BDSM RTV NEWS!!!!

21 march 2009


Thanks, Dick


Source: www.martlet.ca The Martlet - Victoria,British Columbia,Canada

Auden Cody Neuman

“Whenever I tell someone, ‘I have a human dog,’ I kind of… throw up a bit in my mouth,” the words come slowly out of my new handler’s mouth. She’s sitting on her bed, beer bottle clutched tightly in both hands like a lifeline.


We make eye contact and laugh. I know that feeling. She drops her eyes to her lap, grinning, shaking her head: this is all new. It’s a good thing we’re old friends, or I might be put off. Instead, I find the confused mixture of elation and shame on her face endearing.

But let’s step back. Allow me to explain myself: I am a human puppy, also known as a leatherdog. In the BDSM - Bondage/Discipline, Domination/Submission, Sadism/Masochism - world, this means I occupy centre stage in an elaborate role-play. I don’t mean role-play in the Dungeons and Dragons sense. What I mean is that I like to pretend I’m a dog. To be exact, I’m a border collie/black lab cross. My dog name is Kippur and I’m a bouncy, energetic, obedient pup.

A dog’s life
I have an imaginary history that includes time as a stray, capture by the SPCA, adoption to a master in Vancouver and re-adoption by my new handler in Victoria. My leather family includes my new master (“daddy”), my ex-master, a leatherdog named Blayde, Blayde’s handlers and a slew of supportive allies.

Every few months, I attend Bride of Pride (BoP) events. BoP is a collective of leatherdykes who organize play parties for queer women, transfolk and genderqueers in Vancouver. It’s one of many BDSM organizations in B.C. The Greater Vancouver area boasts a long list of kink societies, including Vancouver Leather, Metro Vancouver Kink and Vancouver Activists in S&M (VASM). These organizations cater to a variety of sexualities and preferences. At BoP events, I spot a veritable menagerie of kinksters: rubber-kitties, fuzzy bunnies, Jedi knights, brides, grooms, Catholic priests, adult toddlers, nuns, schoolgirls and dozens of people in leather chaps. They come with a hodgepodge of toys, from homemade lightsabers to body bags to EZ-bake ovens. I prefer my chew steak and a link of sausage, but not everyone’s a leatherpup with a queer daddy on the other end of their leash.

It sounds weird. Freaky even. I’ll cop to that: I’m a weirdo. My lovers, my handlers and most of my friends are pretty fucking weird too. But this is weird in the John Lennon sense, not the John Wayne Gacy Jr. sense. I may have a talent for flexing my abdominal muscles and shaping my throat in such a way as to produce a woof-like expulsion of air, but I am completely harmless. I don’t bark at small children in the street, nor do I rip the ears off petty-coated Chihuahuas or their identically-dressed handlers. I am, after all, a productive citizen, a stable adult, a moderately talented writer, a dedicated student and an environmentally conscious cyclist. Like the cat lady up the street, I deserve to be forgiven my eccentricities.

A domme’s life
In October, I met Mistress Carissa. She has been a professional dominatrix for 14 years, which means she actually gets paid to dominate clients. I wasn’t looking to be dominated - that’s what my lovers are for. What I wanted was an interview, a way to better understand BDSM by talking to one of its pros. But when it came to her clients, I got the same old story: that curious mixture of elation and shame.

Carissa explained the binge-and-purge cycles some go through.
“They’ll go for so long and then say, ‘Oh this is crazy, I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “They’ll throw everything away. They have a lot of guilt.”
For most of her career, Carissa moved her workspace a minimum of once a year, staying ahead of landlord discovery. Even purchasing a house with a dominatrix collective didn’t solve the problem.

“You have nosy neighbors wherever you’re living,” she said. “They have nothing to do except watch people.”

Despite Carissa’s profession being legal, she can’t claim it on her taxes. Revenue Canada has no employment category for the work she does. Like Madame Cleo’s brothel in Vancouver, she claims herself as a cleaning service.

This is not the story I was hoping to find, however, I wasn’t surprised. Even a professional and her clients feel the press of social taboo upon their shoulders.

“So how much do you know about BDSM anyway?” Carissa asks near the end of our chat.

A lot, I tell her; her face lights up. We talk play parties: I tell her about Sin City and Bride of Pride events in Vancouver while she tries to convince me to join the Sagacity Alternative Society in Victoria. For a moment, I feel elated. Then I remember: the reason we’re bonding is because, socially speaking, we’re freaks.

