Abstract
In Consensual Violence: Sex, Sports, and the Politics of Injury, Jill Weinberg examines the intertwined threads of law, consent, and deviance in two distinct social worlds—mixed martial arts (MMA) and sexual sadism and masochism (BDSM). Centrally, the book makes a compelling argument about the relationship between legality and how consent is generated and understood by participants on the ground. In BDSM, where the state does not establish a framework for consent (as one cannot legally consent to sexual “violence”), practitioners themselves consciously establish and regulate practices and meanings around notions of consent. By contrast, in MMA—which is state-regulated—the fighters themselves do not construct or rationalize consent; yet, paradoxically, in this sphere the rules are at times more difficult to enforce.
There is much to like about this book. It provides a nice addition to the sociology of sport literature by shedding more light on MMA. And it represents a new theoretical perspective on the BDSM subculture as well. Primarily, the author couches the literature not within the expected canons (e.g., sociology of gender or sexuality). Instead, she engages in a nuanced socio-legal analysis that allows her to make several key contributions to existing literature about these communities.
For example, Chapter Six (“The Social Embeddedness of Consent”), which I found to be one of the strongest sections of the book, focuses on the connection between social position and consent, offering a fresh glimpse at how both of these subcultures reinscribe existing social hierarchies (e.g., gender, race) while they also offer some new possibilities for reorganizing such categories. The theoretical framing of the book also highlights the tension between the rigorous ideas about consent and the nonjudgmental culture of the BDSM community. Moreover, this book is probably the most comprehensive analysis of BDSM and its relationship to the law that I have ever seen compiled in one place. It certainly makes a contribution in this sense.
For me, however, the real strength of this text lies in its ability to shed light on important themes that are larger than these two social worlds. Drawing clear connections between the individual and the structural, it offers a broader rumination on how consent is constructed within specific fields and then conceptualized and experienced by the people who inhabit those fields. While much scholarship on consent focuses on scenarios in which it has been breached (e.g., sexual assault), this book indeed provides, as the author describes it, “a new kind of sociology of consent” (p. 119). My one critique here is that, though the book does touch on some other areas in which some might view consent as murky (e.g., fraternity hazing, wearing of the hijab, gang activity), I do think that overall (and particularly in the conclusion) the author could have done even more to demonstrate how the analysis is applicable to other areas of social life. Nonetheless, the strong theoretical foundation and its potential applicability to other social areas are important contributions of the work.
This book is clearly written and relatively short. It generally says what it needs to say in a way that will be accessible to many readers. However, it might have benefited from being more expansive in a few ways. First, I would have welcomed more information about the research methodology. There is a short paragraph on pages ten and eleven indicating that the author has taken a mixed-methods approach, including content analysis, ethnography, and interviews. Additionally, there is a “Methodological Note” at the end of the text (pp. 121–123), which indicates why the author chose to conduct a case study and to use ethnography (and which ruminates on reflexivity) but does not shed any light on how the data were collected or analyzed.
At times, this lack of information is limiting. For instance, at one point the author indicates that “30 percent” of BDSM practitioners in the sample, when asked to give advice to potential newcomers to BDSM, gave legal advice. She then bolsters this point with quotes from two individuals, both lawyers. For me, this is not the strongest evidence that “individuals structure the consent process in anticipation of criminal liability” (p.92), as the author claims, since people in the legal professions might be more attuned to issues of criminal liability. But this case also makes me wonder about the larger dimensions of these two samples. More broadly, were the samples skewed in any meaningful ways that may have affected the patterning of responses? Though the data are clearly rich, it is difficult to evaluate the methodological foundations of the text without additional information.
A second—and perhaps more minor—point is that the book is called Consensual Violence; and while it engages extensively with the concept of “consent,” it never fully unpacks the meaning of “violence.” Previous literature suggests that at least some BDSM practitioners do not view their activities as “violent,” per se, and indeed often consciously disengage from that term—a form of stigma management that is exactly the type that this book discusses. An exploration of the meaning of “violence,” particularly within the context of BDSM, would have been helpful here.
Critiques aside, this book is a quick read that will appeal to those familiar with existing scholarship on these topics, as well as with readers, including undergraduates, who are new to the subject matter. Chapter Four (“Enforcing and Rationalizing Rule Violations”), for instance, would be a useful primer for a Deviance and Social Control class, as it gives context to many of the major concepts and themes of the subfield (e.g., social learning theory, Becker’s concept of rule enforcers) in a way that would be accessible and interesting to students. The text, overall, would be a nice addition to courses on the sociology of law, deviance, sport, or sexualities.