse and practice that is characterized by sexual tendency (heterosexual/homosexual), gender and racial identity, and a wide range of power relations (mental or physical domination, gradual degree of pain infliction and so on) further emphasizes the controversial status of sexuality and consent and even how they may be used as a tool for exclusion under the guise of social legitimization. For example, some statements organized under the consensual argument may include specific power-relation behaviors and fantasies—thereby pushing others beyond the boundaries of legitimacy (Downing, 2004, 2007; Parchev and Langdridge, 2017; Cruz, 2019)—as well as practices for the production of sexual pleasure that are established under accepted sexual orientations, such as the marital relationship, thereby defining consensual, non-sexual power exchanges as pathological and dangerous (Langdridge, 2006; Weait, 2007).
One of the divisions within BDSM is between part-time or time-limited versus full-time and long-time relationships with determined under consensual context (Dancer et al., 2006: 82–3). Time-limited BDSM encounters are circumscribed by rules and roles that are established only for the duration of that encounter. Full-time encounters appear in relationships specifically established for the purpose of incorporating the power exchange encounter as a basis for the entire relationship. Some of these relationships strive for a “total power exchange” (TPE) in which the submissive partner consciously yields control of significant domains of life to the dominant partner. Such relations include several prominent subsets that are based on different roles. SM slavery is a subset of this relationship, in which the submissive person chooses to be seen as a slave and identifies as such (Dancer et al., 2006: 86), but there are other types created around other roles, such as a parent-child relationship.
TPE as an experimental form of BDSM raises unique questions and problems concerning marital relationships, power divisions and erotic and sexual experience, which distinguish it from other BDSM intersubjective engagements, even as it remains a part of the overall phenomena. In the last few decades, several sociological and ethnographic researchers have raised a number of interesting issues regarding the formal structure of TPE engagement, the power division between TPE agents, their subjective descriptive experience, and the sexual versus erotic function (Bauer, 2014: 120–131; Kaldera, 2010; Cook Daniels, 2010; Cascalheira and Wignall, 2022: 628–639; Dancer et al., 2006: 81–93; Facio et al., 2020: 1146–1149; Green, 2007; Ortmann and Sprott, 2012; Williams, 2017). However, while most of the literature has examined TPE as another form of BDSM activity, there has been very little contemplation of the distinct place it occupies vis à vis other forms of BDSM social engagement (Cascalheira and Wignall, 2022: 628–639; Dancer et al., 2006).
The goal of this paper is to expose the way in which the mainstream argument regarding consent and the function of sex in BDSM practice excludes TPE from the realm of the normative. As required in social and political criticism, the purpose of the description is not only to detail the exclusion process, but especially to present TPE as a form of social relationship that expands the boundaries of the consensual and the erotic in order to expose a new form of thinking and practice that goes beyond the dictates of normative society (Foucault, 1997a: 311–313). For this project, I applied a discourse analysis approach to academic and primary sources regarding BDSM. In order to achieve this goal, I will review, first, the way in which most of the literature concerning BDSM validates consent and excludes TPE from the boundaries of BDSM by using a social-constructive and medical argument that is constituted by the biopower production and dissemination of knowledge. In this context, I will suggest TPE as a constructive discursive mechanism that expands BDSM practice beyond normative boundaries by enriching the argument regarding consent. Second, I will expose the sovereignty of the sexual and erotic reason in the BDSM discourse—especially as it appears in contemporary literature—as part of the biopower disciplinary regime and as a mechanism of exclusion aimed mostly against TPE practice. Finally, I will suggest TPE as a pure power relationship that indicates a new form of social relations that functions within the biopower reason but at the same time expands its boundaries.
Biopolitics functions, under this critical direction, as an analytical descriptive frame for understanding TPE through Foucault’s analysis and his contemporary successors, especially in the liberal context. Through the development of the concept of biopower, Foucault suggested a descriptive way of understanding the growth of temporal discursive rules and practices in their historical context and how the subjective function is constituted through this process. As a discursive structure and social constructive practice based on subjective corporal embodiment, BDSM calls for this analytical insight. Indeed, this method has been applied in some of the central ethnographic and philosophical researches concerning BDSM phenomena (Carlström, 2019: 1162–1181; Downing, 2007: 79–91; Weiss, 2011: 60–99; Williams, 2017: 67–74). In the course of this paper, I will use Foucault’s analytical and ethical point of view to identify BDSM’s constitutive discursive rules and its process of constituting the subject in the biopower historical condition.
Methodological approach
The methodology that was employed in this paper is based upon Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach regarding discursive analysis (Foucault, 1977: 79–96, 1997b: 140–148). The BDSM literature on consent and sexuality will be analyzed as a part of the disciplinary knowledge that manifests the institutionalization of BDSM as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, especially within the structure of governmental biopower. The discursive rule functions in this analysis as a constructive consequence of institutional power that constitutes every form of statement and practice by setting their limits and determining their content, not as an oppressive exclusion, but as the immanent product of the mechanism of discourse (Foucault, 1972: 79–96, 1977-8: 108–109).
In his genealogical research, Foucault looked for the way in which statement and practice in modern society function and are produced under a concrete structural power (Foucault, 1997, S.P, 340–54). This analytical direction was extended to his analysis of the discourse concerning the constitutive process of objects, subjects, and concepts under contemporary discursive rules (Foucault, 1982: 79–96). In the course of the paper, I will identify the sociological and cultural academic literature that justified and legitimized BDSM under the consensual and sexual argument as a part of the biopower reason, which functions as one of the prominent structural powers of modern society (Foucault, 2008: 1–42). Here, I will focus on the sociological and ethnographic literature that understands BDSM practice as culturally produced and dependent on a social context, on the internal feminist dispute regarding the legitimization of BDSM, on psychiatric discursive rules, and on the ethnographic and phenomenological discussion concerning the place of sexuality in BDSM practice and identity. As a result of this discursive analysis, I will identify the inclusive/exclusive mechanism of the BDSM discourse, in which the inclusive argument excludes TPE practice, as it is not included in the boundaries of the biopower discourse.
