sort of like your ideas on what happens with religions and other movements
Thank you for noticing the parallel. :)
Yes, any kind of movement that starts out with a potentially liberatory premise or ideology is at danger from the first moment of being co-opted into the defense of the status-quo. I agree with you that negotiating terms is a potentially very empowering aspect of BDSM. We could add safewords to that too.
But i also share your concern about consent being undermined, both within BDSM and without. As many feminists have noted, BDSM ideas and imagery are so well-recognized now that they shape sexist practice in the mainstream culture. (This is becoming true of polyamory and other non-monogamous paradigms too; witness what young people are saying about "friends with benefits" -- it is starting to become a new vocabulary for boys to justify getting sex from girls without putting any effort into caring about them whatsoever.) I'm particularly concerned about the notion of fantasies being colonized. I... well, you remember the ambivalence i felt about some of the things you saw me doing 3-4 years ago in New Orleans.
I mean, where is the talk about the dom caring enough, controly the domly self enough and the situation enough to create an atmosphere where the sub wants to consent to more these days? Pretty much disappeared. Instead the sub-culture is moving into placing all the responsibilty for unfullfilling relationships (short of overt physical coercion) onto the sub (all that talk about "not being sub enough" to give the dom what he demands).
This is exactly right, and it is good cause for concern. Others i know in the scene have talked to me about concerns that there's increasing pressure to submit to edgier and edgier things. Pressure on people to not use safewords or bragging that they don't allow their subs to use them. And sometimes people die.
Most of the people i know who are activists in the scene, at least, have their head on straight about these things. So overall i'm less worried about people who are involved with the public side of the scene. It's on the fringes where i'm concerned; outside of the gaze of scene scrutiny you find a lot of doms who are basically sadistic predators. And they've already worked out how to twist the ideas of SSC and safewords and consent out of their true meaning.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-01-26 03:43 pm (UTC)Thank you for noticing the parallel. :)
Yes, any kind of movement that starts out with a potentially liberatory premise or ideology is at danger from the first moment of being co-opted into the defense of the status-quo. I agree with you that negotiating terms is a potentially very empowering aspect of BDSM. We could add safewords to that too.
But i also share your concern about consent being undermined, both within BDSM and without. As many feminists have noted, BDSM ideas and imagery are so well-recognized now that they shape sexist practice in the mainstream culture. (This is becoming true of polyamory and other non-monogamous paradigms too; witness what young people are saying about "friends with benefits" -- it is starting to become a new vocabulary for boys to justify getting sex from girls without putting any effort into caring about them whatsoever.) I'm particularly concerned about the notion of fantasies being colonized. I... well, you remember the ambivalence i felt about some of the things you saw me doing 3-4 years ago in New Orleans.
I mean, where is the talk about the dom caring enough, controly the domly self enough and the situation enough to create an atmosphere where the sub wants to consent to more these days? Pretty much disappeared. Instead the sub-culture is moving into placing all the responsibilty for unfullfilling relationships (short of overt physical coercion) onto the sub (all that talk about "not being sub enough" to give the dom what he demands).
This is exactly right, and it is good cause for concern. Others i know in the scene have talked to me about concerns that there's increasing pressure to submit to edgier and edgier things. Pressure on people to not use safewords or bragging that they don't allow their subs to use them. And sometimes people die.
Most of the people i know who are activists in the scene, at least, have their head on straight about these things. So overall i'm less worried about people who are involved with the public side of the scene. It's on the fringes where i'm concerned; outside of the gaze of scene scrutiny you find a lot of doms who are basically sadistic predators. And they've already worked out how to twist the ideas of SSC and safewords and consent out of their true meaning.