Read Online Macho Sluts by Patrick Califia - Free Book Online Page A

reviewed (and how); what your friends’ reactions are when they see you own a particular work; how far publishers dare go with their next book.
    Which brings us back to the question I asked earlier. If somebody does not want you to read this book, why is that? Because it goes beyond customary limits of candor? In other words, because it is a little too honest? What are they afraid of?
    No matter how poetic I am, some people will never be able to see anything beautiful about the authoritarian set of a woman’s broad shoulders inside a leather jacket that is well broken in, or the curve of a submissive’s back when she dares to kneel and arch her shoulders for the lash. The prospect of a human body being rendered helpless, put under slowly increasing stress, so that the maximum amount of sensation can be run through skin, nerves, and muscles, will always seem horrifying to some readers, not a fascinating attempt to bring out the body’s stamina and grace. Do these people hate me, do they want sadomasochists to cease to exist, because of a different notion about what constitutes the good and the beautiful?
    Sadomasochists are immensely useful as a metaphor for evil, for violence, for prejudice, for hate—and that metaphor is a big lie; it is nothing but projection.
    It is the notion of consent that the rest of the world finds so abhorrent. It is the notion of sexual choice. It is the notion of having an absolute right to set one’s own limits. The majority prefers compulsory sexual arrangements, wherein people can be labeled according to race, age, class, and gender, and plugged in and made use of, performing as suburban housewives or street hookers, young work-a-daddies and pimps, street kids and their clients, incest victims and their abusers, mistresses and their keepers, unwed mothers, closeted choice, lesbians and gay men, everybody a guard or a prisoner, with no safe word, no negotiation. This system generates relatively little selfish, individual, direct, genital pleasure. Instead, it generates abstract pleasure, vicarious pleasure, pleasure-of-social-position, the cud-chewing pleasure of belonging, of being fenced into a pasture with other cud-chewers, the resentful pleasures of martyrdom or the intrusive pleasures of overseeing and bullying others (and the attendant anxious pleasure of anticipating their revenge).
    Force is not a part of the province of sadism and masochism, not part of the territory of leather and latex, bondage and discipline. It is normal. Coercion is an accepted part of daily life for most people. And most people are unwilling to relinquish the threat of violence, of bodily harm, of stigma, of forced reproduction, of curfew and limited movement, of a vague danger that lies in wait to punish the person who is too sexually different, too adventurous, to enforce their morés.
    Until all deviants are no longer hounded, there will not be such a thing as vanilla sex, if by that you mean a sexuality free of compulsion. And the closest you will be able to come to sexual freedom of choice will be in the territories of the erotic minorities, which you must struggle hard to locate and gain admission to, which you must work hard to maintain a membership in, and which takes even more effort if you want to expand the little bit of territory your community has. If you don’t believe we choose to do S/M, you aren’t using the term “consent” in any meaningful way, but rather as a synonym for “mature,” “socially acceptable,” and “politically correct.” What we choose to do with our freedom may appall you, but it is none of your business. If you are prepared to do anything at all to compel us to make other choices, or even make it more difficult for us to wear our leather in public, buy S/M equipment and literature, and meet one another, are you really one of the good guys? Or just another vice cop without a badge?
    When attempts are made to keep