This methodological direction is determined under the fundamental, genealogical assumption concerning the productive nature of power (Foucault, 1977–78: 95–105, 1997: S.P, 340–4). Thus, the act of inclusion/exclusion will be analyzed as a constitutive mechanism of the discursive TPE rules, beyond the normative biopower reason. Here, I will examine TPE through the empirical evidence of several research studies, referring especially to the autobiography of Dan and Dawn Williams, a TPE master/slave couple
The consensual argument via the exclusion mechanism: The TPE case
Consent as a social mechanism of exclusion and inclusion that shapes the limits of participants’ behavior and even the very content of their experience is determined by two fundamental elements that reflect the social environment in which the structure of the BDSM discourse has been growing in recent decades: First is the definition of a legitimate decision as being one that is voluntary, knowledgeable, and explicit—a condition that is commensurate with an autonomous free will (Bauer, 2014: 57–65; Newmhar, 2011: 149; Fanghanel, 2020: 272), and second is the separation between statements and behaviors that are decided upon rationally, and statements and behaviors that pertain to unacceptable practices that are beyond the consensus.
The critical discussion regarding terms of consent that reflect an autonomous mode is not determined through the formal act of saying “yes,” but through the individual’s capacity to make decisions (Fanghanel, 2020: 269–270). Consent, especially in the legislative discourse and its implementation in the BDSM social network and institutional organization, is based on the conditions that define the right and ability of individuals to make reasonable decisions that reflect their interests and wills, outside of direct and indirect pressure. These conditions are established through behavior that confirms the participants’ capacity to consciously understand their desires and needs on the basis of an active participation in the process of constructing their activity and the ability to withdraw from it. Hence, in order to establish such conditions, participants must mutually determine their meeting location, the way in which they will establish their fantasy and desires, and the inviolate limits of their statements and behaviors (Newmhar, 2011: 64–69; Bauer, 2014: 1–10; Weinberg, 2016).
This mutual, deliberate negotiation, which testifies to an autonomous capacity for reasoning, is emphasized by BDSM scholars as distinguishing it from torture, intimate partner violence, and assault (Weiss, 2011; Jozifkova, 2013; Pitagora, 2013). The pleasure that emerges through negotiation is meditated and realized by the way in which each party determines the proper script that fulfills its fantasy, which guarantees their awareness and intelligent competence. Bauer points out the conditions that testify to this capacity through the concept of meta-consent, in which certain standards of interaction are established prior to the activity, the reduction of potential injury to third parties, and a clear mechanism to cope with temporal change (Bauer, 2014: 80–88). Williams et al. add an additional layer of the same conditions through the translation of the rational process of each party involved in the activity into an operational language (Williams et al., 2014: 7–12). This complex process is determined and completed through three necessary actions: surface consent concerning formal agreement; scene consent, which encompasses what will happen at the scene and how both sides determine their limits; and deep consent, which establishes what the partners are really able to do and the conditions under which they are willing to overturn their prior consent.
The validity of BDSM consent, however, is based on one’s awareness of one’s will and the way one realizes it through intersubjective engagement. But the prior condition of consent is not exhausted by individuals’ recognition of their desire, but also involves the legitimacy of the desire itself. Some patterns of behavior and thinking that reflect a subject’s desires are deemed harmful and destructive and relegated beyond the boundaries of the consensual, even if they are realized by a strong will. Fanghnel described these patterns as an immanent desire that reflects individual wills but conflicts with accepted social values, thus leading individuals to give them a minor expression, if at all (2020: 271–279). Thus, free will may encompass miscalculated decisions that lead to self-destruction, which goes beyond the limits of the contingent BDSM agreement.
This argument is found in the radical feminist discourse, in which a woman’s agreement to make a considered decision regarding her will is put in doubt if it serves the patriarchy (Gilligen, 1993; Noddings, 1984). In the BDSM context, the radical feminists argue that BDSM relations inherently serve the male hegemony and reproduce it, so that a woman’s acceptance of them is not legitimate (Linden, 1982; Vadas, 1995). In the process of incorporating BDSM in the public sphere, the best-known BDSM framework, Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) reflects the dynamic mechanism of exclusion through the slogan itself. Under the safety label, every practice that expands the limits of physical pain to actual injury to the body and physical functioning is excluded from the intersubjective engagement, even if it reflects a mutual desire (Weissman, 1997; Downing, 2004: 1–19, 2007: 79–91; Langdridge, 2006). Thus, only secure practices and behaviors that guarantee the safety of their subjects’ body are included in the consensus.
The question of sanity occupies a more complex place than physical security in the context of exclusion. In BDSM practice, humiliation and pain infliction are responsible for a gradual form of physical and mental sensation and emotions, which may be determined to be a site of depression and suffering. As long as it is accompanied by the participants’ satisfaction, as long as they show a willingness to be at the scene, and as long as they feel that their bodies and lives are safe—then their behavior attests to their fitness to make rational decisions that realize this manner of producing pleasure, that is, sexual arousal or transcendent sensual feelings, and not create for themselves or for others a negative atmosphere of depressed emotions, mutual hostility, and so on (Hopkins, 1994: 121–7; Stear, 2009: 142–159; Weiss, 2011: 142–149).
The absence of these behavioral marker’s casts doubt on the participants’ competence. Herein lies the importance of safety codes or non-verbal signs in a relationship based on in-depth familiarity, as a creation of actual and virtual boundaries that separate between acceptable and non-acceptable statements, practices, and behaviors (Weinberg, 2016). Thus, power exchanges that reflect the participants’ desires but are based on a sense of threat and transmit a feeling of distress and dissatisfaction with one of the parties, attests to the parties’ inability to make a calculated and considered decision that reflects their wills, even if they show a willingness to continue participating in the same activity and sometimes actually build a relationship according to such rules. This point distinguishes between a pathological desire to act against one’s will and serve another’s needs (e.g., as in a brutal marital relationship), and a conscious desire to feel physical pain and experience inferiority in a consensual BDSM relationship, as part of neoliberal subjects’ investment of their physical and mental capital for the purpose of generating pleasure. 1
The limitations of BDSM consent have constituted standards of behavior and acceptable thinking patterns, thereby transforming the heterogenous forms of the BDSM existential experience from a mere practice that enriches one’s sexual practice to a way of life that defines one’s identity. However, compliance with rules that reflect accepted social norms, as manifested in the notion of valid consent, has excluded other structural desires that are inconsistent with these norms
The hegemonic heteronormative domination of consensual argument expresses the inherent tension between transgressive and social expectations regarding BDSM behavior (see Langdridge, 2006; Langdridge and Parchev, 2017). It reflects the normalization process, in which public legitimization reduces potential oppression and exploitative relationships, but on the other hand leads to the exclusion and denial of contingent social behaviors and experiences (Williams, 2017: 67–79). In her ethnographic research on the incorporation process of BDSM in Swedish society, Carlström described this tension by linking biopower governmentality in Foucault’s work with the social exclusion mechanism in the BDSM discursive practice (Carlström, 2019: 1168–1174). As mentioned by Foucault, in modern society, individuals are under constant surveillance and regulation in subtle ways, leading to normalization and acceptance (Carlström, 2019: 1168–1169). Individuals are addressed as rational, autonomous, self-aware agents who are expected to pursue lives that lead to the greatest degree of well-being, and hence they are likely to conduct lives in accordance with authoritative ideas about how to live a safe and healthy life. Liberal and neoliberal ideas function as a subtle social power, marking those who do not conduct themselves in accordance with the normalized discourse as deviant, pathological, risky, and unethical subjects, who must be excluded.
