From: mkkuhner@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Reconciling BDSM and Pagan Beliefs
Date: 6 Nov 92 22:35:42 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

GC.GGG@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gwyn Gordon) writes:

[incidentally, the 'BDSM' in the title is often taken to mean the whole
complex of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and 
masochism.  I can't speak to the last two because they're not part of my
personal experience.--Mary]

[Gwen]
>What DOES the dominant one experience? (true curiosity here)

Can't speak for anyone but myself.  For me it's not a sexual experience,
particularly; mostly a performance put on for my partner's benefit.
I enjoy his enjoyment, mainly, though there's also some interesting
challenges in finding the right things to say/do.   How can I wring the
most intense pleasure possible (for him) out of this situation?

>Sacrificing what? Yourself? Your body? Control of your body? This is
>another thing that I am interested in clarifying, because perhaps I
>could understand it more if I knew exactly what was being gained
>and what was being acted out. 

I don't know if I can put it into words.

My version of the Wheel of the Year myth has the Horned God sacrificing
his life at Lammas, but it doesn't have to be life:  the basic idea, for
me, is willingly and deliberately putting your power into someone else's
hand, letting it go.  Part of the appeal is doing something without
reservations--like committing yourself to a scary ride at an amusement
park.  If I let the other person have power over me he could do
*anything* with it.  (One of the uses we make of BDSM is to play Truth
or Dare....)

There is a scene in Guy Gavriel Kay's _The Summer Tree_ in which a young
man accepts death in order to experience the Goddess' embrace.  In some
ways that seems very awful, very unfair; and yet, *could* his experience
have happened without his death?  In some way which I can't fully
articulate, the terror of submission/surrender/self-sacrifice
intensifies the passion and makes it seem something more than physical
pleasure.

I don't think any of this is going to make much sense if you haven't
been there.

The core of the experience is trust offered and accepted (which is scary
for both parties, not just the submissive; it's a big responsibility for
the dominant).  My own experience with BDSM practicioners suggests that
concerns about consensual BDSM leading to non-consensual are
misplaced, even backwards.  The essence of the act is trust, and any
violation of trust ruins the experience so completely and horribly that
there's no mistaking it--and no desiring it.

(Incidentally, I think you attach more importance to the gender of the
participants than we do.  My partner and I can imagine ourselves as
either gender in fantasy/lovemaking, and often do; so the scene may be
lesbian dominance, or male dominance of a female, or female dominance of
a male, independent of who is topping who.  One of the reasons I trust
my partner to deal with a woman submitting to him is that he knows, at
least in part, what it is to be a woman submitting.  This sort of thing
is technically difficult to acheive in simple intercourse.)

>I guess (again, FOR ME) there are some
>things that I don't WANT to enact, because it seems that even in
>play there is some shred of reality (just as in every racist/sexist/
>whateverist joke there is some shred of the ism?) and the reality is
>too frightening to be fun even in play. 

Other aspects of my spirituality involve trying to force myself to face
things that are terribly frightening and unfun; like the journey to the
Underworld in our Samhain ritual.  Looking within myself I find that
there *are* desires to submit, to sacrifice myself to my lover, to let
someone else control me.  I could deny those, because I know that their
usual expression in this society is a horror; but they don't go away
from being denied.  Or I could look for a way of expressing
them--perhaps exorcising them, perhaps learning to accept and deal with
thm--that doesn't lead to abuse and degradation.

For me, it's profoundly healing to be able to trust a man enough to let
him control me physically or emotionally for a time.  I was raised to
distrust men, to think that if I ever gave them a sufficiently good
opportunity they might rape me.  This may be a necessary survival
mindset but it's a crippling one.  Being able to say to my partner that
I don't fear him, that he can tie me up or entrance me or otherwise have
me at his mercy and I *know* he will not harm me or force me to do
anything I don't want to do...is a tremendous liberation from fear and
mistrust.

I believe this is also true for him--that freedom from society's
pressure to always be in control, always be the one making the
decisions, is a liberating position.  And enacting the dominant role
also has a powerful lesson to teach--that despite society's lies about
male sexuality, he *can* be with a naked, bound, helpless woman and
choose not to do anything against her will.  He's not a victim of his
gonads, and this is an empowering thing to have affirmed. Female fear of
males must be just as hard on them as it is on us.

>You have
>to act in a way that is congruent with your beliefs, and dismissing
>something as "merely" political seems odd to me. I brought up those
>"political" arguments which make visions of S&M resonate with of
>thousands of years of fear and suffering -- and yes this is a
>personal reaction but please don't belittle it as insignificant in
>comparison to a 'mysterious' act that often isn't very mysterious
>at all.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to belittle your concerns--I share them to some
extent.

But I can't accept that when something has been misused for thousands of
years that the only answer is to stop using it at all--especially when
it's something as basic to human nature, or at least my nature, as
dominance/submission in sexuality.  I agree that you have to act in
congruence to your beliefs, but your arguments seemed to me to verge on
saying "I should not do consensual BDSM because other people have done
non-consensual BDSM."  And that's not letting your principles rule your
actions--it's letting other people's lack of principles rule.  The same
argument is used by extreme lesbian separatists to rule out heterosex
altogether--it's been abused, so let's not use it.  But this still
leaves the power in the hands of the abusers--they are still the ones
determining your actions.

I don't know (addressing a point raised by Janis and others in this
thread) whether my submissive (or dominant) tendencies are innate human
nature or the product of being raised as I was.  I don't think it
matters very much.  I choose not to define that part of myself as evil,
even though it's been put to evil use in the past; just as I don't
regard my heterosexuality as evil even though male/female sex has been a
tool of oppression.

I understand how BDSM could represent an internalization of the vile
standards of society--taking in the lies you've been fed and making them
part of yourself.  All I can say is, that's not been my experience with
practicioners.  And taking in the lies, reversing them, and making them
part of yourself will not necessarily lead to truth either (just as
saying 'women are better than men' is not a long-term good response to a
society that insists they're worse).

We run a big risk in reacting to oppression of becoming oppressors, or
self-oppresssors, ourselves.  Standards of beauty have been used to hurt
women; there's a temptation to reject female beauty and to harass those
who are concerned or appreciative of it.  White supremacy has been used
to hurt people of other races; there's a temptation to say that no white
person should ever feel pride or pleasure in his/her race or culture.
But this is just replacing one oppression with another; it's no closer
to freedom.

Storm/Mary K. Kuhner mkkuhnerr@genetics.washington.edu
Newsgroups: alt.pagan