“[We’re] people from another planet,” Carissa jokes.

Boys in white coats
Humor helps keep the vomit down.

There’s a lot of shame associated with sadomasochistic and BDSM sexualities. The reasons for this are complex, but can probably be traced to the emergence of psychiatry as a branch of Western medicine during the sexually-repressive late 19th century. In the name of knowledge, medicine cast its judgmental gaze on sexuality. Homosexual?

Pathological. Promiscuous? Pathological. Sadomasochistic? Pathological. Seems like anything besides a vanilla, monogamous, heterosexual union was liable to render one medically insane.
Of course, some of this is purely historical.

In 1973, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III (DSM-III) removed homosexuality from its list of disorders. It became medically acceptable to be gay. The case for sadomasochism in the DSM remains murkier. The DSM-IV-TR (2000), lists Sexual Sadism and Sexual Masochism as paraphilias. Paraphilia is a psychological term for a disorder characterized by a partiality toward non-normative sexual activity. It includes pedophilia and necrophilia under its umbrella.

Sadomasochists can be diagnosed as paraphiliacs even if their activities occur between consenting adults.

Sadism and masochism in the DSM are defined as sexual activity involving acts of bondage, humiliation or the giving and receiving of pain. In other words, even innocent Kippur is, medically speaking, a sadomasochist. As a dog, I interact with my world from a space of psychological and physical bondage. I am unable to speak, use fingers or thumbs, or rise from a hands-and-knees position. This bondage is mediated by the application of a collar, placed on me by a handler. The fact that this play is more sensual than sexual is beside the point - I doubt the boys in white coats could make the distinction. So, just like a pedophile, I’m a paraphiliac.

Seriously. What the Freud?
The medical community’s discomfort with sadomasochism began in 1886 with Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s The Psychopathia Sexualis. Among other things, Krafft-Ebing enjoyed invading the orifices of un-consenting transgendered folks - including the imprisoned Count Sandor V. of Hungary - for the purposes of recording the attributes of their genitalia. Of Sandor, Krafft-Ebing imparts details of clitoral sensitivity, narrowness of vaginal cavity and texture of uterus when felt through the anus. But don’t get confused: this rape was done in the name of medical science. I’m the paraphiliac; Krafft-Ebing’s just a doctor.

To be fair, Dr. K-E did give us two things of great value: the terms sadism and masochism. Sadism he named for philosopher the Marquis de Sade, masochism for writer Leopold von Sasher-Masoch. For this I give thanks. If it weren’t for the terms, I would have no way of explaining to my mother what that chest harness and dog collar were doing in my backpack in the first place.

So thanks, Dick. I appreciate it.
What I don’t appreciate is this: Krafft-Ebing said sadism was a pathology stemming from cruelty and a desire to cause pain and humiliation. Defining masochism as sadism’s opposite, he viewed both as perversions. Curiously, he found sadism in males almost natural, explaining it by way of instincts toward dominance and sexual conquest. Masochism is more displeasing to him: he damns the male masochist as psychically impotent. No wonder Mistress Carissa’s clients feel shame.

Line in the sand
In 1938, Sigmund Freud piped up with a message that echoed Krafft-Ebing’s. Freud’s writing marks the moment where the two “pathologies” - sadism and masochism - begin to become one: sadomasochism. Freud recognized that both tendencies often exist in the same subject: the sadist is a masochist, and vice versa.

Writing in the same era, Havelock Ellis was the first scholar to propose a sympathetic view of sadomasochism. He rejected the concept of cruelty, instead uncovering the intimate and interpersonal nature of consensual S&M.

To Ellis, both sadist and masochist desire that the pain they exchange be felt as love. He noted that pain is a stimulant for emotion. Humans cry in the face of agony or loss, but also in the face of joy or love. Overlooking this would be a grave error in any study of BDSM. The division between pain and pleasure is less of a stone wall and more of a line traced in sand: not immutable, not impassable, easily crossed or disrupted.
This knowledge of pleasure as pain is not exclusive to BDSM practitioners. It’s a bit of wisdom that is everyday to human experience. Many people prod bruises, delighting in the torment. Some cry to release stress or negative emotion. Others push their bodies to their limits in strenuous workouts, then bask in the afterglow of an endorphin rush. Nearly every sexually active adult or rambunctious child periodically tickles, scratches, bites, wrestles and pinches in the throes of play. Hurting and being hurt, in a safe and controlled manner by someone who cares, feels good.

