Playing with the Politics of Perversion
Policing BDSM, Pornography, and Black Female Sexuality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4272003 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ariane Cruz (0000-0002-8600-0698, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 2-4 |
| Pages | 379-407 |
| Publication date | 2016-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Souls (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1099-9949 • E-ISSN: 1548-3843 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10999949.2016.1230817 |
| OpenAlex | W2562231136 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
In this article I use policing—literal and symbolic—to illuminate how race operates not only as an apparatus of power, but also one of pleasure. Through the lens of bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) race play and race play pornography, I explore the complex relationship between discipline, pleasure, power, and violence hinged at the site of black female sexuality. First, I present my theory of the “politics of perversion.” As both a theoretical framework and praxis of black female sexuality, the politics of perversion pushes back against respectability politics to take seriously the perverse, as not merely a mode of producing pleasure but of black queer world-making. Second, I discuss black women’s fraught practice of race play, a controversial BDSM practice that eroticizes racial difference and often employs racism as an erotic tool of power exchange. Contextualizing black women’s modern-day performance of race play within historical feminist debates over BDSM reveals the longstanding reign of the politics of respectability on black women’s sexuality. Finally, I read an example of black/white interracial lesbian race play pornography that enacts the unspeakable and queer pleasures of race play, while illustrating the literal and metaphorical dimensions of the policing of blackness, queerness, and black queer female sexuality
Human sexuality · Lesbian · Perversion · Pleasure · Political science · Politics · Pornography · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Sexual Identity Development and Sexual Debut in Black Women-Loving Women
BDSM as trauma play
“Digital kink obscurity
Leather nostalgia
Not a moment too soon
History, culture and practice of puppy play
Playing with power
Introduction to the special issue
Critical Consciousness and Sex Positivity
The Sociology of “Dirty Research”
F*ck the police
Who can handle a true BBC?’
Aggression and Pleasure in Opposite-Sex and Same-Sex Mainstream Online Pornography
From the auction block to the Tinder swipe
Expressions of Queer Intimacy
Transgression and (sexual) citizenship
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |