An Eclectic Essay on (In)security (work in progress)
risk, safety, conflict, consent—what drives sex-positive communities usually has something to do with these key concepts. It’s complicated. Uncertainty isn’t bad per se, and safety isn’t good per se—and vice versa. From my personal experience, I’ve found spaces that strongly emphasize consent to be both empowering and enriching, as well as restrictive, school-like, or tamed—and thus simply boring—or, in cases that are fundamentally ambivalent gray areas, failing to do justice to the situation. Sometimes these spaces led to frustration when the very people to whom I could fully open up because of their trusting nature would back down out of a desire for safety whenever things got interesting, just so as not to cross “my” boundaries. Sometimes the frustration also stemmed from the fact that the exercises intended to test consensus had long since created a power dynamic in and of themselves—for example, when, in group warm-up exercises, a partner is chosen at random and participants are then asked to tell each other what they’d like to do with that person, and the other person is allowed to respond with “yes” or “no” — but that implies a specific kind of gaze: a kind of sizing up that a friend quite aptly described as “creepy.” And what are you supposed to say on the spot? Most of the time, I don’t want to say either “yes” or “no” to every offer, but rather: Let’s see! Let’s get to know each other first. Or I’ll observe how you act in the playspace and see if that attracts me or not. Even the exercises designed to deliberately provoke a “no” from the other person—a very direct exploration of boundaries—may make sense from a didactic perspective, but they’re problematic in terms of embodiment, because my body’s cells remember that someone (usually someone I don’t really know yet) primarily wants to do something to me that I don’t like. How am I supposed to still want to interact with that person afterward, even if I know intellectually that it was just part of the exercise—my body can’t make that distinction.
This goes beyond the idea that “safety is a construct, and that’s why we no longer say ‘safe’ but rather ‘risk-aware.’” After all, BDSM practices in particular seek to tap into valuable aspects of the source of uncertainty, rather than simply viewing risk as an annoying side effect. It’s the thrill that makes it exciting. Or rather: it’s taken seriously that sex itself belongs to the realm of the uncertain—just like adventure. On the other hand, however, it’s not a causal relationship—more uncertainty doesn’t automatically make a scenario more exciting. Swimming in a shark tank during a thunderstorm doesn’t necessarily equal sexy. And certain safety-promoting social norms aren’t even up for debate here, such as mutual respect, respect for set boundaries, informed and responsible behavior, open communication, the greatest possible protection against unintended injuries or illnesses, etc. Which is why the concept of “Safe Spaces” is also expanded to include “Brave Spaces”—not “Rapy Spaces.” Sure, when it comes to the basics, the matter is so simple that you cancompareitto offering a cup of tea—but Emily Nagofski describes very vividly why it’s actually more complicated:
“‘This is how you know you have consent’ doesn’t teach people to recognize what someone really wants when they say yes—and it certainly doesn’t teach either partner how to ask for clarification. And it just… it feels dismissive of the experience of the person being asked for consent, to say it’s as simple as wanting tea or not wanting tea, as if it were an on-off switch.”
Embracing uncertainty and confusion depends, not least, on mywillingness to allow myself to feel uncertain. Of course, taking a stand for uncertainty isn’t in itself a free pass to always be pushy—or even to feel obligated to be! But once you feel ready to do so, the following is intended to offer some inspiration: despite the importance of a safe space, dare to push the boundaries and take risks when it feels right for everyone involved.
So, in order to tentatively explore my fondness for uncertainty (or a very specific form of it—it’s as if the right terms are missing → a friend suggested “tolerance for ambiguity” or “competence in incompetence”) and to be able to share with others what might be so promising about it, I’ve started collecting quotes. Because I usually learn more when I look beyond the topics that directly concern me (in other words, when it’s not just about kink or sex), the quotes come from a variety of sources and disciplines (including, among others, Critical Race Theory and Black Studies, because I consider them to be among the most exciting, avant-garde, and well-thought-out disciplines in cultural studies today—fully aware that the theories cannot be applied directly to other fields but require adaptation).
I’m sharing my collection here in a collage-like, free-form manner—without any specific thesis—simply for inspiration (and I’ll continue to add to it over time).
“On Consent.
