The Story of K

By Bunga Pakma

Ramadhan is drawing to a close, the moon is coming to her rendezvous with the sun, to reappear soon and bring us Eid Al-Fitri.  Once the festivities have quieted down, poor Ms. Kartika will report to prison, where a specialist will thwack her six times with a rotan in the interest of her education.

Indignity after indignity has been heaped on Ms Kartika, and in respect to her, I shall not print her name further. Among these indignities, perhaps the most sordid is a thing which the outer world well knows but here in Malaysian discourse is conspicuous by its absence, the proverbial “elephant in the room.”  Have the Malaysian authorities, have the Syariah judge Abdul Rahman Mohd Yunos and lawyers realized that they have crafted a lurid pornographic entertainment for the lascivious men and women, straight, gay and lesbian, of whole world?

When it comes to the variety of sexual practices and fantasies, I doubt there are many innocents in Malaysia or elsewhere, though I’m sure many Malaysians keep an anxious hold on their thoughts and imaginings.  In the interest of education, let us examine the nature of this spectacle.

Bondage, Discipline, Sado-Masochism (BDSM for short) is a subset of human sexual behaviour so ancient and widespread that psychologists classify it as normal.  Bondage is tying up your partner for sex, or being tied up yourself.  Discipline refers to the infliction of pain, traditionally pinching and spanking (see the Kama Sutra) or whipping (with twigs, the staple of the sauna). Sado-masochism refers to mental attitudes: the enjoyment of dominating another person sexually, and the enjoyment of being so dominated.

A BDSM “scene”  is usually established beforehand: a woman and a man might agree that she’s a schoolgirl who has not done her assignment and must be spanked, or they might agree that the man is a sassy slave who must be punished for his laziness by being tied up, and…  They take it from there and a good time is had by all.

The real-life episode in question contains all the elements of a BDSM scene.  Here’s a poor girl caught doing something very naughty and yet trivial. The syariah court puts on its mask of “moral” authority: “You naughty girl.  We must teach you a lesson you shan’t forget!”—a favorite line in porn films.  Then the rotan.

In an NST article of 26-07-09, “A sentence not all it’s been whipped up to be,” the pseudonymous executioner (this is the officer’s proper title) assures us that the patient (the proper word for the whippee) will be seated unbound, and hit on the back, while the blows themselves will hardly raise a bump.  M. Bakri Musa comments:

Presumably the ‘Islamic’ whipping is closer to the S&M variety. ******* is assured that she would not be stripped but allowed to wear her baju kurong. How thoughtful! Perhaps they could supply her with a black leather one…

Dr Bakri in his column on the net takes the theme only so far, and speaks up for the nobility and courage of the sufferer, how she has benefitted Malaysian civil society.  Go to the net and search the blogs, and you, reader, will find plenty of the un-serious.  The global flagellation community has taken note of Malaysia’s enthusiasm for corporal punishment and begun to drool and cackle in their Pre-vert manner.  Jokes are cracked: “In that caning, I hope they use restraint!”  All the more as the “bottom” is a model.

The aficionados of BDSM are not monsters, however, and they constantly deplore the absence of an essential element in this incidence of pain inflicted in play-acting but not in play.  In my sketch I’ve alluded to it, and that is consent.  The watchwords of BDSM are “safe, sane and consensual,” and while ******* has resigned herself to this punishment, in fact this resignation has been extorted out of her.  She has been harrassed more than any human being should be and no decent fellow human, BDSM-player or not, could say that this consent is any more than despair.

What a grotesque farce!  If not for indignation I could howl with laughter at the way the Malaysian Syariah authorities have presented themselves to the world as the Whoremaster Hero of “Righteous Chastisement,” a hardcore porno hit on seven continents!  I advise a guard to do the Saddam-Hussein-Hanging trick: film the whipping with your handphone.  You will be rich, for there are people out there who’ll watch anything, no matter how evil.

And a life has been deeply wounded, I hope not destroyed, by shame.  Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of a condemned man, who, as he was being strapped into the electric chair, said, “This will sure teach me a lesson.”  So much for education.  The hypocrisy shown in the discrepancy between the crime and the punishment has been remarked by everyone. A beer gets you the cane, so better steal a few millions of public money.  Judge Abdul arranges an exemplary spectacle to cow his fellowlsinners.  He is arranging a play.  The consequences to his “characters” are mortal.

Meantime men who are unfortunate enough to be caught in some pecadillo such as overstaying a visa suffer the kind of whipping once inflicted on black slaves and prisoners in concentration camps.  A three cm. rotan hurled with the full force of a strong man on a bound prisoner’s buttocks can best be called a technique of mutilation.  Yes, you can find videos on the net if you really want to see a man’s butt churned to mince-meat.

This is sadism in the true psychopathological sense.  Maybe the executioner gets off on it.  I hardly think he creams in his jeans. His real interest lies in inflicting pain and damage. Some people like that. We inherited this barbarity from the British, who had perfected it in Australia, Norfolk Island, not to mention the plantations of the Caribbean and in their own homeland.  The Brits have always had a thing about flogging buttocks.  Many of the colonial officers remembered floggings on their own bums in their schooldays and sighed with nostalgia.

Ridicule has been a powerful tool throughout history for encouraging reform.  A number of grievous abuses have been laughed out of existence in the past.  I would hope that the loud, scornful laugh of the whole country might rouse shame in the self-righteous asses who run things.  I’m afraid their face-skins are too thick, their skulls too stony and their hearts too flinty for laughter to make an impression.  Not from us, that is.  But the next time Mr Najib or a colleague visits abroad to speak about his religion, much of his audience is going to have to hide their tittering.