From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: Tantra, Power Exchange, and Reconciliation
Date: 28 Dec 92 00:53:28 GMT
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order

In article <1992Dec26.061414.4511@u.washington.edu> cyberoid@stein.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:
>In article <1992Dec25.055511.25377@thelema.uucp> STella@thelema.uucp
>(STella) writes:
>>Note to the asbers seeing this thread for the first time: I've set
>>followups back to soc.bi by default, but I wanted to give y'all a
>>whistle, in case anyone wants to join the thread in soc.bi.

>Stella, thanks for extending the discussion to a.s.b., but next time
>let me know your intentions first...it's netiquette.

Sanity check from some old netters?  I've been on the net since (JUST)
before net.motss was newgrouped, and this is a point of "netiquette" I
have NEVER encountered before.  And I shift threads to appropriate
newsgroups all the time -- punting 'phobes with followup set to
alt.flame and misc.test, followuping a response to a gun-flame in asb to
talk.politics.guns, etc.  If this is an established point of
netiquette, I may have stumbled out of another reality.

However, if you are complaining that "I personally was uncomfortable
being cross-posted into alt.sex.bondage", then I am sorry I
inadvertantly caused you a twinge.  I consider the net a cocktail
party, where it's entirely appropriate to watch, listen, and interact
with any of the other attendees unless they've made it clear to me
that I should not.  I also realize that I post among people who use
different metaphors for the net.  If I've caused you pain or
discomfort, I regret it; I do not acknowledge guilt for violation of
established netiquette.

>>In article <1992Dec19.213643.4922@u.washington.edu>
>>cyberoid@stein.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:

>>>I have no hard and ready rules governing power considerations, 
>>>except that in my own relationships I strive for as nearly-equal
>>>sharing as possible.

>I don't equate equality with marching through life in lockstep, either.
>In fact, given that we live in a power-based society, equality of any
>sort is pretty rare and genuine equality is anything but lockstep.

My point, if I may try again, is that dramatic power inequities are
consistent with the mutual respect, adoration and love of the other.
When someone is flogging me, we are sharing the experience, even
though one of us has the big red whip and the other the big red back.
We make magick through our difference.

>>>Tantric sex, about which I am only now learning, seeks to liberate
>>>deep energies in human beings and unite them through shared energy.
>>>It seems to me (as a novice, understand) that inequities in power,
>>>even if only symbolic, would tend to defeat this goal of perfect
>>>sharing.  Perhaps this is naive and counter to others' experience.
>>>I would be glad to hear more.

>>Naive?  I think not.  Counter? you betcha!

>>If you have a body of water, a downslope, and a waterwheel, you can
>>grind corn or make electricity.  If you have a lake, and no head, no
>>unequal elevation, you can go fishing.  waterski, or various other fun
>>things, but the waterwheel won't move.  When I take the whip in hand,
>>or receive it on my eager back, I'm helping create a power-inequity
>>that liberates energy.  I am an equal partner in that creation
>>(without both top and bottom, nothing happens), but to make it happen,
>>I must play at being unequal, or the wheel won't turn.

>The lesson of tantric sex, as little as I understand of it, is that
>it is possible to liberate this energy inherently, without wild gymnas-
>tics or demonstrations.  This doesn't contradict your own discoveries;

Perhaps my understanding is different from yours; the key point to me
is the finding of ecstasy, of enlightenment, in unexpected places --
the deep ynion in frictionless genital contact or the palpable empathy
between whipper and whippee seem different bits of the same elephant.
You stand in the breeze of his ears and say "an elephant is cool and
quiet" and I, somewhere behind, say "an elephant is soft and squishy".

>it's only another way.  The difference may be akin to that between
>fission and fusion:  both release lots of energy, in different ways.

Yes, that's one of the paths of tantra (aren't you glad I forget the
relevant polysyllables?).  One of the tantric rites I recall reading
about included the eating of BEEF by cow-worshipping vegetarians,
combined with the intentional violation of other, equally-deeply-held,
taboos.

One of the deepest taboos in our lizard-brain, reinforced by the dog
of society and the monkey of self-preservation, is around pain.  Pain
is to be avoided, escaped at all costs.  It hurts?  Run away....

For this reason, what I do when I do SM and I'm ON feels not only
analogous but identical to what I do when I sit on a love's dick and
we float together.  It doesn't always happen when I play, any more
than sex is always tantric trancing.  But the Silence, ah. that silent
burning energy seems the same whether I get there through long contact
with a love, both of us unmoving, or through the lightning of Kali.
And both are included under the unmbrella of MY understanding of
tantra.

>[...]  it doesn't answer my first question, which
>is how to reconcile what are apparently (to me) antithetical approaches
>to the maximum enjoyment of sex.  I have no case to make or normative
>bias to enforce.  I'm not into power relations.  Another, perhaps an
>SO, might be.  If we wanted to get together, how might we do it?  Maybe
>only someone who has solved this problem can tell us.

Well, what's working for me and my formerly-<whatever YOU like to call
people who don't do SM> husband is to keep trying; he wants submission
but I'm a bottom?  (This is a current issue.  If anyone wants to
followup back in asb, I gather Bob would prefer that you remove his
words.  I could use advice.  My uppity-bottom style infuriates his
babydom persona; my simulated submissive rings false to him; I WILL
find a way of getting closer to his dreams.) I'll do my best to act as
if I were submissive, and perhaps someday, he'll learn how to elicit
something less studied from me.  If sie (your SO) wants to play
master/slave, fake it like you were playing cowboys-n-injuns.  If you
produce a passable simulation, perhaps you'll find something rewarding
in hir response.  The next night, perhaps, you tell hir you're going
to take hir as YOU will, and sit within hir unmoving till your brains
white out and fuse.  Find elements of what sie wants that don't block
YOUR arousal, and add them in (I know, from long and sometimes bitter
experience, how grateful a player with a non-player partner (is that
better than the v-word?) can be for even a little of what's wanted.
Because even the most awkward taste of leather ripple from a
formerly-non-playing partner can be such a powerful reward (the
suspicion that wjr thought I was not only different but ICKILY so was
a blight on my spirits), you don't have to understand it to get bits
of it right, you have only to accept your partner's sensuality as it
is, not as you wish it were.  (You might share this with hir, because
it's true for both parties in a sextaste mismatch.)

>Thanks for the response.  I thought the topic had been ignored to
>death.  I welcome its resusitation because of its more than theoretical
>importance.

(Sorry, dear.  Been wanting to respond, but had a funny arm that hurt
when I typed.)

More than theoretical indeed!  There were times I thought I'd have to
go outside the relationship for ANY of the physical stuff what makes
me wettest.  There are still others who can take me further than wjr
currently does, but the fact that it's the man I fell in love with
trying would cover a lot more technical flaws than have ever existed.

Hope this is a bit more help.  But the only way to do the
reconciliation, as I see it, is to keep trying, to look for the
commonality, and exploit the similarities to shed light on the areas
where you each have far different handsful of the elephant Tantra.
For me, tantra can be found in the eye of the storm; for you, perhaps,
it's listening intently for the breath of the ghoddess.  Much love,
and the next time I'm fortunate enough to be flogged into the silence,
I will dedicate that silence to everyone who's ever loved someone who
doesn't embrace hir sexuality.  Good luck, dear, and have as much
patience as you can muster -- it was almost a decade between the time
I realised BDSM was not just something I enjoyed but central to me,
and the time my sweet formerly-<no the v-word> husband caught clue.
And it's taken equally long for some of his deepest wishes to come up.
I wish us all luck.

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
STella%thelema.uucp@dec.com	Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian!
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