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A Comparative Study of BDSM Community Formation in Budapest and London

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A Comparative Study of BDSM Community Formation in Budapest and London Reframing Exclusionary Identities Through Affective Affinities: A comparative study of BDSM community formation in Budapest and London By Heath Pennington Submitted to: Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Gender Studies Supervisors: Eszter Timár and Nadia Jones-Gailani CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 Abstract In this comparative thesis, I investigate how BDSM communities in Budapest and London form around affective affinities that do not rely on the exclusionary mechanisms of identity politics. I strive for an open, ambiguous definition of kink to support my framing of BDSM as an affective praxis that need not rely on normative identities. My analysis is based on 20 semi-structured interviews and a literature review drawing from sexological, psychoanalytic, gender studies, and ethnographic fields, which chronicles the historical and contemporary social construction of BDSM. Situating myself and my research locations, I discuss what it means to utilize a feminist, embodied, interdisciplinary praxis in my fieldwork. I describe my participant observation and interview methodologies, and detail the pros and cons of mobilizing the term “community” in my research. Illustrating the problem with using identity as a tool for community formation, I explore how identity creates normativities and develop the idea of kinknormativity, unique from other normativities in linking the legitimacy of informed consent to social privilege. Moving away from identity, I argue that affect provides the necessary opening for BDSM communities to form, analyzing two main affective modes: feelings of belonging and discussions of gender. I show that affective belonging is built in both locations through solidarity and educational events, which are more frequent in London than in Budapest. Perhaps in part due to differing educational resources, knowledge of gender varies greatly between my fieldwork sites, expressed with more fluency and reflexivity in London through notions of performativity and in a more parochial manner in CEU eTD Collection Budapest through temporal references to the 1800s. My research contributes to continuing efforts to bring BDSM into the academy, moving away from debates around de/pathologizing kink while contributing to interdisciplinary scholarship on sexual cultures, affect, and gender. i Acknowledgements Many thanks to Central European University for its generous financial support, without which I could not have undertaken this Master’s. To my professors throughout the year, whose coursework has deepened and expanded my thinking, I also extend my thanks. I am deeply grateful to Eszter Timár and Nadia Jones-Gailani for co-supervising this project and providing so much insight and encouragement throughout. Further thanks go to Hadley Renkin for surpassing the duties of a second reader. I recognize my interview partners, who have made this research possible, and send great bursts of affective appreciation for the thoughts and feelings they so generously shared with me, which all went into the lived reality in which I forged this work. Especial thanks to the organizers and owners of the HunCon and Anatomie Studio for allowing a scholar- practitioner to undertake fieldwork in their spaces. Gratitude also goes out to friends, in Hungary and around the world, who were there for me this year; to all those with whom I have interacted during participant observation for this project; and to the people and communities I have had the pleasure of knowing since my kinky journey began in 2012. CEU eTD Collection ii Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of original research; it contains no materials accepted for any other degree in any other institution and no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographic reference. I further declare that the following word counts for this thesis are accurate: Total word count, thesis text only: 21,974 Total word count, entire manuscript: 30,298 words Signed, Heath Pennington CEU eTD Collection iii Table of contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii Declaration ..................................................................................................................................... iii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Literature Review ................................................................................................................. 3 1.1.a – BDSM and Gender Scholarship .................................................................................. 4 1.1.b – A Genealogy of BDSM ............................................................................................... 9 1.1.c – Voices of Kink .......................................................................................................... 14 1.2 Structure .............................................................................................................................. 21 Chapter 2: Methodology ............................................................................................................... 23 2.1 Situating the Research ........................................................................................................ 23 2.1.a – Self-situating ............................................................................................................. 24 2.1.b – Budapest .................................................................................................................... 26 2.1.c – London ...................................................................................................................... 29 2.2 An Interdisciplinary Feminist Approach ............................................................................ 32 2.2.a Participant observation ................................................................................................. 33 2.2.b Ethnographic Fieldwork: Semi-structured interviews ................................................. 36 2.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter 3: Identity Politics and Kinknormativity ......................................................................... 41 3.1 The Problem ........................................................................................................................ 41 3.2 Kinknormativity .................................................................................................................. 44 3.2.a Conceptual framework ................................................................................................. 44 3.2.b The abnormality continuum ......................................................................................... 46 3.2.c Impossible vanilla sexuality ......................................................................................... 47 3.2.d Pathologization............................................................................................................. 49 3.2.e The taboos .................................................................................................................... 51 3.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 4: Affect........................................................................................................................... 57 4.1 Affect as Alternative to Identity ......................................................................................... 59 4.2 Belonging ............................................................................................................................ 61 4.2.a Solidarity and consent, mainly in London ................................................................... 62 4.2.b Educational gatherings in Budapest and London ......................................................... 64 4.3 Affective Gender ................................................................................................................. 70 4.3.a Conversance in Budapest and London ......................................................................... 71 4.3.b Performativity in London versus the 1800s in Hungary .............................................. 72 4.4 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 75 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 77 CEU eTD Collection Appendix 1 .................................................................................................................................... 79 Appendix 2 .................................................................................................................................... 80 Appendix 3 ...................................................................................................................................
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