A word for everyone. What could be more valuable than a person’s consent; what could be more reassuring to the other person? For in this situation, there are always two people: the one who consents and the one to whom something is granted. Consent is an intimate but never isolated act. It implies a relationship, a movement toward another or toward one another. […] Nevertheless, consent is not always unclouded; it is darkened by all manner of shadows that fall upon its freedom; for consent can be coerced and can arise from an implicit or explicit power dynamic.”
“Certainly, someone gives his or her consent; yet someone else receives—or even snatches—that consent from the other. Consent is something that circulates from one person to another; a strange object that can be both domination and theft. From the innermost part of one’s own self to the outermost; from the inner nature of the self to the relationship with the other. … So is this a matter of pure freedom, or an inevitable balance of power?”
“Between accepting and allowing, agreeing to something and conceding something—how can one always achieve clarity in such situations?”
Geneviève Fraisse: “Consent: On the ‘Who’ of a Political Concept,” 2018.
“When working with white students to unlearn racism, one of the principles we strive to embody is the value of taking risks—recognizing that we may learn and grow in situations where we do not feel safe, and that the presence of conflict is not necessarily negative, but rather its meaning is determined by how we cope with that conflict. Trusting our ability to cope in situations where racialized conflict arises is far more fruitful than insisting that safety is always the best or only basis for building bonds.”
bell hooks: “Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope,” 2003.
“Our era is defined by risk: probability calculations, surveys, crash scenarios, assessments of psychological resilience, prevention […]—no facet of political or ethical discourse escapes this process. The precautionary principle has become the norm. When it comes to human lives, accidents, terrorism, or social demands, it resembles a cursor that is moved around depending on the needs of collective mobilization and profiteering. It remains unquestioned.
The expression “to risk one’s life” is one of the most beautiful in our language. Does it necessarily mean facing death—and surviving? Or does life itself contain a secret mechanism, a music that, in and of itself, is capable of shifting existence onto that front line called desire? For risk ventures into an unknown space. How can we, as the living, conceive of it in terms of life rather than death? At the moment of decision, it puts our innermost relationship to time to the test. Risk is a battle in which we do not know the enemy, a desire of which we are not even aware, a love whose face remains hidden from us, a pure event.”
“In a wondrous way, risk would thus be the opposite of neurosis, whose hallmark is to monopolize the future in such a way that it shapes our present according to the pattern of past experiences and leaves no room for the intrusion of the unknown, for even the slightest shift in a changed horizon.”
Anne Dufourmantelles: “In Praise of Risk,” 2018.
“Today, however, we take the sting out of most pleasures: bars without tobacco, alcohol-free beer, decaffeinated coffee, fat-free whipped cream, virtual sex without physical contact. Things that give us pleasure always come with a problem. They’re expensive like champagne, fatty like cream cake, toxic like cigarettes. This problematic pleasure defies the economic logic of thrift—the rationality of managing our resources today so that we’ll still have some left tomorrow. This irrational indulgence brings us a sense of triumph.”
Robert Pfaller: “We Enjoy It Defiantly,” 2011.
“We believe that if you never, ever have a scene go haywire—with unexpected physical or emotional consequences—you may not be taking enough risks. After all, the reason most of us engage in S&M is to explore areas that we find a little risky and challenging; if you’re sticking so close to the center of the trail that you never get lost in the woods, you may want to reconsider your path.”
Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy: “The New Topping Book,” 2003.
"How does our focus on consent limit us? Here are a few ways:
Much of our actual sexual communication isn’t about asking for sex or agreeing to it. When communicating about sex, I might, for example, begin to articulate a fantasy, suggest a possibility that I think might please the other person, probe to find out how the other person feels about an activity or role, or seek help in exploring how I feel about it. Good sexual negotiation often involves active, collaborative discussion about what would be fun to do. It also often includes conversations about limits, constraints, and exit conditions. None of this fits neatly into a “request-and-consent-or-refuse” model of sexual negotiation.
Autonomous, willing participation is necessary for ethical sex, but it is not sufficient. We can autonomously consent to all sorts of bad sex, for terrible reasons. I might agree to do something that I find degrading or unpleasantly painful, for instance, perhaps because I would rather have bad sex than no sex at all, or because my partner isn’t interested in finding out what would give me pleasure.
One person asking for sex and the other agreeing to it is not the most common—and almost never the ideal—way to initiate sex. So what are some other ways we can use language to initiate sex, and, more importantly, how can we do it well? I’ll focus on two: invitationsandoffersof gifts.”
