A friend just moved to Alt-Tempelhof. The apartment is a dream, with high ceilings and lots of sun. But we Umzugshelfer*innen had to wonder: Is there anything at all in this neighborhood? My friend told us there’s a BDSM fetish club just around the corner. Everyone laughed – what kind of weirdos must hang out there? But I had a nervous smile. Sure, I’ve been to Insomnia. I guess I’m one of those weirdos.
While working on the prostitution issue of Exberliner, I did an interview with two dominatrixes about sex work. Kristina Marlen offers classes about rope bondage and I was curious. I had been a boy scout, but it turns out this requires a completely different skill set. So why not go to Insomnia to learn the ropes, so to speak?
I remember I was nervous as hell, but it turns out a fetish club can be a very relaxed place. In some part of my mind, I was thinking the whole club would be old men. And over the course of the evening, I did see one old guy who struck me as a bit strange. But most of the visitors were young women. In fact, when we had to break up into pairs to practice knots on each other, there was a shortage of men.
There were some grey-haired couples there, and while I personally didn’t find them particularly sexy, they were really sweet. The only thing that freaked me out was the club’s obsessively thorough dress code – but they still let me in wearing a black t-shirt and mostly clean shoes.
My friend is from the anarcho-vegan scene – so militantly anti-sexist that you get corrected if you fail to pronounce the gender-neutral forms of agglomerated words (“it’s pronounced Bürger*innenbegehren“). So how do I explain that I went to a class to learn, amongst other things, to restrain women for sex?
The trick is: Sadomasochism, or SM, doesn’t have anything to do with abuse. Some of the stuff you find on the internet can look really creepy, but it’s based on adults doing things they enjoy. People should be able to do whatever they want, as long as they’re doing it with people who give their informed, enthusiastic and ongoing consent.
Even the most mundane-looking sex can be rape if there’s no consent – and with consent, even the most eye-popping acts of humiliation can be a fun sexual experience for everyone involved. A BDSM club will only keep its doors open if women feel comfortable being there, so everyone has an interest in stopping anything that even remotely looks like abuse. I bet you can find more sexual transgressions in any ‘normal’ bar.
But why would anyone like these sexual practices in the first place? That’s too big a question for this blog. The short answer is that science doesn’t really know why some people associate “power exchange” and/or pain with sexual pleasure. Why do some people like the same gender and others the opposite? I mean, why would anyone like sex in the first place? If sex were just about reproduction, we would be like pandas, in heat once every year or so. But human sexuality is surprisingly complex.
The only thing we know for sure is that Fifty Shades of Grey is wrong: Sadomasochism is not associated with childhood abuse, like in E.L. James’ story of a fictional billionaire, and it won’t be ‘cured’ by a loving relationship. One study claims that people into SM have, on average, fewer psychological problems than the general population.
So a feminist attitude towards a BDSM club in the neighborhood doesn’t mean being opposed to it – it means helping people communicate about their desires so they can do whatever they like (and avoid things they don’t). If this is what you are interested in, Berlin is a good place to look around, with endless clubs, shops and communities.
For my part, I was happy to help my anarcho-vegan friends overcome some prejudice by “coming out” as a fan of their neighborhood BDSM club. I think they may look at the “weirdos” there a bit differently. Even though they still insist that whips should be made of old tire rubber, not leather. Vegan BDSM is – of course – also available at my local vegan co-op.