In the context of the historical rise of the BDSM exclusion/inclusion mechanism, the production of biopower knowledge of health values is determined in the framework of the neoliberal terms of responsibility and free choice, which has been described as a mutually created effect by Rose (2001: 1–21, 2007). Thus, the mechanism is less an external institutional dictate and more a rational decision of BDSM participants to reject statements and actions that do not correspond with authoritative health values. This neoliberal state is conditioned and, in some sense, shaped through the radical change in the medical discursive rules concerning BDSM practice, from the description of every BDSM behavioral pattern as a pathological tendency (Kraft-Ebbing, 1965: 56–67) to “kinky,” acceptable sexual behavior within certain limits (American Psychiatric Association, 2013: 94), and through the legal protection afforded to the institutionalized form of BDSM (Weiss, 2011: 72–4).
Here, the neoliberal tendency functions through SCC as an institutional mechanism in the public sphere that establishes BDSM discursive rules and practices through health codes that are consistent with normative medical rules and legislature. This is accomplished first by limiting BDSM participants’ behavior to values of health that protect the participants’ bodies from any physical damage and by establishing their will in any given time through safety codes, common consideration, after-caring tactics and so on. Thus, the participants shape their thoughts and actions in the context of what has been determined to be safe and healthy, while excluding other contingent options as pathological, dangerous and even criminal (Downing, 2004: 1–21, 79–91; Newmhar, 2011: 81–92; Weinberg, 2016). Consequently, the compatibility of BDSM with healthy codes is expressed in the creation of an internal elitist group that produces the hegemonic voice of BDSM, which is manifested in the public arena through the media and the institutional organization of BDSM relationships (Weissman, 1997), in distinguishing between healthy and sick practices and in establishing study workshops in which participants acquire tools that allow them to adapt the power exchange to health values (Weiss, 2011: 72–88; Weinberg, 2016).
The connection between BDSM and health codes as expressed in the normalization of BDSM SCC is not limited to permitted thinking and behavior but also to a division between fiction/reality and the public/private realm (Weiss, 2011: 72–78). BDSM functions as a healthy condition only when it is a fictitious practice between adults that does not penetrate real life, whether a marital relationship, the workplace and so on. As some scholars have argued, the separation between fiction and reality defines BDSM as an activity in the private realm, separate from the public sphere, as a contra argument against the radical feminist and post-colonial critical attitude, by establishing BDSM as an area in which the individual expresses a necessary part of his identity, without violating public, consensual values (Hopkins, 1994: 42–57; Stear, 2009: 142–159; Weiss, 2011: 72–78; Cruz, 2019). Thus, BDSM practice abides by the condition of physical and mental health only if it is not expressed in any part of human life, that is, by remaining a mere game that is located in a separate time and place, like playing basketball on a Tuesday afternoon. This separation corresponds to the medical determination of the DMS-5, according to which BDSM is considered normal as long as the participants do not report any psychosocial interferences (American Psychiatric Association, 2013: 94–95). The BDSM mainstream attitude distances itself from any possibility of being considered pathological by creating normative subjects whose daily function is absent any expression of power exchange.
In a contemporary research, Turley argues that the transgressive function of BDSM is a real and important component for some of the participants, which sometimes serves as a political statement against institutional discursive rules and practice (Turley, 2022) . But, at the same time and not necessarily in contradiction, BDSM agents have divided into a categorized dichotomy, where the good BDSM subjects obey the external normative conditions, while the bad BDSM subjects, who are suspected of undermining them, become even more marginalized, stigmatic, and fearful of external consequences. By its very definition and as we have seen through examining the relationship between normalization and biopower concerning BDSM acceptance, especially with regards to the separation of reality and fiction—TPE cannot function under these conditions. In TPE engagements, especially those that adhere to a severe protocol, the subordination of the bottom to the top’s control encompasses considerable portions of their life (Dancer et al., 2006). Thus, the separation between reality and fiction does not exist, as the dyadic power division constructs reality and determines some of its parts. In this constructive framework, the whole negotiated process that establishes the engagement does not necessarily function under arbitrary SSC conditions, or at least has to be examined in long-term relations. Thus, TPE may suffer from a pathological stigma that causes it to be excluded from normative BDSM. Dunkley and Brotto emphasized this exclusion mechanism as they define BDSM consent in this manner: “partners are able to discriminate between BDSM activity and common everyday life” (Dunkley and Brotto, 2020: 668) and “everyday hierarchal disparity is mild” (ibid). Thus, TPE as an activity that potentially penetrates every part of life is inconsistent with the prerequisites of the “healthy” BDSM condition, and may be conceptualized as an abusive and pathological relation (Dunkley and Brotto, 2020: 668–670).
However, TPE relationships are explored in this context as a transgressive social force, as an intersubjective engagement that subverts the heteronormative marital reason. But the transgressive force does not contradict the BDSM normalization process under the production of biopower knowledge. During the ongoing process of consent in TPE, the submissive partner gains autonomy over specific duties, which does not necessarily violate the hierarchical division between the parties, and participants enter the relationship of their own free will; this distinguishes between TPE and abusive, non-consensual relations (Bauer, 2014: 233–239; Kaldera, 2010). Additionally, as Cascalheira et al. revealed in their phenomenological evidence, TPE agents shape their desires and will in a social construction context that emphasizes the process of identity constitution under the aegis of community belonging and the gradual acquisition of mental and physical tools (Cascalheira et al., 2022: 635–636). Thus, the discussion of health and sanity is a part of the creation of TPE selfhood, as is the case in other BDSM experiences, while the question of autonomy, the partner’s established will, and belonging to the BDSM community with its normative conditions occupies a central part in the ongoing intersubjective engagement and self-realization process.
Intimacy and trust: TPE conditions of consent
If TPE is not included entirely in the normative BDSM form of consent, how can such relations be legitimized? Is it a criminal and pathological behavior that cannot be justified within a framework of consent? Does it require breaking the logic of consent? Or is it possible to violate the hegemonic rules and expand these boundaries for the purpose of inclusion?
