Eclectic attempt at un/security (work in process)
risk, safety, conflict, consent - what drives sex-positive scenes usually has something to do with these key terms. It's complicated. Insecurity is not bad per se and safety is not good per se and vice versa. In my personal experience, I have found spaces that strongly emphasize consensus to be both empowering and enriching, as well as constricting, school-like or tamed and therefore simply boring or not doing justice to issues that are fundamentally ambivalent grey areas. Sometimes these spaces led to frustration when the very people to whom I could give myself completely because of their trusting nature always backed down when things got interesting so as not to overstep 'my' boundaries. Sometimes the frustration also lay in the fact that the exercises that were supposed to test consensus had long since created a relationship of violence in themselves, for example when a partner is randomly sought out in the group during warm-up exercises and then you are supposed to tell each other what you would like to do with the other person and the other person is then allowed to answer "yes" or "no" - but this implies a specific look: a check-out that one friend aptly described as "creepy". And what should you answer in a hurry? Most of the time, I don't want to say "yes" or "no" to every offer, but: Let's see! Let's get to know each other first. Or I watch how you act in the Playspace and see whether I'm attracted to it or not. Exercises in which a "no" from the other person is to be provoked quite decidedly, a very direct search for boundaries, is perhaps useful didactically, but problematic in terms of embodiment, because my body cells remember that someone (usually someone I don't really know yet) wants to do something to me that I don't like. How am I supposed to want to interact with this person afterwards, even if I know in my mind that this was only the purpose of the exercise - my body can't tell the difference.
All of this goes beyond "safety is a construct and that's why we no longer say 'safe' but 'risk-aware'". BDSM practices in particular try to tap into valuable parts of the source of insecurity and not simply view risk as an annoying side effect. The sting is what makes it so appealing. Or rather: the fact that sex itself belongs to the sphere of uncertainty is taken seriously. Just like adventure. On the other hand, it is also not a causal structure - more uncertainty does not automatically make a game more appealing. Swimming in a shark tank + thunderstorm does not necessarily mean sexy. And certain safe manners are not even up for debate here anyway, such as mutual respect, respect for setting boundaries, informed and responsible interaction, open communication, maximum protection against unintended injuries or illnesses, etc. Which is why the concept of "safe spaces" is also extended to include "brave spaces" - not "rapey spaces". Of course, when it comes to the basics, the matter is so simple that it can be compared to offering a cup of tea - but Emily Nagofski describes very clearly why it is more complicated:
"'This is how you know you have consent' doesn't teach people to recognize what a person really wants when they say yes - and it certainly doesn't teach either partner how to clarify. 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, like it's an off-switch/on-switch."
Embracing uncertainty and irritation is based not least on the condition that I agree to let myself be unsettled. Of course, taking up the cudgels for uncertainty is not in itself a free pass to always be pushy or even to have to be pushy! But as soon as you feel ready to do so, the following would like to give you some inspiration to dare to push your limits and take a risk if it feels right for everyone involved, despite the importance of a safe framework.
So, in order to tentatively approach my preference for insecurity (or a very specific form of it - it's as if terms were missing → a friend suggested 'ambiguity tolerance' or 'incompetence competence') in my mind and to be able to tell others what might be promising in it, I started collecting quotes. Because I usually learn more when I also look around where it is not directly about the topic that concerns me (i.e. where it is not only about kink or sex), the quotes come from different sources and disciplines (such as Critical Race Theory or Black Studies, because for me they are currently among the most exciting, avant-garde and well thought-out cultural studies disciplines - knowing full well that the theses cannot be transferred 1:1 to other areas, but require a transfer performance).
Like a collage and free-floating, my collection is shared here for inspiration (and will be added to over time).
"About consent.
One word for all. What could be more valuable than the agreement of one person; what could be more reassuring for the other person? Because in this situation there are always two people, the one who agrees and the one to whom you concede something. Consent is an intimate but never isolated act. It implies a relationship, a movement towards another or towards each other. [...] Nevertheless, consent is not always unclouded, it is darkened by all kinds of shadows that fall on its freedom; for consent can be coerced, can arise from an implicit or explicit relationship of violence."
