![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Sex and Trust
Recently someone told me that in general, trust is not a factor in sex and that in particular, it wasn't necessary in a BDSM situation. This is dangerously and bizarrely fallacious, not to mention fantastical. It doesn't bear up to real life examples, any sex studies I've read or even common sense.
sex = physical intimacy = physical vulnerability
Surely you won't quibble with that. Now, being that sexual acts require physical vulnerability, wouldn't an untrusting person avoid them altogether? After all, that kind of extreme risk isn't really worth it just to feel good for a few seconds, minutes if you're lucky and then be left exactly as you were before. A profoundly untrusting person would rely on his own hand.
Every consensual sexual act (excluding masturbation) requires trust, if only enough to be sure that your partner will not kill you during the act, or otherwise endanger you. The dirtiest bar crawler is making a sublime leap of faith when she goes home with a strange man, accepting that he won't give her a disease or assault her. The most hardcore domme has to trust that her sub really is a sub and isn't going to suddenly decide she doesn't want to be there and fuck up the game.
Sex is necessarily always an act of trust, even when that trust isn't consciously imparted.
In a BDSM situation, trust is even more important. A sub has to trust that his master won't get out of control, knows what she's doing and can understand his needs. A domme has to trust that her sub knows how to take care of himself, in that he needs to know when to use his safewords. BDSM is an exchange of trust and truly screwed up people don't get far in consensual relationships and games.
Sex is so romanticized partly because trust is so essential to it, and it's easier to trust someone noble or loving. Abuses of trust in sexual situations - cheating, pushing someone too far - are near-universally reviled, though each culture has its own spin on it. Many of our romanticized notions of sex were developed as a kind of protection. If chivalry has convinced you that you can't sleep around and you have to treat the ladies decently, then you're less likely to give them syphilis and treat them roughly, you know?
We also see a push towards anti-romanticism, the sex-means-nothing camp. Interestingly, outsiders and insiders usually perceive this as a deviation from the norm. The norm where people realize that sex is about trust. Ahem. Stripping sex of its romanticization and intimacy is an act of rebellion. Such people are usually called by derogatory terms.
Even for those who possess a kink for unsafe sex, the act is still implicitly about trust, because in this case, it is about the lack of trust present in the situation. [The exception proves the theory. <--![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adoramouse won't let me hold onto my poor grammar. Pretend this sentence doesn't exist. *sniffle*]
In all consensual situations, trust plays an essential role in sex. It is only in non-consensual situations where power is more important than trust. Non-consensual sex is typically about exercising power over another human, while consensual D/S is a game, an exchange of trust and power.
Non-consensual sex should not be confused with kink in general or BDSM in particular. A dom is not a rapist and a sub is not a victim and any attempts to draw correlations between these two very different kinds of people (and urges) is frankly ridiculous. It’s like saying that anyone who doesn’t fuck the way you do is an immoral, criminal deviant.
And just to make sure that no one misunderstands this post: minimal trust is required in every consensual sexual act. Trust is implicit to sex. Trust is always a factor.
Thank you, drive through.
sex = physical intimacy = physical vulnerability
Surely you won't quibble with that. Now, being that sexual acts require physical vulnerability, wouldn't an untrusting person avoid them altogether? After all, that kind of extreme risk isn't really worth it just to feel good for a few seconds, minutes if you're lucky and then be left exactly as you were before. A profoundly untrusting person would rely on his own hand.
Every consensual sexual act (excluding masturbation) requires trust, if only enough to be sure that your partner will not kill you during the act, or otherwise endanger you. The dirtiest bar crawler is making a sublime leap of faith when she goes home with a strange man, accepting that he won't give her a disease or assault her. The most hardcore domme has to trust that her sub really is a sub and isn't going to suddenly decide she doesn't want to be there and fuck up the game.
Sex is necessarily always an act of trust, even when that trust isn't consciously imparted.
In a BDSM situation, trust is even more important. A sub has to trust that his master won't get out of control, knows what she's doing and can understand his needs. A domme has to trust that her sub knows how to take care of himself, in that he needs to know when to use his safewords. BDSM is an exchange of trust and truly screwed up people don't get far in consensual relationships and games.
