This article is not meant to insult any one’s kink. It may come off as disparaging some one’s kink, which is not my intent, but only to look at the State. I think it’s great that adults can find out what their needs and desires are and meet them in a safe, sane, and consensual way, and I think there is a big, bright red line between the State and kink: consent. Also, I’m rather vanilla, so if I misused any terminology or concepts please forgive me, and let me know so it can be corrected.

I’ve seen rumblings about this on anarchist sites for about a year, but I haven’t seen anyone state it outright and I think it should be: The State is a non-consensual group “BDSM” scene. That’s not an analogy, but an exact description.

There are obvious comparisons between BDSM and the State. BDSM can involve locking people in cages. Statism can involve locking people in cages. BDSM can involve electrocuting people (tasers/violet wand). Statism can involve electrocuting people (tasers/electric chair). BDSM can involve beatings. Statism can involve beatings. BDSM can involve a Dom micro-managing their sub’s life. Statism can involve a legislature micro-managing their citizen’s lives. BDSM can involve sadism, including bringing someone very near death (If the dynamic includes RACK). Statism can involve sadism including outright killing people, even children. BDSM can involve financial domination where someone’s finances are put under the control and supervision of someone else. Statism can involve financial domination where someone’s finances are put under the control and supervision of someone else.

There are similarities between the tools and methods used in BDSM and in Statism

I suspect there may also be similarities in the underlying motivations and emotions in Statism and BDSM. Within the division of labor of the modern State, different desires for domination can be played out only in certain roles. For instance, if someone is a sadist who enjoys hurting people they could join the police or the military. If they want a feeling of control or importance in some one’s life they might join the legislature or become a teacher depending on how they have thought about that desire and the way they want to express it. And then there are different departments for more specific kinks, some of which are only legal in the context of working for the State, like a pedophile working for the TSA. (Clearly not everyone who works in these areas necessarily has the related kink, but these departments give an outlet for people who do poses them. Not all TSA agents are pedophiles or vice-versa, but if someone is a pedophile, they’d have an incentive to join the TSA. Also, these desires are necessarily conscious desires.)

There are also examples of the State providing an outlet for submissive desires. Many submissives talk about liking a feeling of being protected or of security. There’s also the idea of “being contained,” of knowing the boundaries and not having to think so hard. Some submissives work through emotional or physical abuse with their Dominants. In a similar way, many citizens put the same emotions they had for important parental figures in their life onto the State. And many people just want to know they’ll be taken care of. The State may not actually provide these things, and I think most anarchists would argue it does not, but it does seem to fulfill the emotional need and desire to feel like those needs and desires are being met. The State may not actually “protect people from foreign threats” (no protection and no foreign threats) but people feel like there are threats that they need to be protected from. The State puts that fear onto foreigners, and then promises to protect people from those scary foreigners. (Scary because they are a conscious proxy for subconscious fears.)

Different types of governments all have Dominant/submissive positions

Historically, one of the best examples of this dynamic has been feudalism. Under feudalism there is a strict hierarchy of “Dominants” and “submissives” with a king (or Pope, depending on what time period and country) at the top and his vassals, and their vassals etc. down to the peasants, who, though they were almost slaves, had an agreement with their lord who was required to feed them in times of difficulty and protect them from foreign threats. Feudalism, because it was largely based on heredity, was rather ridged and often didn’t allow for different people’s needs and desires to be met. If someone wanted to take on a role with responsibility, but was a serf, they might have a very small field of action to do that in. Of course, this was also true the other way around. If someone were born in a position that made them Dominant, but whose emotional needs were that of a submissive, it could be very hard to get those needs met. (Especially because the society did not allow for experimenting with kink.) There is the story of an emperor who would beat people so they would stop fearing him and love him. Within feudalism there was a vast network of submission and dominance and many people were Dominant in some of their relationships while being submissive in others.