"Certainly someone gives his or her consent; but someone else receives, even snatches consent from the other. Consent is something that circulates from one to the other; a strange object that can be both domination and theft. From the innermost of the self to the outermost; from the inwardness of the self to the relationship with the other. ... So is it a matter of pure freedom or an unavoidable balance of power?"
"Between accepting and allowing, agreeing to something and conceding something, how can clarity always be achieved?"
Geneviève Fraisse: "The consent. On the who of a political concept", 2018.
"Working with white students on unlearning racism, one of the principles we strive to embody is the value of risk, honoring the fact that we may learn and grow in circumstances where we do not feel safe, 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 on safety as always being the best or only basis for bonding."
bell hooks: "Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope", 2003.
"Our time is characterized by risk: probability calculations, surveys, crash scenarios, evaluation of psychological resilience, prevention [...] - no facet of political or ethical discourse escapes this process. The precautionary principle has become the norm. In terms of human lives, accidents, terrorism or social demands, it resembles a cursor that is shifted according to the needs of collective mobilization and profiteering. It remains unquestioned.
The expression "risking one's life" is one of the most beautiful in our language. Does it necessarily mean facing death - and surviving? Or is there a secret device inherent in life itself, a music that in itself is capable of shifting existence along that line of battle called desire? For risk advances into an unknown space. How can we, as living beings, think of it in terms of life and not 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 our opponent, a desire that we ourselves are not aware of, a love whose face remains hidden from us, a pure event."
"In a miraculous way, risk would thus be the opposite of neurosis, whose hallmark it is to so take over the future that it shapes our present according to the pattern of previous experiences and leaves no room for the intrusion of the unknown, for the slightest shift in a changed horizon line."
Anne Dufourmantelles: "In praise of risk", 2018.
"Today, on the other hand, we take the sting out of most pleasures: bars without tobacco culture, beer without alcohol, coffee without caffeine, whipped cream without fat, virtual sex without physical contact. Things that give us pleasure always come with a problem. They are as expensive as champagne, as fatty as cream cake, as poisonous as cigarettes. The problematic pleasures break the economic logic of budgeting - the rationality of using our energy today so that we still have some tomorrow. Unreasonable expenditure brings us a triumph."
Robert Pfaller: "We enjoy 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 do S/M is to explore territories 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 pathway."
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. In communicating about sex, I might 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, for instance. 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 nicely 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 requesting sex and the other consenting to let sex happen is not the most typical - and almost never the ideal - way for sex to be initiated. So what are other ways in which we can use language in order to initiate sex and, especially, what are ways to do it well? I will focus on two: invitations and gift offers."
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 at risk of falling. [...] The most dangerous thing for them is the state of maximum stability. If they were to achieve this, they would fall off the rope like a potato. Tightrope walkers have to keep their balancing pole in a state of unrest. They outwit the law of falling with constant movement and counter-movement. Only by shifting their center of gravity forward step by step, i.e. walking, do they secure their existence. Tightrope walkers are condemned to movement, even elegant movement. The security of a fixed position is taboo for them. It would be their end. They only escape the danger of falling through uncertainty."
Reinhard Kahl: "Lob des Seiltänzers", 1995, quoted from Annita Kalpaka: "'Parallel societies' in educational work - possibilities and dilemmas of pedagogical action in 'protected' spaces", 2009.
Thanks to Katharina Debus for forwarding the quote!
"When in a romance someone has sex and then says to the lover, 'You make me feel safe,' we understand that she means that there's 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 where I am also not safe, where I am too close to the ridiculous, the disgusting, the merely weird, or-simply too close to having a desire. But some situations are riskier than others, as the meanings of unsafe sex change according to who's having the sex. That's where the politics comes 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 doesn't, as most of us know to our sorrow, mean that sex is always sublime, nor that it can't be conceptualized as beautiful, but rather that it trenches on an economy of danger where shifts of scale can at any moment reorganize value or empty it out, articulate new meanings or dislocate the subject of meaning altogether."
"The adorable, which almost seems to have wrested this privilege from the beautiful, can domesticate the riskiness that inhabits sexual encounter (...) and so, 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: which satisfies, fulfills, creates euphoria; which comes from culture, does not break with it, is bound to a comfortable practice of reading.
