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Editor's note: Dr. George Weinberg coined the word "homophobia" (See Oxford English Dictionary, 1998) and is the pioneering author of Society and the Healthy Homosexual (1972) and many other notable works. Arthur Evans co-founded New York City's Gay Activist Alliance in 1969 and is the author of Critique of Patriarchal Reason, a major philosophical treatise (1997).
By Dr. George Weinberg
Jack Nichols, a dear friend of mine for over thirty years, asked me to comment on the debate regarding S&M, featuring Thomas Scott Tucker on one side, and I guess on the other Jack and the brilliant Arthur Evans, whose admirable work with the GAA when I first got interested in gay rights and whose subsequent
writings have certainly advanced us all.
"Society is advanced by those who oppose it," wrote Neitszche, and it's hard to find two people who have moved society along more for its own good than Jack and Arthur. So saying, I must add that I couldn't agree with them less on this particular matter, and let me say why. Of course, this is more than a simple matter of pro and con for consenting S&M behavior; the participants are far too humane and sophisticated for this. As Jack put it, "I'd be the last to forbid a sad-masochist to play out his fantasies…with a consenting companion." The issue is whether such behavior is harmful in that it undermines society and the soul, whether it will lead to sadistic behavior toward underlings and toward unconsenting people in the world, and whether it promulgates a way of looking at life that is ugly and brutal and conducive to fascism. It's easy to say this. One can conjure up a slippery slope in any direction, but things are more complicated. First of all, I disagree with the assumption that in a purely Utopian world a partner wouldn't want to use pressure or force, or even inflict mild pain, even play during sex. Or that no healthy partner would consent to this or take orders willingly during sex. I would cite not only the incredible variety of human wishes regarding sex, but also our mammalian heritage which is full of nips and bites and pressure. I don't mean to join the fatuous array of people who have been saying from time immemorial, "Behold the ant," but only to mention that at least our minds whatever we see anywhere, some of us are—and are happiest being. The evidence is that a great many of us are wired or become wired to want something more than pure equality and gentleness in bed.
The bigger issue here is what we may call "The Continuum Argument," which comes up in many contexts and diverse forms. The Continuum Argument goes that if you allow a thing in even a small degree, you are allowing it altogether, and therefore allowing it in excess: you are sanctioning it. Usually, those who make the argument decide on their own continuum. If you let your fourteen year old boy out past ten o'clock on a weekday, this is bad because the next step is marijuana, and if you allow this, the next step is cocaine, then heroin, and maybe murder—or perhaps low grades in school and a classic dropout. Continuum people can always find cases of escalation in the direction that they deplore, and they cite permissiveness at the earliest stage as the root reason why the sluices of all reason and decorum broke open. I don't believe in the Continuum Argument. I recently maintained to a friend, for instance, that I don't believe that if you allow a house search without a warrant minutes after a murder (providing that you can't steal anything or use evidence of other crimes during the search) that this means you are destroying Privacy. The next step need not be freedom to search people right and left, whimsically, to invade privacy. Not if we don't want it to be. Maybe after a murder a young policeman lacking a warrant will inadvertently see a man in drag, who didn't have time to change, but this is the policeman's problem. Giving one permission isn't giving carte blanche. Because there is no inherent continuum, if two people play master-slave in bed, this doesn't imply to me that one of them is going to try to take over the Western World or even his town or a PTA meeting. In fact, if you told me that one of them did this in actuality, I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess as to whether it was the master or the slave during sex who did this. The Continuum Argument, I think, is often rooted in fear. When I would talk about gay rights back in the Sixties, I would sometimes get the comment, "If you allow this, then pretty soon everybody will become homosexual." I resisted the impulse to say, "Speak for yourself, John," because what counted was the movement itself and the permissiveness, part of which we have indeed accomplished. In fact, my fellow psychotherapists would often adduce the Continuum Argument when I espoused acceptance of gays, which helped me see just how phobic they were and led me to coin the word "homophobia." Continuum people picture a world painted in the exact color of the world which they are accepting in some local place. And they picture the world not just in that color, but in brighter colors, in dangerously bright colors. Some, certainly not Jack or Arthur—seek to stamp out the local color. I don't think that any sexual preference, or that any fantasy, will spread like wildfire. Freedom gives permission for similar freedom. But S&M won't stop all couples from going to bed as equals, any more than models of gentleness have deterred the Western World from S&M.
