From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Reconciling BDSM and Pagan Beliefs
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:20:30 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <1992Nov5.063434.17211@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>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? 

It wouldn't shock me, but we can't say much else about it.  What with
all the cultural domination/submission shit dumped on sex as it is, any
psychological basis for it will get drowned out.

I remember hearing something on the news about finding a genetic link to
violence-prone people; of course, they ahd a picture of a couple of
young black guys getting hustled into the back of a cop car.  Again,
what with the economic and racially-motivated garbage driving young
black men to lives like this, even the slightest genetic predisposition
in human beings of any shape, size, or color is going to be drowned out.
It is the cultural motivations behind things that we can examine and
attempt to right; innate characteristics are immutable.  Hence, if we
see something not so nice that is culturally mitovated, it wouldn't kill
us to try to do what we can with it.

Saying, "But how do you know it's not innate?" in this instance can be
construed to mean, "But that's just they way things ARE," which is a
nonsense argument.  Biology/psychology has been used over and over and
over and over and over and OVER to justify all sorts of things that we
now know to be culturally determined -- like the fact that more women
are concerned with their appearances than men, and more black men are in
jail than college.  Using this argument to justify somethnig that holds
for only our culture and has in the past been used to oppress people is
very dangerous.

>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?

There is none.  But, with people growing up in a culture like ours,
where the immediate assumption is man/dominator woman/submissive,
getting out of that rut is impossible.  You don't break a bad habit by
flirting with it.  Putting an unlit cogarette into the mouth of someone
who's trying to quit only makes them stressed beyond belief, to coin a
metaphor.

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

You ask me in a few lines what are my references.  By what justification
do you make this hazy claim about "evidence" for a psychological limk to
sex and domination/submission of any kind?

>>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.

Look past what you see of other cultures on TV.  Read as a basic text
Haviland's _Anthropology_.  Read as much archaeology as you can,
specifically about Minoan Crete and early India.  Read Merlin Stone's
works, and the works of the early Greek, Etruscan, and Suerian poets and
those who study and analyze their work.  Read, especially, Margaret Mead
for a good example of the diversity involved here.  Read Monica Sjoo.
Read Rodney Castleden's work on Minoan Crete.  Read Mylonas's work on
it, too.  Research more than just the stuff you learned in Psych 101.

Your use of the words predator/prey are revealing.  Are you sure you
aren't just so convinced that everyone thinks of it this way that you
fail to examine the evidence because, "it's bound to show you right"?

>	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.

Way wrong, bud.  By this single comment ALONE, you have showcased
yourself as one of those people who took Psych 101 and Anthy 1A in
college a while back and think you know it all.  If you can still
seriously argue that 20th century America is the most egalitarian
culture of all time, you quite simply don't know what the hell you are
talking about. 

Blessings,
Janis