My BDSM news updates have been filled recently with headlines about actor Armie Hammer. The headlines were alarming at first. They implied that he had coerced women into cannibalism and BDSM. I read several reports but the lack of substance was almost as alarming as the implications. The rush-to-publish pieces were based on Twitter posts that did not allege he had forced anyone into cannibalism, but that he’d made weird comments about having a cannibal fetish and (less clear) liking BDSM. The media’s insinuation by putting these terms in their headlines made it sound as if simply having extreme fantasies is somehow shameful and abusive.
Rolling Stone did a really good job of unpacking the tabloid-style sensationalism. They interviewed a professional dominatrix who nailed it on the head.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/armie-hammer-cannibalism-sext-scandal-1115309/
Empress Wu says that the discourse surrounding Hammer’s transgressions should focus less on his alleged kinks and more on the alleged consent violations that occurred with the women in these texts. “I consider it a bad representation of BDSM because I don’t consider it BDSM,” she says. If the messages are real, “this man has a fetish, this man has a kink, but I don’t think it was true BDSM because there was a clear consent violation that occurred. It’s just, like, spicy assault.”
Slate also interviewed people who have this fetish and discovered they too are irritated about the way the media has blown this up.
The Ethical Cannibals of the World Would Like the Armie Hammer News Cycle to End, Too
… cannibal fetishism isn’t offering an actual serving of a body on a plate, and they are not necessarily interested in eating an actual bite of human (which, even with explicit consent, can get you sent to prison—and sometimes it doesn’t even take that much). In the accounts of Hammer’s purported fetish, two things are happening: the fetish itself and the allegations of abuse. The conflation of the two—and the breathlessness of the coverage—is what rankles people who have been doing this particular dance for a long time.
In my interviews, cannibal fetishists drew a bright line between their activities and the allegations against Hammer, but also seemed a little protective of him, insofar as he should have a right to desire human flesh in peace.
Yes. Cannibal Fetishists do what all Safe, Sane, Consensual adults do to find ways to simulate the experience without causing real harm — they adapt, modify, and respect limits.
And now comedian Bill Maher has weighed in, exonerating Armie Hammer by saying he was just talking bullshit, and turning around to blame and shame the female victims
“My point is that the women who are objecting to this now, who went out with Armie Hammer – willingly – and stayed in – willingly – and there wasn’t physical bad stuff happening, OK… we can all agree that’s intolerable.
“But if there wasn’t any physical coercion, why isn’t this just filed under, ‘That seemed like a good idea at the time to let Armie Hammer eat me, but it really wasn’t.’ It seems like we don’t have any ownership anymore, of our own choices.”
Maher’s opinion, apparently, is that women who stay in abusive relationships bear all the blame if they don’t leave. It’s a commonly shared belief among abusers, the old “but she still stayed for the goodies” excuse. This is particularly disgusting to BDSM people because it takes all the agency and places it on the less powerful person in the relationship, the one who may be fearful of the dominant partner’s authority, power, or financial status. (Hammer is an heir to an oil fortune, by the way.)
Maher should be calling bullshit on himself. First, because — like me — he can’t possibly know for a fact yet everything Hammer said to the women, how he treated the women, and how he made the women feel about themselves. (Twitter is speculating that a big reveal will be dropping soon.) What we DO know is that women in his past agree that he’s abusive. Why did they wait to talk? Well, sometimes you need to feel empowered by other victims before you can tell your story. Meanwhile, when several women are willing to witness to a man’s abuse, you can almost count on the allegations being true.
If Maher’s standard of consent means that men get to hurt women emotionally as long as the women don’t leave, then he doesn’t understand more about consent than your typical serial abuser. Domestic abuse is a complicated and tragic phenomenon, with bizarre relationship dynamics that can leave invisible scars on its victims. Our culture tends to prosecute for physical abuse but hasn’t yet learned how to punish people for inflicting psychological scars through their lies and games.
FANTASY YES, HARM NO
Maybe Mr. Hammer had weird fantasies. All fantasies are acceptable in the domain of FANTASY. What you are not allowed to do is harm others in real life, neither in word or deed. Whatever your fantasy, you are responsible for mitigating harm and making sure that your legal-age parter walks away physically and emotionally okay, and — one hopes — happy too.
Think of sex, at its most primal, as transactional. You give something, you expect to get something in return. You give your body, you expect pleasure. You give your energies, you expect reciprocal energy back. You give your trust and you expect the partner to demonstrate that your trust was well-placed. In the case of intercourse, lack of mutual consent means it’s an act of rape. In the case of Kink, almost anything may be construed as assault unless there was clear (explicit), legal, informed consent.
If Hammer deliberately flaunted kinky things to rile their fears, it has nothing to do with fetish. It has everything to do with a psychologically warped mind. Decent humans keep looking until they find someone who says “you too? let’s act it out safely!” They don’t use their fetishes to frighten others.
Discounting the power of verbal abuse, as Maher does– and as thousands of other bullies do — is ignorant. Talk to an abuse survivor. They feel so diminished or gaslighted by partners, they often feel just as damaged as those who suffered physical injury.
Any woman (or man or nonbinary/transgender adult) can get sucked into the vortex of an abuser’s negativity, wanting to believe only the best of the partner they chose, rationalizing their partner’s shitty attitudes, brushing off hurtful words, and discounting their own suffering for months, years, even lifetimes. Under the constant emotional stress of abuse, the line between fantasy and reality erodes and fear and shame can be too overwhelming to speak out. Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t just apply to prisoners but to long-term abuse victims too.
NEVER BLAME A FETISH
A fetish is a fetish. Nobody chooses their fetish. Instead, fetishes form spontaneously in people with the inclination to be fetishists in the first place. That’s my theory: genetics play a role but environment and individual biology create the specific fetish attachment. I wrote about the seven set stages of sex/fetish development in my book, Sex for Grown-Ups. In 30+ years of research, I’ve yet to meet a self-identified fetishist who hasn’t experienced those developmental stages.
Some of us have unusual or extreme fetishes, some have more sensual or mainstreamed ones. Those differences don’t make one type of fetish better or worse than others. Rape fantasies? Choking fantasies? Knife fantasies? Cannibal fantasies? Adults have all of those fantasies and more, including adults who don’t identify with BDSM or Kink. As above, Safe, Sane Consensual, or Risk-Aware Consensual Kink are hard and fast rules we BDSM/Fetish folk abide by to avoid harming others in word or deed. SSC and RACK remind us that kink and sex, in general, are for MUTUAL pleasure. Even the most extreme fetishes can bring joy to partners without harm to any.
Meanwhile, I’m not even convinced Hammer is a Cannibal Fetishist. It sounds like he’s too much of a coward to honestly put in the work to deserve membership in any fetish club. My call is that his real fetish is for nonconsensual mindfucks and causing anguish, also known as anti-social behavior. He made statements intended to terrorize and disgust women who didn’t know where he was coming from or if their lives were at genuine risk with him. He wasn’t doing it in a responsible BDSM/Fetish way, with the keen awareness that this was a game they were playing together, and should be as much for her fun as for his.
Hammer just used fetish references to fuel his own nonconsensual game, with rules that gave him all the power and ended up hurting women deeply. There’s nothing kinky about that. It’s called misogyny.
