Pleasantly Painful, Excruciatingly Exciting: The Dominant/Submissive Binary in Popular Representations of BDSM Scenes L U C A S DE L E L L I S D A S I LVA
Chains, ropes, dominatrices, and a lot of latex. With the increased representation of BDSM in popular culture, the historically pathologized practice has gained a confined, yet refreshing space previously dominated by normative sexual expressions. Because of the centrality of power relations in BDSM, the practice is often informed by binaries: object versus subject, passive versus active, pleasure versus pain, dominant versus submissive. In real life, these binaries are played with and the BDSM space becomes a queer space. However, instead of queering sexuality and deconstructing the aforementioned binaries, BDSM representation in popular media has reinforced fixed binaries out of the necessity of appealing to the heteronormative gaze. There are several ways in which one could classify the binary between who makes the action and who receives the action in BDSM. Instead of using the vocabulary of active versus passive, or subject versus object, I have decided to use the language of dominant and submissive. The reason for that is because this is the vocabulary used in BDSM itself. Using any other form of categorization would be part of constructing an argument about agency. The vocabulary of “active” and “passive” presupposes that only one of the individuals is actually putting the action forward, while the passive is only able to receive the action, as if there is no agency whatsoever involved in this interaction. The same connotation goes with the terms “subject” and “object.” In this vocabulary, the active or the subject is the one detaining all the possibilities for action. These words imply that the “active” or the “subject” has something that is withheld from the “object” or the “passive.” Therefore, I will use the language of dominant (dom) and the submissive (sub) to analyze the mediatic portrayal of their interplay. 120
EXIT 11