Sex is so romanticized partly because trust is so essential to it, and it's easier to trust someone noble or loving. Abuses of trust in sexual situations - cheating, pushing someone too far - are near-universally reviled, though each culture has its own spin on it. Many of our romanticized notions of sex were developed as a kind of protection. If chivalry has convinced you that you can't sleep around and you have to treat the ladies decently, then you're less likely to give them syphilis and treat them roughly, you know?
We also see a push towards anti-romanticism, the sex-means-nothing camp. Interestingly, outsiders and insiders usually perceive this as a deviation from the norm. The norm where people realize that sex is about trust. Ahem. Stripping sex of its romanticization and intimacy is an act of rebellion. Such people are usually called by derogatory terms.
Even for those who possess a kink for unsafe sex, the act is still implicitly about trust, because in this case, it is about the lack of trust present in the situation. [The exception proves the theory. <--
adoramouse won't let me hold onto my poor grammar. Pretend this sentence doesn't exist. *sniffle*]In all consensual situations, trust plays an essential role in sex. It is only in non-consensual situations where power is more important than trust. Non-consensual sex is typically about exercising power over another human, while consensual D/S is a game, an exchange of trust and power.
Non-consensual sex should not be confused with kink in general or BDSM in particular. A dom is not a rapist and a sub is not a victim and any attempts to draw correlations between these two very different kinds of people (and urges) is frankly ridiculous. It’s like saying that anyone who doesn’t fuck the way you do is an immoral, criminal deviant.
And just to make sure that no one misunderstands this post: minimal trust is required in every consensual sexual act. Trust is implicit to sex. Trust is always a factor.
Thank you, drive through.
no subject
no subject
Great post. I think you've stated it well.
no subject
Re: Non-con vs. BDSM
It seems to me (as someone who's never actually practised BDSM, but has done a bit of reference reading on the subject) that most stories with "BDSM" in the warning are generally of the "Stop! Rape! Wait, that feels really dirty, don't stop!" variety. It is, in essence, what your vanilla hetero female thinks BDSM might be like. Which is why there's a lack of safety words, set boundries or trust. They mistake what some BDSM participants roleplay as for what's really going on, if that makes any sense at all. The example that comes to mind is the presence of master/slave that's commonly labeled as BDSM. In the stories it's very much an actual master/slave relationship, not someone's kink and usually in the begining it's very non-consentual. It's a very rare fic indeed where the characters sit down beforehand and say "well, you're okay with ropes but no knifeplay, right?"
Just my 2cents.
Thank you...
So, Severus can have sex, but it would be a leap of faith, and it would be in circumstances in which his emotional barriers were down. Even for impersonal sex, Sevrus would have to feel as if the person copuld not seriously hurt him.
hmmm ....
Absolutely. But fanfic -- or fiction of any kind -- is often a place to explore precisely the kinds of situations anyone with a minimal sense of self-preservation would avoid in real life. This can include not only topics like chan and incest, but also questionable/twisted consent, hate-fucking, and the kind of sex that may seem to have some of the physical trappings of BDSM but is really about power and hurt and exploitation and shattering limits ... none of which is relevant to actual BDSM at all.
If I remember correctly -- and please tell me if I'm wrong -- you were arguing that Snape was too untrustful and self-protective to be having sex (or maybe it was BDSM sex, specifically ... sorry for not going back and checking your post). I agree that Snape is neither someone who could trust his partner enough to want to sub, nor is stable enough that anyone would want to entrust their own safety to him as a dom. But, you know, fanfic allows us to explore territory that while in RL is dangerous or unacceptable, certainly is emotionally familiar to a lot of us. So the idea of Snape engaging in either of these activities in fanfic ... out of rage, hurt, a desire to expatiate guilt, a desire to inflict pain on others, a desire to abuse trust itself is completely plausible. And I think this is what Brodie was protesting. People often don't act sensibly when it comes to sex, and they don't tend to follow logic. Which is unfortunate, but there you go.
