Babygirl, Social Power Structures and Kink Representation.

After ignoring its existence for a while, I finally watched the film Babygirl and of course, I didn’t expect to like it (and I really didn’t) but it doesn’t matter because this isn’t about the film. When it began, I found myself remarking in jest about how it’s always CEOs, bosses and people in power and never taxi-drivers or teachers when it comes to the representation of kink on screen. It is true that this is often the case but it’s not really novel as a concept nor is it something that is only limited to pop-cultural interpretation of fetishism. Social power-structures have always had an influence on fetishism, particularly power-exchange of any kind.

Well before I knew the term power-exchange, I did know that I liked the idea of someone having power over me, and having little understanding of how something like that may actually work, I looked around at the world and saw that power-imbalances, people with more power than others and positions that were hierarchically superior already existed, not always in necessarily exploitative ways but because power is a component of how social structures work. Older people, especially ones who were much older, more experienced and part of a culture that treats its elders with reverence, had inherent power so I was attracted to them. Bereft of any understanding about how chosen-power may work, it made sense that in order for me to operate with awareness of my lack of power in a relationship, I would have to place myself against someone who had a lot more of it than I did. Like teachers. When you’re young and in school, they represent the top-rungs of the social power-hierarchy. They’re smarter than you, more accomplished, they can tell you what to do, you have to follow their rules, they can reprimand you and there’s a protocol of deference in place in terms of how you have to behave around them. To a person who seeks power-exchange but doesn’t know it exists, this feels pretty close to it so in my head, it made sense to want to love/fuck my teachers all the way through college.

Think about it, right? To someone completely uninformed, what seems easier? Is it is easier to find a random person, be attracted to them, hope they understand the desire for submission/domination, let them figure out how they express their own power and how you express your lack of it in response to it, develop rules and protocol, set up your own systems of accountability and orchestrate an entire relationship in a society that thinks all kink is latex and debauchery? Or, is it easier to just find a prototype of a relationship that already incorporates power (boss, professor, employer, older person, much richer person) and the structure for how that power plays out and just add sex and latex to that? The latter seems easier, for a long time, to a lot of people. I think the main reason why all pop-culture insists on making kink-films (or books, shows, whathaveyou) that hinge on either the enforcement (boss has power and likes to top) or subversion (boss has power and likes to bottom) of a conceit rooted in social-power is because most people (especially in the general population) struggle to understand power and control without the prototype. Why are rich, older men hot as a concept? Mostly because we understand that means power and we’re attracted to power.

Of course, then there is the kink-community and we know better, right? I don’t know. We do know some things. For instance, it was only after spending some time interacting with people who had thought about power and society, and how they intersect with desire, that it started to occur to me that I may be operating by a playbook I didn’t really need. Now, at this point in my life, I can tell you that I only sub to people who choose to take power within the limited context of our relationship (or their relationships with other individuals), not people who draw it from their social privileges (like natural dominants) but that was a long-road, and one that not everyone is obligated to take, it isn’t (at least, in my book) necessarily wrong or unethical to draw from social power-structures, but I do think it is hypocritical to scoff at any film that exalts (or subverts) the CEO as if we don’t have the same patterns of social-power transference here. When I first started interacting with people who wanted to play with power (submission/domination, daddy/mommy, power-exchange of any kind) on here, I noticed a trend among some of the seekers, they wanted someone who was superior to them in some respect. It was not always exactly the same as society at large but you trace the sublimation.

For instance, the power of being rich transfers directly. As much attraction as there is for the (power of) the wealthy in general society, it also remains here, but sometimes the currency changes. It could be wealth as it is, or it could be fancy dungeons, events and invites to spaces that restrict access in exclusionary ways. Or, instead of being attracted to older, we could say we are attracted to experience and in some cases, submissive profiles will mention they can only sub to someone who is smarter than them. Some of it is also visible in gender, not all women who say they only sub to men and top other women are necessarily operating out of the interpretation of power-transference but there definitely are some who can only see men as dominant because the social script supports the narrative of men in power by providing a capsule of prototype-power. It does exist here, the ideas draw from the same repository that makes filmmakers believe that a story about power cannot be told unless we borrow imagery from a social-structure that makes sense to everyone. We all do it to some extent, and some of us recognise it doesn’t work for us so we may work at getting rid of it, and when we do, we realise just how pervasive it is and how it applies to our sexualities in ways we didn’t even realise. We’re largely oblivious to all of it, chill with it or defend it so staunchly it makes conversation around it too difficult but when a film does it in our faces, we’re pretty clear in our stance.

This is not D/s. This is abuse. This is coercion. This is wrong. Don’t make this about us. It’s interesting because, I do agree, I fucking hate every single kink-film I have ever watched and no, I don’t like The Secretary or Nine and A Half Weeks just because they’re older and somehow that makes them better either because really, what the fuck is the difference between James Spader as Maggie’s boss and Nicole Kidman as Harris Dickinson’s boss except the fact that Spader can believable pull off a sadist and turn me on (and Maggie is believable as a masochist too). Someone suggested one called the Duke of Something as well and I would watch it, I would, except S&M between a “maid” and their employer has the same central premise issue for me. I like my power-exchange to be as chosen as possible. I am submissive because I want to be and it turns me on to be helpless. You are dominant because you like to take charge and tell me what to do. I don’t (anymore) need you to be my teacher, my employer, older or anything that young-me needed as a crutch because actually, I now know that of the two possibilities I suggested earlier, the former (even in its elaborateness) is easier than an ethics-mire of social-power intersecting with the power-exchange. To me, the deliberate, considered choices are way easier.

However, that does not mean social power-structures aren’t a big fucking part of our community. I know it’s hard to see ourselves in it when a CEO is on the screen, but our community does not exist in a vacuum and sometimes what we dislike about a film is what we know exists somewhere inside our community as well. It was similar with 50-Shades, no? We hate a controlling, insecure, rich man who micro-manages and life-coaches a virgin into submission, but can you honestly say that does not exist within the community? Sometimes the problem with representation is that it gets it wrong but some things are a problem because they get it right.