BDSM: Not this year’s blowjob oration

BY NATASHA THONDAVADI

Have you ever gotten a hickey? Given a hickey? Most of us have. But what most of us don’t know is that even something as simple as hickey can share motivations with BDSM, a collective term that denotes the sexual preferences of Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism. Despite this ignorance, about 40 students gathered on Wednesday to hear a panel on the topic of BDSM. From the experienced kinkster to the virgin, everyone seemed to be curious. To be honest, from the moment I saw the event on the Sex Week 2012 calendar, I was intrigued.

As a gaggle of giggling freshmen filed into the back row of the small LC lecture hall, I realised what it was that was so captivating about the event on paper: the spectacle. As a sophomore, I wasn’t at Yale for the famed blow job oration, and this event probably seemed the closest within thisyear’s Sex Week repertoire to the hotly debated scandal. So it’s really remarkable that the panelists managed to keep the dialogue mature and the analysis reasonable — if you expected to see one of the speakers whip out a pair of handcuffs, you were probably one of the many students who trickled out over the course of the talk.

The three panelists offered diverse perspectives. Dr.Charley Ferrer, who ran the show, is a Clinical Sexologist and seemed well versed herself in the goings-on of the BDSM “community” (more on that later).Judy Guerin’s place on the panel derived explicitly from her extensive experience in the practise and education of BDSM. And adding a sobering tone to the whole experience, Dick Cunningham spoke of BDSM from the angle of a legal consultant on issues of discrimination with WASP flair.

Many of the ideas discussed were new to me. The panelists spoke of the “BDSM community” as a source for warmth, advice, acceptance and continuing education — but as one anonymous audience member asked, isn’t BDSM kinda, ya know, private thing? Especially when the speakers seemed to continually stress the difference between the consensual, if uncommon, sexual practices and actual violence. But BDSM can be private or public, sexual or nonsexual — it’s more of a need to, say, feel like a slave than to necessarily be a sex slave. Guerin stressed this angle of looking at BDSM as an overall desire, describing it as her sexual orientation, much as some people would identify as gay or straight.

But regardless of the variety of viewpoints expressed, the panelists agreed that the most important aspect of learning about BDSM is learning to accept the practise. Less than twenty years ago, the desire for BDSM sexual practises was considered a mental illness. While that classification may have been erased, the associated stigmas still exist. And so the speakers stressed that the main take-away from the event should be that BDSM isn’t weird, gross or misogynistic. Rather, it’s anything you and your partner want it to be.