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Kind of what Apophenia said, really. I am not minded to prioritise the delicate sensibilites of someone who's effectively attacking me and my practices and expressing potentially very dangerous ideas over making a firm and clear stand.
I'm also very unhappy with what I see as an attempt to spin Dedi's post as neutral when in fact it does actually express a message that can very easily slip from being rude into being actually oppressive. Cut'n'pasting from one of my posts in the BDSM thread:
I'm not just uncomfortable with the "natural domina" thing because Dedi said it. I have experience--long, broad and painful experience--of being told "you are not a proper X because you do/don't do Y." You're not a proper perv because you switch. You're not a real Domme because you won't let me kiss your boots in the middle of this non-fetish nightclub. You're not a true sub because you wouldn't let me take your top off in the middle of a crowded tube train. Sometimes this kind of thing is too laughable to be a real problem, but I have actually suffered real emotional harm in the past as my sense of self came under a sustained attack following a similar model.
I've had these experiences myself. I know other people who've had these experiences and suffered by them. It is not a neutral position to suggest that safewords are always entirely incompatible with meaningful, real, "natural" BDSM experiences. It can be at best an ill-mannered dismissal of other's practices and at worst it can be at the foundation of an abusive interaction.
I fear we may be at risk of forgetting that a lot of BDSM sex does not occur in the context of a scene or a community. Indeed, the abusive top is very likely to go to some pains to isolate hir victim from any sources of information that might challenge the structures that enable the abuse. If "safewords are topping from the bottom" is not challenged and challenged strongly, we risk giving aid and succour to such abusers.
Sure, maybe the more generous interpretation is the correct one. Maybe what Dedi really meant was "I have nothing against others using safewords, but safewords would be topping from the bottom if I included them in my particular brand of scene." But until he's prepared to come back and clarify that for us we're going to have to work on what he actually said, which was: "Safewords" are absolutely topping from the bottom. A natural domina will, for her own pleasure, take you to a new level almost every time. There's no point, if every time a slave is threatened or feels close to breaking, he yells "Mercy, Mistress."
Now, we don't need to bring any history into the mix for that to be a whole can of problematic worms. However if we look up on the same page of the same thread, we also see:
Bloodly hell. I'll share this. You're a male, athletic, muscular. You are totally in control of yourself. Yet, you totally submit to Goddess. You almost understand Babalon. You'll never understand Kali. You play in a variety of clubs. You form few realationships. A few are honest. Not many. In these you fail because you can't give up total control. You come close enough. You become a top for a while (but always with an adult girl-child, never a woman). You separate magic from your sex life. It goes well enough....
It's not the pain. That's a distraction, almost.... And an annoyance for the Domina.
This is an extremely problematic post and it invites a less generous spin on the later "safewords are topping from the bottom" post. I really and truly don't think anyone in that thread has been out of line. Personally I feel somewhat attacked by what was written, as a perv, as a Domme, and as a survivour of abuse within a BDSM relationship. I don't feel that I acted inappropriately by registering my strong emotional response. Had I made the kinds of generalisations that Dedi has made against any other group then damn skippy I'd expect to be pulled up on it, and pulled up hard. |
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