From: dbshapco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Brad Shapcott)
Subject: Re: Roy's "consenting" slave
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 12:26:29 GMT

In article <1gln9qINNg3m@agate.berkeley.edu> rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S. Rapoport) writes:
>In article <BzBA89.Jnu@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> dbshapco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Brad Shapcott) writes:
>
>->situation.  There is a implicit sexual contract between the players in an
>->S&M scene or master/slave situation that grants power to both sides.  By
>
>Hmm ... I'm not sure I really agree with the use of the term 'sexual' here.
>S&M, to me, is separate from sex ; certainly, my first scene involved no
>sex, and I had no wish to have sex with my top.  My most recent scene was
>the same.  Introducing sex to it would have caused me to call safeword ...
>
>Unless you and I mean something different by 'sexual contract', of course
>... certainly it seems to me that an S&M scene requires some intimacy
>between the participants ... I personaly also found the scenes I've been in
>sensual to one level or another.  So I'm not exactly sure what you mean by
>sexual here ...
>
>-roy

The sexual part need not be emphasized.  All human interaction is controlled
by implicit contract that controls the distribution of powers and rights
within that interaction, and sets the expectations for and demands of
each participant.  That is most social interaction occurs in this manner,
and most of what we consider criminal is in fact a violation of the
'de facto normal' contracts in our society (rape, murder, robbery --
basically all crimes where one tries to circumvent normal social contracts
to gain at the expense of others).  What components are involved (sexual,
humane and so on) varies.  As an observer I would have guessed that there
is usually a sexual component to S&M, and therefore a sexual contract.
I could very well be wrong about the sexuality of the contract, but the
fact remains that there is a contract that governs this interaction.

The immediate problem that I could see anyone having with a master/slave
relationship is that they parallel it to the violation of social contract
in situations like SO abuse.  Facetiously, there could be many shared
elements, but most abuse situations lack a key ingredient that a healthy (?!)
master/slave interaction should have, and that is the right of both parti-
pants (and especially the apparently weaker one) to exit the situation
at will (akin to the function of the safeword).  Abusers tend to destroy
or erode this ability on the part of the abused (to end the abusive
relationship) by introducing a dangerous level of dependency on the
abuser (through financial intimidation, threats to loved ones, cutting
off the abused from other supportive friendships, and so on).  From an
abstract level, they merely seize all the power in that relationship.
On an abstract and artistic level, this is exactly what occurs in a
master/slave relationship (the master apparently seizes all the power).

(There are of course formal contracts in our society, chiefly governing
business interactions, with the same interpretation of wrongdoing if the
contract is violated.  And of the contracts we have in our society, some
are represented in laws, others not.  So it is really a broad definition
of contract meant here -- perhaps 'an instrument that governs human
interactions.')

One of the best artistic representations of this concept is '9 1/2 Weeks'.
A movie worth watching for its politics of power as much as all the sex.
I won't get into that though.  Anyways, I would look beyond the one
word 'sexual' and concetrate more one what I was saying previously about
social contracts, and perhaps evaluate this master/slave relationship and
critique it (I mean, its quite a good thing to look deeply and critically
into your own relationships, though it can rarely be done impartially)
from that perspective.  There are bad places to go with this whole
thing, whereas the trick is seeing and avoiding them.

The other thing is that while I might be fascinated by the mechnisms at work
here, I'm not willing to criticize or condone specific instances.  The
complexity of the matter makes it too difficult to render simple
judegments.


Brad