When the patriarch admits, “I want to beat you during sex because you are not worthy of respect” that is not power exchange, that is not BDSM. That is NOT an expression of trust or vulnerability. That is a replication of the hegemony that empowers them.

And when the culture, well-meaning but panicked, says, “it is wrong to want to beat ANYONE during sex,” it conflates agreements between lovers who exchange power for mutual pleasure with the logic of an abuser. All it does is further endanger people whose desires are stigmatized.

When you focus criticism on the aesthetic of erotic expression as opposed to the material function of power surrounding it, what you do is not curb the ostensibly dangerous appetite of the beater, you in fact obscure the path to safe experiences of pleasure by the beaten.

The patriarch, the rapist, the abuser, thrives on this lack of nuance. It allows them to hide in plain sight behind liberal touchiness and corporatized feminist anxiety around “sex positivity.” Don’t shut up but learn to identify the difference and attack with precision.