Sheppard's “Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control” (2019)
“Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control”
Many of the participants felt excluded from the semi-public scenes and spaces of kink because of their disability—as some spaces were felt to be less tolerant of disability, or were simply physically inaccessible—and also because maintaining a regular scene presence could be expensive, thus putting it out of the reach of participants reliant on benefits or in low-paid work.
Kink pain was identified as a contrast to experiences of chronic pain that, at first look, appears not just distinct, but opposing—why would someone who lives with chronic pain want more pain? In the research, it became quickly obvious that one does not lead to the other, but nor does chronic pain make being kinky impossible. The difference between the experiences of chronic and kink pain can be broadly thought of as experiences of involuntary but expected chronic pain, and experiences of chosen, expected pain.
This ontological impossibility of chronic pain—the impossibility of imagining living with chronic pain—results in stigma. In effect, in shying away from hearing about other's pain (because they are then forced to confront the possibility of becoming pained themselves), listeners silence chronically pained people. Chronically pained people feel unable to speak of their pain—unable to express emotion related to their pain.
[The project's] participants are not the first to have pointed out that it is not that people have a problem speaking about pain, but that people have a problem hearing about another person's pain (Young 1997; Patsavas 2014; Sheppard 2017)). As Nielsen and Fernandez (2010) and Bourke (2014b) have pointed out, hearing about pain is unpleasant—it can be distressing, and, especially when the speaker is perceived of as returning to a well-worn topic, boring and annoying.
[T]he ideal ablebodymind is a healthy one; they do not (or should not) get sick, and, being young and athletic, they recover quickly from injury. They fit the neoliberal risk society ideal of a flexible body (McRuer 2006), which, on the rare occasions they do get sick or are injured, recovers quickly and completely before returning to productive work. As pain is positioned as negative and dehumanising even when it is necessary, a normal, proper and rational human also seeks to avoid pain in their lives, and to end it quickly when it is unavoidable.
[C]ures can range from prescription medication and various therapies, to dietary and 'lifestyle' changes (some of which may be presented as a therapeutic regime); the majority can be grouped under neoliberal rehabilitation practices, making a profit while promising (and not necessarily delivering) to make the person living with chronic pain as close to discursively normal as possible (Mitchell and Snyder 2015). Efficacy and success varies hugely from person to person, and treatment to treatment; accessibility varies widely as well—some cures are expensive, others require the person to live in an area near to various facilities, or care providers, others require large amounts of free time or energy to undertake. Many require us to have all four: money, time, energy, and to live in the right location.
[A]s Patsavas (2014) has pointed out, the emphasis on cure and treatment pushes responsibility for ending pain onto the person living with chronic pain—they are responsible for finding a cure to try, and responsible for making what can be significant life changes, or enduring unwanted side effects for months; they are responsible for continuing to try further cures when each (inevitably, perhaps) fails. Chronic pain is thus cast as a personal failure; if a chronically pained person continues to be in pain, it is because they have not tried hard enough—they have failed to control their pain and failed to control their bodymind. People living with chronic pain thus experience stigma from two sides—the stigma of failing to be normal, and the stigma of being in pain—and so engage in stigma management alongside pain management.
One of the participants, Charlie, felt that pain is sometimes reacted to as though it were a bodily fluid—one that should be properly contained within the body, and certainly not allowed to leak out in the view of others
Expressing pain works as a leak because it is horrifying, abject[, resulting] in pain being reacted to in the same way as leaks of physical fluids, as though observing and acknowledging the expression of pain will make that pain contagious—will cause the observer to feel that pain. Thus, expressions of pain are not not understood, but deliberately ignored; it is not a failure to express pain by the person in pain, it is an unwillingness to 'catch' pain on behalf of the witness, and unwillingness or inability to imagine oneself in pain.
[I]n using pain within their play, participants were able to engage emotionally with their pain, and with their bodily selves, in a controlled space, and in ways in which they were in control, rather than relying on the judgement of medics or caregivers. This is because in kink, they had the ability to decide how they received pain, and to call a stop to any activity—as well as the knowledge that the pain is temporary. Kink play is also a space where they are able to be uncontrolled in their emotional response—to give voice to their experience. One of the pleasures of kink was the time and space to engage with pain, as well as an audience willing to witness pain.
[T]he pain from play can feel very different to the already-present chronic pain, in that it is a different sensation, or in a different location in/on the body.
For other participants, kink pain could overlay—not quite replace—chronic pain; in its urgency and acute sensation, it pulled attention away from chronic pain. Acute pain—in a controlled situation—allowed for a control of pain, again welcoming in sensation, reshaping the context.
Kink and kinky sex could also be pleasurable, which impacted the pain participants experienced—and thus provided them with another source of control. Natalie reported that orgasm from sex (whether including kink or not) gave her a measure of temporary pain relief, and sex with kink resulted in stronger orgasms, and thus more effective relief—although it was also more tiring for her, meaning it was more costly in terms of fatigue afterwards.
For some of the participants, pain play could serve, very literally, as pain relief, as Charlie explained ... They identified flogging and needle play in particular as a part of what they called "desensitisation work," (Charlie, interview two). Charlie explained that having pain caused in a particular area helped to dull the sharper sensation they feel due to nerve damage there. For Charlie, desensitisation work was a carefully thought out, and purposeful use of kink pain to help them live with their chronic pain.
In the context of kink activities, strength means Julie is able to embrace her vulnerability, to be vulnerable both physically and emotionally. This vulnerability is welcomed—even encouraged—in kink; Julie feels able to express emotions, to experience pain, without fear of condemnation. This meant that her kink play served as a space in which to relieve the social pressure to contain responses to pain, echoing discourses of submission as relief from high-stress, high-responsibility employment (Newmahr 2011; Weiss 2011).
For my participants, kink played a part in that control—a narrative that differed from more mainstream, normative-adjacent discourses of why people engage in BDSM—offering them ways of engaging with sensation which they felt more control over, as well as offering them ways of emotionally engaging in pain without being stigmatised for expressing their response. This presentation of kink as almost-therapeutic (I say almost because my participants expressed discomfort with presenting kink in this way, especially as it was something they engaged with for pleasure, while therapy was associated with medicine and rehabilitation) is undoubtedly an awkward, problematic one to hear (Barker and Langdridge 2009), but one I would argue is necessary as it reveals a great deal about how people living with chronic pain experience their lived bodyminds.
☙