Barbelith Underground > Head Shop

08:45 / 15.06.05

Where has the trust and the honesty gone then.

Well, you have the initial honesty that one party is admitting they like a certain kind of sexual act and trusting that the other person will respond to this information calmly and not freak out (even if they're ultimately not interested in participating). You have the trust placed in the bloke that they will handle the physical (and potentially the mental) wellbeing of his partner for a brief period. You have the bloke trusting that his partner is telling them what they need to know about what the act is intended to mean – obviously, any kind of sex can bring up odd unexpected issues, but I were doing anything like this, I’d want my partner to tell me what physical pleasure or emotional triggers we would both be aiming at. Also, the bloke trusts the woman has told him about any physical issues that would affect what he should or shouldn't do. With anything to do with breath play, both parties should trust each other to have read up on it and made an informed decision about what risks they're prepared to take. And trained for first aid.

So potentially a whole load of honesty and trust; in practice, any of these 'ideal' elements could be ommitted or forgotten or screwed up, but that's not a necessary part of the encounter. Overall, I see what you mean about abusive or manipulative relationships, but I don’t know why they are the ones that should involve BDSM. Any sex can involve parties disagreeing over acts they would like to perform, and either cheerfully ‘trading off’ (‘I’ll wear Calvin Klein pants if you call me ‘Gertie’’) or finding something they both like. I’m not seeing how you get from this to 'It has become manipulation and domination instead. This kind of thing happens all of the time and the instances of honest and loving BDSM become few'. The willingness or unwillingness of the people involved to participate makes something manipulation or domination, not the fact that they’re wearing high heels or slapping their partner at their request, surely?

It seems as though you’re assuming that because certain sex acts are fairly common, and culturally associated with love and romance, they won't be used for manipulative engagements. To rephrase your question: Say I’m a chap and during sex with a lady she wants me to put my penis in her. She’s really 'the dominate', and although I agree to it, where has the trust and honesty gone, then?

In fact, there is one sense in which 'normal' sex acts are more likely to result in manipulation and an imbalance of willingness - because everyone expects them to happen, so you have less of a leg to stand on if you don’t want to do them. One of my college chums didn’t like penetrative sex, and it was constantly presented – by her and to her, her boyfriend and friends - as a problem, rather than a preference, and specifically as her problem. Even her closest chums said 'Get therapy!' rather than 'Get a boyfriend who doesn't expect to do that every time.' If her boyfriend had said 'Hit me with a fish nightly!' I suspect more people would have felt she had the right to decline.

It's great that you wanted to find out more about BDSM, although I question whether stepping up to run a series of commercial sex projects (which sound fairly awful) was the right way to go about it. This thread might also be a place where you could find out more about it, but you seem rather likely to alienate contributors by assuming that what you learnt the One Truth about BDSM in your prvious work. You have a concept of what love involves, and a concept of what BDSM is, and you have drawn on your experiences to construct them as diametrically opposed - that's interesting, but other people also have experiences, and (as far as I can see) are doing their best not to extrapolate from them in a way that is disrespectful.

Although your assurances people that you're not prejudiced against BDSMers are welcome, it might have been easier to work less with sweeping statements to begin with, rather than backpedalling to state that some BDSM may be 'a healthy release'.

Leaving aside the idea that this is going to be an issue that a lot of people are personally invested in, using phrases like 'Some people like to think…' and 'White bread it up all you want and then try to explain it all later with your idiolist pretensions. You obviously have no real experience with it.' is just a rather unpleasant way of offering your information.

There are some very interesting things that might come out of this – the clash between the concept of BDSM and people’s negative experiences, for example. I often find myself using phrases like ‘ideally’ and ‘done properly’ when discussing BDSM, because I am aware that it is perfectly possible to do sex involving pain, powerplay, bondage and so forth like a big pillock and for it to be abusive and manipulative, and I don’t want to hymn it as a panacea. Therefore, against the accusation that all BDSM is abusive, and negotiating that fact that that similar kinds of behaviour can be abusive, I find myself trying to define ‘proper’ BDSM itself as the sex that intrinsically isn’t abusive. I end up in a quandary – I still think that ‘BDSM done properly is not abusive’ a useful statement, primarily for talking to people who share Morpheus’ opinions, but if I’ve defined BDSM as non-abusive sex, what meaning does the statement have? Can a tautology be useful?
Is it about as much use as the lesbian-feminist line that lesbianism is intrinsically more ethical and non-exploitative – which just ends up with some (self-identified) lesbians telling other (self-identified) lesbians they aren’t ‘proper’ lesbians? Or, as identity labels always involve policing behaviour, do we have a chance to use that a positive way?

bdsm questions?