Recently a new article by sex columnist Dan Savage trigged a lot of discussion and debate online, and I thought that the subject matter was important enough to also add another piece of commentary to the already crowded field. Basically, Savage answers a concerned mother whose 15 yr old son has been “watching sadistic porn- and ONLY sadistic porn- for a couple of years” and that “he thinks about this porn all the time-all day, every day- and fantasizes about doing sadistic things to the girls he dates.”

Savage then checks in with a bunch of experts including Canadian sex researcher Dr. James Cantor, who suggests that the woman’s son is a budding kinkster and any concerns that he could be the next Ted Bundy should be put to rest. Some other folks add their opinion, including a professional dominatrix who brings up the importance of “ethical sadism.”

I’ll leave the description of the column at that for the moment, and merely suggest that anyone who is interested in reading more go directly to the column here: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=21679058 .  I think it’s well worth the read.

So what should we make of this mother’s concerns about her son’s use of violent porn? First, let me get some basics out of the way. As I’ve written in this blog before, there is absolutely no evidence that violent porn leads to acts of sexual violence. In fact, in the aggregate those countries that have legalized porn use have experienced an inversely correlated drop in sex crimes.  Second, fantasies involving themes of seemingly sexual violence are not uncommon as I’ve written about here and here. A recent Canadian study found that fantasies involving S&M are common amongst both men and women and numerous other studies have found that about 50% of women have experienced “rape fantasies.” Conclusion: virtually no sexual fantasies are “deviant.” (BTW, I think it bears stating and repeating over and again for those unaware, that BDSM differs markedly from nonconsensual violence, with consent being just one of the differences.)

In fact, the largest porn production company in the entire world, based in San Francisco, specializes in this kind of “violent” (consensual) kinky porn. Last time I was in SF, I had a chance to take a tour of the studio, and believe me it was run extremely professionally like any other corporate entity in the US. The founder is a former PhD business student at Columbia University and the entire staff feels much more like a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are passionate about their kinks rather than a bunch of creepy sex abusers burrowed away in some basement.

Second, I was privy to this discussion, as Dan Savage was inviting feedback, as it was happening in real time. I didn’t weigh in as so many other voices had already chimed in, and I think that everyone had something important to contribute. The truth is, nobody really knows what’s going on with this kid based on a case description from a worried mother lasting all of several paragraphs. To assume some sort of absolute expertise on a young man we haven’t met before would be foolish. That said, I think that the contributors made a very powerful and important decision not to assume pathology as a starting point. And that is what I think is the greatest takeaway from this particular piece.

I think we are soon about to turn the page, the proverbial “tipping point” when it comes to non-normative sexualities here in this country. We have Fifty Shades, which is a run-away commercial success both as a book and a movie; however it casts a very simplistic and pathological light on its protagonist Christian Grey. Much like media 20 yrs ago used to treat the gay character as the stock “gay character”, that’s where we are at right now with BDSM; but as with homosexuality, the wheels of change are turning and Mr. Savage’s column is part of that larger process.

I don’t think the therapy world has caught on yet, but just as most therapists would be too shamed or uneasy about carrying on gay conversion therapy, in the near future they will experience a backlash too in conducting kink conversion therapy. There I said it. In my mind, changing kinks is to changing homosexuality as kink conversion therapy is to gay conversion therapy.  It’s still conversion therapy, folks. And as time (and the wave of progress) will tell, both types of therapies are both often unethical and immoral, and always potentially dangerous.

I’ll end this post with the wonderful words of my colleague Margaret Nichols, PhD, who I believe accurately describes the maxim (when it comes to overpathologizing sexuality) “better safe than sorry” (my own bolds and italics for emphasis):

I am a student of queer history, esp of the way psychiatry and sexology have treated queers….i am also old, I started grad school in 1973 and came out in 75 – so i’m old enough to have personally experienced discrimination at the hands of mental health practitioners who thought I was too ‘sick’ to raise a child.  Our field has an ignominious history of oppressing sex and gender variant people, and most of the time the ‘perpetrators’ are well meaning, if paternalistic.

So that might help you understand why…. I vehemently believe there is WAY more danger from overpathologizing than from underpathologizing.

I believe that our stance towards sex and gender variant people should be ‘innocent until proven guilty’, I think as a field we are naive about the social effects of diagnostic labels and pathologizing.  The removal of homosexuality from the DSM is widely credited with being the pivotal or one of a very few pivotal changes that enabled gay rights to go forward.   Categorizing variance as illness has sobering social consequences.  That’s why we need to be very, very careful about our own biases.

Having said that…..I don’t mean that one abandons clinical judgment when one sees someone who is sex/gender variant.  Of course extensive interviewing is called for in any new case and particularly with young people and potentially explosive situations.  And of course I’ve had clients – and known people – who have used nonstandard sexual practices in harmful ways, just like i’ve known vanilla people who have used standard sexual practices in harmful ways.

But I have gotten to the point with both kink and transgender issues that i want to say – if you don’t have specialized training and experience   – you should refer to someone who does, in this case a kink aware professional, because you may do more harm than good.  

My mistrust of the capabilities of non kink aware therapists is heightened when I hear… violence and BDSM conflated, when I hear a naive  statement like the one about underpathologizing versus overpathologizing; when someone speculates that porn has made the kid kinky. I believe some of the attitudes… show bias against people who practice kink, especially a tendency to automatically associate it with violence.

I am sure my biases lead me to be at times overly vigilant, and strident in my defense of different types of queers.  But to me, many of you seem biased towards pathologizing sex and gender variance without being aware of it, especially when it comes to kink and trans issues. 

Beautifully stated.