Playing with Race:
on the edge of edgy sex, racial BDSM excites some and reviles others

Continued

Mike Bond, who declined a phone interview and answered questions by e-mail, is a masochist. He is a black man and emphatic that race play "is not a message about all of black kind." He doesn't suggest that all black folks enjoy what he does, but he says, "I have been floored when people have criticized me by saying [that] not everyone agrees with my fetish. So what? Not everyone likes cheese."

During his workshop, Bond told the audience about his own history. He first considered race play when a partner asked if it was humiliating for him as a black man to bow before her, a white woman. He hadn't thought about it before. "But if that made it more embarrassing," he said, "then I was all for it."

On the panel with Bond were three white women he has played with. They emphasized that race play isn't about hate. For one woman calling Bond "nigger" was just another bad name that aroused him. But another woman, who is Jewish, said it took time and encouragement to be able to relax with race play.

After the talk came the demonstration: A woman dressed in a business suit and planted in the audience heckled Bond, then grabbed him by the collar and threw him down, all the while yelling about what gave Bond the right to criticize "her people" (rednecks).

As arousing as that scene might be for some, it is downright repulsive for others. Racism was institutionalized as social, economic and legal practices, in part, through rape and the white domination of black sexuality. Chupoo, who is a black woman and declined to give her last name, says it point blank: "I can't do race play because I have people in my family who had to submit to that, where they had no choices. It's too close to home for American black people." Race play makes her think about her grandmother who had to sleep with her employer, a doctor, so that her children could have healthcare.

Chupoo is not anti-BDSM. In fact, for seven years, she's been a submissive in a master-slave relationship with a black man. So, she's delighted, for example, when in an erotic context, he calls her a "bitch." "I can accept other people are able to rise above their sexism," she says, adding, "The race thing is really a lot deeper. I guess it's easier for me to deal--he understands that we have a partnership ... I feel like my master respects me. I cannot imagine feeling that with someone around race play."

Those who engage in race play are quick to say that they keep politics outside of their bedroom (and dungeon). But their own relationships to race are telling. Chupoo sees race as central to her life; Mollena, not as much or not in the same way. Chupoo refuses to do BDSM with anyone who's white and she says that when someone at a BDSM party ignores her partner, or pretends to not know his name, it's disrespectful and has to do with racism. For Mollena, it's most often the other person's problem, and she's had relationships with white men. Whatever trajectory brought the two women to these different conclusions, it may also inform what they do in the dungeon, making race play either titillating or disturbing.

The Turn On Many presentations on race play, if not all, follow a similar format: personal history, explanation of race play, demonstration and time for questions and answers. The explanations vary.

Vi Johnson, the black matriarch of BDSM, has presented on race play at kinky conferences and she believes the appeal is different for each person. "When you're being sexually stimulated, you're not thinking that what's stimulating you is a racist image," she says. "You're just getting turned on."

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So, for some, she says, race play is about playing with authority and for others, it might be humiliation.

Well-known dominatrix Midori, who is Japanese and German, often presents her theory that humiliation in BDSM is linked to self-esteem. Take the woman who likes it when her boyfriend calls her a "slut," Midori says. Perhaps the woman internalized the idea that "good girls don't," but she enjoys her sexuality. Because the boyfriend sees her in all her complexity. Midori says, when he calls her a slut, "he is freeing her of the social expectations of having to be modest." That's different than having some stranger (and jerk) calling you a slut. The stranger doesn't see the full woman. It's similar with race play, Midori says. By focusing, for example, on a black man's body, while he's bound as a slave, she's bolstering his own perception of himself as strong and powerful.

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by Daisy Hernandez

Written in 2004. Last reviewed: 10/05

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