Disordered Desire: On Pillion (2025)
Many years ago, I found myself in a discussion about "paraphilic infantilism," a fetish in which an adult pretends to be a baby, dresses like a baby, talks like a baby, adopts the behavior of a baby, and is "cared" for by someone who may also be a sexual partner. This seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, like the very sordid activity of the mentally ill, an enterprise so innately repulsive to my sense of what it means for humans to live a good life that it made me feel sick to even contemplate.
But the people around me, who had raised the subject, were more reticent. Yes, they acknowledged, it was certainly unusual, and yes, maybe even disturbing to most. However, different people like different things, so who are we to "yuck their yums"? (These precise words are burned into my memory.) Who are we to say that what they enjoy is "less than"? As long as those involved were consenting adults, my friends were not disposed to make any judgment that went beyond uncomprehending indifference.
Harry Lighton's Pillion (2025) brought to mind this conversation and countless others like it, conversations I've had with people who reflexively adopt what seems to them a commendably open-minded neutrality, indefinitely suspending their judgment in favor of an anthropological curiosity. Lighton has been roundly praised for adopting such an approach to the gay biker BDSM culture in which Pillion's protagonists participate. In fact, for research he spent a weekend with the "Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club" (GBMCC), who also served as advisors for the film and were even featured in it as the gang to which Ray belongs. Apparently, the GBMCC were pleased enough to praise the film earlier this year:
... the film was absolutely top-notch in the way it told the kind of story not often seen in mainstream cinema. We were all very proud to be representing the club and bringing a little visibility of our biking community to the big screen!
Many film reviewers have praised Pillion, too, especially Lighton's non-judgmental approach to the subject matter. Justin Chang, for NPR's Fresh Air, describes the film as "a dark-toned but wildly entertaining comedy." The New York Times's Jeanette Catsoulis describes it as "an opposites-attract romantic comedy with a B.D.S.M. overlay" that "deftly navigates between salacious and sweet, raunchy and romantic." Peter Bradshaw, of the Guardian, calls Pillion "a real love story" that is told "amusingly and touchingly." Daisy Jones, of British Vogue, says that Pillion is "a very classic and quite moving romantic comedy" apart from its graphic sex scenes. David Rooney, of the Hollywood Reporter, describes it as "a cheeky delight, not to mention a unique queer love story."
How can I reconcile these descriptions with the fact that I felt physically ill during most of Pillion's runtime?
The plot is straightforward: Colin, an insecure gay man who lives with his parents, meets Ray, an attractive biker who entices Colin into a sub-dom relationship. It is an entire way of life, not just a bit of bedroom fantasy. Ray has Colin doing the shopping, cleaning, and cooking; in the evenings, while they watch TV, he doesn't allow him to sit on the sofa but has him stand behind it instead; and at night he has him sleep on the floor, at the foot of his bed, all to Colin's delight. Colin even proudly wears a chain around his neck, held together by a padlock to which Ray has the key.
We learn that Ray is part of a wider gay biker culture that welcomes Colin, giving him a position to occupy within its distinct social structure, which he happily accepts – even when it means spending the day at a campsite bent over a table alongside the other "subs," arrayed for the collective use of the doms whenever they get tired of the campfire. Colin thus steps into a role that gives him an identity, a purpose, and a sense of belonging. And though it lacks warmth and intimacy – for example, he and Ray do not have personal conversations and know very little about one another as people – it does make him feel wanted.
My objection to Pillion is not its exploration of transgressive themes or its graphic sexual content. For all its inhumanity, this is a human story about real psychological and emotional dynamics, which has the potential to open up our understanding of ourselves and of the world. But Lighton leaves this potential unrealized by refusing to engage the fact that this relationship and the premise on which it is built is not just unusual, but actually bad. Of course, Colin's mother quickly picks up on all the red flags and makes her concern known in an awkward dinner scene, providing the much-needed relief of reason. But it is Ray who articulates the dominant ethos of the film when he responds: "Deciding that what makes you uncomfortable is bad for your son... Honestly, that's a pretty backwards way of thinking. [...] I'm just saying you sound a little ignorant."
The reviewers follow Ray's lead, at least in spirit, treating the film as an "edgy queer romance" or a comedy of manners, a delightful romp, at times "an atavistic joy." Since Colin consents to his treatment, all other normative questions are effectively neutralized, broached only to be shrugged off and treated, in the end, as misguided. Warped in this way, the film can be seen as a series of laughs until its ostensibly empowering ending.
But to one who ventures the risk of critical thinking, the relationship at the center of Pillion is deeply disturbing. Ray is so psychologically damaged that he hardly seems human, adopting the frightening mode of a despot. The obvious question presents itself to the viewer: what kind of person wants to dominate another person, to tightly control what he does, to train him like an animal, to turn him into an object for his own use? This is not a benign personality formation, it is not mere difference – it is a gravely deformed psyche.
On the prowl for a man with an inversely and thus compatibly disordered psyche, Ray sniffs out Colin at a bar, spotting his lack of self-esteem and his innate "aptitude for devotion." But again, the obvious question: what kind of person desires to be so totally subordinated to another person, to comply with his orders, to be treated like an animal, like an object, to be systematically degraded? This is not a neutral set of desires: it is a fantasy that has spilled out into reality, becoming a totalizing disorder that refracts the other's command and control into a travesty of love.
On the one night when Ray allows Colin to sleep beside him rather than on the rug, Colin says, "You know I love you, right?" "That's not what this is," says Ray, "that's not the point." Colin asks, "Isn't love the whole point?" One hopes that this will lead to the realization that there is no love here, not if love can be meaningfully distinguished from Stockholm Syndrome.
Unfortunately, it does not lead to this realization, which would be too judgmental. Colin's much-vaunted character growth at the end of the film is simply that he learns more about the nuances of his own desire. Making an online profile in the hopes of finding another "dom," he touts his submissiveness, his obedience, his high pain threshold – but he now requires one day off per week, and he will not cut his hair. Other than that, "your wish is my command." Justin Chang calls this a "hopeful direction."
Pillion and its reception add to the evidence that a moral imagination that begins and ends with "consent" is disastrously impoverished. For it treats desire as self-justifying and thereby fails to distinguish between good and bad desires. The great victory for Colin is that he learns that he wants to be degraded six days a week rather than seven. That's one notion of progress. But is the desire itself good? The film and its reviewers suggest that only Colin can know. This recalls the old Crystals' song: "He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)." If it felt like a kiss, who is to say otherwise? To say otherwise would be to make a value judgment, an act that has been severely restricted in the bien-pensant circles for which the film is intended. Judgment is reserved for crimes of "intolerance." In this case, as in the case of "paraphilic infantilism," I believe the charge would be "kink shaming."
Call it whatever you like. But it is astounding to think that those who find Pillion romantic, or at least look upon its extreme submissive-dominant relations with a blithe agnosticism, are largely people on the left, people who profess a commitment to equality and human flourishing. Their judgment, or lack of judgment, reveals just how shallow is their idea of equality – equality as a mere abstraction, an empty formalism – and of human flourishing, conceived as the indiscriminate satisfaction of one's desires. The ethic of non-judgment turns intelligent people into moral imbeciles.
For those whose taste for equality runs deeper, who understand it as a living ideal, the stark asymmetry in Colin and Ray's relationship is deplorable, and the satisfaction they get from it emerges from seriously disordered structures of desire. We must retain the capacity to say so.