I think the safest way to approach this subject is to say that BDSM, like anything else, has liberating and oppressive possibilities.

For instance, I really try to avoid the "Your kink is not okay," thing, but goddamned if there aren't some people in the kink community who creep me out. I'm a little disturbed by het guys who are exclusively tops, for instance. I think that most liberating, subversive experiences come from transgressing boundaries and experimenting with new roles, rather than finding one and sticking with it. Curiosity, not education, is the key to genius, and I think that applies to kink as well as more intellectual pursuits. And frankly, I find that a lot of kink folk have an unimaginative, humorless streak that borders on puritanism.

What's really lovely about the videos that Mistress Matisse shows on her site is the sense of raunchy humor which is often completely suppressed by the nature of rigid roles, either gendered roles or "power play" roles. Sex is too important to take seriously. That might sound glib, but it's true.

So in short, I really like what Mistress Matisse is talking about here, in the sense of giving and taking power in a fluid way. I think that it transgresses an awful lot of what we're frequently taught both in vanilla culture and in kink groups.

Blog: Literate Perversions

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then finally y