>From my understanding, it has the same meaning also in
kinky sex relationships and activities. Brian
certainly says he enjoys it. But as a number of people
have said here, in the context of those activities the
infliction of pain is something the person on whom it
is inflicted _desires and consents to_. If it goes
beyond those limits, it's not kinky sex or BDSM
sadism, it's just assault, battery, and related crimes
and torts.
Probably most people who are not knowledgeable about BDSM don't grasp this distinction. They hear "sadist" and they think of Dr. Mengele or Torquemada, not Brian Dauth. Obviously the former pair are seriously evil individuals whose practices are despicable, in part because they inflicted terrible undesired pain on unconsenting people.
But I believe Brian when he says or implies that he'd never do anything to a party that the partner didn't want and agree to, or subject them to more pain that they really wanted. He's a really nice person and highly ethical. (Disclosure: I've met Brian and his husband and we are friends.) I don't think most sadists/BDSM tops/Dom(mes))/Masters-Mistresses are any different in this respect, or anyway are more like Brian thgan like Dr. Mengele.
In part, unlike the situation with Mengele or Torquemada, whose victims were captives (and not masochists), in a kinky sex relationship in a free country, if you don't like what your partner is doing and they s/he won't stop when you ask, you can always leave, other things being equal. So a BDSM sadist who behaved like what most people think of as a sadist, that is, a brute, wouldn't be able to keep a partner in the relationship very long. (And probably in a small community, word would get around.) S/he'd have to change the behavior or give up on BDSM. And she'd risk criminal prosecution or civil suit.
> > As to criticism of BDSM, I think you two ignore
the
> fact that there is a big
> problem of domestic violence against women in the
> world, certainly in the
> US. A big _left_ project is to get men to stop being
> "sadistic" toward
> women. So, it might help if you explained in detail
> how BDSM is actually
> only superficially similar to or actually not at all
> like domestic violence
> against women.
See above. There's a big distinction between mutually consensual activities and abuse. It's really no different than the distinction between mutually consensual vanilla hetero (or other) sex and spousal/partner rape -- alas still far too common, though no longer legal even among married people in any jurisdiction that I'm aware of. I'm not sure there's any more reason to be specially worried, with regard to sexual activities, about whether kinkiness is related to abuse than whether plain sex is. My guess is that spousal/partner rape is at least if no more common than physical abuse in the form of beating. And neither has anythiong to do with sex -- it's just violence, whether or not sexual organs are involved. That's feminist ABCs.
Also, my understanding is that about 95% (or some very high proportion) of heterosexual BDSM relationships involve the male as the masochist/bottom, and the woman as the sadist/top. A Domme that Brian and I know says, "Everyone's a bottom. Except Brian." Brian says, "And her." (She's not an LBO member but several years ago, when we last debated this -- 2004?) Doug put a longish thing on BDSM that she wrote on the list; it's probably still in the archives. I thought it was extremely interesting and well worth reading.)
To put it in another way, from what I gather about kinky sex, in the hetero BDSM world, it's normally the woman who inflicts pain on or subordinates the man, not vice versa, and there are far more men out there who really want to be dominated by a strong women than there are women who are willing and available to do that to them.
I think that BDSM is far more tolerated among queers, who have to get used to the fact that society considers them perverts anyway, and who as people who have had to come out (at least to each other) may come to think of themselves as sexual rebels or revolutionaries, thus more open to experimentation.
To address another of Charles' questions, I don't know whether there is any general answer to whether LGBT people who do kinky things regard them as being "as important" as their sexual orientation. I suppose it depends on the people. My guess is that they regard those things as _part_ of their orientation, same as straight people who do those things. Brian, would you agree?
But what's the point of the question, to find out whether you could ban kinky sex while respecting gay rights, or something like that?
I have observed, also that even apart from the world of self-identified labels, that nonstandard sexual activities are actually pretty common among the so called vanilla population. People say, "I'm not into S&M but . . . ." Open any issue of Cosmo and read the sex tip of the month advertised on the cover. (Yes, I do read it in supermarket checkout lines when I'm nor reading the Weekly World News -- now you know my dark secrets -- one gets all sorts of good ideas that way.)
The advice is as likely to involve the suggestion that a girl who really wants to get a guy excited should spank him gently, maybe with a hairbrush. Suggestions to tie him to the bed with silk scarves, blindfold him, and surprise him are no less common. Cosmo isn't the only place you'll find such discussions. And they're not even put forward as "kinky."
Note the gender roles here: girl on top. Now, it's true that I don't read the male equivalents of Cosmo, Maxim or Stuff or FHM (they don't have them in supermarket checkout racks, where I read Cosmo sex advice), so I don't know what they say. But I used to read Men's Health for years, before their fitness advice became redundant for me. And the sex advice there is mostly on how to pick up chicks and obvious but important things like, if you want to make her happy, make sure she comes before you do. I cannot recall any comparable advice to that in Cosmo and similar women's publications about turning on a woman by spanking her or tying her up in those magazines. That supports the observation of Brian's Domme friend that in straight kinky sex it's typically male subordination that is involved.
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