ABSTRACT
Like many postmodern texts, this chapter should be understood as a tentative attempt to tackle a very complex subject-area, which seeks to open up a dialogue and does not aim to provide yet another meta-narrative. The content of this Chapter is derived both from a critical theoretical exploration of the notions of ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’, and on data collected during a criminological, methodologically mainly qualitative, social research project I carried out in London’s consensual ‘S/M Scene’. I conducted unstructured, focused interviews as well as participant observation with the aim of exploring the ‘lived realities’ of consensual ‘S/M’ and its ‘subjugated knowledges’. (As is standard practice, names have been changed. For further details of the interviews contact the author. ‘S/M’ is in inverted commas throughout to emphasise that it is a social construction.)
The data collected provided information about the diversity of erotic experimentation and ‘bodily practices’ (Mauss, 1979) of consensual ‘S/M’. These bodily practices (a term I find more adequate, in describing and understanding the empirical world of consensual ‘S/M’ as I encountered it, than the simultaneously value-laden and, in contemporary consumer society, meaningless term ‘sexuality’) often stand in deep contrast to the cultural imperatives of genital ‘sexuality’ and to the day-to-day wholesaling of ‘sex’ as a consumer product. My data also revealed the central importance of responsibility and rights within consensual ‘S/M’, an importance that escapes traditional understandings and interpretations of these notions.
