bdsm

Graphic Sexual Horror is a documentary film about the late, hardcore BDSM pornsite, insex.com. To me, this film can be succinctly described as a brain virus. Since the seven days that I have seen it, I've not quite been able to shake it from my head. The images of women chained, cropped and tortured for viewing pleasure continue to project themselves into the dark of my eyelids, and my brain is still working overtime to try to make sense of it all.

Part of the reason why this film is such a mind-fuck is because of the utter lack of positioning on the part of the documentary makers. The film took a stand back position, gracefully allowing the porn and this company to be shown for what it was, without any sway on what we as viewers were to think of it. The film was neither a monologue at or a dialogue with the viewer on the subject. Rather, it felt  like some omniscient third party, passing along information and images to be burned into our retinas.

Here is what you need to know in order to understand the film: Insex was a brainchild of BDSM enthusiast and artist, PD. The site employed models, many of whom that weren't into BDSM, to engage in hardcore BDSM play on camera for a generous amount of money. There was always a safeword any model could use to end the session, but the women were also rewarded with more cash, the longer they went and the more they endured. This site was eventually shut down by the State.

Last Friday I too had the chance to see the documentary Graphic Sexual Horror at the Leather Archives and Museum.  The film explores the story behind the now-defunct hardcore BDSM pornography website InSex.com, with an impressive lack (or mix) of glorification or condemnation.  I'd like to thank Arvan for the detailed review he's already posted - as well as of course Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon for making the film, and Clarisse Thorn and the Leather Archives' Jennifer Tyburczy for hosting.

While Arvan's post touches on many fascinating aspects of InSex and of Graphic Sexual Horror, the one that I left the museum discussing was the ambiguity of consent.  InSex's trademark was hyper-realistically torturing women to the very edge of their limits.  The documentary asked whether these women had given fully-informed, empowered consent, and left the audience with the answer, "Some of them, some of the time."  Which is almost more unsettling than "No," because it calls into question our sacred differentiations between sadomasochism and exploitation.  But then, any strong differentiation has to withstand occasional questioning.

Last night, I attended a screening of "Graphic Sexual Horror", directed by Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon.  The venue was the Leather Museum & Archives (LAM), who also sponsored the event along with The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum as part of the Sex+++ Documentary Film Series.  The event was presented by Dr. Jennifer Tyburczy, Ph.D. Director of Programming for the LAM and Clarisse Thorn.  Present for the showing and taking questions afterward, was Barbara Bell herself.  I was joined in the audience by blogger Rabbit White and her husband Ned.

So, the warning and disclaimer: This could easily trigger you.  I'm not even kidding.

This is a documentary about the creation of a website that produced media of women being tortured for people to watch as they masturbate.  BDSM porn...torture porn...whatever you may call it.

This is striking stuff and I found it difficult to separate my thoughts about the porn from my thoughts about what I thought of the film.  Which, I suppose is a nod toward the directors for presenting the subject without overtly interjecting themselves into the process.

The film is about 120min long and covers the story of how this website insex.com was conceived, launched, operated and finally shut down.  It starts right out off with a grainy film titled "worm" being shown.  The narrator, "pd" - is describing that this is his wife at the time, wrapped in vinyl, bound and laying on the floor.  The film then continues on through a series of interviews done recently, with staff members of insex.com relating their experiences on the site. 

THE LEATHER ARCHIVES & MUSEUM HOSTS
a thorough exploration of pornography, kink, consent, and fine lines

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR
documentary and discussion
featuring film director Barbara Bell

Presented by Clarisse Thorn and the Sex+++ Film Series in support of the Leather Archives & Museum

This event is generously sponsored by Shibaricon, the world's premier international pansexual annual rope bondage educational conference.  Located in the Chicago area May 28-31, 2010.

When: Friday, February 12, 7:30PM
Where: The Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Avenue, Chicago, IL 60626. For more information, please contact Director of Programming, Jennifer Tyburczy, at jennifert@leatherarchives.org
Suggested Donation: $5-10
Light refreshments provided by Shibaricon

Today I had a thought that stopped me in my tracks: I don’t believe I have ever read a single blog post by a male-identified BDSM dominant and/or sadist. I’ve kept this blog for over a year now, and y’all can see from the blogroll on the right-hand side that I’ve encountered a fair number of cool sex blogs; but I don’t recall ever seeing a male top’s blog.

Off the top of my head, I can think of many (oft-updated!) examples of the other combinations. For female bottoms there is of course myself, and violetwhite writes in a lovely, highly personal style. Female tops also represent: over a year after I found it, I can still recall my electrifying first reading of Trinity at SM-Feminist; a trio of clever female tops recently started a group effort called Topologies. And it’s not like it’s just women writing sex blogs — for male bottoms there’s the amazing activist maymay at Maybe Maimed But Never Harmed, the eloquent Orlando at In Scarlet Ink, my adorable college and Chicago-based friend Danny at Sex, Art and Politics, and the always-incisive Thomas of Yes Means Yes fame. And then there’s the queer butch top Sinclair “Sugarbutch” Sexsmith; and I have never seen a trans person’s blog strictly dedicated to BDSM, but Chicago’s own extraordinary Hazel/Cedar — who identifies as female but prefers the gender-neutral pronoun — sometimes notes hir kink experience as a BDSM-switch.

