Sadomasochistic Nature Religion: Transfeminism, BDSM, and the Meat of Religious Studies

This paper explores sadomasochism as a methodological entry point for studying trans/queer life and religion under its present oppressive policing by the United States government. Namely, it seeks to reposition the “more-than-human” turn away from “queer ecology” and the inherent queerness of the body towards, instead, the religious sensations of rendering and being rendered into meat. Centering BDSM and kink as methods exposes the pleasure in the pain of studying that which hurts, especially as a trans woman studying my own subjugation. If BDSM explores the perforated boundaries between pain and pleasure, a safe avenue for embracing pain and trauma felt as uncontrollable sexual ecstasy, I similarly position religious studies as a sensational reenactment of my own control by the state, my rendering as meat, and the economies of un/freedom that both harm me and make up the genuine pleasure I feel from studying religion.