I have a huge problem with the ever-increasing use of the word  "play" to describe both BDSM activities and sex acts in the BDSM community. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

 

I think it's apologist, reductive, confusing, and cowardly. I think the community should face up to the fact that the word "play," which is most commonly defined as "to participate in games or sport," is a bad fit for describing the deep connections, spiritual moments, and passionate feelings of BDSM interactions.

 

I also think it's a lousy way to describe consensual sex acts between adults. While there is an historic use of the word "play" in the context of "sex play" or "playing around," the modern use in the BDSM community to describe any sexual relations trivializes adult sex and intimacy.

 

I've become aware of the new usage of "play" in the Bay Area BDSM community during the last few years. Last year, while I worked at San Francisco's wonderful kinky coffee shop, Wicked Grounds, I realized the term had become ubiquitous. I had several very confusing experiences with the word as used by people, especially much younger people, in the scene.

 

First, the (much younger) boy I was dating was living with a female friend. He was afraid I'd be concerned by this, and he explained that they had "played," but they had never had sex. As it was of no concern to me either way, I didn't ask for details, but I did assume that he meant "play" in the sense I was hearing it used most commonly in the cafe—to describe a BDSM activity such as bondage, flogging, or D/s role-play. Months later, in a conversation about his relationship with the young lady, he said something about how they'd never had sex—"just oral." To me, this completely transformed my understanding of the relationship. They had been lovers! No wonder she'd had hurt feelings about my starting to date him! I was astonished at the semantic gap between 27 and 43.

 

Around the same time, I was talking to a beautiful young pornstar at the cafe. Usually quite discreet about her liaisons, she said she wanted to tell me something because she thought I'd be pleased. She told me she'd started "playing" with a mutual friend of ours. I thought it was nice that she was engaging in her kink play with someone I trusted so much and thought so well of. Weeks later, she said something about getting up in the morning with him, and I realized—they were lovers! I was delighted for them both, but very confused by the terminology. And a young man new to the scene texted me this past weekend; he had met a girl who wanted to fuck him with a strap-on, and he was excited about "playing" with her; did I want to watch while he lost his anal virginity? Since when is having strap-on sex something other than having strap-on sex? A dick in your ass is a dick in your ass, not a tennis match.

 

In her 2006 article "Working at Play: BDSM Sexuality in the San Francisco Bay Area," Margot Weiss says:

 

"In BDSM, play is a form of collective belonging based on the bracketed activity of SM. In the community, sexual practices, styles and dynamics are referred to as various forms of play... play is pleasurable because because it is an intervention into the social world; it recodes familiar and mundane experiences of power, relationships and intimacy in new ways, in a safe space called 'the scene'. The freedom to experiment with alternate subjectivities is real, but because the space is bracketed, special and, above all, safe, it is  also insulated from the real."

 

She notes that: "David Stein writes that the rise of the new SM scene 'occurred during the same period that SM activity came to be almost universally referred to as 'play,' S/M practitioners as 'players,' and the tools we use as 'toys'."

 

Gregory Bateson, in his classic essay "A Theory of Play and Fantasy," says that "Expanded, the statement 'This is play' looks something like this: 'These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote.' "

 

Game theory is full of discussions of Johan Huizinga's concept of the "magic circle." In his analysis of human play, Home Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938), Huizinga conceives of a "magic circle," as a conceptual space in which play occurs.

 

I object to the conflation of "playing" with sex because I think that sex between adults is by its very nature an activity that should always be treated as beginning in the arena of real life, not in the "magic circle." I think it's necessary to engage with the other person as an intellect, a human soul, and a potential source of biological risk, even if only for the few seconds it takes to negotiate safe-sex boundaries and behavioral boundaries. If you're negotiating sex (or the intention of one of you to inflict intense sensation or pain on the other), you're taking responsiblity for your choice to have sex or BDSM activity. If you're negotiating "play," you're framing your interaction in a behavioral context where you've both agreed the rules are different, and the usual rules may not apply. What's about to happen may be the same—safe word chosen, condoms and dental dams ready, limits agreed upon—but you've changed the game.

 

I think it's especially dangerous to the emotional clarity needed for safe, sane, consensual BDSM interaction that young people are using the word "play" interchangeably to describe anything from getting flogged by a total stranger at a dungeon to regular sex with a lover.

 

If you approach all sex activities under the umbrella of "play," then even if your play-frame includes rigorously ritualistic safe-sex protocol, you're not giving yourself a space to apprehend the raw personhood of your partner. Calling sex "play" presents the danger of thinking of people as objects or toys—or deities—before you've registered them as individuals. As potential friends, say. So does framing your sexual interactions as a hobby, or a craft you're learning.

 

Will you really be able to give a prospective life partner a chance to be their flawed and human true selves if you were "playing" the first time you met? Or have you already created an unreal space for your relationship that you'll have trouble aligning with day-to-day living? Of course, many couples or groups do form true partnerships of profound intimacy from a meeting at a dungeon or "play" party—I'm just saying, why not describe your interaction as...sexual interaction? Objectification is part of negotiated relationship dynamics or activities for many kink couples; I can't help but wonder if it's more freeing to be treated as an object by a person who says "I'm going to piss in your mouth cuz it gets me hot" or by a person who says "Let's engage in consensual watersports play."

 

And because I come from the generation where AIDS was a death sentence, I find the concept of sex as "play" at odds with the seriousness of possible body fluid transfer.

