Late Stage Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and Ass Beating

 What a strange combination!

As part of my Seraph path, I am reading a couple of heavy, academic works on BDSM as the last two of the books I was directed to read.  This one, Techniques of Pleasure:  BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality by Dr. Margot Weiss of Wesleyan University, is an amazing look into the world of BDSM in many ways.  Dr. Weiss goes down many different paths in this text, as it is an outgrowth of her doctoral dissertation at Duke University.  In this blog, I am going to examine of her areas of study:  the intersection of late stage capitalism, Neoliberal thinking, and various aspects of BDSM in the San Francisco scene of the early 2000s.

Weiss gained access to the BDSM community in San Francisco by actually having to look for the kinky people.  Today if one were interested in finding a BDSM group, one simply gets on Google or Fetlife and explores to their heart's content.  In the early 00's, as the Internet was a thing but not yet the thing, it was not quite possible to use the fairly early Web to find the ministers.    So by using an arcane tome called "The White Pages," and some contacts she had made, she was able to get involved with various BDSM groups in the area.

The interesting thing here is that what Weiss describes in 2002 is literally what the BDSM community looks like today:  mostly white, middle aged, middle to upper middle class mostly, and comprised of a lot of professional people that have found a home in a marginalized group that is largely antithetical to their vanilla, professional type life.  She ties conceptions of neoliberalism to this group, and states that the creation and presentation of self in BDSM groups is tied very closely to late stage capitalism and the formulation of status via what we term conspicuous consumption, or the creation of wealth to flaunt it.  

As she says:

SM communities are not oppositional to, but rather complicit with, transformations in capitalism, particularly the consolidation of what is variously called late, flexible, informational, or advanced capitalism. Although different scholars emphasize different aspects of this shift, late capitalism is characterized by flexibility, new relations between production and consumption, a shift from Fordist to post-Fordist production, and the rise of new technologies and informatics.  (Kindle Location 270-273).

Neoliberalism is largely seen as a meeting point between desires to free and empower people and the use of classical liberal ideas of free markets,  reduced (but not removed) stress on safety net ideology, and a push for people to self-actualize in order to gain the greatest freedoms.  It is really the thought process behind the Bill Clinton "Third Way" of the 1990s.  With these ideas came the concept that status is gained not through manual labor and finished products (which Marxism championed), but rather through the purchase of commodities.  By giving people increased ability to make a comfortable living, they would be able to enter this world more fully and so be a ensconced member of society.

Weiss's argument here is that the world of BDSM practice is a wellspring of neoliberal, capitalistic thinking.  To be "successful" in a BDSM community, one goes to purchase a dizzying array of beaters, paddles, devices, outfits, accessories, and so on.  These items are not necessarily expensive, but many can get to the $100+ range.  For example, I have a lovely black and red shot loaded, hard spanker that was custom made for me.  It would normally cost $95, but as I'm a "repeat customer" and the designer had made me wait a long time due to issues on his end, he gave it to me for $65.

This kind of conspicuous consumption would appear to be madness to a person who is barely making ends meet, but for me, a person who is upper middle class, with little in the way of necessities I must pay, why wouldn't I pay $65, or even the originally agreed upon $95, for such a lovely toy?  Showing it to people instantly gives me a certain degree of status, much more than if I were walking around with a $20 crop I got in the bargain bin from a dealer at a BDSM expo.  My actual ability to perform a scene is often secondary to the fact I can walk around with such toys, or open my toy bag and show a potential scene partner a lovely set of toys to work with.

By the way, I am a lightweight in this -- people I know at the club have literally thousands of dollars of toys, far more than my $600 or so investment in my BDSM lifestyle.  A few Tops I know come into the club with a full suitcase, containing multiple examples of every toy one could imagine.

There is nothing to say that anyone needs to spend this amount of money to be seen as an accomplished member of the community.  Indeed, my club has offered a class in "How to create a $30 toybag" by going to the local dollar store and buying a set of items to beat people with.  However, I can attest that a person looking for a scene is going to give the Top with the thousands of dollars of various toys far more status than some nice, probably more than adequate top who pulls out some wooden and plastic spoons and gadgets they purchased at Dollar Tree and Big Lots.  

What Weiss found in these early 2000s BDSM communities is that the most successful people were the ones that could afford the most, so the community fits well into the neoliberal world of consumption and status.  However, quite interestingly, the members of this community also were able to take on the status of deviants by being members of a marginalized community.  Thus, white, middle class and above professionals could be the objects of mistrust, hatred, and marginalization, "just like other groups."  So even though their relative levels of power, status and wealth were very high, they could self-construct themselves as "deviant, disliked' people.  It was all very interesting.

As I live in a large city (Los Angeles) and it is nearly 20 years past when Weiss was doing her ethnographic study, I can't say things are exactly the same.  As I say above, I can still see a good deal of this conspicuous consumption going on, but we have had a good number of people of color in our club over the years (indeed, two of our board members have been people of color), and everyone is welcomed regardless of what level of status and wealth they portray.  

Also, we have a very good collection of under 35s (what is called in BDSM parlance "The Next Generation") who do have a more "Bernie Sanders" approach to their BDSM lifestyle: less on the external showing off and more on the practice side and community.  But still, even among them I can see some of this glamorization of commodities and status via items that is part and parcel of Weiss' "late stage capitalism."  We shall see where this goes, it is an interesting time!

Much more will come out of this book, I'm only 7% done with it!  But this really struck a chord with me sociologically, and I wanted to get some of it down now.