In this regard, a key point for remaining within the discursive rule of consent while still expanding its limits is the extended linguistic use of the concepts of intimacy and trust as expressed in social interactions. As Bauer argued in linking between intimacy and BDSM, intimacy means sharing intense effects, emotions, and physical responses, which in a heteronormative context are expressed by exposing to someone else something that nobody else gets to see (Bauer, 2014: 110–112). The capability to do so in a social interaction involves allowing another to realize the goal of the exposed without damaging the trust placed in the exposure and sharing process. Thus, the consent between the two parties is based on the connection between intimacy and trust, on the responsibility of one party to realize the hidden desires of the consenting partner or at least to respect them and give them a proper place within the framework of their relationship.
The TPE master/slave relationship is based on the way in which both parties establish their most immanent desires in all aspects of life, to control or to be controlled in a 24/7 relation. Thus, the process of intimate exposure is necessary for establishing the core of the relationship, much more so than in a vanilla relationship and even in BDSM short-term relations, where the essential interaction between the participants is not necessarily constituted under terms of intimacy (Bauer, 2014: 44–47; Facio et al., 2020: 1644). Here, intimacy functions as the main avenue of consensual validation, in which the intersubjective attachment realizes the most significant desires of each of the parties, consistent with the mutual trust that has been established between them.
Understanding the TPE lifestyle enables exposing the consensual intersubjective pattern, which draws its legitimacy from the promise of trust that exists in intimate relationships. In this way, TPE subverts the mainstream academic and public consensual discursive rule, which is based on a normative argument that is external to intimacy and trust. In the rest of this section, I want to suggest a discursive analysis of the written text of the William’s couple due to the central function of intimacy and trust in their life. This analysis exposes the relative constitution of concepts and terms that are realized as absolute, following Foucault’s genealogical analysis (Foucault, 1997a: 372–4), by presenting a form of intersubjective attachment, which on the one hand cannot be reconciled with the mainstream consensual rule, but on the other hand is consistent with the consensual goal that separates between harmonious relationships and abusive and exploitative ones. Through the TPE engagement, this analytical textual unit suggests an inclusive mechanism of thinking and a behavioral pattern beyond the biopower structural function, while recognizing the influence of the biopower function on shaping the construction of every action and thought.
Findings and results: From SSC to risk taking—Intimacy and trust through the Williams’s story
In a confessional monologue in the autobiography by Dan and Dawn Williams, the latter, a slave in a TPE relationship, presents the complex process through which they built their marital relations: “After examining ourselves individually, we shared our secrets, and our most secret desires, with each other. Our relationship was built around our authentic selves. Dan needed to be in charge and to be trusted completely, without reservation, by a strong person. I needed to completely trust someone. Someone with whom I surround myself and my ego. Our relationship is built on trust” (Williams and Williams, 2011: 9–10).
Dan and Dawn built their relationship not through a mutual consideration of their life, but by exposing their inner desires, which is called by Dan “the authentic self”; in other words, by trusting each other to accomplish their differing wills. Here, trust is not conditioned on the production of a proper feeling such as love and warmth (Bauer, 2014: 111). The act of intimacy opens the door to a valid form of consent to a mutual engagement that is not based on any signal of satisfaction from either party, a potential sense of threat and even the option of physical damage to the body. Such possibilities come into existence only if both parties, and especially the bottom, disclose their hidden desires to each other and establish a relationship of trust in which the master does not, for the most part, gratify himself but works to satisfy the needs and desires of the bottom. Thus, intimacy has an inclusive social function that has not been recognized in the neoliberal interpretation of SCC. Dan, the master, presented this contingent inclusion by detailing an intimate engagement from his past, where he was acquainted with a slave partner that aspired to be to locked up in a cage without any emotional closeness; just a mutual relationship that realizes the slave’s desire: “For her—and for others—M/S is not about a loving, committed relationship or a direct exchange dynamic in the way most of us would see it. It was about knowing her place, and her place as a property. Some will argue whether this is healthy, or whether any sane persons would allow themselves to be used in such a one-sided manner. But it is one-sided? Or is it an exchange just in a different sort? We have already broken the boundaries of normal relationships when we come to M/S. Some of us take a loving relationship and add a layer of power exchange to it. Others simply seek the power exchange without an emotional aspect. The aspect they seek comes from within, born to service” (Williams and Williams, 2011: 12).
The total pattern of control, without affection and love, as it appears in Dan’s presentation, is not a representative expression of a TPE master/slave relation, but a minimum threshold condition that justifies the contingent consent that facilitates engagement. These TPE conditions challenge the biopower hegemony over the production and dissemination of social knowledge, as the intimate engagement is not conditioned on an autonomous and self-aware subject linked to binding, necessary values that produce positive and healthy feelings such as warmth and affection; instead, the slave’s very act of consent reveals his inner desires and attests to his fitness to make a voluntary decision, perhaps even more so than a decision based on the existence of constant reflection during the entire engagement but also on a lower level of awareness of both sides regarding the desires of the other.
Dawn demonstrates this point when she presents menial tasks as a practice that she dislikes but performs because the passion to serve the particular master to which she is so attached is stronger than her lack of will to do such things (Williams and Williams, 2011: 72–78). Thus, if we still remain tied to the concept of health that conditions the capability to act as a free will, based on the liberal-utilitarian paradigm of enjoyment via suffering, we will condemn Dawn’s preference. But, if one chooses to serve a master out of one’s deepest, inner expression of one’s sense of being a slave, then the process of intimate exposure of the slave to his trustable master may be viewed as an effective instrument for realizing the desires of both—perhaps even more so than in a healthy, vanilla relationship, where the desires of both partners are sometimes hidden from the subjects themselves.
This point reveals options for expanding one’s existential experience beyond the safe space of biopower, which is tied to the concept of sanity. It enables the crossing of boundaries that is necessary for the production of thrills in a BDSM relationship (McClintock, 1993; Kendrick, 1999; Weiss, 2011: 90–99). This subversive move against the hegemonic power and knowledge joins the criticism in the BDSM community against the mainstream SSC assumption outlined in the Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) worldview. This criticism rejects the imperative to be sane as a stigmatic psychological pathology that inhibits BDSM practice; it rejects the imperative to be safe, preferring to take risks in edge work (Weiss, 2011: 74–79; Weinberg, 2016: 74–77; Williams et al., 2014: 3–5; Fanghanel, 2020: 273).
