Colombia

While researching, I had to often deal with the phenomena of being in the role of what Becker (1963) termed the ‘falsely accused’. Even though my ‘deviance’ only went as far as to be conducting a research on the topic of consensual ‘SM’, a lot of the people in my social environment as well as on the Scene (of consensual ‘SM’ and ‘Fetishism’) in London labelled me any- way. This experience allowed me an insight into the rigidity with which

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people apply labels and how a label changes the way people interact with an individual once labelled. Although my commitment to consensual ‘SM’ ‘body practices’ reduces itself to the level of professional research interests, my parents and my ex-partner believed that I was actively engaged with consensual ‘SM’ ‘bodily practices’ because I studied it. The psychotherapist whom I interviewed in London’s ‘Institute of Human Sexuality’ was inter- ested to find out about my ‘SM-elements’ as I was carrying out this specific research project. These are only a few of the many situations I encountered within the role of the ‘falsely accused’ which provided me with a ‘lived experience’ of the potential impacts of processes of labelling.

Through the interview with the psychotherapist who works at the London ‘Institute of Human Sexuality’, I gained an insight into the effects of official labelling. None of the clients he encountered in the context of his work were open about their ‘bodily practices’; they remained ‘closeted’ and preferred to stay that way. The therapist informed me that in contrast to, for example, ‘fetishism’, which in his opinion is an exclusively male ‘paraphilia’, ‘sadomasochists’ could be found in both ‘genders’: “There are probably as many women as men in SM” (Interview-file Q.: l). He stated his belief that ‘the broad area of SM’, to his knowledge, is unusual; the clients with whom he works on their ‘Sadomasochism’ seem to obviously not enjoy their ‘sexuality’. In his experience these are mostly men, who ‘play’ alone or ‘unmatching couples’ that do not cope with their different expectations regarding ‘sexuality’. Another stark contrast to the people I interviewed, who were never officially labelled and who do not see the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ as problematic in their lives, is the fact that these clients do not have any connection to others who share similar experiences or the Scene that evolved around consensual ‘SM’ and ‘Fetishism’ in London. It appeared as though his clients tried to avoid the stigmatization and the social reactions that go along with the label and therefore preferred to live isolated lives. As the social construction of the label ‘Sadomasochism’ implies a notion of psychopathology, they do not want to be identified with this ‘social censure’ (Sumner 1990) or be connected to any of the con- sensual ‘SM’-support groups. “I would say that none of them seem to be in any kind of network. None of them have. ... They wouldn’t want to iden- tify” (Interview-file Q.: 4/5). The psychotherapist agreed that imposed and/ or internalized negative labels often prevent constructive work on prob- lems and he added that negative labels would also lower self-esteem which in turn will worsen the compulsion to act out ‘paraphilias’. In his opinion ‘paraphilias’, like ‘Sadomasochism’, are grounded in low self-esteem and thus negative labelling would be more than counterproductive in effect. My experiences with people in the ‘field’ was different. My interviewees did not show any self-esteem problems and thus, it might be that they are rather the result of lives spent in the ‘closet’ (i.e. as in the case of the psy- chotherapist’s clients).

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Research on the relationship between self-concepts and ‘delinquency’ has had disappointing results (Matsueda 1992). Matsueda thus suggested: “... the need for considering alternative conceptualizations of the self and its role in the process of social control” (Matsueda in Cullen and Burton l994: l74). Matsueda’s modification suggests a concept of self as ‘being rooted in social interaction, comprising many dimensions and as providing a crucial link between self-control and social control’ and considers the importance of labelling theories in the specification of ‘the broader determinants of the self’ in building up the argument that “... delinquency is in part determined by one’s appraisals of self from the standpoint of others” (ibid.: 174). In view of the impression I gained of the ‘self-esteem’ of my interviewees I consider Matsueda’s specification of ‘self’ an improvement as none of the people I encountered on the Scene seems to have particularities of ‘global self-esteem’. Therefore Matsueda’s framework that treats ‘global self-esteem’ as only one element of a multifaceted ‘self’ is indeed more fruitful as it appreciates that: “the critical locus of social control may be the process of role-taking and forming the self as an object with a specific set of mean- ings” (Matsueda in Cullen and Burton 1994: 175). This approach will be applied within the section of this chapter that deals with the modes of self- understanding on the side of my interviewees.

In the view of the psychotherapist there appears to be no specific ‘SM-background’ which also matches the results of my research: “They have a wide range of backgrounds, they may have cold parental environments, they may have public school type coldness or they may have not. They may have a very warm background and everything ‘normal’, normal as far as you can tell and according to their own accounts of it as well. And you think: ‘Why is it like this?’ And the answer is: ‘Who knows.’ I think there are hun- dreds of kinds of paraphilias” (Interview-file Q.: 4). Even though this ther- apist has an extraordinarily accepting approach towards consensual ‘SM’ in that he does not try to ‘cure’ it, like a majority of therapists might do, he still applies the term ‘paraphilia’ and he sees ‘paraphilias’ as implicitly prob- lematic even though he gives his clients the choice to stick to them: “The crucial thing about it is that they [‘paraphiliacs’] prefer those things to the loving partner. They are not just like embellishments, they are not like salt and pepper, they are the main course” (Interview-file Q.: 4).

After my experiences within the ‘field’, I believe that this is not gener- ally true. Many interviewees either were in loving relationships or looked for them; some did not. In my opinion the fixation mentioned here might also be the result of the isolation in which clients of the Institute were living. They did not get a chance to meet others, who might have shown them that they are not ‘weird’, and they would not have had the chance to meet more ‘matching’ partners. Apart from these general findings, I found the psychotherapist’s perception of ‘masochists’ very interesting: “Often when you meet people who are so-called ‘masochists’, even in a

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clearly sexual way, they are very difficult people, very, very controlling. So, it’s almost as if they are the controlling ones, you know, the ones in charge” (Interview-file Q.: 3). Although I find it problematic to accept the suggestion that ‘masochists’ are supposed to be ‘difficult people’, the psy- chotherapist’s comments about the masochist’s power to control and to be in charge finds its empirical echo within the interviews and observations I conducted.

In ‘Fetishism, Sadomasochism and Related Behaviors’, the psychologists Gosselin and Wilson (in Howells 1984), point out that they:

pay relatively little attention to the clinical literature, since the clinical subject represents only about 10 percent of those with these sexual vari- ant patterns ... and is usually under legal or social pressure, feels excessive guilt, suffers marital discord and generally finds his sexual pattern a bur- den rather than merely a fact of life or a source of enjoyment. He is conse- quently unrepresentative of the variant population as a whole. (Gosselin and Wilson in Howells l984: 89)

The official label thus profoundly impacts on a subject’s behaviour. The information I gained at the ‘London Institute of Human Sexuality’ fur- ther verified Gosselin and Wilson’s objections to the study of the ‘clinical subject’ or the ‘secondary deviant’ and therefore I decided to include only individuals within this research, who did not get officially labelled. The use of official statistics as a source of information to estimate the popula- tion who engage in consensual ‘SM’ as such, is, in my opinion, inefficient as it has proved to be for ‘crime’, not only because of the dark figure, but also because: “..., the size of the ‘criminal’ population is wholly determined by the exercise and experience of control, with particular members being periodically extruded into or included from the ‘normal’ population. ...” (Ditton l979: 34).