From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Subject: Tantra, Power Exchange, and Reconciliation
Followup-To: soc.bi
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 92 05:55:11 GMT

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.

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.

As do I.  I rarely play with people who're uncomfortable with either
role, beater or beaten.  But equality is not marching through life in
lockstep, and for me to feel that power is equal in a relationship is
PERFECTLY compatible with asking hir to give me the gift of pain, or
allowing hir to control the timing and nature of our sexplay.  Or with
beating someone till my arms are so tired I won't be able to control
the whip, or teasing hir into quivering, gibbering lustpuddles.

The biggest lesson I've learned in playing BDSM with people I love is
that mileage varies DRAMATICALLY.  I simply don't understand why
people enjoy being tickled -- even accidentally done, it makes me
ANGRY till I grab my emotions, and if I HAVE a safeword, I'll USE it.
You may not understand why I was so eager, a couple years ago, to get
my clithood pierced.  And neither of us, tickle-hating painfan or
tickle-loving painhater, perhaps, understand the folks who're into
some third thing.

BDSM, however, is more than flying whips, dripping blood, and
heart-felt screams.  Inside the safety of an agreed SM encounter, I
can be pretty damn sure that folks will NOT do anything that I do not
fully, freely, individually consent to.  I have had a friend, after
beating me till I was weak-kneed, ask me "may I kiss you?"

Besides all that scarey stuff people associate with SM (there are
non-pain forms of powerplay, of course, but I'll speak mostly of what
I know best, other than to mention in passing that, in negotiating
with a friend, I discovered I was more nervous about telling him he
made me wet than I was about telling him I'm ready to try a punishment
scene.  Your limits are not my limits), there's an underlying
communication protocol that makes it safe to play with some pretty
scarey emotions.  If, knocked down by a screaming love, I discover
that this is TOO real for me right now, my safeword instantly changes
us from in-scene to after-scene.  If, while being fisted, I get a leg
cramp, things stop till I'm comfortable again.

>  Others may feel this is pollyannish.  (I hope
>they will have the good sense not to refer to this preference as
>"vanilla," a condescending term that simply drives me up the wall.)

I'm sorry you hear condescension in that term, but when I do it,
whatever you call it, when I talk about doing it with friends who also
enjoy both "vanilla" and leather ripple, I shall continue to use
"vanilla" till someone comes up with another word.  (I suspect,
however, that whatever word is chosen, it'll still grate on some
because they hear a subtext of "(those wimps who _ONLY_ have)
<vanilla> sex"... which is almost funny, considering that for me,
leathersex is safer, emotionally.  I LIKE having a safeword....)  If
you would care to suggest an alternative to "vanilla", perhaps for
good.  I DO try to communicate with folks who don't share my kink, but
I don't know of a good word for non-powerplay sex that's more widely
recognized than my _favorite_ flavor of icecream.  (Breyer's, please
-- if I call icecream OR sex vanill_in_, you damwell BET it's
pejorative!)

>It would be interesting to hear the rationales for each (or mixed)
>preferences.

Rationales?  Could you ask that in a different way, because I'm no
more inclined to offer a rationale for being into painplay and power
exchange than I am for being queer.  I am.  And I can think of several
different questions you might be asking, and am much too lazy to
answer ALL of them.

>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!

The night I had my clitoral hood pierced, I was clearly bottoming to
the needle, to my fears.  BUT when the needle shoved home, my pain
(less than a stubbed toe) was divided, shared, among the (how many was
it?  25-30?) people in that room.  My joy, the ecstasy of having
passed through something I'd feared, however, was multiplied as each
person in that room fed their joy back to me, as all I was and willed
to be was concentrated in that loving needle-thrust.

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.

>My motivation is my intimate relationship with a woman who is looking
>into power-focused experiences.  These feel antithetical to my own
>seeking:  not wrong in themselves, but very orthoganal to my direc-
>tion.  How might these orientations be reconciled?  This would be a
>topic of keen interest to many, I'm almost sure.

I'm certain of this, since my husband was not at all into this stuff
when we started seeing each other.  And for a lot of years, I could
not turn him onto what I found, from early childhood, in the
acceptance and transmutation of pain.  (Note that if she's not into
pain, but power, the same holds, but without the need for a whip or
needle.)  I gave up completely more than a dozen times....  But
eventually, I found something of common ground between our positions;
we shared a presentation on ecstatic shamanism given by Fakir Musafar,
and the concept of SM as brain-change did what all my urgent words had
not.

But everything else I'd tried, before that, was coming from MY point
of view, and sailing past, MISSING, where he was trying to understand.
So while we might, and I hope WILL, give you some points to ponder, if
you are trying to find common ground with her, you would be well
advised to talk to HER.  I can tell you what I, what some people, get
out of power-focused play (I like the phrase, BTW), but only she can
tell you what _she_ wants.

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