what does it mean to be loved by death?

Imagine a related but different scene in which two adults agree to enact a play-rape scenario. The person in Lumi’s position, the “bottom,” appears to be powerless since she hands over to the other the power to determine the stopping point. As the authorized arbiter of limits, the person in Imani’s position, the “top,” may be seen as the person with power as she is the one who “calls the shots.” Obviously, a sexual scene of this sort derives its frisson and erotic charge precisely from this top-bottom power differential, that is, from its asymmetry. Inversely, one might see the bottom as being in control, since she, after all, is the one who decides when things stop and what goes or does not. The top, in this reasoning, is merely executing orders, “servicing” the bottom. But, for several reasons, we would not be correct to view this encounter as one in which power is totally split—with one person having it and the other person not. The idea that the top is ultimately in control naïvely overlooks the top’s vulnerability: in consenting to act as the top, she has engaged the bottom’s invitation for her to move past her own limits. The fact that she may also be pleasured by the experience does not diminish the fact that, in overcoming her internal resistances—that is, in bending her will—the top has to assume some responsibility if something were to go wrong. The top, therefore, makes herself passible to the bottom and to the bottom’s desire, which means that she is not the sovereign in the dyad. Nor is she sovereign in herself since, in accepting the vulnerability of bending her will, she permits the calling up of things in herself that she cannot predict ahead of time. To enact the rape play, she will have to engage with the rousing of her sadism to let it flow, while also keeping some relative check on it. At the same time, the popular opinion that because the bottom conceives of and directs the play she is ultimately the one in control is not correct either. While it is true that the top’s authority is granted—and can be revoked—by the bottom, the bottom also assumes the risk of being exposed to something going awry, which is also what makes the erotic engagement “hot.” In other words, limit consent gives us an understanding of consent in which power is not dichotomously apportioned—as in, one has it and the other does not —but elaborates a vision of consent in which power, vulnerability, and responsibility are more complexly distributed, not only between the participants but also in the texture of their encounter. Dichotomous power is in the purview of affirmative or informed consent.

The affirmative consent model, however, is insufficiently nuanced: it problematically imagines desire to be autonomous, unconstrained, and possible to separate from social inequalities that, in fact, condition who gets to withhold consent and who does not. Premised on and trafficking in appetites and erotic acts that are intelligible and socially palatable, it “often buttresses normative sexualities and sexual hierarchies” (Cruz, 2016, p. 46). From a psychoanalytic perspective, then, affirmative consent is revealed to be but a ruse: the discourse on affirmative consent presumes individuals with distinct centers of subjectivity who inform, negotiate, and reach agreements to minimize misunderstandings and manage expectations (Haag, 1999), which overlooks that we cannot know, except after the fact, what we will enjoy or not and how or what will pain or traumatize versus growthfully challenge us. So while violations of our boundaries and a disrespect of our limits absolutely deserve our attention, affirmative consent is illusory and thus not a useful concept.