the Female Body GOVERNING

Feminism’s Sex Wars 263
Masochism in women is pathological only to the extent that it exaggerates
their natural qualities, which, in turn, result from adaptation
to social conditions of patriarchy. Krafft-Ebing’s discussion of female
masochism is, however, caught in a contradiction. He claims that cases
of female masochism should occur frequently, yet they are difficult
to document because women suppress the articulation of perversion
(p. 197). While masochism is an extension of feminine characteristics,
it is, in turn, female “modesty” and “custom” that hinder women’s
expression of perversion. Therefore Krafft-Ebing claims that only three
cases of female masochism are known. 5
The discourse by Krafft-Ebing (1946) in which he defines masochism
and sadism as pathology exemplifies the workings of governmentality
through the institution of sexology. The underlying principle of normativity
privileges genital sexuality and hence reproduces gender norms
and the patriarchal family. Krafft-Ebing’s liberal discourse defines the
normative vis-à-vis pathological behavior while articulating the liberal
tolerance for such pathological behavior. Pro-s/m lesbians deconstruct
and question those gender prescriptions that fossilize women as
masochistic for biological reasons and men as potential sadists without
an explanation. Sadomasochistic lesbians claim that women can take
on flexible gender roles. Thus, it would seem as a albeit politically
questionable—transgression of psychoanalysis’s gender configuration
to imagine women as possible sadists. Yet, while women take on the
dominant role in s/m among lesbians, their accompanying discourse
takes pain to clarify that those lesbians are not sadists. Performing
as the dominant woman when the woman is not a sadist has been
inscribed into the definition of masochism from the beginning of the
sexologists’ discourse on masochism.
The emphasis on the performativity inherent in the role play of
s/m seems to lend itself to an argument against essentialism, yet the
writers of Coming to Power articulate a decidedly essentialist argument
in favor of lesbian s/m. According to them, the fact that s/m takes
place among women situates it in an essentially different realm than
heterosexual and gay male s/m. Despite the s/m lesbians’ explicit
critique of traditional concepts of femininity, several essays base the
difference between lesbian and heterosexual s/m on the goodness and
kindness of women: “They ask my permission first, and are loving and
gentle in their manner,” claims J. in “Proper Orgy Behavior” (Lucy,
1981, p. 42). Juicy Lucy’s essay “If I Ask You to Tie Me Up, Will You
Still Want to Love Me?” differentiates between lesbian s/m and “prick
violence & pornography”: