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In the Habit of Being Kinky: Practice and Resistance

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IN THE HABIT OF BEING KINKY: PRACTICE AND RESISTANCE IN A BDSM COMMUNITY, TEXAS, USA By MISTY NICOLE LUMINAIS A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Anthropology MAY 2012 © Copyright by MISTY NICOLE LUMINAIS, 2012 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by MISTY NICOLE LUMINAIS, 2012 All rights reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of MISTY NICOLE LUMINAIS find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ___________________________________ Nancy P. McKee, Ph.D., Chair ___________________________________ Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Faith Lutze, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Jeannette Mageo, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could have not completed this work without the support of the Cactus kinky community, my advisors, steadfast friends, generous employers, and my family. Members of the kinky community welcomed me with all my quirks and were patient with my incessant questions. I will always value their strength and kindness. Members of the kinky community dared me to be fully present as a complete person rather than relying on just being a researcher. They stretched my imagination and did not let my theories go uncontested. Lively debates and embodied practices forced me to consider the many paths to truth. As every anthropologist before me, I have learned about both the universality and particularity of human experience. I am amazed. For the sake of confidentiality, I cannot mention specific people or groups, but I hope they know who they are and how much this has meant to me. My advisors equipped me to brave the field. Nancy McKee constantly challenged me to look beneath the surface. She has grounded me when I became too involved in my own head and pushed me to go further when I felt I could not go on. Jeannette Mageo encouraged me to examine theoretical assumptions and the ways in which they inform the production of knowledge. Faith Lutze taught me not to shy away from personally difficult topics. Our many discussions of gender and violence prepared me to understand the contexts of violence in the kinky community. Jeffrey Ehrenreich first set me on the path of anthropology. Looking back, taking his Anthropology of the Body class set in motion all the actions that have led me to this place. All of my advisors share a belief in the salience of gender as lens through which to examine culture. I have learned from them how to be a feminist. I cannot thank them enough. I could not have made it this far without the friendships forged in the fires of graduate school. Intellectual discovery and shared adversity brought me close to many people. I would iii like to particularly thank Xianghong Feng, Christa Abdul-Karim, Kerensa Allison, and Tiffany Tuttle Collins. I miss rattling around College Hall and winding up in deep conversations about Chinese politics, Bourdieu, and Top Chef, all at the same time. Their continued support long- distance has been a cherished resource. Michelle Fiedler has my eternal gratitude and respect for her ability to at once motivate and reassure me that this process would work out. I could not have asked for a better friend to go through graduate school with. Donna Bonner was my professor before she was my friend. She acted as a mentor and a source of practical advice about how to perform fieldwork in the more complicated moments. She made being in the field a less frightening prospect. She helped shape this work in more ways than she probably knows. My employers were also generous with time and support. My sister Michelle Iglesias has been a stalwart friend throughout this experience. Her intellectual curiosity and calming cups of tea have helped me get through the tight spots. She is also generally wonderful. I am lucky to have her as family. Finally, none of this would have been conceivable without my husband, Jordan Luminais. He has shared my joys and supported me in my disappointments. He helped me collect data, listened to all of my oddball ramblings, and sustained me when the going got rough. He also provided much needed levity and I could rely on him and BioWare for an escape from the grind of fieldwork and later writing. Jordan inspires me. I could not ask for a better partner. This may have been the most difficult thing I have ever done and the people in my life made it possible. Thank you. iv IN THE HABIT OF BEING KINKY: PRACTICE AND RESISTANCE IN A BDSM COMMUNITY, TEXAS, USA Abstract by Misty Nicole Luminais, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2012 Chair: Nancy P. McKee “Kinky” is a stigmatized identity in wider American culture. People in kinky communities renegotiate their relationships to themselves and others to incorporate their desires into a positive identity. People take advantage of bodily practices to modify their habitus, or way of being in the world. From an outside perspective, it may appear as if sex and violence are the overwhelming impetuses for the community. I argue these are only two in a suite of corporeal methodologies used to resist hegemonic ideals of gender, age, partner choice, and body size. Intense pleasure and intense pain (physical or mental) may result in a moment of crisis wherein modification of habitus is more possible than during other times. Parallels can be drawn to rites of passage, in which a person shifts from one status to another through the means of a liminal period. In the kinky community, violence and sex create liminal spaces without the subsequent immediate change in status. Over time liminality becomes its own practice through which people modify their identities and relationships to reflect better their perceived ideals. One result of this modification of the self through practice is a gender system that defies binary categorization. Dominance and submissiveness, as character traits, are disarticulated from masculinity and femininity, allowing for novel combinations not recognized by wider American v culture. Masculinity and femininity are unmoored from the physical body. Gender becomes a performance, varying by context and audience. Additionally, a “switch” identity exemplifies the performative nature of gender by allowing individuals access to multiple gendered identities concurrently. This work contributes to the growing literature on how sexuality interacts with identity, focusing on gendered experiences in a community in “Cactus,” Texas. People participate in BDSM (bondage/discipline/dominant/submissive/sadism/masochism) activities and engage in other social activities that support membership in a community that resists (and accommodates) hegemonic ideals through modifying bodily practices. The possibilities and limitations of embodied resistance have implications for an anthropology of power. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... xii LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ 1 Thesis .......................................................................................................................................... 9 Methods..................................................................................................................................... 17 Existing Literature on Kinky Communities and Sadomasochism ............................................ 20 Ethnographic Comparisons ....................................................................................................... 28 Emic Literature ......................................................................................................................... 35 Popular News ............................................................................................................................ 38 Literature in Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 38 Structure .................................................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER TWO - WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY....................................................................... 45 CHAPTER THREE - PLAY ......................................................................................................... 58 The equipment .......................................................................................................................... 60 vii Pre-scene negotiation and establishing space ........................................................................... 62 Opening a scene and warm up .................................................................................................. 64 Types of play............................................................................................................................. 66 Climax of the scene ..................................................................................................................
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