Rebecca Kukla: “Sex Talks: The Language of Sexual Negotiation Must Go Far Beyond ‘Consent’ and ‘Refusal’ if We Are to Foster Ethical, Autonomous Sex,” 2019.
“Tightrope walkers live dangerously. They are constantly in danger of falling. […] The most dangerous state for them is one of maximum stability. If they were to reach that state, they would fall off the rope like a potato. Tightrope walkers must keep their balancing pole in motion. Through constant movement and counter-movement, they outwit the law of gravity. Only by shifting their center of gravity forward, step by step—that is, by walking—do they secure their existence. Tightrope walkers are condemned to movement, indeed even to elegant movement. The security of a fixed vantage point is off-limits to them. It would be their end. They escape the danger of falling solely through instability.”
Reinhard Kahl: “In Praise of the Tightrope Walker,” 1995. Quoted in Annita Kalpaka: “‘Parallel Societies’ in Educational Work—Opportunities and Dilemmas of Pedagogical Action in ‘Protected’ Spaces,” 2009.
Thanks toKatharina Debusfor sharing the quote!
“When, in a romantic relationship, someone has sex and then says to their lover, ‘You make me feel safe,’ we understand that she means there has been an emotional compensation to neutralize how unsafe and close to the abject sex makes her feel. ‘You make me feel safe’ means that I can relax and have fun even in a situation where I’m not actually safe—where I’m too close to the ridiculous, the disgusting, the merely weird, or—simply put—too close to feeling desire. But some situations are riskier than others, as the meanings of unsafe sex vary depending on who’s having the sex. That’s where the politics come in.”
“Among the things to which sex refers is the prospect of an encounter with something much closer to the sublime than to the beautiful—which does not, as most of us know to our sorrow, mean that sex is always sublime, nor that it cannot be conceptualized as beautiful, but rather that it treads into a realm of danger where shifts in scale can at any moment reorganize value or strip it bare, articulate new meanings or dislocate the subject of meaning altogether.”
“The adorable—which almost seems to have wrested this privilege from the beautiful—can tame the risk inherent in sexual encounters (…) and thus, as Lauren has put it, can work to ‘neutralize how unsafe and close to the abject’ sex can be.”
Lauren Berlant & Lee Edelman: “Sex, or the Unbearable,” 2013
“Text of Pleasure: one that satisfies, fulfills, and induces euphoria; one that stems from culture, does not break with it, and is bound to a comfortablereading practice.
Text of Lust: one that transports the reader into a state of self-forgetfulness, that triggers unease (perhaps even to the point of a certain weariness), that shakes the reader’s historical, cultural, and psychological foundations, the consistency of their preferences, values, and memories, and plunges their relationship with language into a crisis.”
Roland Barthes: “The Pleasure of the Text,” 1973.
“to consent not to be a single being”
Fred Moten, quoting Édouard Glissant, 2010
“O you sad, boxy, alcohol-free modern age, you wretched era of air travel and world travel—you can see now just how much the adventure-hungry lovers suffer under you. Oskar and Emma’s love gradually withered away, and why? Yes, for lack of danger. (…) Where activities are permitted so readily and entirely blindly, they soon become boring and eventually fizzle out. That is the appalling irony of the times (…) where everything is so shamelessly permitted. (…) Oskar and Emma wanted to create a novella, but it didn’t work out; it fell apart. (…) Danger is, after all, the lifeblood, and the obstacle is, after all, the very life of a novella. And there are no more obstacles in this characterless, unproud world, which is incapable of any noble prejudice. (…) Oskar and Emma knew this, and an indescribable sense of foreboding took hold of their young hearts. Their parents were open-minded people—oh, what a pity.”
Robert Walser, Note, 1913.
