What does it mean to use the problematic aspects of BDSM as a way to explore real power and real pain? Can images be recontextualized through words? What does self-exposure really entail? How are sex positive and sex negative feminists allied against certain kinds of sex and certain kinds of work?
[Trigger warning: see tags]
PART ONE: Fists
[A nude black and white photo of Lori taken from behind. She is seated on a stool, and her arms are pulled straight behind her by a leather bondage device. It has multiple straps and runs up her back and around her neck. Her face isn’t visible and her hands are clenched into fists. She is tilted at a noticeable angle.]
This device sent chills down my arms. I’ve owned a pair of leather restraints for years. I use them on a regular basis at work and occasionally for play. Usually I find restraints unremarkable. There was something about this particular device, though, something about its shape: halfway between the full arm binding of a straitjacket and the piecemeal straps of modern medical restraints, what the girls on my first psych ward called ‘the four points.’
You will only see straitjackets in museums and BDSM parlors these days. It’s not that straitjackets weren’t effective; on the contrary, hardly anything is more effective. It’s that they are horribly painful to wear for long periods of time. Wikipedia explains the physiological reasons with the standard detachment: “Blood tends to pool in the elbows, where swelling may then occur. The hands may become numb from lack of proper circulation, and due to bone and muscle stiffness the upper arms and shoulders may experience excruciating pain.” We’re more civilized than inflicting that sort of pain now.
We’re so civilized we speak in code. When the call came down the hallway for a Code… Code Orange, I think (or Yellow? Not Blue, that was death), we all knew to scatter. Calling codes is one of the many amusing ways psych wards are like commercial BDSM parlors, where the scatter-and-hide code is always ‘Clear’ If one didn’t hide, if one stayed and peeked around the corner, she’d see a man in a business suit being led into a room with a black bondage bed and black leather cuffs. Or, she would see a girl being held down on a white cot, straining against white canvas cuffs.
I made it a point to be as disobedient as I could without incurring consequences. I needed to prove to myself that I was still in control even though I was not able to leave. This tendency faded quickly enough in the BDSM parlor, where we were forbidden to come and go as we pleased to avoid drawing the attention of police to the fact that we fucked men in the ass with dildos and fists. In other words, our restriction was for the safety of the management, and for our safety, too. At ten days, my stay in the psych ward was too brief for my obstinance disappear. When the code was yelled, the orderlies shooed us down the hallway, but I ambled so slowly I fell behind the other girls, stopping right next to the doorway from which the yelling was emanating. I peered in, largely to see if I could, but also because I thought that someone should.
Acetylene Eyes 