Mike B wrote:
> If I could be convinced that humans were genetically
> predisposed to dominance and submission, I'd give up
> on the socialist project. For now my opinion is
that
> people are socialized to accept dominance by
existing
> authority and have been since at least the dawn of
> class society. I have become convinced of this view
> through a critical reading of the reasearch done by
> Reich, Fromm, Horney and others.
Curtiss: Now wait a minute here. Brian just got through telling that there's mutual consent free from coercion among partners in putting together a scene. I take that to mean whatever physical injuries--if any, because I suppose someone might just go for humilitation--someone gets may very well be something explicitly requested by the person receiving them. The person requesting them can also stipuate limits--where, how many, etc. That means the person delivering them must agree to what the receipient stipulates. So "dominance" and "submission" in the sex play, even if they involve actual physical injury, have to be considered within the context of this mutual, coercion free consent. ***************** Mike B) responds: I agree that consent is given to those who hold real and imaginary power over those who submit to it. I think that sort of dominant/submission dynamic is inculcated through various authorities we encounter in the class societies in which we are born and are brought up within. It’s a social psychology of authoritarian personality which is introduced into our character by the dominants we interact with from birth. ****************************************************** As far as your previously mentioned analogy with the ideology of free labor goes, it doesn't hold. Those who act as dominants do not hold hegemony over the production of sexual pleasure in the way the owners of capital hold the means of material production. The workers whose hides receive a tanning via the extraction of their surplus labor has no recourse for except the sale of their labor power. ***************
But why do workers accept that arrangement when it is their labor which creates the social wealth?
Out of the necessity of being powerless to do anything about it?
Where does this sense of powerlessness come from?
Not being organized as a class?
Why don’t they organize?
Perhaps they feel that dominance and submission are natural and that Lordship and Bondage have always been around and that maybe if they submit to the power of the bosses as they have submitted to the power of other social and political authorities in their lives, they will someday be able to work their way up in the hire-archy to become a boss/dominant themselves.
Are we not wage-slaves?
********************************************
Submissives are individuals who seek a minimum of sexual pleasure from other individuals who are dominants--and then, I suppose that many of these individuals may prefer to be submissive sometimes, dominant other times, and sex without these roles at others. Need I add that this does not make them Subs, Doms, or vanilla as such? ********************* Mike B): No, you needn’t add that. ************** Curtiss: Final point: suppose that under different conditions of production these sexual practices *do* fade away. Exactly what good does it do to attack those who enjoy them now? ************************ Mike B): I’m not attacking them personally. I’m tyring to convey a social dynamic which, I think, explains one big reason why class consciousness remains so weak after more than a hundred years of rational explanation, millions of leaflets, countless demonstrations, volumes of literature, thousands of speeches and endless meetings. ********************
If your analysis is correct, these practices are a side-effect of socialization to accept dominance. Please explain to me just how, if your primary concern is to overcome socialization that makes people acquiesce to dominance, placing those who *do you no immediate or even indirect harm in a subordinate position* contributes to that goal. From where I sit, it only makes it worse.
Curtiss *********************
I think that knowing about how this dynamic operates in our daily lives may help to spur a rebellion against submitting to being ruled and contribute to a consciousness desire for self-rule, grassroots democracy and an end to class dominated society.
Regards, Mike B)
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===== "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed."
Theodor Adorno, NEGATIVE DIALECTICS http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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