 

Although there is great ritual attention to bio-safety in the "magic circle" of the dungeon or playspace, I find young kinkster people to be appallingly casual about blood transfer outside the playspace. For example, a 21-year-old kinkster demonstrated a toy that drew blood on me during dinner, and then casually reached over and squeezed the tiny wound on my arm to show the blood welling up. Bloodplay between strangers is considered perfectly safe as long as there are rubber gloves; the fact that afterward the bottom walks around the crowded dungeon bleeding, often with the open wounds of play piercings, doesn't seem to concern anyone. It's as if a superstitious belief has grown up that as long as you "play" by the rules and use condoms, nothing can happen to you.

 

So I worry about the safety of people on the kink scene in town. And I worry about their souls, for lack of a better word. In my experience, engaging with a partner (or several) in a BDSM scene can be a profound, spiritual experience of connection and intimacy. Trusting someone to take you to a place of utter vulnerability, high on surrender and endorphins, is a huge act of faith in their humanity and decency. Why trivialize something so meaningful by calling it "play"? Is it because you're afraid of the depths of the experience? I seriously doubt that. The kink community I'm familiar with is made up of some of the bravest people I've ever met, people who are courageously committed to exploring their own desire and their relationships with their bodies and their partners.

 

Perhaps it's because so many BDSM "players" have absorbed the BoBo Play Ethic—the American idea that you have to master anything you're going to enjoy. The huge emphasis on technical skill development, training, and equipment in the kink scene creates a commodification of sexual experience that parallels the commodification of any other leisure activity in the U.S.

 

Margot Weiss addresses the issue of pleasure as labor in her article, "By couching various pleasures as work on the self, SM can be located within an American tradition of self-development...I argue that BDSM sexuality should be conceptualized as a form of 'working at play'. Considering two dominant models of sexuality, identity and lifestyle, I argue that BDSM is more fluid and less binary than identity. Moreover, while lifestyle focusses attention on BDSM as consumptive labour, this model does not adequately address the pleasure or sociality BDSM practitioners themselves emphasize. Instead, I argue that 'working at play' recognizes the ways that practitioners move between registers of work (productive labour) and play (creative recombination)."

 

Another reason that BDSM practicioners describe sex and BDSM activities as play is to appease the vanilla world. It's a lot less scary to have a "community playspace" in the neighborhood than a dungeon; collecting "toys" may be easier to justify than collecting tools for causing pleasure and pain. Telling your vanilla friend you have a "playdate" is easier than saying "I'm going to go get flogged for an hour by this guy I met online." Plus, it takes the onus of sexuality off BDSM activity. "Playing" suggests something entirely sexless, something innocent. While not all BDSM practitioners are sexual, sexuality is a big part of the kink lifestyle, and for many a big part of its appeal. I'm concerned that the kink community is capitulating to the puritanism of the vanilla world in using the word "play"—it's a stealth mode, a way of saying, "no dirty stuff here, Ma—just all-American play!" Letting the vanilla world uncouple sexuality and BDSM may make it less sinister to them—or it may not. Is it worth the experiment if it costs the community the dignity of admitting their passion and relegates the intense feelings of power exchange to the realm of harmless childlike activity?

 

If you get deep pleasurable feelings from hitting someone with a cane until they bleed, and the person you hit has been unable to sleep all week before your date because they're so excited about being hit with a cane 'til they bleed, what's wrong with calling it a pleasure exchange?

 

Here's the thing:

 

• Impact play = hitting a human being hard with a heavy object.
• Sensation play = touching a human being with objects or substances.
• Blood play = cutting or piercing a human being's skin until they bleed.
• Breath play = temporarily cutting off a human being's oxygen supply.
• Butt play = inserting things in a human's anus or other anal stimuli.
• Fire play = lighting a human being on fire.
• Electrical play = shocking a human being with electricity.
• Messy play = covering a human being with food.
• Takedown play = simulated rape of a human being.
• Watersports = interactive use of human urine.
• Strap-on play = dicks in the ass.

 

Now, I'm not judging any of these activities—I've done them all. (Actually, I don't think I've ever done "piss play.") Anyway, I'm just saying, why not call them what they are?  Are we so afraid of our own desires that we have encode them even among ourselves?

 

I carved my initials into my (beloved, tested, fluid-bonded) boyfriend's chest with an Xacto knife, because he wanted me to and I thought it would be hot, and tender, and intimate. How about we call that "lovemaking" instead of "knifeplay"?

 

There are 2360 groups with "play" in their group name on FetLive.com. One of them is for people who want to play CalvinBall, though.

 

There are some activities in the kink community I would happily describe as play. Puppy play, for example. Anyone who's been at Wicked Grounds when the pups are leaping and lunging and romping and yipping in the back knows that puppy play is pretty damn playful. The same goes for Littles play and some age play—when a group of Littles is sitting on their blankets on the floor, coloring and hearing stories, they're undeniably playing. Seeing puppies or Littles connect with the puppies or Littles inside themselves is magical, a transformative wonder. But I have some questions about whether these activities are still play when they move to the dungeon and the diaper becomes a tool of arousal or humiliation.

 

What if we called that kind of activity "role playing"? Oh, wait, that's what they USED to call it. That term has fallen out of fashion because it implies something that's threatening to the community—the idea that these Little selves, or puppy selves, aren't true inner selves. The community is adamant in insisting that everyone's true self, whether Little or Slave or Pony be validated. So why can't the activities of those selves be treated with dignity?

 

Maybe you like the word "play" because it creates a space of possibility where you can explore impulses you don't yet fully understand, or you like the word "play" because it gives you the freedom to make mistakes and change your mind and try new things.

 

What if you said you were going to the dungeon to "explore yourself," or to "exchange subjectivities," or to "experiment with sensual pleasures, perhaps including pain"?

 

You could try it—all you've got to lose is your diminished view of your own power to experience.