“Above all, however, it was Artaud who most emphatically formulated the principle of contagion as a model of artistic communication […]. The performance spreads to the viewer like a contagious disease. Beyond mere active reception, it is meant to affect the viewer and take possession of him. The contagion—not merely physical, but above all psychological—to which Artaud directs his attention will, above all, help unleash unsuspected passions. […] Artaud’s conception thus differs significantly from classical aesthetics, which had subjected passions to the measure of cathartic purification. If, according to Aristotle’s well-known formulation, art, through the depiction of passions, “evokes pity and horror in the viewer and thereby brings about a purification from such states of agitation,” then traditional aesthetics defines art as a principle of vaccination intended to prevent actual infection by passions. In contrast, since Artaud, contemporary art has often intended an uncontrolled contagion in order to help the “slumbering conflicts” within the viewer erupt. Instead of restoring the integrity of the person threatened by passionate agitation, the “calm of the senses” is disrupted, and the “compressed unconscious” is released with a dissociative effect. In contrast to cathartic purification or the discharge of passions, but also in contrast to the ideal of proper balance of the affects, contagion aims to create a precarious state and to spark a “crisis.” Instead of moderation and homeostasis, the focus is on “destabilization,” uncertainty, and alienation. In this function of triggering a “crisis”—given the dual nature of contagion and catharsis in the history of the aesthetics of the passions—the concept of contagion is the more significant one for the contemporary arts.”
Kathrin Busch: „Ansteckung und Widerfahrnis. Für eine Ästhetik des Pathischen.“ in Kathrin Busch & Iris Därmann: „>pathos<. Konturen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs“, 2007
“[C]ritical race pedagogy is inherently risky, uncomfortable, and fundamentally unsafe […] This does not mean creating a hostile environment, but rather acknowledging that pedagogies that address racial power will be most uncomfortable for those who benefit from that power.”
“A subtle but fundamental form of violence is perpetuated in discourses on race that present themselves as safe; this must be challenged through a pedagogy of disruption—itself a form of violence, but one that is humanizing rather than repressive. […] We pedagogically reframe the racial predicament by promoting a ‘risk’ discourse on race that does not assume safety but rather contradiction and tension.”
Zeus Leonardo & Ronald K. Porter: “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue,” 2010
South Park, 2015
"There are many reasons to reject consent as the guiding principle for sex. These include the following:
Consent serves primarily to protect those accused of sexual assault. Consent allows an accused person to say, “Well, she consented to X, so nothing bad happened.” Even the expanded concepts of “enthusiastic” consent and “affirmative” consent do not significantly deviate from this function.
Consent is based on a proprietary conception of selfhood derived from social contract theory. It legally implies that humans “own” their bodies and can relinquish them through a statement of consent. As Ann Cahill suggests, consent may imply that the person giving consent owes the activity to the recipient of consent, and thus that the recipient can claim harm if the person giving consent does not “deliver.”
Consent reinforces the idea that men ask for sex and women respond, as Pateman and Alcoff point out. In heterosexual contexts, sex is portrayed as something men are always seeking, placing the burden on women to decide how far things will go.
Consent fails to capture the temporal unfolding of sexual encounters. It artificially divides sex into discrete segments, failing to account for the way in which desires may emerge intersubjectively over the course of an encounter.
Consent does not capture the ambiguity of many sexual encounters, including what is referred to as “gray rape.” In *Screw Consent*, Fischel addresses the backlash against the #MeToo movement, which claimed that it implied “all bad sex is rape!” For Fischel, the alternative to this slippery-slope reasoning is to examine just how bad bad sex can be. Although bad sex is different from sexual assault, bad sex is often bad in a way that perpetuates broader social scripts at play in sexual assault—and this “bad sex” has serious detrimental effects on the parties involved.
Consent may prevent individuals from putting in the effort to develop a nuanced awareness of their sexual partners’ desires. Consent makes it seem as though all one needs is a red light or a green light, without also having to learn the many rules of the road. Heterosexual cultures generally lead women to put in the effort to try to understand men’s desires, whereas the reverse is not expected of men. Peggy Orenstein depicts the chilling results of this in her book *Girls and Sex*.
Consent presupposes a level of self-awareness that individuals often lack. Many of us are often unaware of our own desires, so suggesting that we can know what we want the moment we are asked overlooks historically conditioned forms of behavior, the effects of past experiences, and the relative power of different social positions.
Ellie Anderson: “Women in Philosophy: The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics,” 2019.