Nonetheless, RACK remains captured in the mainstream logic of consent, which contradicts its goal, while it is tied through its semantic definition to a state of awareness. Under these limitations, every fantasy and behavior have to be included in one’s will and wishes, and every pleasure-creating practice and excitement derived from the loss of individual control over one’s will is pushed outside the boundaries of consent. Here, RACK limits the human experience to authoritative health values determined by the autonomous condition of the subject. By exchanging awareness with intimacy, TPE releases risk-taking from the neoliberal shackles of health and sanity, removing the process of consent from any prior psychological and mental condition. Here TPE does not contradict the RACK philosophy, which operates under the neoliberal reason concerning the increasing danger of taking risks beyond calculated, safe contexts. However, the rise in human behaviors that go beyond the condition of autonomy increases the level of consent for modes of experience that reflect the participants’ desires in BDSM activity—desires that are not established in RACK, as they are not expressed in mainstream SSC. Thus, the intimacy function in the TPE master/slave engagement appears to be an instrument of social inclusion, as through the process of exposure it reveals one’s immanent desires, which are excluded from the boundaries of normative health practices, and realizes them under conditions of trust.
Sexuality and BDSM: From sexuality to pure power exchange
The question whether or not BDSM should be considered a sexual experience has given rise to various controversies in the literature. A good part of the academic discourse, with its phenomenological and ethnographic evidence, regards sex as a fundamental and necessary characteristic of BDSM. It is conceptualized in transgressive terms rather than normalized sexual behavior as producing pleasure beyond the genital orgasm and a plurality of outcomes beyond sexual arousal (Weinberg et al., 1984; Giddens, 1992; Foucault, 1997: 165–9; McClintock, 1993; Kandreick, 1999; Langdridge, 2006: 380; McWhorter, 2012: 99; Weinberg, 2016). 2 In this transgressive orientation, sexuality functions as a social inclusion mechanism by defining BDSM practice as a rational choice, based on a calculated, considered decision that has a utilitarian motivation and that rejects pathological brutal sadism and masochistic paraphilia.
Some researchers have taken this assumption a step further by finding the motivation and goals of participation in BDSM as going beyond sexual arousal, and even viewing it as a radical practice that subverts its epistemic reason. Some of them have recognized BDSM as a bodily practice that enhances existence beyond the normative boundaries of selfhood and identity, sometimes going beyond the limits of the production of biopower knowledge (Foucault, 1997b: 165; Kendrick, 1999; Beckmann, 2005: 206–225, 43–53; Weiss, 2011: 98–100; Carlström, 2019: 1164–1181; Cruz, 2019: 194–205). Others argue for the precedence of power over sexuality in BDSM activity as a site of production of a variety of thrills, fantasies, and thinking patterns that do not add up to sexual arousal (Turley, 2018: 148–160; Newmhar, 2011: 74–80). Here, BDSM is seen as an existential alternative to the dominant authority of sexual pleasure in the modern discursive rule of the production of pleasure.
These critical attitudes, like those that limit BDSM motivation to sexual arousal, require an external explanation of the power dynamic in order to distinguish between a consensual relationship and an abusive one. The creation of positive sensual, mental, and physical reactions is necessary for legitimizing the existence of the power differential as the core of this intersubjective intimate relationship. Turley emphasized this point by conditioning consensual BDSM on a contextual field that transforms unpleasant acts into sexually pleasurable activities (Turley, 2017: 324–334, 2018: 148–160). Thus, although sexual arousal does not function as the only valid motivation, every statement and practice must embody pleasurable images and sensual pleasure, and every element of the power relations must be confined within fictitious boundaries that necessarily attribute motivations that are external to the pure power relation themselves. However, as some ethnographic and phenomenological evidence demonstrates, numerous BDSM practitioners are motivated by power rather than by sex (Weinberg et al., 1984; Ussher and Taylor, 2001; Newmhar, 2010: 315–318, 2011: 67–70). This raises some questions, such as whether the social constructive and psychological literature excludes them as pathological and criminal in this critical analytical perspective, and whether the behavior of these participants is necessarily motivated by external pleasure, even if not sexual, thereby distinguishing between their behavior and the behavior of non-consensual sadists?
TPE occupies a prominent place due to this problematic issue. TPE is not based on a separation between reality and fiction; rather, it permeates every part of human life, and therefore the way these power relations are motivated externally requires, at the very least, our scrutiny, especially since the attribution of an external motivation may serve as a mechanism of exclusion of TPE subjects. In the next pages, I want to analyze the discursive rules that determine the ethnographic, phenomenological, and sociological argument, which is based on the hegemony of sexual knowledge under the production of biopower knowledge. This I aim to do not only through understanding the boundaries that emerge from the BDSM discourse, but also as a structure of physical existence that subverts them. Then, I will explore the inclusive and exclusive discursive mechanism in the Williams couple text as an experimental reaction.
Sexual hegemony and transgressive contingency under biopolitical production
The function of sexual pleasure as a social exclusion mechanism has been accompanied by a discursive transformation of the biopolitical production of knowledge in recent decades. In contrast to Foucault and his commentators’ description of the discursive function of sexuality until the 1970s (Foucault, 1977-78: 84–9; Halperin, 2002; Rubin, 2011), sexual pleasure as a mechanism of exclusion based on the element of pathology is seen less as a determination that several behaviors and structures of thought are pathological and dangerous and more as legitimizing various heterogeneous tendencies while excluding others that do not belong to this sexual framework. Here, BDSM is not further established as an expression of mental disorder and criminal personality because of the connection of violence with lust and the lack of procreation activity, as discussed in the majority of the sociological literature (Weait, 2007: 22–31; Rubin, 2011; Weinberg, 2016; Parchev and Langdridge, 2017). In the contemporary epistemic context, in which sexual pleasure functions as a natural tendency (Rose, 2001: 1–21, 2007; McWhorter, 2012) and is traded in a world of social goods and services, sexual arousal resulting from a power exchange testifies to the subjects’ health and legal competence—thereby excluding behavioral patterns that are marked by this reason as criminal and pathological. Thus, as Newmhar argues, scholars that limit BDSM practice to sexual arousal deny the true motives of those who are not motivated by this goal, falling into the same essentialist trap that derives from the normative sexual scale (Newmhar, 2011: 68), excluding subjects that go beyond BDSM limitations and labeling them as criminal and unethical.