Anyway, I think that everyone just has different criteria for plausibility. For me, a certain basic level of physical believability is necessary for me to enjoy a fanfic ... all those fics where a virgin ecstatically gets it up the butt with no lubrication are a complete turn-off for me. But as far as emotional plausibility is concerned, I don't demand that fictional sex follow all the rules and ethics that we practice in RL. I just expect that people act like human beings ... which, you know, often means that they act absolutely terribly. It doesn't usually mean, on the other hand, that teenage boys act like preteen girls (as a lot of h/d fic on ff.net seems to insist), because very few do.
So I get frustrated a bit when people complain that there is no proper BDSM in the fandom or that people aren't representing it correctly (not that you yourself are saying this ... it's just a perennial complaint in various circles). Because this may be true, but there's plenty of excellently written fic that explores power relations, questions of consent, the master/slave dynamic, bondage, the magical possibilities/implements of torture (whether pleasurable or not). And these fics work for me because they do come out of an emotional truth ... that rage and sadism and a desire for power or control (whether to wield it or be overwhelmed by it) are all also part of the range of human experience that we can understand, even if we don't agree with. What makes fic fun is being able to explore the kind of material that we can't in RL, and ... getting back to Snape, I would argue that anybody who was part of a community that thinks torturing Muggle children (as in the beginning of GoF) is a fabulous way to celebrate an evening, probably has a streak of sexual sadism (or at least kink) a mile wide. In a way that is not safe or logical or sensible at all.
Re: hmmm ....
Sorry to spam.
Re: hmmm ....
It can be fun to play with things like non-con and chan and what have you, but many writers do this, informed of the realties of sex and with sexual experience. They know that what they're writing isn't realistic, they know what realisitc sex actually looks like and they still just want to have fun.
I don't think I'm expressing myself at all well. Hmm. Let me get back to you. ;)
Regarding Snape specifically:
Most everyone has sex and I'm sure Snape has had some in his time. I don't think that realistically speaking, he'd be able to get over himself enough to explore his kinks, or ever be stable enough that someone else would be interested in playing with him.
no subject
But, um, I am a grammar dork and cannot let improper phrase usage go by unremarked.
The exception proves the theory.
In this saying the word "proves" uses its older, less common meaning. That is: to test. What the phrase actually means is "the exception TESTS the rule" not "the exception confirms the rule." Because, honestly, think about it. How can contradictory information validate a thoery? It doesn't.
The example of people who enjoy sex w/o trust tests your theory, to see if it does hold water. Since you explained that the kink is still "all about trust" your theory passes the test.
Those pesky holdover phrases! ..The trouble comes from when people assume that the words they are using mean the same thing in a phrase as they do standing alone. But sadly, it's no use using logic with the English language.
/dork
no subject
Don't let me play fast and loose with grammar and merrily shred old sayings.
You suck.
:p
(Though I did know it was correct, I left it in there anyway, since I don't have enough respect for the rules. *g*)
no subject
1. Fantasy BDSM: no safewords, non-consensual sex, blood play, etc
2. Twink BDSM: can often include light fantasy BDSM (no safewords, mostly bondage, almost no pain involved outside of a lack of lubricant), questionable consent, etc.
3. Realistic BDSM (sadly rare)
I think it's a cycle. Most people write out of 1 and 2. Others read it and think it's how BDSM relationships work and write about it that way. (Or they really don't stop to think.)
Rarely is it about "breaking boundaries." I think it's just deliberate ignorance for the most part.
This seems just to be encouraged by the Gen X idea of "sex meaning nothing."
...someday I will sit down and write the story in which Gryffinwhore!Sirius has sex with Snape and ends up with VD or something. Just because.
no subject
*blinks innocently* ....what?
no subject
no subject
It will be a smash hit, I'm telling you.
no subject
I think I'll stick with the penis flying away and Lily collecting it for Potions use or something.
no subject
I suppose there's a level of trust in that, but I was always a complete stranger to them... It's better with strangers - you don't have to cuddle them, or buy them a drink afterwards.
no subject
So.
no subject
Fucking A!