Kink, Shame, and the Absence of Respect: The Prevailing Reality of Sex Negativity in the U.S.

TRIGGER WARNING: This article includes discussion regarding sexual assault, sexual coercion, emotional manipulation and abuse.

Do we live in a sex-positive culture? 

After witnessing the media’s handling of the news related to Armand (Armie) Hammer’s infidelity and abusive behaviors, I think we can confidently answer this question with a resounding no. 

Throughout March 2021, the month in which the news surrounding Hammer’s (allegedly abusive) relationships was made public, I felt incredibly frustrated—and equally disturbed—by the media’s obsession with Hammer’s sadistic sexual interests. Nearly every headline related to the multiple accusations of sexual assault and coercion against Hammer failed to mention such accusations. Instead, these headlines solely emphasized on Hammer’s cannibalism fetish. Essentially, what should have been the focus of these stories—Hammer’s alleged abusive and sexually coercive behaviors—was overshadowed by the public’s preoccupation with sex.

Now, how does the media’s coverage of Hammer correlate with my claim that we do not live in a sex-positive culture? To answer this, we need to firstly recognize the politics of sexual shame in the United States and secondly understand the stigmas attached to public sex in our country. When I say “public sex,” I am not referring to sexual acts occurring in public. Rather, I am pointing towards initially private sexual acts that are made public. 

In his book The Trouble With Normal, American cultural critic Michael Warner elucidates the troubling relationship between sex and shame in the United States. Warner specifically argues that hierarchies of sex exist in the United States—hierarchies that suppose some forms of sexuality (and sexual activity) as normal and demonize others as abnormal and therefore shameful. According to Warner, these hierarchies “serve no real purpose except to prevent sexual variance.” Sexual variance in this case encompasses the behaviors of individuals/groups whose lifestyles reside outside of the established sexual norm(s): the unmarried, queers, the promiscuous, and those who participate in BDSM. As someone who both has sex outside marriage and is interested in sadomasochistic practices, Hammer resides on the lower end of the American hierarchies of sex.

It is worth noting, of course, that we are only aware of Hammer’s position within these hierarchies due to the publicization of his sexual life. In his work, Warner notes that “although sex is public in this mass-mediatized culture to a degree that is probably without parallel in world history, it is also true that anyone who is associated with actual sex can be spectacularly demonized.” I would extend Warner’s argument and claim that those who are publicly associated with non-normative sex are demonized even further, at once associated with the scandalous (and everyday) phenomena that is sex and ousted as a sexual variant. This leads us to a conversation surrounding the stigmas attached to sexual variance—a discourse that Warner notably engages throughout The Trouble With Normal. 

In Warner’s mind, stigma “attaches not to doing, but to being; not to conduct, but to status.” Essentially, stigmas function to bind one’s acts—“the doing”—to one’s social position—“the being.” Contextualized with the recent news concerning Hammer’s sexual proclivities, we can see how the stigmas attached to the kinds of sexual relations; Hammer is involved in are fundamentally shaping public perceptions of his personhood.

It is for exactly this reason that I find the media’s (mis)handling of Hammer’s romantic relationships so infuriating. Somehow, the scandalous nature of Hammer’s sex (and, apparently, of sex itself) has diverted our attention away from the real story: the multiple accusations Hammer faces of sexual assault, of sexual coercion, and of emotional manipulation and abuse. If we truly lived in a sex-positive culture, Hammer’s non-normative kinks and fetishes would not be sensationalized. The public’s attention would instead be directed towards the unequal power dynamics—and the alleged abuse of said power—existing within Hammer’s past romantic relationships. 

While the media’s portrayal of Hammer—and the public’s acceptance of such a portrayal—reveals the persisting sex-negativity embedded within our culture, Hammer’s own comments regarding his views of sexual variance demonstrate how such negativity is produced and maintained by a politics of (sexual) respectability. 

In a 2013 interview with Playboy, Hammer describes how his marriage to Elizabeth Chambers forcibly transformed (read: repressed) his sexual desires: “I used to like to be a dominant lover. I liked the grabbing of the neck and the hair and all that. Then you get married and your sexual appetites change… You can’t really pull your wife’s hair. It gets to a point where you say, ‘I respect you too much to do these things that I want to do.’” In Hammer’s mind, the BDSM practices he describes (“grabbing…the neck and the hair,” “[being] a dominant lover”) are inherently incompatible with marriage. Hammer seems to believe that married couples cannot participate in BDSM practices because they “respect” one another. This, of course, implies that Hammer perceives BDSM as a practice that he can only partake in when he does not respect his partner.

The blatantly problematic nature of his comments aside, Hammer’s understanding of marriage as a force that facilitates and maintains respectful sexual/romantic relations highlights the significant role marriage plays in perpetuating the politics of sexual respectability—and shame—in the United States. Problematizing the function of marriage in The Trouble With Normal, Warner describes marriage as a force that “sanctifies some couples at the expense of others. [marriage] is selective legitimacy… if you don’t have [marriage], you and your relations are less worthy… marriage, in short, discriminates.” 

We can now begin to understand marriage not as some idealistic vision of the ultimate love but as a tool that is socially recognized and used to certify specific forms of sexual and romantic relations as normal—and, more importantly, respectful. 

To truly begin working towards fostering a sex-positive culture in the U.S., we must work against the traditional view of marriage as the highest expression of love and embrace all forms of romantic and sexual relationships. If we continue to validate specific forms of intimacy by integrating them into our definition of marriage (I am specifically thinking of the fight for gay marriage, which Warner and I are intensely skeptical of), we must vehemently fight for the social and legal recognition of non-normative relationships. In doing so, we must also promote and foster an environment of sexual autonomy, one that not only allows us the freedom to explore our pleasures and desires but also provides us with the tools to explore them.