Sometimes I wonder if devoting so much of my time and energy to the culture and history and practice of BDSM is worthwhile. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, does BDSM matter any more than, say, lacross or beekeeping?
Actually, I think it does. The reason why comes from a surprising source.
I’ve been following the career of Peter LaBarbera for some time now. LaBarbera has made a career out of investigating the homosexual and kinky world and exposing The Thruth about these public depravities to the Christian right wing in the US, through venues like Fox News, the Illinois Family Institute and Concerned Women for America. His current gig is the Americans for Truth about Homosexuality blog, which appears to be a one-man operation.
LaBarbera is a part of the anti-gay media, who spread misinformation or disinformation about homosexuality, STDs and so on. He’s developed an interesting sideline in the BDSM culture, particularly public events such as the Folsom Street Fair, and posting about the shocking – shocking – things that go on there.
Here’s LaBarbera and Alyson Smith on the 2007 Folsom Street Fair:
In addition to the nudity and public sex acts, there were public whippings and spankings. Some were held at booths: the AIDS Emergency Fund was hawking charity spankings for $5 each — and others apparently occurring spontaneously, if you can say that about an act of consensual, “erotic” violence. We witnessed one man whipping his “partner” on a sidewalk, the “whippee’s” back becoming a brighter red with each round of punishment — done out of love, we are told by the sadists.
The annual Folsom Street Fair takes place in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) San Francisco district. Speaking to a local “gay” newspaper through her spokesman, Pelosi refused to condemn the blasphemous Folsom 2007 promotional logo — which mocked Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” painting by substituting “leather” men and women for Christ and His disciples.
Here’s a clip from Fox News, in which LaBabera is asked why he lays the blame for this horror on Democrat Nancy Pelosi instead of the Republican governor of California:
More recently, LaBarbera ran a story about Guy Baldwin, a well known BDSM educator and writer, being honored by the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce and fabricating the charge that this organization is supported by the Democratic National Committee.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force “Leather Leadership Award” honoree Guy Baldwin is the “co”-author (with “a grateful slave”) of “Slavecraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude; Principles, Skills and Tools.” The book advocates “consensual slavery.” Will the DNC demand a return of its at least $2,500 donation to the Task Force, whose “Creating Change” conference in Detroit honors Baldwin? Or is the party that overwhelmingly receives the most support from African Americans comfortable with the idea of celebrating and sexualizing “slavery”? This is one form of deviant play-acting that mocks Black descendants of REAL slaves whose servitude was certainly not “consensual,” and trivializes an awful chapter in America’s history….
We at Americans For Truth call on the DNC to demand their money back from the NGLTF – or they are complicit with the homosexual Task Force in glorifying this disgusting, sadomasochistic perversion that belittles the forced suffering of African Americans under slavery.
In both of these cases, LaBarbera’s ultimate target isn’t kinky people, nor does he particularly care about black history or Catholic religious art. He’s using kinky, queer people to get at Democrats, to cast them as the “depravity party”. He deploys his special knowledge of kinky people to speak about them to the conservative Christians, and uses us as a bogeyman to secure political support.
The culture LaBarbera supports is opposed to the ideals of personal expression and autonomy, and support the most oppressive gender roles and family structures. Though kinky people are numerically a minority and socially peripheral, they are the most visually compelling segment of liberal culture. Our very culture makes us a target. Kinky people are political, whether they want to be or not, because LaBarbera and his allies have made them so.
BDSM can’t exist without the autonomous individual experience being valid, and without the relative absence of coercion. BDSM can only really exist in a liberal society. However, its use of images and terms from pre-liberal society makes it an easy target for conservatives.
To practice BDSM, particularly outside the bedroom and in the public sphere, to write about it, to educate about it, is an expression of liberalism. Indeed, it’s right at the leading edge of liberalism, a laboratory protocol for testing how much human desire can be reconciled with a functioning society. Kinky people being kinky aren’t working to feed the hungry or cure AIDS, but they are expanding what it means to be human and free. That’s why it matters.
