Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.05.2016, Qupperneq 12

At a meeting held on March
20 this year, it was discussed
whether BDSM á Íslandi
should be allowed to keep
its place under the umbrella
queer organization known as
Samtökin ’78.
Many brave people spoke out and many
a statement from my family of fellow
perverts stirred me to tears. There
were, however, also other people pres-
ent at the meeting, many with less
educated opinions about what BDSM
is and what it is not. One such person,
whose name is publically stated in the
Samtökin ’78 meeting summary, was
Páll Óskar Hjálmtýsson.
To be absolutely clear, I am not
about to critique Páll Óskar out of
spite. If anything, he managed to com-
municate his prejudice and lack of
knowledge at this meeting in a seem-
ingly polite way, unlike others partici-
pating in this debate. I single out Páll
Óskar because he is one of the most
respected and best-known members
of the Icelandic queer community. In
fact, unless you are raging homopho-
bic dinosaur with a knack for singing
“Sjúddirarí rei,” you will show Páll Ós-
kar the respect he deserves. Because
of his fame and the respect he enjoys,
his words carry a certain weight in the
queer community. It is therefore not en-
tirely without fear of being shunned by
the communities in which I feel most at
home that I write the following.
At the above-mentioned meeting,
Páll Óskar stated that he would not
vote for the inclusion of BDSM á Íslan-
di into Samtökin ’78. At the same time
he told members of the BDSM commu-
nity to go “make your own parade.” Ad-
mittedly, he later apologized “if” this
might have sounded a bit nasty (which
it did, thank you very much), yet he did
not change his position on the matter
during the meeting. He maintained
that BDSM folk should, in fact, make
our own pride parade as one part of a
larger effort to educate him and the
public about BDSM before we should
be allowed anywhere near Samtökin
’78. He failed to mention that BDSM
á Íslandi has held countless meet-
ings and even whole-day seminars on
these issues, none of which have been
attended by anyone opposing BDSM á
Íslandi’s membership in Samtökin.
Notwithstanding his lack of knowl-
edge about BDSM, however, Páll Óskar
Hjálmtýsson seems to have no prob-
lem borrowing elements from BDSM
culture and appropriating it for his
otherwise wildly entertaining and
glimmery performances.
The first time this happened was
in 1997, when Páll Óskar performed
“Minn hinsti dans” at the Eurovision
Song Contest. Here he was dressed
in black latex pants while four wom-
en, also dressed in black latex, clung
around him in what was a very se-
ductive performance, to say the least.
This caricature version of real-life
BDSM was conceived of by Páll Óskar
almost two decades ago, but he never
really stopped flirting with the BDSM
aesthetic. As such, in 2007 he released
the music video “Allt fyrir ástina,” in
which he and his backup dancers were
all dressed in red latex suits.
These days his dancers wear what
we in the BDSM community term a
“bondage suit” (or more commonly a
“gimp suit,” a term made popular after
its portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s
‘Pulp Fiction’). In BDSM communi-
ties these suits come in many variet-
ies and shapes—such as straitjackets,
sacks, hogties, codpieces and whole
suits—and can be made of anything
from rubber and latex to leather or
spandex (the Páll
Óskar version
seems to be made
of glitter, which
is fine if that’s
your fetish). Typi-
cally, a bondage
suit will be worn
by a submissive
to fulfill a need to
feel helpless or the
fantasy of being
temporarily re-
duced to a sexual
object or toy. Stra-
tegically placed
zippers on most
of these suits al-
low a dominant
to access certain
areas of the sub-
missive’s body,
including the
nipples, genitals,
anus and mouth.
A bondage suit
will also typically
have a number
of metal rings or
anchor points to
make restraining
the wearer easier.
The bondage
suit has a history
so long that it is
nearly untrace-
able, and we may only ponder as to
when the first bondage suit saw the
light of day. What we can be fairly cer-
tain of, however, is that the modern
bondage suit developed from the need
to express one’s BDSM orientation.
More importantly, the bondage suit
is probably one of the most intimate
and most easily recognizable symbols
in BDSM. It expresses the beauty of
willful submission with such grueling
intensity that it not only transcends
normative sexualities; it upsets them,
queers them and forces them out of
their usual framework. In other words,
a bondage suit is not just a bondage
suit. It has a particular cultural value
to our community.
Admittedly, I am not easily of-
fended over issues of cultural appro-
priation. Sure, if you are, say, a white
rapper and decide to wear a Native
American headdress while perform-
ing, or attend a Halloween party in
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2016
12
MAKE YOUR
OWN PARADE
OPINION
BDSM Rights
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