Role Play Isn't an Excuse for Abuse: What to Know about BDSM, Kink, Consent, and Eric Schneiderman
This week, now-former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down from his office after the New Yorker published a bombshell report in which four women accused him of violence and abuse. He has denied the allegations, but even in an era abundant with details about the alleged sexual practices of our elected officials—from the president down—Schneiderman took an unusual tack. In his statement, he claimed he hadn’t abused anyone, but rather had engaged in consensual “role-playing” in the bedroom.
Schneiderman’s statement read, in full:
“In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”
But when I read the New Yorker article, I felt strongly that the accusations leveled against him in the piece don’t describe what kinky folks partake in as part of BDSM (that is, bondage, dominance, sadomasochism).
As a 34-year-old who’s engaged in this type of sexual behavior since high school, I know BDSM to be safe, sane, and consensual. Instead, the behavior that Schneiderman’s accusers describe involves brutal, nonconsensual assaults, which allegedly surprised and scared his victims.
Moreover, in some instances, the abuse wasn’t sexual at all. “This did not happen while we were having sex,” one of the women, Michelle Manning Barish, said in her account. “I was fully dressed and remained that way.” (Two women spoke to the New Yorker on the record, and an additional two women remained unnamed.)
In the piece, journalists Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow wrote:
“[Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam] allege that [Schneiderman] repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on them as ‘assault.’ … [B]oth say they sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and also choked.”
The women claim Schneiderman engaged in other nonconsensual behaviors, including name-calling, spitting on them, and making demeaning comments about their appearance. And there’s a problematic racial element as well: Selvaratnam, who was born in Sri Lanka, said Schneiderman referred to her as his “brown slave” and demanded “that I repeat that I was ‘his property.’”
On their own, these allegations are horrible (and hypocritical), given Schneiderman’s cultivated reputation as not just a feminist, but a champion of abused women. (He recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, which claims that Weinstein mistreated, intimidated, and harassed his staff.)
But what disgusts those of us who engage in BDSM is any abusive man’s attempt to align himself with us by portraying himself as a dominant playing with his submissives.
But what disgusts those of us who engage in BDSM is any abusive man’s attempt to align himself with us by portraying himself as a dominant playing with his submissives. Myself and others who engage in dominant and submissive power play in the bedroom renounce and abhor anything like Schneiderman’s alleged behavior. Furthermore, as BDSM becomes more accepted in the mainstream — thanks to movies like Secretary and songs like “S&M” by Rihanna — we now also see our sexuality co-opted and contorted.
Consensual “role play” is a handy excuse for Schneiderman in response to these allegations of violence, but they don’t pass muster in the BDSM community. Kink is a dynamic between partners built on a foundation of trust. Ethical role play requires that mutually acceptable behaviors are established beforehand and that limits are respected. The abuse that Schneiderman is accused of is, given his power and rank in legal circles, a distinct case, but alas, it’s also familiar. Most of my own kinky partners have adhered to the safe, sane, and consensual tenets but still, there are outliers, and like Schneiderman, they are dangerous.
I was violated by a sexual partner once, and it occurred during consensual BDSM play. When I used our safe word, he accused me of misunderstanding what a dominant actually does in bed. He implied that it was my fault and did it in such a way as to imply that I was ruining his fun.
But I didn’t misunderstand. I don’t think he misunderstood, either. He wanted to cause pain that I didn’t want to feel, and that was both physically and psychologically abusive. For days, I had the worst bruises that I’ve ever had on my backside. I knew they weren’t like the errant bumps or scratches that can occur to anyone fooling around in bed; I knew these marks had been intentional and had been meant to hurt me.
Like consent itself, talking about BDSM play should be a continual conversation with frequent check-ins.
If BDSM is something you’re interested in exploring with a partner, a conversation about it needs to occur while both partners are sober and well in advance of clothes coming off. And it shouldn’t be one conversation either. Like consent itself, talking about BDSM play should be a continual conversation with frequent check-ins. I’ve been married for almost five years and my husband could probably write a dissertation about my sexual quirks, yet I still have conversations with him about what I do and do not want.
Not only is forthright communication good, ethical bedroom behavior, but it’s also reflective of the fact everyone gets their jollies in a different way. Slapping, choking, or being called a “whore” or “slut” — the behaviors Schneiderman allegedly engaged in — are, in fact, practices that some people find sexy in bed. Others enjoy being spanked, whipped, or caned, being handcuffed or tied up. There are endless ways to engage in verbal and physical sexual power play.
Most crucially, none of these behaviors should come as a surprise to a BDSM partner during play (or as practitioners refer to it, “during a scene.”). Both partners must want the behavior, know how an encounter will happen, and consent to it, with room for the terms of the experience to be readjusted and renegotiated while it occurs. And crucially, within BDSM, the play stops immediately when one of the practitioners wants it to stop — typically with the use of a safe word. (I personally find “stop” to work just fine, but many people use “yellow” for “slow down” and “red” for “stop.”)
Schneiderman’s victims describe his reported behavior out-of-the-blue and not only continuing, but, in some cases, escalating, when they made it clear they wanted it to stop. Consensual sexualized violence shouldn’t cause sustained physical harm, like vertigo or ringing in the ears. Of particular concern is how dismissive Schneiderman was when the women allegedly emphasized how unwanted his behavior was. EJ Dickson, an editor at Men’s Health, aptly referred to Schneiderman’s “defense” on Twitter as a smokescreen for intimate partner violence, and experts cited in the New Yorker back that up: Jennifer Friedman, a legal expert on domestic violence, explained that a “slap is not just a slap—it reverberates through the rest of the relationship, making her afraid of setting him off.” That isn’t kink; that’s abuse.
My experience, and that of Schneiderman’s victims, are the antithesis of how BDSM is truly practiced. As the kink-positive feminist writer Feminista Jones wrote Glamour.com in an email:
“Above all else, those of us who live this lifestyle regard consent as non-negotiable, so when someone engages in nonconsensual kink with someone else, that is generally viewed as abuse. When I heard the descriptions of what he is accused of doing, my first reaction was ‘Are they in The Life?’ because what was described was not unheard of in our realm. However, the women say they did not agree to these things and THAT is the difference — you can’t force your kink onto anyone.”
Or, as Michelle Manning Barish’s lawyer Debra S. Katz told the New York Times, it was Schneiderman’s “fantasy and his fantasy alone that the behavior was welcome.”
My own violation both scared and disappointed me, particularly because it showed how no matter how much I discussed or negotiated beforehand, a man could still hurt me in a vulnerable moment if he wanted. That experience caused me to be less trusting of men in general and more cautious around kinky men, especially.
I have since warned other kinky women I know who are dating about the identity of the man who hurt me; I’ve been warned about other men as well. But one-on-one warnings and whisper networks of the “Shitty Media Men” list variety aren’t enough. Not only does the abusive behavior have to stop, but abusive men need to own up to their behavior — and to stop blaming it on BDSM.