Desiring masculinities while desiring to question masculinity? How embodied masculinities are renegotiated in les-bi-trans-queer BDSM practices

ABSTRACT

Based on the results of a qualitative empirical study of les-bi-trans-queer BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism) practices and identities, the author discusses how butches, transgender butches, transbutches, genderqueers, transmen and femmes use queer BDSM practices to play with, appropriate, eroticize and transform notions of masculinity through embodied, sexual practices. He calls for an expanded understanding of trans masculinities, which includes temporary as well as more sustained disidentificatory desires for masculinity independently of male bodies and identities in order to disrupt the construction of masculinity through processes of distancing and excluding women.

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinity
• transgender
• butch
• BDSM
• disidentification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Robin Bauer studied Philosophy, Educational Science and Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, where he received his PhD in Sociology with a thesis on queer BDSM practices and intimacies. Currently he lives in Brussels and is acting professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the DHBW Stuttgart, where he teaches gender, sexuality and diversity in social work. His research interests include queer studies, transgender studies, polyamory, BDSM, queer-feminist science studies and veganism/animal rights.

Notes

1. For a discussion of my own situatedness and its impact on my research, see Bauer (2013; 2014).

2. Muñoz developed his concept within the context of queers of color. Since my sample is predominantly white, the marginalization is of a different kind, as most interview partners have white privilege.

3. The spelling ‘boi’ rather than ‘boy’ highlights that it is an adult impersonating or embodying a young transmasculine role or identity. For a more detailed discussion of les-bi-trans-queer BDSM practices playing with the intersection of gender and age (see Bauer, 2007a; forthcoming).

4. While the term ‘intersexual’ or ‘intersexed’ is still widely used, I follow the German inter* activist community in refraining from using the term ‘intersexual’ as this is a medical, pathologizing term. It has been replaced by ‘inter*’ as an open term that stresses the diversity of individual inter* self-definitions.

5. A process which can also be interpreted as disidentifying with femininity.

6. The butch-femme erotic dynamic can also be understood as a disidentifying practice with its queer appropriation of heterosexuality, and queer BDSM has many other aspects that can be theorized as disidentificatory (see Bauer, 2014).

7. As a consequence, they also tended to identify as queer rather than lesbian, as lesbianism was often understood as woman-loving-woman.

8. Hale speaks of a culture of two in co-constructing new embodied identities, whereas I would hold that this culture of two remains situated in larger social contexts that shape it.

9. This also has implications for how the boundaries of women’s communities are defined, see Bauer (2014) for a discussion of this issue in regard to the women’s BDSM context.

10. Fajardo (2013) also shows in his research in a very different context, how Filipino tomboy and cismale masculinity are involved in masculine forms of intimacy that highlight their sameness through certain forms of masculinity rather than through their difference in terms of sexed bodies.

11. I therefore use the term transbutch to describe a transwoman who also identifies as a (lesbian, bisexual or queer) butch. This is not to be confused with the term transgender butch, which I introduced earlier. Transgender butch refers to an individual who was assigned ‘female’ at birth/cisfemale and has a masculine gender expression and identity and does not consider themself a woman (or for that matter, a lesbian butch), but as in-between genders and therefore a transgender version of butch.

12. Elsewhere I discuss questions of embodiment and materiality drawing on Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action (Bauer, 2014) and trans theoretical phenomenological perspectives (Bauer, 2014, 2015).

13. The question of the political significance of subcultural practices like queer BDSM is worth further investigation. I have discussed some of the issues that arise with these kinds of micropolitics elsewhere within the framework of the sexual politics of exuberant intimacy (Bauer, 2014, chapter 9).