Added 10th October 2017

Well, damn. In the three years since I wrote this, the situation seems to have gone from bad to worse. A “social conservative” backlash seems to be pushing back at equality in the west and more generally in the world. This has horrified me and, I must admit, made me a bit less comfortable shooting BDSM. It’s getting harder for me to be comfortable with the idea that female submissive BDSM is OK for play because we don’t act like that in the real world when demonstrably a fair number of shit-bags DO act quite like that in the real world.

Which makes it even more important for those of us with some sort of platform to make it clear how unacceptable we find discriminatory behaviour towards any group of human beings. Not on grounds of colour, gender, or anything else.

The thing that gives me hope is that I think this is a last hurrah, a desperate rear-guard action from the bigots before they are properly overwhelmed by the tides of history. Let’s all do our bit to keep the pressure up.

Original post

Hi All,

There’s been a lot of thought provoking stuff recently about every-day sexism, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A . Human being are clearly prone to discrimination, and one of the most deep-seated forms of discrimination is gender or sexual identity based.

I didn’t used to have very much time for the “all porn is bad” point of view. The more I see of the world, the more I realise where some of these protests are coming from. I believe they are misguided, but I have sympathy for the point of view.

Sexism is deeply ingrained in our media reporting. A male MP can attend cabinet without the newspapers feeling the need to comment on his hotness or lack thereof. Whilst I disagree with Esther McVey on almost every policy and opinion she holds, it is deeply wrong that her appointment to cabinet was hailed like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2692722/Watch-Theresa-theres-fashionista-Downing-Street-Esther-McVey-makes-big-impression-arrives-Prime-Minister.html
not just by the Mail, but by almost every news report.

Is it OK that RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com present pretty young women, made up to look attractive?

I can see why it may not seem so from the outside. We know that we are ethical producers of erotic art. But we don’t tend to bang on about it, and maybe we should.

The models are paid (significantly higher paid per hour that they work for the site than anyone else involved in production). They are self-employed freelance professional women in successful careers.

The stories we enact are done in fun, in the spirit of roleplays between consenting adults. Shoot days are fun. We often lose shoot time from the giggles. Models are not forced or bribed or cajoled to do anything; they show up, have a hopefully fun creative shoot, get paid and go on to their next professional assignment.

There are arguments which trouble me.

It troubles me that we might be perpetuating the idea that a female person’s worth is primarily to be judged by her physical attractiveness, as rated by a 40-something white heterosexual man.

It troubles me that some idiots on twitter appear to be a bit hazy about the dividing line between respectful fan comments and sexual harassment.

It troubles me that my own sexuality is sufficiently unadventurous that I seem to be unable to do a really good job of creating art which lies considerably outside it (although I’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunities to shoot it with other producers when I’ve been able to).

The main thing that troubles me though is the realisation that I grew up in an anomalous bubble of time and place and society in which sexual equality was taken as a given.

My mother, although she would never recognise herself in the description, is a true Renaissance liberated woman of the 1960’s wave of female equality. When she wasn’t given interesting enough work to do in her first job at an aircraft designer, she stormed in to see her boss and made them give her something more challenging. She did a Pure Maths degree as a mature student, and worked part-time all through to retirement as a computer analyst and troubleshooter working with University researchers on cutting edge projects like early finite element analysis software for civil engineering.

She and my father had calmly and rationally decided how to divide up the responsibilities of raising a family and working full-time, and clearly have nothing but the greatest of love and respect for each other.

As a University kid in a University town in the 1970s, this was the norm. Friends’ families were like that too. And being Welsh, there was less social stratification and class bias than in England, I now realise.

Put together the kids of these University families in a single school, mostly in one or two classes, and the idea of gender equality was definitely the norm. I vividly recall the short shrift given to a (female) Royal Navy recruiter by (female) students who tried to defend why the Navy wouldn’t allow her to serve on a battleship. We had very progressive schooling, including classes on morals and social responsibility where many of these issues were discussed, led by teachers who also entirely embraced sexual equality.

I now realise that the rest of the world wasn’t like that then, isn’t like that now. It may not even be like that back home these days, I don’t know. The glass ceiling hasn’t fallen, women are still under-represented in many walks of life, and most shamefully underpayment for doing the same work as a male colleague is still a routine reality of life.

For me, it seemed entirely reasonable to enjoy bondage and fetish games where one real-life equal partner chooses to play a submissive role and one chooses to play a dominant role. It doesn’t impact on their equality, because I just assumed that in real life they are equal. Different, but of equal worth.

I still do think it is reasonable. But you have to really mean the equality thing, deep down, right down to your heart. If you don’t, I question whether it is really OK to play out the roles in bondage games.

If I had been brought up in a setting where sexual discrimination was the norm, I doubt I’d feel as sanguine about BDSM and erotica.

Similarly, I try very hard not to judge a person by their sex or by their appearance. I’m far from perfect at it; millions of years of evolution have gone into making me notice pretty girls. I can’t really help that.

What I can help is what I do about it. Not staring, for a start, and definitely not cat calling or slut shaming or judging a politician by their perceived hotness instead of their professed policies.

I’m aware that by running Restrained Elegance and Silk Soles I might be perpetuating the problem.

That’s why I try to explain what I am doing, why our stories are more than “I saw this slut on the street and I just had to tie her up and fuck her”. (It was Kate who came up with that – she said if our stories were like that, she’s not be happy to work with us).

RE and SS shoots are fun, collegiate, collaborative, friendly and cheerful. It’s just that some of the stories we like to tell are a bit cops-and-robbers, damsel-in-distress. It’s OK, because we all buy in to the shared fantasy in its correct, mutually agreed context. And by describing the models as valued artistic collaborators. If you ever see a word like “slut” or “bitch” on our sites it will be in the context of a character, and most often just one character accusing another of acting like a bitch, rather than “this fucking bitch deserved it”.

I’m delighted that there are some female-gaze erotica sites, BDSM sites with a wider variety of gender roles, wider variety of body types, and all sorts of things. If times were less tight, I’d probably run several mini-sites exploring some of those aspects myself, even though I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I’m very keen to collaborate with others and reach understanding of other niches and fetishes and orientation- which is at least part of the rationale behind running the British Fetish Film Festival, too.

So my current thought is that yes, looking at erotica, BDSM or fetish material of whatever flavour and orientation you happen to like is absolutely fine and healthy… so long as you genuinely do realise it is a game for fun, and there’s no malice in your heart, no sneaking disdain for the performers in the porn you like, no thinking that your fetish and your orientation is the “right” one, the “natural” one, the one true way.

Be a bit vigilant about your thinking and you can enjoy your artwork, erotica, roleplaying, videos, photos and whatever you like with a clear conscience. (Oh, just so long as you support its production and don’t pirate it.)

Regards,

Hywel