Faccio et al. (2020: 1641–1652) suggest distinguishing between sexuality and eroticism through a comprehensive definition that includes additional contingent experimental statements and practices, for the purpose of increasing BDSM acceptance beyond the normative sexual identity. They conceptualized eroticism as a world of imagery and symbolism stimulating primordial feelings and sensations (Faccio et al., 2020: 1646–1647). According to them, sexuality is a biological, psychological, and physical-technical mechanism inhabiting an erogenous zone, while the erotic is a realm of abstraction regarding what this mechanism is capable of doing to us. The significant difference between vanilla sex and BDSM is that the former necessarily overlaps sexual and erotic thrills, while the latter is a complex world of fantastical images based on the separation between the two, along with a contingent connection between them (Faccio et al., 2020: 1644).
Here, BDSM as a heterogenous erotic experience constructs individual BDSM orientations according to the narrative related to the experience underlying erotic thrills and sexual activity, and through a coherent narrative it establishes a sense of identity vis à vis the specific sphere of experience (Faccio et al., 2020: 1648–1649). BDSM participants are categorized according to their orientation within the complex scale of eros and sexuality, into those who identify power exchange as another part of their sexuality and those who define their entire being as part of a BDSM identity (Faccio et al., 2020; Ortmann and Sprott, 2012). Thus, the separation between consensual BDSM and brutal sadism and masochist pathology is not determined by sexual motivation, so that experiences of desires and images that are excluded from sexual discourse are recognized as an acceptable basis for proper BDSM behavior.
Ortmann and Sprott located TPE at the extreme end of the erotic scale, where the totality of the power exchange dominates every part of the subjects’ lives, making almost every moment driven by the array of images and symbols that arise from the power exchange (Ortmann and Sprott, 2012: 79–80). This analytical diagnosis is consistent with Beckmann’s analysis of BDSM as a pattern of behavior that subverts the hegemonic role of sexuality in the production of biopower politics through empathy between bodies that engage inter-subjectively in order to establish pleasures that transcend the dictates of a given identity (Beckmann, 2005: 212–217). Bauer presented this totality in his ethnographic research as central to the power exchange of TPE participants (Bauer, 2014: 125–128). They described their life as motivated by a rigid protocol that controls every detail of their life, thereby defining who they are (Bauer, 2014: 127). Each action and statement related to the erotic dimension of power distribution redeems the trivial details of human existence from their emptiness. As some of the participants in a 24/7 power exchange relation said: “My boy at the time actually wrote a poem about how sexy it was to take out garbage. She just wrote this gorgeous poem about the sweet tickling between her breast, as she carries the trash. I mean, it was totally eroticized and that was gorgeous” (Bauer, 2014: 127).
That said, the intense presence of the power relation may make the erotic component too narrow and inadequate to serve as an overall definition of TPE. As Dancer et al. argue, TPE indicates a daily relationship based on customary rituals and patterns of behavior that anchor the division of power between the parties (Dancer et al., 2006: 83, 93–95). Here, menial tasks that serve the master and that are performed by the slave replace the rope and chain of the time-limited scene, emphasizing the necessary duties of the slave and how they are delivered to the master. Thus, reducing every action and statement of individual life to the generation of erotic thrills may seem excessive and even impossible and unwanted. Indeed, eros cannot be physically touched, especially not in the erogenous zone, but it is still based on emotional or physiological transcendence, expressed for example, in an adrenalin rush. TPE, in contrast, is based on the construction of the power exchange within a daily routine, that only partly and perhaps for the most part does not provoke an erotic reaction. You may be able to write a poem about taking out the garbage, but basing a whole life, including paying taxes, cleaning, being tired from work, etc., on the production of mental and physical thrills may be inconsistent with the menial tasks and especially with the social engagement derived from it.
Dan identifies the failure to subordinate his TPE relation with Dawn to erotic or sexual motivation in the discussion of the place of sex in their life: “Recently we were asked ‘Is sex a big part of an S/M relationship, or just a little part?’ The answer is actually neither of the above; sex is an optional part” (Williams and Williams, 2011: 48). The motivation of Dan’s and Dawn’s relationship is not to be found in sex or its eros abstraction. These desires or practices are not the core of the intersubjective engagement but are a non-binding, contingent option. Dawn emphasized and strengthened this point: “Dan and I are getting older. We have to keep in mind that there may come a day, at some point in time, where neither of us is interested in sex … And if that day comes it’s okay. Our foundation is built on an ethical total power exchange philosophy: because of that foundation, we will survive together even if the desire for sex and/or BDSM play disappears” (Williams and Williams, 2011: 50).
The division of power that determines the subjection of Dawn to Dan establishes the central experiences and feelings in their life. Consequently, if the two bodies wither and the external attractiveness diminishes, the relationships will last, as it does not depend on an essentialist, external source such as sexual stimulation or its erotic abstraction. In this context, TPE is viewed as a pure power exchange (PPE). It is an ethical philosophy established through a way of life that constitutes the relationship between the individual and himself and his external environment exclusively in the framework of power exchange.
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The way in which Newmhar used Stebbins’s concept of “serious leisure” as an analytic ethnographic unit that allows characterizing the BDSM community creates, to some extent, an ontological interpretation of the ethical meaning, through a structural description that imbues the existential routine of pure power relations with meaning, based on permanence and perseverance (Newmhar, 2010: 315–331). This perseverance is realized through a mental and physical effort that includes the acquisition of proper skills by training, attention to the needs of the bottom by the top, the tasks that the bottom is required to accomplish, and self-construction through shaping qualities and capacities for accomplishing mutual goals-all in order to create a sense of belonging vis à vis the external world (Newmhar, 2010: 318–326). Cascalheira et al. revealed this serious leisure character of the TPE engagement, especially regarding the acquisition of skills through a self-constructed identity that is connected to a social construction process and a sense of belonging to a community (Cascalheira, 2022: 630-632). While Dawn and Dan discovered in their TPE relationship a similarity to serious leisure (Williams and Williams, 2011: 52–68), the sense of transcendence still leaves the erotic component as central in the testimony of the BDSM community members sampled by Newmhar: “SM participants speak of their play in terms of ecstatic experience, or what can be understood as a flow. They speak of weightlessness: of grooving and flying, of the cessation of cognitive process and of the disappearance of the world around them… These ‘sharply exciting events and occasions’ that are most memorable to serious leisure participants are ‘thrills’ for Stebbins, who considers them ‘exceptional instances of the flow experience’” (Newmhar, 2010: 328).
The ecstatic experience described by the community participants is compared by Newmhar to erotic sensation (2010: 329). Here, the dominating function of sexual abstraction in the erotic experience occupies a minor place. Erotica is not reduced to an array of abstract sexual images; instead it is assigned to any sensation that detaches one from his routine rhythm and leads him to a feeling of transcendence, which is sometimes expressed in physical symptoms such as an adrenalin rush. Here, the ethnographic evidence regarding the BDSM community challenges the normative health codes by presenting the absence of sexual arousal from BDSM activity not as a dangerous pathological symptom, but as a production of pleasurable thrill and flow (Newmhar, 2010: 329–331).
