Joanna writes:
> What I attempt to express when I have sex with someone is not
my self, but love.
And that is your script. Cool.
> Is it possible to express love when you are encumbered from the
beginning by a script (S/M, etc.)?
All human actions are performative/scripted. Scripts are not encumbrances, they are facts of life.
> specific expectations?
I think a person needs to have expectations. Danger arises when we fetishize/attach to them.
> Or is love essentially free and open?
What do you mean by "essentially free and open"?
> I find my "self" and other "selves" to be dreary, predictable,
petty, self-serving.
Well, you cannot change other selves, but you can write the script of your own self.
> The self, for me, is a door to step through, not a place to stop.
I agree. That is a basic tenet of Buddhism.
> You call Paul a puritan for imposing some judgment on a "free"
consensual act.
Yes I do.
> But the act you describe doesn't sound very free to me
at all.
Why isn't it free? Two (or more people) give their informed consent to enagage in a particular act. What is not free about that?
> If it is puritannical to delimit sexual expression, is it not equally
puritanical to delimit it through technique, through a scenario?
No. The technique is the vehicle of the sexual expression. Without the vehicle sexual expression remains unmanifested. Technique does not delimit, it frees up. By your line of reasoning, a man could refuse to use a condom as a delimiting of his sexual expression. A condom is a tool, just as a flogger, shackles, hoods, ball gags and role play are tools. They are all employed in the service of sexual expression. In fact, our very bodies are tools used to manifest our sexuality. I hope you do not want to proscribe their use as well.
> I understand that "kinky" people flatter themselves with the idea
that they are radical and free
Some do. I find it rather distasteful. To me one is radical and free in a sexual sense if she can appreciate all manifestations of consensual sexuality without thinking one is better than any other.
> I understand that the left pats itself on the back for being tolerant of
consensual kink.
I wish that were true. As you can see from LBO, kink talk awakens the inner sexual reactionary in many leftists.
> I spent a good dozen years experimenting with sex -- but, paradoxically,
I think I was as limited by this practice as the most repressed prude. A
difficult paradox to explain, to be sure.
Not at all. Kink may not be your sexual orientation. You will feel limited by practicing what doesn't fit you -- trying to act the wrong script. It would be the same if you tried to follow a Republican script -- you would feel constrained.
> What it comes down to is that so long as the mind dictates what the body
may or may not do, the body is not free at all and the mind is distinctly not
radical.
Does the body ever act without the mind? They kinda go together like bagels and cream cheese or whips and chains. If not the mind, what else would be instructing the body?
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister