Consenting to Non-Consent
I have never understood non-consent. Well, perhaps I can understand it somewhat intellectually, but I really don’t understand it in any kind of visceral manner.
I just really can’t see what would be interesting about it. I know Rona finds it hot from one side, Eileen from another, and can find fantasies on it all over the web if I look, and yet seem to be missing something about it.
It may be simply that I really have no interest. That’s fine, there are lots of things I have no interest in. It may be I just haven’t found an approach to it that works for me.
In an IM conversation, Eileen said that "Non-con fantasies come out when you start taking simple feelings inspired by different parts of BDSM and taking them to extremes."
An example she gave concerned bondage. One of the things I like about binding people is removing certain options from my partner. I like seeing how there are things my partner wants to instinctively do that they can’t, and so are forced to process or react to in another way. It is the same when I am bound (although it has been some time since I’ve been bound).
There is something creative in placing restraints. Not just in sex, but in many creative endeavours, too much freedom is sometimes a problem, while putting limits into play forces creative solutions and new responses. It is one of the reasons games have rules. Calvinball is fun sometimes, but so is chess.
But none of that strikes me as non-con in any way. One consents to removing options. Eileen has said that a lot of non-con is "becoming aroused by playing with the tipping point when options are just-this-side of gone". I can get that intellectually.
I think that there are a number of issues involved for me. One of the main ones is simply that I am heavily invested in the idea of consent - active, affirmative assent. It is something I argue as for what the standard of consent should be, ethically, rather than the negative framing we tend to have now in society. Too much feminist and social theory makes it difficult for me to not find non-con immediately suspect. Another issue may simply be that most of the non-con fantasies I have ever read strike me as really abusive. (Yes, I know fantasy is not reality.) A third is likely that the one couple I know at all intimately who played with non-con, who are both long-experienced kinksters who had been together for years, had it blow up on them rather spectacularly. They are no longer together, and for some time she considered the incident sexual assault (I don’t know if she has re-assessed her view of that or whether she simply decided it wasn’t worth arguing about anymore.) I know that he has sworn off ever playing with non-con past a really low level again, no matter how much his partner might claim to want it.
I think I have difficulty hearing "non-consentual" and going straight to "no say whatsoever". Everything less than that isn’t non-consentual in my mind, it is negotiated limits. (For instance, my mention of putting a knife to someone’s throat and making them give me a blowjob. The only people I would consider doing that to are people I know would find it hot and who would trust me to do it - so it isn’t non-consentual in any interpretation in my brain.)
So I ask you all (limited though my readership is), what makes non-consentual play hot? What is it I am missing? Or, rather, what might you suggest is a way for me to have an in to see why people find it hot? Or is it just that I am, in a way, doing the same thing with non-con that I do with kink in general. defining anything I do understand as not really non-con?
Hmm… As I’ve said in the past the non-con line for me isn’t a line it’s a blurry field. It contains some of the following areas…
a)Things that I can’t admit to wanting, but that would be really hot if someone would make me do them. (And I have issues with this one for reasons similar to your consent issues, since these are by and large entirely sexual things and I sometimes think if I can’t talk about things, or if I have to be made to talk about them, that I shouldn’t be allowed to have them. Still… this is a hot area for me)
2)Things I don’t want to do, but that my partner REALLY wants to do, and that I don’t have any real objection to or that I find mildly mentally unpleasant. I can find these things hot because they ping my sexual or non-sexual service buttons.
3)Things I really don’t want to do, that aren’t just uninteresting they’re actually abhorrent. And that I WILL NOT DO. Things that if you try to get me to do I will safeword and if you try again I will probably try to hurt you as soon as I am able.
So, for me, non-consensual play isn’t actually non-consensual. It’s nothing I’m not accepting. It’s nothing I’m really horrified by. It’s just things I either can’t admit I want or wouldn’t do if someone wasn’t making me but don’t really object to on principle.
And I don’t go anywhere near that shit without a safeword. Because I need to be able to say “No, stop” and mean it without things stopping, so we can play on that line, but I also need to be able to say “Red” and have it stop immediately. To be perfectly frank I think playing with non-con shit with someone who can’t safeword (emotionally, physically, whatever) is a very dangerous proposition. Obviously other people’s mileage may vary, but I think that for a lot of people non-con stuff is the areas where they’re not comfortable admitting they’re kinky and so they need some level of push to do the things they want to in their ID.
Comment by Rona — January 10, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
Rona.
Thanks for answering.
To go in order.
1) This is one of the one that intrigues me. I can’t really think of anything I would want that I can’t ask for. Also, I tend to believe that you shouldn’t get what you can’t ask for. Obviously, I am well aware many people think otherwsie. When I discussed consent in the past, people have sometimes said that being asked if they want something or having to ask for it themselves, made it less hot or was proof the relationship wasn’t working. (”They should just know.”) As you know, there is someone I am involved with now who has trouble asking for what they want and has told me flat out that they can’t be taken at face value concerning these things. This is extremely difficult for me, not the least due to my last serious relationship blowing up in a large part due to my partner’s unwillingness to express her desires, either positive or negative.