Text of lust: which puts the reader in a state of losing himself, which causes discomfort (perhaps to the point of a certain weariness), shakes the historical, cultural, psychological foundations of the reader, the consistency of his preferences, his values and his memories, plunges his relationship to language into a crisis."
Roland Barthes: "Die Lust am Text", 1973.
"to consent not to be a single being"
Fred Moten, quoting Édouard Glissant, 2010
"Oh, you sad, square, alcohol-free modern age, you disdainful age of flying and world travel, you can see now how much the adventurous lovers have to suffer under you. Oskar and Emma's love gradually died away, and why? Yes, for lack of danger. (...) Where activities are permitted so readily and so blindly, they soon become boring and finally wear out. That is the dreadful joke of the age (...) where everything is allowed to happen so easily. (...) Oskar and Emma wanted to write a novella, but it didn't work out, it fell apart. (...) Danger is the vein, and the obstacle is the 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 unspeakable trepidation took hold of their young hearts. Their parents were unprejudiced people, oh pity."
Robert Walser, note, 1913.
"Artaud in particular, however, has explicitly developed the principle of contagion as a model of artistic communication [...]. The spectacle is transmitted to the viewer like a contagious disease. On this side of active reception, it should affect the viewer and take possession of him. The not only physical, but above all psychological contagion, to which Artaud directs his attention, will above all help unsuspected passions to break through. [...] Artaud's design thus differs markedly from classical aesthetics, which had brought the passions below the level of cathartic purification. If, according to Aristotle's well-known formulation, art "evokes lamentation and shame in the viewer through representations of passion and thereby brings about a purification from such states of excitement", then traditional aesthetics defines art as the principle of inoculation, which has to prevent an actual infection by passions. In contrast, since Artaud, the intention in contemporary art has often been an uncontrolled contagion in order to help the "dormant conflicts" in the viewer to break out. Instead of restoring the integrity of the person threatened by passionate excitement, the "calm of the senses" is disturbed and the "compressed unconscious" is released with a dissociating effect. In contrast to the cathartic cleansing or purging of the passions, but also in contrast to the ideal of the right balance of affects, contagion is intended to create a precarious state and the ignition of a "crisis". Instead of moderation and homeostasis, it is about "destabilization", insecurity and alienation. In this function of triggering a "crisis", the concept of contagion - assuming the dual form of contagion and catharsis in the history of the aesthetics of passions - is the more important concept for contemporary art."
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 equate with creating a hostile situation but to acknowledge that pedagogies that tackle racial power will be most uncomfortable for those who benefit from that power."
"A subtle but fundamental violence is enacted in safe discourses on race, which must be challenged through a pedagogy of disruption, itself a form of violence but a humanizing, rather than repressive, version. [...] We pedagogically reframe the racial predicament by promoting a 'risk' discourse about race, which does not assume safety but contradiction and tension."
Zeus Leonardo & Ronald K. Porter: "Pedagogy of fear: towards a Fanonian theory of 'safety' in race dialogue", 2010
South Park, 2015
"There are many reasons to reject consent as the regulative concept for sex. These include the following:
Consent functions primarily to shield those accused of sexual assault. Consent allows one accused to say, 'Well, she consented to X, so nothing bad happened. Even the enriched notions of 'enthusiastic' consent and 'affirmative' consent do not significantly depart from this function.
Consent is based on a proprietary notion of selfhood derived from social contract theory. It legalistically suggests that humans 'own' their bodies and can sign them away through a statement of consent. As Ann Cahill suggests, consent may suggest that the one consenting owes the activity involves to the recipient of consent, and thus that the recipient can claim harm if the one consenting does not 'deliver.
Consent reinforces the idea that men ask for sex and women respond, as Pateman and Alcoff point out. Within heterosexual contexts, sex is figured as something that men are always gunning for, putting the onus on women to decide how far things will go.
Consent fails to register the temporally unfolding nature of sexual encounters. It artificially breaks up sex into discrete segments, failing to account for the way that 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 to the #metoo movement that claimed that it suggested 'all bad sex is rape! For Fischel, the alternative to this slippery-slope reasoning is to investigate 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 operative in sexual assault-and this 'bad sex' has serious detrimental effects on the parties involved.
