>Just because Hegel was wrong about the African character doesn't
>mean he was wrong about everything. Most would agree that his
>master/slave discussion was insightful, even brilliant.
But was Hegel qualified to talk about consensual S/M? Hegel possessed no knowledge about it, nor (to his credit) did he claim to. Consensual S/M is the opposite of slavery, in that, unlike in slavery, the bottom is not enslaved by the top. S/M is a role-playing game, in which practitioners freely choose their favorite roles and define rules together (between S/M partners and within S/M communities). Slavery, unlike S/M, wasn't a game, and it insults the enslaved to conflate the two.
All these collective exhibitions of ignorance about Muslims, the MSA, and S/M remind me of Operation Save America <http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/streets/oh/Columbus/index.htm>.
On July 17-24, 2004, Columbus <http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/streets/oh/Columbus/> was visited by Operation Save America, a group of right-wing Christians who hate Islam, Abortion, and Homosexuality, successfully uniting Muslim, feminist, and GLBT activists in Columbus against them. Operation Save America's Koran-burning in Columbus is featured on their website <http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/streets/oh/Columbus/suspected-muslim-terrorist-present.htm>. While we never got around to asking them if they also hated S/M in particular and kinky sex in general, I'm sure they would have proudly said they did. In that pride there is, at least, honesty. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>