But.. to return to the point, making you do something you want to do but won’t ask for doesn’t strike me as non-consent.
2) Again, I don’t really find anything non-consensual about that. I have a service thing, both sexual and non-sexual. But there is a huge difference between doing something that isn’t super hot for me, or even a bit annoying, and being MADE to do something I don’t want. I am choosing to inconvenience myself for my partner.
3) Right. That’s non-consent. And this is where my brain goes when I hear “non-consent” play. Because the others involve consenting. I remember once hearing of the person who negotiated a scene with someone, and expressly put their lack of interest in certain things on the table. As soon as they left the room, the domme they were talking to announced her intention to do exactly those things to this person, since that was obviously where they needed to be pushed. I find shit like that insane.
As for your point about someone being unable to safeword… I agree. I have all kinds of worries about playing with someone who admits they tend to get to a place where they feel they can’t safeword.
Obviously other people’s mileage may vary, but I think that for a lot of people non-con stuff is the areas where they’re not comfortable admitting they’re kinky and so they need some level of push to do the things they want to in their ID.
And that worries me as well. It is probably the feminist (pro-feminist, ally, what have you) in me. I saw far too many college girls arranging situations so they could have sex which they didn’t want to admit to. I think it an incredibly self-destructive way to go about things, and it lends itself to the thought process that allows the self-justification of “they will like it if I make them” which I think a fine step on the way to abuse.
Comment by Victor — January 11, 2008 @ 6:48 am
I think I have difficulty hearing “non-consentual” and going straight to “no say whatsoever”. Everything less than that isn’t non-consentual in my mind, it is negotiated limits.
What I think you might be missing in this concept is that the above statement is absolutely true of non-con play. That’s why, as I’ve said, it’s called play.
I’m not sure that addressing why the thing is attractive for me might be helpful any further in this discussion, because there’s always a difficulty when explaining a visceral want in intellectual terms.
But perhaps I can elaborate a bit on how non-con play can actually work, and not constantly be seen simply as “play within negotiated limits.”
Three simple words: suspension of disbelief.
As someone who enjoys this kind of play from the top, I have to simultaneously recognize all the ways in which the scene is fake while enabling my bottom to imagine that the scene is real.
Some people are more suggestible than others; for some, having a knife held to their throat is an intensely scary experience which emphasizes the possibility of me forcing them into something they do not want. This is simplistic, but it works for people who have that connection with knives, or can get that kind of thrill out of the threat (not the reality, just the threat) of being forced.
Other people need more elaborate set-ups to allow them to practice suspension of disbelief. Maybe they need to be pulled from a hallway, hooded and dragged to a dark spot by a gang of people, and then strapped to a chair with a bright light in their face. Sometimes it’s all in the details.
Yet other people don’t need set-up, but rather surprise, anticipation, or shock and fear. These are where the practice of mind-fucks comes in amazingly handy. Once, for about the space of thirty seconds, I made May genuinely believe I had cut his throat open. Of course that scared the shit out of him. Of course he figured it out very, very fast. But in those few seconds, that’s where the suspension of disbelief became real for him. He wasn’t even gagged or bound; he could have stopped me, safeworded, taken my knife away, any number of things.
It’s called “consensual non-consent” specifically because on a base level it is always consensual. You might never find a way to parse that knowledge and simultaneously set it aside. That’s okay; after all, it’s not your kink
.
My apologies if this comment posts multiple times.
Comment by Eileen — January 11, 2008 @ 11:28 am
Eileen. (regarding your last comment, I have received more than one complaint about the blogsome version of wordpress, I may have to change it)
I’m not sure that addressing why the thing is attractive for me might be helpful any further in this discussion, because there’s always a difficulty when explaining a visceral want in intellectual terms.
I understand that. Still, I think it is the “why this is hot for me” that I am trying to figure out. As for your examples… I’m starting to think I just really have no interest. Not knowing what you are going to do next? Hot. Assuming you are going to do things specifically because I don’t like them/they scare me/against my will? Not hot.
Comment by Victor — January 13, 2008 @ 12:06 am
Actual non consent is NOT hot. Playing on that line? Totally can be, but it takes a LOT of trust that things won’t be pushed from one, in to the other.
Both Rona & Eileen have made more than adequate comments as to the hows & whys if this.
Comment by misskitty_79 — January 16, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Kitty.
A question, in order to fish out some of whether this is as much about the way I label things to keep myself happy as anything else.
Have you and I done anything that you would consider non-con play?
Comment by Victor Alcazar — January 16, 2008 @ 10:02 pm