>I'm not talking about an occasional slap on the ass, or my partner
>punching me in the arm for an erotically "rude" suggestion. I'm talking
>about the ceremonialization of pain play by people who never really
>experience much externally inflicted physical pain in their day-to-day
>existence.
>
>Snit Poll?
On what kind of sex we all have? Oooooo. Fun! I wouldn't put down s/m b/d practitioner's, but I do agree with you that "vanilla hetsex" is used to slam people too often. Like Puritan.
>S/M as a *mainstay* erotically vs no S/M by income, occupation and/or
>social "class"?
We used to have an S/M sex worker on the BAD list and she used to post here, too. 'Anastasia' did mention that most of her clients were well-to-do business men, but that doesn't mean much. There was an article in the local alt weekly, back in 1998. The writer became a phone sex worker. She reported that most of the men she talked with wanted to be abused and humiliated. It wasn't something she even knew much about and she certainly didn't advertise it as a speciality. IT would just turn out that the conversations would move in that direction and the men usually told her what they wanted her to do. OJT I guess. :) I don't have a copy of it any more, though. So I can't remember exactly what she was trying to say about this, but I vaguely recall that it was cultural commentary of that suggested that perhaps these men shat on everyone else in their life and they wanted to be punished for it. Again, my memory is very poor on this one. Maybe I'll hunt it down on next visit to the library.
Oh! I got Alice Munro out. Thanks for the head's up Mike B.
k