I don't prefer the terms "pistachio" or "vanilla", and certainly not the label BDSM, which is a casual agglomeration that to me proves little more but that marginal sexual practices get lumped together in analysis and often band together in self defence. However, I've a fair amount of experience at both D and s positions of D/s and I've been thinking about this lately, and written about it a little, and so I thought I'd respond.
> (As with the words "Queer" or "Dyke," terms such as "Sadist,"
> "Masochist" or "Pervert" also are used in an ironic way by people who
> associate themselves with the group, in what seems an attempt to
> co-opt the language used by people who would condemn such activities
> and thus to rob it of its power.)
I actually don't get this, as all of these are terms that are used in completely un-ironic ways by lots of people in my experience. It's not irony that has a person who likes flogging call themselves a Sadist despite how negatively that can be perceived. It can be a project of reclamation, it can be an insistence on the validity of that practice, but I never encounter it as irony. Not in that way, anyway.
You're quite right about the importance of recognising that what someone means by calling themselves a Sadist is not what the dictionary means, necessarily. But it's not always "empathy, desire to take care of and please the partner, responsiveness to the partner's reactions, highly developed sense of responsibility". I grant you, someone you didn't manage any of these would be very unpopular on any S&M scene, and especially on any D/s scene, but some people do "fail" at one or all of these. Just because you like "kinky" sex doesn't actually make you more ethical than anyone else. Nor does it make you less, of course, and the rules and conventions of scenes and the relationship/sex genres associated with B&D or S&M do have a huge amount of power and, as you say, they all tend towards negotiation, reciprocity and, most of all, consent.
> However, in almost all BDSM relationships (even if they
> last for only a few hours), it's the dominance/submission component
> that's the key; the "sadomasochistic" aspect occurs only as a subset
> of the overall dynamic. It therefore seems right to discuss the D/S
> mentality first before focusing in on the S/M part.
This conflation bothers me. Most D/s relationships are not what anyone generally means by S&M. While some pain may be employed as part of any disciplinary scene, it's usually fairly minor. I've had very ordinary het sex hurt worse than lots of D/s scenes. In fact, D/s quite often doesn't involve sex either, understood in, say, mainstream porn ways. I have a close friend on the scene who had a three year D/s relationship which never once involved intercourse or oral sex or any of the other things usually considered sex. That's true of some S&M too, but I guess my real point is that we shouldn't just throw this all together because mainstream straight sex practices want to label it "BDSM" or "kinky sex".
I agree with many of your points about the primacy of consent, and it's crucial that breaching accepted rules about consent will get you ostracised from any community I know centred on these practices. Accepting my caveat that people do still mess up - often privately rather than in any community - those are all good points. However, reluctant submission does not always count as abuse. Persuasion and so on, seduction, a degree of pressure, those are all valid styles. But so are they for het sex.
As for your "themes", I think they're pretty representative yes. I think I'd particularly stress how much D/s, because that's what you seem to be talking about, is about the pleasure of the "s". It's a lot of work to run a good/effective/pleasurable D/s scene. It requires an extraordinary degree of attention to the "s", and someone skilled enough to move between different submissive partners effectively is thus very rare.
Like most people I know, then, I've had a lot of bad D/s sex. Just bad in the sense of didn't really work. I say this, because I think the fantasy of always coherent always polished and posed D/s sex doesn't do us any service. It makes us seem less human and, in fact, that's part of the appeal, I think - it's all so very human. So much about need and fear and will, and about what you can offer to and assure another of.
> * Heightened Suspense, Excitement and Intensity
> * Feeling of Belonging To and Being Taken Care Of
> * Don't Think---Feel
I want to stop at this one and say that here I think your focus on the "s" position starts to be a problem. While the needs of the "s" are most important, sometimes it's the "D" position who's the person who thinks too much. I knnow why you have this emphasis - to explain why someone would - but it's worth remembering that the "D" position also enters into a role which many people have trouble explaining, and in the intense focus on another person's body needs and anxieties/fears and sensations there's a powerful "other space" as well, a long way out of your head in an everyday sense.
> * Do the Right Thing
The ethics of D/s fascinate me - the right thing is about what was consented to, but also about the rules negotiated within a certain received image of D/s in a really specific time and place, in a way, shaped by texts and communities and venues and available partners and what they know. I'm very interested in it as a study of how we learn and determine what is right.
> * Shed Your Inhibitions
D/s is so inhibited in a way. There are so many things that aren't all right, and so much clear negotiation of what will be allowed, it's not really very spontaneous.
> (Of those
> people who do enjoy playing the dominant, many are switches---meaning
> they also take pleasure in submission on occasion or have done so in
> the past. Folk wisdom suggests that while not all good dominants
> start as submissives, many find that having had that experience at
> least on occasion allows them to better understand how the feelings
> of their own submissives and therefore to construct more enjoyable
> and rewarding experiences for them.)
I know only one dominant who's never been in a submissive role, and I wouldn't repeat the encounter or recommend her to anyone. The submissive role is almost a necessary learning curve - learning what's too much, and what works, before you can attempt to learn how to closely read the responses of another well enough to operate as a dominant. Because your pleasure comes from managing it well, from having it all go so well that they can and will give up everything for and to you.
> * High Sense of Control and Power
> * Exercise Creativity.
> * Ensured Sexual Gratification
> * Give Pleasure to the Submissive
On this last point, then, I don't think it's that straightforward. Despite the pre-eminence of the submissive's pleasure, pleasing them is all about proving your right and capacity to be dominant, and thus ensuring your right to the other elements. "High Sense of Control and Power" doesn't quite cover for me how reassuring it is to know you succeed in managing another person's desire.
> in a
> variety of ways pistachio sex seems to lend itself to being conducted
> within an ongoing and caring relationship, for a number of reasons.
I know only one long term D/s relationship that has remained D/s, and it does so by clearly maintaining an outside to that dimension and constructing it as just sex play and as not in fact very emotionally significant. It's not then just a matter of including other parts of the relationship. What I've never seen work longterm is the extended D/s relatioship where the dominant controls many nonsexual elements of the submissive's life. In fact, most people into these relationships are creative and imaginative people who move on to other roles or other practices after a while or at least reframe them in new ways.
It's true, however, that it's very much a relationship, and that casual D/s sex rarely works very well because you don't know each other well enough, and thus that regular couples or small groups are the most effective way of enjoying these sex practices. However, "loving and caring" seems to sugar coat it a bit. Care, yes, but it's a certain kind of care that's required. It's even affectionate, and certainly intimate, but most longterm relationships move away from D/s, and longterm D/s pairings in fact tend to pall when you know each other too well.
So, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it's a mistake to paint D/s or S&M relationships (and while I've seen a lot of the latter it's worth keeping them apart) as less complex or fallible as straight or gay sex. And I also think that just that fallibility is what makes it so interesting, to do and to think about.