“You can be a deviant, dearie. Just not where I can see it.”
On a less snarky note: do I believe that people can be triggered by BDSM posts? Absolutely, I do. But this alone does not mean that BDSM can only be talked about in disparaging terms on the various feminist sites out there. Plenty of stuff on feminist sites brings up some rather horrific images for me, and not all of it comes with a warning either. Doesn’t mean I get to tell the authors to STFU.
And you know what, perhaps women want to talk about their BDSM experiences in a feminist context because, guess what, the assumption that one cannot enjoy BDSM or else that one could not possibly call oneself a feminist while practicing BDSM is something they wish to challenge?
Personally, I’m tired of the “SHUT UP about X being empowerfulizing” argument that gets thrown around, both in relation to sex and other matters, just as I am tired of the bloody hierarchies and such. The “SHUT UP” thing rarely addresses the actual substance of any given argument or related experience. It’s the death of nuance. I can’t live without nuance.
It’s like saying, “you know, I really rather love The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It’s really too bad that the author was so horribly sexist, but this passage, for example, on page…”
And hearing in response something like, “SHUT UP! You just loooove that sexist bastard Leo Tolstoy, don’t you? How TYPICAL! He hated women. HATED WOMEN. And you love him because you’re a male-identified sparklepony sellout idiot! Hah!”
– “But… no. That’s not what I said at all. I think it’s truly unfortunate how misogyny permeated the work of great writers such as Tolstoy. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t look at this book and take something out of it, like, for example…”
– “SHUT UP! He called death a ‘She’! That’s all I need to know! You love misogyny!”
– “Actually, it was ‘It’ in the original Russian. Anyway, as I was saying…
– “Misogyny! You love it!”
– “But you’re being unreasonable…”
– “WHAT? You said women are unreasonable?”
– “Um, OK. Screw this.”
– “Get back here! I’ll bite your legs off!”
etc.