From: barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Reconciling BDSM and Pagan Beliefs
Date: 5 Nov 92 06:34:34 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: QQQCLC

In article <2AF71F00.22548@news.service.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>When it comes to BDSM, I don't want to say to anyone, "You shouldn't do
>that because . . . " since it makes me feel like morals police.
>HOWEVER, I do think that it is one hell of an indicator of what's going
>on in a society when people can link submission and sex.

	But suppose there really is a link, an innate psychological
link, between sex and dominance/submission? If true, is that a bad
thing? Or is the problem, where it exists, that people are forced to
play a particular role because of their gender? Without a coercive
man-dominant, woman-submissive preconception, where's the harm?

	It's worth thinking about, because there's a lot more and better
evidence for such a link than just the existence of BDSM.

>I'm not asking anyone who's into BDSM to answer for that since they
>didn't set the system up.  I just have to shake my head a little when I
>see how other societies regard sex, and how so much of it has gotten
>caught up in domination in the west. 

	Who are these other societies? The Japanese have certainly been
big on bondage since before they were hit by Western influences. As for
courtship, generally, the "predator/prey" elements seem at least as
strong in most other societies as they are in the west.

	I'd agree that the sexual mores of our culture are far from
ideal, but I don't think you'll be able to separate out bad or sexist
impulses from healthy or instinctive ones in BDSM, by cross-cultural
comparisons, because there are no well-documented non-sexist societies
to compare us to. Late 20th-century America seems, if anything, one of
the least sexist societies in existence.

>We've HAD domination for thousands of years.  I'd rather try something
>new, give mutuality a try.

	It's a difficult distinction for me to visualize. Given that no
one is coerced into a sexual role they don't wish to play, isn't BDSM an
example of mutuality rather than dominance? If you try to use another
standard for distinguishing, like the _appearance_ of domination that
occurs in BDSM, things get really confusing. BDSM is only an extreme on
a continuous scale. There are elements of dominance and submission in
all sorts of courtship rituals and common sex play. If people start
trying to edit all of their sexual impulses by examining them for
symptoms of unhealthy cultural prejudices, they'll get too uptight to
have any fun :-).

	Taken to an extreme, you get the Dworkin conclusion. She's
widely misunderstood to have said that all sexual intercourse between
men and women is rape, but she actually wrote something slightly less
extreme: that, given the fact that we are members of a sexist culture,
and have internalized that sexism, all male/female intercourse is rape
_in a culture like ours_, because consensuality has been compromised -
in a male-dominated society, no woman's expressed consent can be truly
free of coercion.

	There's a prima facie logic to this that coaxes the intellect,
but it doesn't stand up to serious examination. It confuses an abstract,
philosophical definition of free will as "choice without constraint",
with the mundane business of choices, which are seldom unconstrained.
People don't sling burgers at McDonald's for sheer love of the feel of
ground beef. And the ultimate effect of crediting such logic is to
reduce the freedom of everyone, by undercutting a woman's right to
choose. Would it be liberating to cross-examine every impulse to do
something that appears to be harmless fun, to seek out hidden sexist
memes, or would it be stultifying?

	Who was it, Plato? Who said that the "unexamined life is not
worth living". Well, maybe the _too_-examined life is not worth living,
either. Take a worst-case: suppose Mr. X is into BDSM because
of being abused as a child, or some such; isn't it still possible that
BDSM is a very healthy, positive way of coping with whatever
psychological traits arose from this abuse? Hey, maybe JFK only got
into politics because of a neurotic need to win love and approval from
a cold parent; does that make his becoming president a bad thing?

	Causes are interesting and sometimes enlightening, but effects
are the best measure of a thing.

>In article <1992Nov3.171830.5066@csus.edu> altheimm@nextnet.csus.edu (Murray Altheim) writes:
>>How many of those doms out there learn that subjugation of a submissive
>>partner feels the same to them as subjugation of a victim?

	This, I think, is the really relevant question. If there were
reason to believe that BDSM was some kind of gateway into psychopathic
and criminal behavior, well, that's an effect, and important. But there
doesn't seem to be any such gateway effect, far as I can see.

-  Nothing fails like success  -             Kenn Barry
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