However, this description is still within the substantive boundaries of the normative health discourse, as it subsumes appropriate and indecent behavior under an external definition of how to live a good and healthy life. Sexual sensation is replaced by the creation of sharply exciting events and occasions, but this only replaces one condition with another. Not conforming the TPE master/slave relationship to these conditions does not make this relationship pathological and dangerous; instead, it reveals a way of life that does not require an essentialist external principle, that reduces the need to regulate the power distribution and does not require any external regulation. TPE exposes emotions and feelings that reside in the desires of some of those who are involved in BDSM activities and that can only be realized within a relationship based on PPE. The penetration of power divisions into every aspect of life and the way in which the needs of the master and slave are realized only in this way open the door to a type of social engagement and self-construction that are silenced under the essentialist shackles of the health code, thus offering an existential option for individuals who do not belong to the essentialist limits.
Discussion: TPE and ethical practice–A queer reading of pure power relations
TPE is a structural, anti-essentialist interpretation of valid consent that challenges the health code reproduced by the biopower production of knowledge. The terms of consent of an autonomous subject are realized through a secure space and the dependence of the power exchange on a sexual or erotic motivation. These are transformed in the pure power exchange, which is realized under terms of exposure and trust in order to create a form of statement and practice that lays the foundation for an existential experience beyond the normative, accepted value of health. Thus, BDSM at its extreme, as established in the TPE-PPE intersubjective engagement, not only suggests a new contingency of social interaction, but also a transgressive structure of subjectivity that challenges the biopower subject, which is constructed in terms of healthy conduct, autonomy, and sexuality.
TPE is an intersubjective engagement that suggests a new form of subjectivity that undermines the dominant egalitarian code constituted by the institutional structure of liberal modern society (Bauer, 2014). The TPE interpretation of consent in the marital relationship rescues social engagements that do not rely on an egalitarian relationship from repressive terms of exploitation and enslavement by turning them into a contingent form of social relation and subjectivity, which exchanges the centrality of sexual motivation with a pure power relationship. Here, the justification of unequal power distribution within the family unit and the social environment is not subjected to multicultural arguments based on the traditional structure of society, as indicated in the communal and liberal multicultural criticism (Taylor, 1989; Kylmica, 1995). TPE is a form of pure power relationship that is not based on external motivations-whether sexual, traditional, or others—thereby suggesting a type of self-creation through self-reproduction, as opposed to self-production under the egalitarian reason.
This suggestion is compatible with a queer BDSM reading. As a result of its heterogenous form, queer theory exposes the relative character of universal values and the possibility of overstepping their boundaries (Butler, 1993). Several scholars have suggested a queer reading of BDSM as a form of conduct that presents universal values such as masculine superiority, the division of roles in marital relations and so on in a ridiculous and relative way (McClintock, 1993; Berlant and Warner, 1998: 558; Weiss, 2011: 157–169; Cruz, 2019; Langdridge and Parchev, 2017). TPE exposes the universal function of the value of egalitarianism as a form of conduct that shapes intersubjective relations and self-production by suggesting an opposite form of social relationship. The pure function of power exchange, without any prior motivation, and the unequal division of power are incompatible with the normative values concerning intersubjective engagements; they are not derived from exploitation and brutality, and they suggest a new interpretation of consent and a realization of an inherent individual desire beyond the sexual and erotic. TPE creates an interesting ethical criticism by offering a new perspective on the social code. However, this new form of criticism must be questioned. The social-constructive mechanism that builds the normative health code also determines it transgressive contingent practice, because any attempt to exceed the limits of power that shape the structure of thought and action is invalid, if every behavior and utterance is viewed as a necessary condition of social construction (Foucault, 1977–78, 1997a: 332–6). Hence, while we limit any argument to the problem of consent and sexual construction, the radical change in the nature of the statements that justify and deny them requires examining their consequences, especially when it comes to subverting liberal fundamental values.
First of all, the problem of individual mental capability in terms of consent places a question mark over the TPE contractual engagement itself. Indeed, the queer TPE reason depends on the right to deliver individual desires to another without any a priori determinations, such as medical arguments. However, full adherence to the absence of any precondition apart from the slave’s consent to reveal his inner desires may provide justification for any action by the master, including brutal and cruel acts that do not take into account the slave’s desire. The absence of a sexual and erotic impulse that justifies the slave’s desire for humiliation and potentially thrusts him into a daily existence that is contrary to his will, without the barrier of mutual decisions, may place the relationship within the boundaries of the pathological and the criminal. Therefore, the question of the trust that complements intimacy must be raised. For example, a woman who undergoes constant physical and mental humiliation by a man, accompanied by sustained vigorous beating: in such a case of abuse, the delivery process may be legitimized under the TPE reason by proving that the man was given permission to perform the act of delivery. Here, the queer reading of TPE suggests that any act of abuse or brutality can be legitimized within the narrow, acceptable argument of a formal agreement. It seems that here we must return to the starting point of autonomy as a rational process of deliberation of safe spaces and motivation to produce sexual pleasure.
The shift of the ethical intersubjective dynamic from a mutual interaction to the realm of the dominant master presents several options for coping with this problem. Domination, here, refers not only to the manner in which the master uses the slave for his own purposes, but also, and perhaps even mostly, to the way he behaves in the context of specific traits such as caring and attention, after taking responsibility for the needs and feelings of the bottom slave. The power division, which is the master’s responsibility, coincides with ethical approaches, the prominent of which is the approach to apprenticeship in ancient Greece, where the question of morality was the domain solely of those who had suitable virtues and who were in the proper position in the hierarchy (Foucault, 1984: 1–20; Halperin, 2002). 4 Dan presented this type of character in his relation with his slave, Dawn (Williams and Williams, 2011: 53–61). According to him, the character of the master has to include a responsibility for the slave and her relation to the master, commitment to the slave, providing the slave with guidance for her education, and assisting the slave’s growth (Williams and Williams, 2011: 53). This character must be realized with constant attention to the mental and physical needs of the slave and the changes in her mood and health (Williams and Williams, 2011: 54–59). Thus, on the one hand, the way in which some slaves are motivated by the desire to be beaten and crushed, physically and mentally, is not analyzed in pathological terms, but as an act of self-realization in an intimate engagement. On the other hand, the relationship is not categorized as an oppressive one, such as a relationship between an abusive man and a battered woman, since the master controls his desires and orients his behavior so as to care for the slave’s needs. The TPE master/slave engagement suggested here is an interesting, queer ethical point of view that challenges autonomy as a relative value under the Western ethical principle of acceptable human virtue.