The Continuum Argument contains the same fault as Kant's Categorical Imperative taken literally. If we didn't do anything that we wouldn't want everyone to do, we couldn't subdivide labor or function. We would all have to hunt, grow our own food, etc. I couldn't be a therapist because what if the whole world consisted of therapists. Who would fix the TV or ship the ood to us therapists. The great act of faith needed is to trust in the infinite variety of tastes and lifestyles that would ensue if we honored individual freedom and stopped passing judjment using the Continuum Argument. What people do consentingly doesn't imply that they would do it by force. Some will, some won't. The contrary is just as applicable. Among the most brutal sadists, like certain serial killers, are prudish people who, if they had found a consenting partner or two and had fun, might not have gone on to morbid heights with nonconsenting partners. Years ago, I was a consultant for TV Guide on a series of articles about the effect of TV on violence. I had to answer letters, and one that I remember was by a man who said that he came home from work Nightly, frustrated and with thoughts of violence, but that when he saw violence on TV, those thoughts went away and he felt renewed and nonviolent. As for the passage that Jack quoted from the Rubaiyat, about a serene love affair in the wilderness as an ideal—Yes, it is an ideal. But then Jack doesn't picture handcuffs as part of the image. Might not one have said the same thing against homosexuality? "Alone in the wilderness with someone of the same sex, that's not the ideal that Omar had in mind a thousand years ago." Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't invalidate it as an eligible ideal. The picture of someone voluntarily a slave during love-making no more makes the scene a mockery than any other picture of willing lovers, though to those whose tastes run otherwise, that picture is very wrong. It isn't my picture, but neither is Jack's picture mine. We don't need to have the same preferred vision. Forget continuums. Pass your rules at every stage. Consenting sex is fine so long as the consenters are truly capable of consenting or dissenting. If the participant goes past the line, draw the line. If a sexual sadist goes past the behavior of consenting partners, punish him or her. But a society that heads people off at the pass before they commit crimes is to be feared. You can't eradicate the seedlings of what you personally consider behavior reminiscent of criminal and violent behavior. We don't know enough to appreciate what leads to what, and even if we did…? Consent Is Not Enough By Arthur Evans
What a delight to hear from the thoughtful George Weinberg after 28 years!
Thank you, Gay Today, for making possible both this discussion and this
re-union.
George is right about the slipperiness of "the Continuum Argument." Just because people do something small that we don't like, doesn't mean they're going to do something awful along the same line. But that's not the point at stake in this debate. Here's the point: Just as people have the right to act on their sexual fantasies (provided the act is consensual), so people also have the right to express ideas that evaluate fantasies and actions. The freedom to express ideas is just as important as the freedom to act on fantasies. And just because people evaluate fantasies doesn't mean they're going to try and use the police to suppress them (that's the Continuum Argument!). Why is it important to evaluate fantasies and actions? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates tells us: because that's the way we improve our own individual character and elevate the quality of life of the community. It's called ethics. Ethical reflection is the crossroads at which George Weinberg and I part company. George says, "Consenting sex is fine so long as the consenters are truly capable of consenting or dissenting." But I say that consent is not enough. Dogs and cattle may rest content with consent, but not human beings. We also have to reflect on the implications of what we do, both for ourselves and for the society at large. We have to do so for sex and for every other aspect of our lives. That's what it means to be a mature human being. As Socrates said: "For a human being, the unexamined life is not worth living." When we reflect on S&M, questions of ethics and character appear that have yet to be answered. I'll give you a very specific example --
I sent an open letter to the paper, asking Pat this question: What kind of a person gets off by scratching swastikas on a woman's skin? She never responded to my question. I'm still waiting for an answer.
Arthur Evans |
In fact, the Continuum Argument often works exactly backwards. Society always pays a price for condemning behavior that isn't intrinsically harmful. Those who maintain to their fourteen-year-old son, "If you're out past ten o'clock on a weekday, it can ruin your life," undermine their authority. When Bill sees that he can do quite well with little sleep, and then that his parents overreacted to other behaviors, he becomes more prone to escalate. If the authorities were so wrong in these other cases, he may rationalize, maybe putting a needle into his arm isn't so direful. Analogously, the condemnation of cigarette smoking as vulgar very likely made it racy and chic to smoke for millions, who overrode the cancer scare as one more false alarm.
Pat Califia 
© 1997-2000 BEI