Co-founder and director of CineKink Lisa Vandever is looking for a group of kinky film-lovers to help spread the word about the kinky film festival. I’d love it if you’d read below about her work and check out the website for more information.

Please repost, tweet, facebook and otherwise share this post about CineKink’s events and need for support...and see what you can do to become a sponsor, yourself.

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The seventh annual edition of CineKink NYC is scheduled for February 16-21, 2010.

Once again the kinky film festival will feature a specially-curated program of films and videos that celebrate the wide diversity of sexuality. Along with a wealth of screenings, plans for the event also include a short film competition, audience choice awards, presentations, gala kick-off party and sexy AfterGlow celebration, all to be followed with a national screening tour.

While we’re just finalizing the schedule, among this year’s stories are a couple’s first brush with the world of swinging, a judge forced to choose between his legal career and his wife’s hunger for S/M and a French sex farce with actual sex in it! Viewers will also get a look at the boylesque sensation Waxie Moon and take part in “Bring It!,” our annual show-down between some of adult entertainment’s hottest directors.

Attendance at the CineKink NYC event, which runs over six days, averages 3,200-3,400 overall.  Turn-out for tour appearances, which vary market-to-market in terms of venue size and number of screenings, ranges between 150-1,500 per city.

Originally posted at Clarisse Thorn.

Note: This post is a bit feminist-theoretical.

Radical feminists* attack BDSM (and many other marginalized sexual identities) on a variety of ideological grounds — usually claiming that it’s Patriarchy Stockholm Syndrome (an assertion that is not only unproveable but is also usually stated in really hurtful terms, thereby serving mainly to drive kinky people away from feminism or guilt-trip kinky people into suppressing their desires).  But another tactic many radical feminists use against us is slut-shaming, including resentful declarations that sex-positive women (they often patronizingly call us “fun feminists”) are getting all the sexual attention.

If I make the mistake of announcing that I’m into S&M in an unfamiliar vanilla group, then yeah — it’s true — I do get hit on more.  Because the stigma around BDSM is particularly sexualized. But that kind of attention isn’t actually what I want, and it frequently takes really unpleasant forms.  For instance, before I left Chicago I went on one of my friend Ken’s Chicago Sex Tours.  Because it was a sex-related event, I introduced myself to the tour group as Clarisse the S&M activist.  Immediately, people had questions, which is fine and great — that’s part of why I’m an activist: to answer those questions.  But they also had assumptions — most obviously the man who grabbed my ass while I was ahead of him in a stairwell.  Obviously, that dude’s tiny mind was thinking what most similar dudes (and many radical feminists — but I’ll get to this in a minute) think: “Woohoo! A girl who’s into S&M!  She must have no boundaries at all!  Clearly I can grab her ass with impunity!”

I love stumbling across alternative-sexuality history lessons. I love it because we're absent from most history accounts, due both to censorship and to our predecessors' desire for their own privacy.  And then sexually liberated people and conservative reactionaries end up with the same misguided belief that rampant, shameless sexuality is something Westerners invented in the 1960's.

So I highly recommend Tony Perrottet's recent article for Slate.com, "Hellfire Holidays," about the sex clubs of 18th-century Britain.  As Perrottet reports,

"Sadly, during the prudish Victorian era, most references to these naughty clubs were scotched from the historical record.  Horrified relatives burned embarrassing documents and club regalia. But their subversive antics survived in pornographic novels, travel guides to risqué tourist sites, and, of course, popular memory."

When most people first fall into an alternate-sex community, it does feel exotic and revolutionary.  But seriously, the novelty and "naughtiness" wear off after a couple years.  Despite getting off on exoticism, and despite mainstream shock, we the currently living haven't invented anything new.  We have antecedents' example to follow and adapt; we simply have to study history that didn't make it to our textbooks.

I recently had the pleasure of dinner with someone who had traveled from another state to give a presentation at my local dungeon. Over dinner, we discussed his leadership work with his local Next Generation group.  (For those who don't know, "The Next Generation" or "TNG" is a common name for BDSM-centered social groups for younger adults, usually age 18-35.  There is no central TNG leadership as far as I'm aware, but there are TNG's in many cities throughout the U.S.)  One of the changes he's been trying to make in his local TNG, he explained, was semantic. Instead of using the acronym "BDSM," (Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism), he refers to the groups' members exclusively as "kinky." Instead of "munches," they have "meet and greets."

"What's the difference?" asked everyone at our dinner table after the dungeon presentation.

"Oh, there's no difference at all, really.  But for some reason, it seems to scare people less.  When I tell people that I'm into BDSM, I get all the scared looks.  But if I say I'm a little kinky, people are more likely to smirk or find it hot.  It's more 'naughty' and less scary.  Even if I'm doing the exact same things."