However, this argument exposes a new problem in the form of the absence and denial of freedom. Freedom, as Foucault recognized, is the ontological form of ethics as a realm of speech and action that is necessary for the relationship between the individual and his social codes (Foucault, 1997a: 261–283; Rabinow, 2006: iii-vi). This relation is crucial for the way in which the individual shapes his selfhood within the structure of concrete power. In TPE, the relationship between the slave and the normative health code is put in doubt when he hands over the very ability for reflexive interpretation to the external social environment, his master. In other words, the questions of autonomy, security, and sexual motivation may be criticized in the queer discourse, but the absence of freedom, as manifested in TPE, undermines the very ability to challenge these values, thus nullifying the power of the critical argument and perhaps even negating its validity.
However, this problem is even more complex than it initially appears, as in contrast to orthodox servitude, the participants in the TPE slave/master relationship go to great lengths to experience the desire for servitude, yet their basic human and civil rights remain intact and cannot be relinquished. In the almost only empirical research dedicated to the TPE master/slave relationship, Dancer et al. (2006: 95–96) presented evidence that describes the slave free space in this relationship. The comments and the survey indicate that the limits within the relationship concerning the master’s power were respected. Many responses reflected an assumption that slaves could refuse an order—even while stating that they do not have the right to do so—when they feel it is too dangerous, mentally or physically. This suggests that slaves can exercise their denied rights when necessary. Sixty percent of the respondents reported having a bank account of their own, suggesting that the slaves maintain some level of independence in spite of their slavery. Additionally, the possibility of leaving was realized in this study when the slaves felt that the relationship was unsatisfactory (Dancer et al., 2006: 86–87).
Dawn adds to the complexity of the tension between total control to freedom in the confession she provided concerning her position as a TPE slave (Williams and Williams, 2011: 83–90). She recognized herself throughout the course of her relationship as a strong person who can care for herself and is capable of developing her life and will. Furthermore, she described the inherent dynamic in her relationship as depending on this strength, which defines the conditions of trust and intimacy. Thus, according to her, the tension between their personalities and the servile character of TPE raises crucial questions: “Can you take care of yourself? Does your master have to hold your hand through everything you do? Do you have the strength to keep working on yourself, even though you are in a power exchange relationship? Your life is now about serving your master, but do you also do things to grow as an individual? If something becomes very wrong, or if your master begins taking advantage of your gift of submission in an abusive way, could you walk away? (Williams and Williams, 2011: 89).”
These questions reflect the unsolvable tension between the individual’s will to build and develop his selfhood and his desire to serve, which is the main motivation behind his desires and needs. Yet, by being based on negation and cancellation, it contains the seed of its own destruction. This was especially expressed in the extreme relationships that go far beyond the practices of the majority of the TPE population surveyed by Dancer et al.—relationships in which the slaves are motivated by a total desire to destroy their personality and any remnant of contingent freedom (Dancer et al., 2006: 84–91).
This problem goes beyond the medical and legislative logic of exclusion; rather, it emerges from the PPE argument regarding consent and thus opens up a space for a discussion of alternatives to the vanilla couple acting according to the normative biopower health code. Such alternatives question the engagement through existential problems that derive from the centrality of sex and the egalitarian status: How to create an egalitarian division of tasks and realize the desires of both partners? Are intimate relationships and sexual pleasure limited to the marital relationship or is it possible to open them up? These questions and others are either irrelevant in the TPE master/slave relation (question 1) or else occupy a minor place that depends on other contexts (question 2). They are replaced by issues based on power priorities, which are constructed through questions regarding the existential experience and process of the construction of selfhood: Is the individual’s control of his life and body consistent with the slave’s enslavement process? Is the slave’s desire to give up a contingent space of speech and action consistent with self-realization? Does the total deletion of the self in the context of the TPE-PPE master-slave relation facilitate and even determine the very realization and growth of the slave?
Limitations
It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this paper regarding its methodology and findings. First, this project does not include any community-produced publications, news media, and archival sources that may shed light on the findings and the analytical direction of the paper. In other words, the findings here are representative only of the discourse that was analyzed. However, the lack of literature on TPE and its significance to the BDSM experience emphasizes the need to locate some of the fundamental principles of its discourse. Accordingly, biopower as an inclusive/exclusive mechanism that shapes the discursive rules of BDSM can be examined using contemporary relevant literature, evidence concerning the phenomenon, and prominent research cases. Therefore, this project should be viewed as the beginning of larger research studies that will examine TPE with a variety of methods as a unique part of the BDSM phenomenon.
Conclusion
The inclusive process of the BDSM phenomenon in recent decades in the medical, legislative, and cultural discourse has excluded several forms of existential BDSM contingencies due to the criterion of consensual practice. In the institutional view, the TPE power exchange oversteps the boundaries of legitimacy due to its lack of compliance with the principle of consensuality and erotic sex, which is required for the sake of distinguishing between consensual BDSM and abusive, exploitative, sadistic relations. The discursive analysis of the academic literature on BDSM in relation to a selected primary text that describes a TPE experiment did not expose the oppressive mechanism of the mainstream BDSM discursive rule and certainly does not imply that the TPE life style is pathological or criminal in nature. It suggests, in particular, a queer reading due to the relative function of BDSM practice in the social constructive condition: TPE as a pattern of behavior and fantasy establishment subverts the production of biopower knowledge that creates the mainstream BDSM argument, thus opening the door to a new form of existential practice.
This queer reading is consistent with the critical literature in recent years, which has recognized BDSM practice as a transgressive contingency against and within the institutionalization process (Beckmann, 2011; Weinberg, 2016; Langdrige and Parchev, 2017; Cruz, 2019). TPE as a PPE intersubjective engagement based on a pure power relationship, along with an argument of consensuality between the parties, expands the BDSM discursive rule. This represents a transgressive move that exposes a new form of thinking and practice, which to a certain extent reflects the range of desires of BDSM participants—desires that have been excluded in the process of normalizing BDSM. Thus, in this analysis, TPE is seen as a transgress act that exposes the process of establishing normative boundaries, while remaining within them (Foucault, 1997, P: 69–73). Within the narrow methodological choice of this paper, TPE is included under this determination by suggesting a new form of experimental existence that remains limited under the consensual boundaries that separate consensual BDSM from sadistic, abusive relationships. This is a critical direction that must be developed and confirmed in future research studies.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