Eventually, with the rise of the market place, feudalism began to breakdown as a system of government. However, though feudalism was breaking down, people still looked to the State to fulfill (often) subconscious emotional needs. People eventually divided into two diametrically opposed camps, each desiring two diametrically opposed systems: people who wanted to be Dominant and people who wanted to be submissive. These different groups wanted democracy and communism respectively. These governmental systems are not opposite for the reasons that the State likes to propose: liberty vs. enslavement, free market vs. planned economy etc. They are opposite in that each sell themselves to different groups. Democracy focuses on dominant personalities, with rhetoric about allowing people to exercise desires for domination through their interactions with other people through the State (voting, running for public office, being a judge, being on a jury or being a police officer etc.). Communism focuses on people’s desire for submission through the interactions with other people through the State (everyone serves everyone else, you will be taken care of and protected, every one’s abilities will be directed to their best use etc.) Both communism and democracy have people in positions of dominance and positions of submission, the difference lies mainly in the way the State sells the dynamic, either focusing on the emotional needs of Dominants or the emotional needs of submissives.

I suspect that any governmental system will have elements of dominance and submission, and will do things that, if they were consensual, could be part of a BDSM scene. The existence of prisons, locking people in cages, is a form of bondage and domination. To the extent that the State regulates how people live their lives there is a slave/Master dynamic. And to the extent people are punished with physical or emotional abuse for breaking the government’s rules there is a sadism/masochism dynamic, and the more authoritarian the regime the more pronounced the s/M and S/m dynamic will be. I even suspect that some forms of governance for an anarchist society that have been proposed would, in practice, include elements of BDSM, though perhaps with some element of consent, which is the main problem that statist BDSM has: there’s no room and no possibility for consent.

Huge, bright line between BDSM and Statism: consent

Despite some outward, superficial similarities between BDSM and the State there is a huge, bright red line between them: consent.

BDSM is play, but without consent it can be abuse, or rape, or worse. When two people feel comfortable with each other, have talked before hand, have a safe word, etc. and one of them ties up and punches and beats the other person, that’s play. When a police officer handcuffs and beats someone that’s abuse. When a Dominant orders a willing submissive to strip naked and plays with their genitalia that’s play. When a police officer searches a woman and orders her to strip in front of her children and removes her tampon as part of the “search,” that’s rape. When two (or more) people enjoy playing with pain and decide to tase each other, that’s play. When a police officer tases someone that’s torture.

It may be useful to compare the State’s lack of consent with the things people who practice BDSM do to ensure consent to find things that may be good to have in an anarchist legal system, like a system of safe words. Currently, when a cop pulls you over they have a lot of discretion about what they do, which can often lead to terrible results, especially if they set off a trigger that someone has. An excellent example of this is Linda A. from “The Stranger in the Mirror.” Linda was pulled over by the police, who used racial slurs against her, had her partially strip, and do a side-of-the-road alcohol test. The police officer decided to arrest her. When the officer went to handcuff Linda she asked him to handcuff her in the front instead of the back. The officer ignored this and handcuffed her in the back which Marlene Steinberg, the author of “The Stranger in the Mirror,” believes caused a disassociative event and Linda tried to defend herself. Things really went downhill. Linda wound up bound with her hands cuffed above her head being maced. Even if an anarchist legal system had some form of arrest it would be essential to have a mechanism that allowed people to communicate their needs.

Another aspect of BDSM that doesn’t exist with the State that anarchists should consider is two concepts that are closely linked: an intimate relationship and trust. One of the biggest problems with Statism is that it attempts to legislate for a wide variety of people, and judges a huge number of cases with little or no knowledge about the people involved in any given case. With BDSM people will tend to get together with people they know and who know them. This allows for much, better, more personalized treatment. An example of this is law in Somalia where the patriarch/council has seen the perpetrator grow up and so knows them and has much more of a vested interest in their welfare than a judge who has never seen or known the defendant before the trial.

Conclusion

The State seems to have some similarities with BDSM. It is almost as if the State is just a massive BDSM scene, except that it isn’t consensual. An excellent example of this is Feudalism. After the fall of feudalism, the two main contenders as replacement organizations of the State: democracy and communism , which appealed to different general groups. Democracy’s ideology seems to be mainly geared towards people with Dominants while communism’s ideology seems mainly geared toward submissives. It may be true that any governmental system will have BDSM-like interactions. The State seems to encourage people to get their kinky desires met through the State while discouraging people from doing kinky things outside of the Statist avenues. There is, however, a huge, bright line between Statism and BDSM, and that is consent. Looking at how Statism differs from BDSM suggests some things that anarchist legal systems might incorporate, like safe words and judgments made by people who know the parties in the dispute.

Tags: BDSM, Kink, Sex, Statism, Torture