Charles, please read what I said. Which was that there are people who do BDSM who also overstep limits into abuse and assault, just as there are people who do plain vanilla sex who commit rape. In neither case, (Dworkin-MacKinnon to the contrary) would I say that the limits-overstepping step, the abuse or the rape, is the norm. Nor is it the core activity.
Consider my boxing analogy: most boxers, I surmise, are peaceable folk outside the ring. Joe Louis was supposed top have been a pleasant, agreeable, even meek sort of person once he took off his gloves. Ali was cocky but I don't think he was a menace outside the ropes, and inside only according to the rules. That doesn't mean you don't get the occasional Mike Tyson, who's a thug, a hoodlum, and and assaulter (is that a word?) inside and outside the ring, and a convicted rapist to boot.
But you wouldn't say that boxing is defined by Mike Tyson's worst outside-the-ring behavior. Unless you were MacDworkin, you wouldn't say that vanilla sex between a loving hetero couple was indistinguishable from rape. And unless you were confused and uninformed, you wouldn't say that normal kinky sex as practiced by many people who do it (many of whom don't even think of it as kinky, like the Cosmo girls) is equivalent to the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, Mengele's experiments, or even wifebeating.
A simple rule: if s/he says "no," and you don't stop, it's domestic abuse or rape. That isn't really very hard to follow. From my understanding it is the main rule of BDSM. Most people -- not all, but most, I surmise, do stop when their partner says no. At least (I have no studies) I wouldn't think that any more people who do BDSMish things don't stop when told to than people who don't do such things.
And maybe fewer. You marvel at the thought that a practice that is about discipline should instill discipline. Why is that so amazing? And discipline is a two way street: with power (if you want to keep it) comes responsibility. Brian once told me that there's a real sense in which a lot of Masters are really their subordinate's subordinate, because in dominating the subordinate they're doing what the subordinate wants.
Now, are all people who engage in these practices feminists, socialists, clean cut? Obviously not. The practices are so widespread that they cut across whole wide swathes of the population, from right to left on all dimensions. (As well as clean cut and not -- some of them are shaggy. Or even disheveled.) But that doesn't mean that these practices are right wing, male-supremacist, spouse/partner-abusive rape. It doesn't mean that even if some of the people who sometimes do these kinky things do those bad things too. What we are somehow failing to convey is that these are two different sorts of things.
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen
>
>
> 2) The main answer is that among people who do
> nonstandard sex, the activities are voluntary,
> consensual, and within limits acceptable to both (or
> all) parties. That's why it's not abuse any more
> than
> it's assault to hit someone in a boxing match, to
> use
> an imperfect analogy.
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> CB; So are there no BDSMers who commit rape or
> domestic violence outside of
> their BDSM relationships ? What are the statistics ?
>
>
> And you are saying that it's all neat and clean ,
> like no other range in a
> human activity. Everybody is just absolutely a
> cleancut BDSMer who
> meticulously and rigorously doesn't' violate any of
> the rules, or they are
> an absolute rapist/domestic violator.
>
> What self-disciplined, strict people these BDSMers
> are for libertines.
> Are all BDSMers leftists ? Feminists ? None of them
> are male supremacists ?
> This BDSM is truly amazing stuff. It instills
> politcal and ethical
> discipline that nothing else seems to be able to do.
>
>
>
>
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>
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