When I read Mayer and Farrow’s New Yorker article, I was struck by their use of the phrase “nonconsensual physical violence” to refer to Schneiderman’s alleged acts. Unlike BDSM, which means so many things that it means almost nothing, “nonconsensual physical violence” is chillingly pure — it means that one person hurt another person’s body without permission. But the phrase also interests me because it holds the implication that physical violence can be consensual. Sometimes, the phrase “nonconsensual physical violence” allows, you and your partner can agree that pain, whether received or inflicted, is pleasurable. This discomfiting idea of pain is, as consent is, woven into the fabric of BDSM; it’s often the BDSM aspect (other than its black leather and chrome aesthetic) that alienates people who don’t dabble in rough sex; and it’s the aspect that’s most volatile, slipping from delight into agony with ease. [...]
What strikes me, however, is this: While feminists, sociologists, and human behaviorists question women’s choice of the submissive role almost ad nauseam, the idea that kinky (cis-het) men are somehow naturally dominant goes without interrogation. Of course, culture murmurs, men want to be dominant — why would they want to give up their power? Men who want to be doms fit into the mystique of the “alpha male,” our culture’s idea that manly men get what they want by taking charge, spanking ass, and calling names — and, certainly, this masculine swagger has appealed to me. Much to my intellect’s shame, I have thrilled to hearing “good girl” growled in my ear. [...]
But maybe — just maybe — these men’s dominant kink is a cover for their misogyny and their anger. It’s easy for men to mistake their private motives when society already gives hypermasculinity a big blank check. It’s even easier if those men — perhaps including Schneiderman — strive to perform flawless feminist progressive politics in a culture that demeans caring men, in a society that tells women every day that their experiences don’t matter, and in a world where masculinity wafts with a toxic fug. [...]
These two “woke” guys publicly performed a feminist sensibility while privately assuming a bad-boy, sexy, naughty BDSM identity. But the feminism was fake, while their rage — at women, at themselves, at their families, at society, at whatever it is that angers white men with advanced degrees — was real. These men appeared to embody the fascinating dichotomy of enlightened politics and raw male sexual magnetism, and this bifurcated appearance was as important to them as it was to me. For as much as these guys’ façades and naughty underbellies fed their egos (and got them sex), together they also formed a shield. After all, you can’t possibly be a misogynist when you’re a feminist, right?
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