We’re all a lot kinkier than Krafft-Ebing would have us believe.
But if we’re all a bit kinky, why does society still frown on BDSM? These days, fuzzy handcuffs are acceptable bedroom accessories, yet most people shudder at the thought of whips and floggers or needles and paddles, not to mention human dogs.

What’s so scary about consenting adults having a little fun? It’s not as though the BDSM community is a wild, untamed world where anything goes. It’s a subculture with carefully enforced rules and practices to ensure safety and positivity for its members. There are theories and philosophies of safe play widely available online. The two most common philosophies are Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) and Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) - a philosophy that allows for the fact that nothing is ever 100 per cent safe. A condom, for instance, has a certain chance of failure (between one and 15 percent) but is still recognized as one of the most effective ways of guarding against STI transmission.
RACK allows for a similar failure rate in kink. The point is to be educated about the risks and to play as safely as possible, not to live in a sterilized, foam-padded environment where nothing could ever go wrong.

Journey of trust
Yet even with all the measures taken for emotional and physical safety, some people have trouble accepting that BDSM is not abuse. When I ask Carissa’s opinion, she says people have a mental block: they don’t want to understand BDSM, so they shut down.

“They can’t even go there, some people,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, but they just can’t fathom it.”

BDSM is scary, though not necessarily for the reasons one might assume. It’s terrifying for the same reason it’s liberating: it challenges our sense of ourselves. It dismantles the boundaries between adulthood and childhood with its games and play. It breaks down the line between human and animal with human puppies, ponies and kitties. It disrupts gender. It redefines sex. It is physical, emotional and spiritual, and it allows otherwise stable adults to transgress categorical boundaries. It’s a fluid space where identity breaks down.

Since the damning days of Krafft-Ebing, many BDSM players have brought their voices to the page in defense of their activities. American writer Scott Tucker points out in Leatherfolk that pain in consensual S&M is more a journey than a destination. It is a route out of the confines of everyday life and into a realm of self-discovery and transgression. This statement is true of different types of play. For me, being a dog is only half the point. Puptime is about leaving myself behind in order to discover an entirely new dimension of self. Kippur, the adventurous boy that he is, is the Greyhound that takes me away from, then back to, home.

The emotional and psychological benefits of BDSM have been written about by many writers, including Pat Califia and Dossie Easton. Some laud the endorphin high produced by consensual pain as one of the key pleasures. Others argue that BDSM is a form of stress relief.

The ability to give up or take on power in a playful manner allows people to let go of everyday tensions. A healthy BDSM relationship also involves an intense level of trust. This creates a deep and intimate bond between top and bottom, dominant and submissive, sadist and masochist. Or pup and master. Put simply, consensual BDSM builds loving relationships.

Daddy’s best friend
A few days after the vomit conversation, I met up with my daddy again. She was in a foul mood: school, parents and money were weighing on her like ten tons of shit. Her expression suggested even a 12-pack of beer and the fattest joint rolled beneath the sun couldn’t make her smile.
We tested out a new collar that evening. A chainmail weave designed by a leatherdyke in Vancouver, it was to be my passing collar. In other words, with it around my neck I would be capable of remaining in dog headspace while passing for human in public. Daddy had to teach Kippur a whole new set of tricks: how to stand, use fingers and thumbs and comprehend basic speech. Considering her mood, I was worried the exercise would be too much.

But when my collar went on, daddy’s face transformed. Her dark mood departed; her eyes gleamed. She read to Kippur from a dog book, showed him videos of talking canines, laughed at his pathetic attempts at speech, took him for a walk and held a cigarette patiently to his lips until he learned how to inhale. She was healing in front of his eyes.

To mark the occasion, I leapt up beside her on the bed. Bowling her over with my shoulder, I stood above her with my paws straddling her chest. Like that dog on Letterman, I howled into her face: “Ahhh wwruv roooo!”
She grinned, embarrassed.

“Ahhhrruuuvrooooo!” I repeated. Then I attacked her with a bombardment of face-licking, ass-wagging love. She struggled to push me away, giggling, squirming. Her strong hands groped at my neck and shoulders, rough and gentle in the same instant. “Okay Kippur, okay! That’s enough!” Then, as I sat back on my haunches, she said, “I love you too, boy.”

What more could a leatherdog ask?