Responses to Joanna and Wojtek:
At around 9/1/07 11:59 am, joanna wrote:
> I never said anybody should do it my way & I never said bondage was bad.
>
Yeah, that's true of course. But you see, we on this lefto (that's the beauty of the USA: every day I learn a new word, some days two, as in this thread ;-)) kink-hating list are, of necessity, repressed kinksters ourselves, and our inner slave cannot but perceive you as a dominatrix if you have an opinion that differs. What's your problem anyway? We don't want freedom -- we just want to get off ;-).
At around 9/1/07 11:36 am, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> [WS:] You make a good point here. If the only thing that separates an
> oppressive relationship form non-oppressive one is the so-called consent of
> the subjugated part - this is a really flimsy defense indeed. It would not
> hold much water if we applied the same reasoning to non-sexual situations,
> e.g. labor relations (workers "consent" to work under exploitative
> capitalist conditions) or political regimes (people "consent" to autocratic
> rule). Such arguments are usually nothing more than flimsy propaganda
> pieces.
Sort of the same problematic reasoning I talked about in my post (which I awkwardly labelled a 'behaviourist' argument). But I also noted in that post that further substantiation is important ... in the case of workers, there is [multiple kinds of] evidence (and reasoning) that suggests that their "consent" is not really voluntary. In fact, one could almost certainly demonstrate that such "consent" in many cases, cannot be voluntary, based on stronger (widely held) shared notions.
In the case of SM, I am not sure such evidence/reasoning exists, especially when these acts are carried out between fairly randomly paired individuals (outside a strong framework/structure/etc) -- and the subjugation is make believe and temporary. With SM, the roles seem much more dynamic, with those who are often in the oppressor group in other areas (sex/gender, labour) desiring to play the oppressed? This does not touch upon the issue of exploitation... perhaps a person who was abused as a child seeks, for psychological reasons, such abuse as an adult?
[Apologies for the stream of consciousness...]
--ravi