Consent may prevent individuals from putting in the work of cultivating nuanced attention to the desires of sexual partners. Consent makes it seem like all one needs is a red light or a green light, without also needing to learn the many rules of the road. Heterosexual cultures generally lead to women putting in the work of attempting to learn about men's desires, whereas the converse is not expected of men. Peggy Orenstein depicts the chilling results of this in her book Girls and Sex.
Consent presumes a level of self-knowledge that individuals often lack. Many of us are often ignorant of our own desires, so suggesting that we can know what we want the moment we are asked overlooks historically coded forms of behavior, the effects of past experiences, and the relative power of differing social locations.
Ellie Anderson: "Women in Philosophy: The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics", 2019.
"The Vampires' Castle specializes in propagating 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 one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires' Castle is that it can look as if [...] one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, 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 one to be outed, exposed, condemned. [...]
The fourth law of the Vampires' Castle is: essentialize. [...] Since the desires animating the VC are in large part priests' desires to excommunicate and condemn, there has to be a strong distinction between Good and Evil, with the latter essentialized. Notice the tactics. X has made a remark/ has behaved in a particular way - these remarks/ this behavior might be construed as transphobic/ sexist etc. So far, OK. But it's the next move which is the kicker. X then becomes defined as a transphobe/ sexist etc. Their whole identity becomes defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioral slip. [...]
What has to be done?
[...] Capital subdued the organized working class by decomposing class consciousness, viciously subjugating trade unions while seducing 'hard working families' into identifying with their own narrowly defined interests instead of the interests of the wider class; but why would capital be concerned about a 'left' that replaces class politics with a moralizing individualism, and that, far from building solidarity, spreads fear and insecurity? [...] We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital's work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn't 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 overthinks sexual encounters, but rather that it underthinks the way that our feelings exist in relation to social scripts, relations of power, and the like. It presumes that people are rational agents with transparent desires that they may freely communicate to others. By conceptualizing sexual ethics on the basis of the heterogeneous self, we may better account for its complex intersubjective character. We may envision modes of self-fashioning that deepen our relations to others by recognizing that we are others to ourselves. This project takes us into still-uncharted territory, but I think it holds more promise than continuing to try building sexual ethics around a notion of selfhood inherited from social contract theory that feminist theory has proven wrong."
Ellie Anderson: "Women in Philosophy: The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics", 2019.
"I think there is very good reason for this first agreement: YOU AGREE TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATURE OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Because you are. Its part of the privilege of being an adult; you enjoy freedom of choice, you are not a child. And, yes, of course, you get triggered sometimes, all of us, we lose control, we are momentarily not able 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 on your nose, if you lose your temper and start throwing objects, you are still responsible for the damage you do. If you enter a space ( Berghain??) or an event (Kinky Power Xplosion?) you cant handle, you are responsible for your reactions. (Of course I am not talking about violence or assaults against you here, just of the intense emotional reactions that kink and s+spaces can trigger) You can only train your capacity, you can learn to feel when you are in that danger, you can study your triggers, you can better understand your limits. I ts called growing up. But this should happen somewhere else (therapy, counseling) then in s+ spaces. Kink and s+spaces are not therapy. They are spaces of exploration, experience and controlled risk taking. I think a big problem lies in the promotion and marketing of these spaces. Too much talk about empowerment, liberation and healing. Even enlightenment is promised. Of course then you attract the powerless, unfree, fragile and dimly lighted. Where is consent in your marketing, where is practicing clear communication and radical honesty? Watch your language. Watch your blind spots. If you get a kick out of treating people as children, if you like to see yourself as a caretaker, then of course shit is more likely to happen. Your role systemically will need justification. I think as a facilitator you have to make 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 is fine line between taking responsibility and co-dependency. I think the line is rather clear. I f you give false information about your space and your capacities, if you infantalize people by believing they need education and guidance, if you are looking for power and recognition for your facilitator persona, then you are in risk of making people dependent. To say it very bluntly: The less you care about people s opinion, the safer probably your space."
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 after the existing ones Based on graffiti existing on a wall at the National Technical University of Athens as of April 6, 2017)