“The Vampires’ Castle specializes in fostering guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be part of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can appear as if […] one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, and heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements […]: it pays lip service to “solidarity” and “collectivity,” while always acting as if the individualist categories imposed by power really hold. Because they are petit-bourgeois to the core, the members of the Vampires’ Castle are intensely competitive, but this is repressed in the passive-aggressive manner typical of the bourgeoisie. What holds them together is not solidarity, but mutual fear—the fear that they will be the next to be outed, exposed, or condemned. […]
The fourth law of the Vampires’ Castle is: essentialize. […] Since the desires driving the VC are largely the desires of priests to excommunicate and condemn, there must be a sharp distinction between Good and Evil, with the latter being essentialized. Notice the tactics. X has made a remark or behaved in a particular way—these remarks or this behavior might be construed as transphobic, sexist, etc. So far, so good. But it’s the next move that’s the kicker. X is then defined as a transphobe/sexist, etc. Their entire identity is defined by a single ill-judged remark or slip in behavior. […]
What needs to be done?
[…] Capital subdued the organized working class by eroding class consciousness, viciously subjugating labor unions while seducing “hardworking families” into identifying with their own narrowly defined interests instead of the interests of the broader class; but why would capital be concerned about a “left” that replaces class politics with moralizing individualism, and that, far from building solidarity, spreads fear and insecurity? […] We need to learn—or relearn—how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing one another. This does not mean, of course, that we must always agree—on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.”
Mark Fisher: “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” 2013.
“The problem with the traditional view of consent is not that it overanalyzes sexual encounters, but rather that it underanalyzes the way our feelings exist in relation to social scripts, power relations, and the like. It assumes that people are rational agents with transparent desires that they can freely communicate to others. By conceptualizing sexual ethics on the basis of the heterogeneous self, we can better account for its complex intersubjective nature. We can envision ways of shaping our selves that deepen our relationships with others by recognizing that we are “others” to ourselves. This project takes us into uncharted territory, but I believe it holds more promise than continuing to build sexual ethics around a notion of selfhood inherited from social contract theory—a notion that feminist theory has proven to be flawed.”
Ellie Anderson: “Women in Philosophy: The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics,” 2019.
“I think there is a very good reason for this first agreement: YOU AGREE TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATURE OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Because you are. It’s part of the privilege of being an adult; you enjoy freedom of choice—you’re not a child. And, yes, of course, we all get triggered sometimes; we lose control; there are moments when we’re unable to take responsibility. But still: we are nevertheless responsible for what we do and what happens to us. If you drink too much alcohol and fall flat on your face, if you lose your temper and start throwing objects, you are still responsible for the damage you cause. If you enter a space (Berghain??) or an event (Kinky Power Xplosion?) that you can’t handle, you are responsible for your reactions. (Of course, I’m not talking about violence or assaults against you here, just the intense emotional reactions that kink and s+ spaces can trigger.) You can only train your capacity; you can learn to sense when you’re in danger; you can study your triggers; you can better understand your limits. It’s called growing up. But this should happen somewhere else (therapy, counseling) rather than in S&M spaces. Kink and S&M spaces are not therapy. They are spaces for exploration, experience, and controlled risk-taking. I think a major problem lies in the promotion and marketing of these spaces. There’s too much talk about empowerment, liberation, and healing. Even enlightenment is promised. Of course, this attracts the powerless, the unfree, the fragile, and those who are in the dark. Where is consent in your marketing? Where is the practice of clear communication and radical honesty?? Watch your language. Watch your blind spots. If you get a kick out of treating people like children, if you like to see yourself as a caretaker, then of course shit is more likely to happen. Your role, systemically speaking, will need justification. I think that as a facilitator, you have to make it very clear that there is potential risk in your space. You don’t pretend that you can take responsibility for people. You don’t pretend that you can provide a safe space. I also don’t think there’s a fine line between taking responsibility and codependency. I think the line is actually quite clear. If you give false information about your space and your capabilities, if you infantilize people by believing they need education and guidance, if you’re seeking power and recognition for your facilitator persona, then you run the risk of making people dependent. To put it very bluntly: The less you care about people’s opinions, the safer your space is likely to be.”
Felix Ruckert in a Facebook comments discussion, 2019.
Photo: Banu Cennetoğlu, *BEINGSAFEISSCARY* (2017) for documenta14,
(Ten aluminum letters borrowed from the Fridericianum in Kassel and six letters cast in brass based on the existing ones, inspired by graffiti on a wall at the National Technical University of Athens as of April 6, 2017)
