My nice next door neighbor who engages purely in vanilla sex with his wife may also feel pleasure inflicting pain on persons who did not consent. So what? You are assuming that for some reason a person who enjoys inflicting consensual discomfort during sex play is more likely than a person who does not do so to feel pleasure inflicting that on a non-willing participant. There is no good reason to hold this believe that I am aware of.
^^^^ CB: Let me see if I can accurately summarize roughly what has "gone down" on this thread.
First, Jim Straub and ChuckO lament that lots of radicals and leftists are hard to convince to endorse or "approve" of BDSM. Note that this implies that some fans of BDSM somehow seek approval of it from these leftists/radicals. It's not that the radicals initiate the debate by denouncing BDSM. It is that BDSM fans initiate it by seeking approval of it. That's analogous to what happened on this list. Nobody on LBO-talk popped up and denounced BDSM. Jim Straub and ChuckO stared it by complaining about leftists not "approving" of it. And then the way Straub and Chuck do it is to make some snide remarks about anybody who doesn't endorse it, including statements of the type those who engage in socalled vanilla sex don't really know what happens in BDSM, and don't realize that the common meaning of "sadist" is completely different, absolutely different than BDSM sadism.
Of course, one wonders why the same word is used to refer to both.
Next, and I'll take my post as the main one, I said , roughly, yea I know from the history of threads on LBO ( and really I could kind of figure it out long ago even before there were any discussions of it here, since if people were seriously hurting each other it would likely have been stopped by somebody) that this "pain" inflicted in BDSM is a kind of paradoxical "pain"/pleasure. BUT, given the big problem of domestic violence against women ( and rape), I'm not sure that it's such a great idea to publically broadcast endorsements of these cults. I guess I would add now, I'm not so concerned what nice BDSMers do in private, but, publically celebrating it might not be such a good message to send out into a society that already has a lot of men who some how arrive at the mentality of domestic batterers and rapists. My thought being it might aggravate the problem.
In the course of this thread, the pro-BDSMers find it necessary to insult me or anybody who doesn't unhesitatingly endorse and "approve" of them as ,oh, how shall I say it, "putting their foot in their mouths", mentally unable to grasp the sharp and absolute difference between a BDSM sadist and domestic battering/rapist sadists.
Well, hey ok, my preciouses, you want to insult me. I'll think about it a little more just to see whose so stupid and whose so smart. And as I think about it more, it starts to become clear to me that the brilliant BDSMers have a few weaknesses in their rationalization of their cult and culture. Like what I just said: How do you know Mengele couldn't get off on the same thing you get off on ? Or how do you know there aren't people who have some kind of contact or hear about your BDSM clubs who do their own thing and do a cross between what you do and something closer to domestic violence or rape. ?
Basically, as far as the burden of proof, I'd say , no , it's on you. Because the whole thing starts out with BDSMers wanting non-BDSMers to accept them or not think badly of them. So, if that's what you want, then the burden of proof is on you to establish the sharp distinction or show that publically broadcasting it does _not_ feed into the epidemic of violent male chauvinism. And it is because there _is_ an obvious similarity between the two, _at least_ on the surface. And your adament denials that there isn't any similarity at all, is you "protesting too much". Because any honest person would admit that there is at least a prima facie similarity. You would do better to say , "yes, you are right that there is a prima facie similarity, but here's why they are absolutely different." Instead, you insult my intelligence , and try to make out that I'm dumb because I can't grasp that they are so sharply different. All that does it motivate me to think of ways in which they aren't so clearly and sharply different. And really I don't give a good goddamn what you do, but since _you_ brought it up and are so agitated that some radicals don't readily endorse it and give you their blessings, the burden of proof is on you,like I said.
Again, it is obvious and common sense that BDSM is a little bit weird, "weird" being defined as what most people think is weird. Instead of admitting that ,and making a respectful argument as to why it's shouldn't be considered weird, you take the path of trying to make out that BDSM is just obviously wonderful and some kind of more advanced sexuality than "vanilla sex". And anybody who doesn't agree with you is slow. You try to show , basically, how your BDSM makes you some kind of elite and advanced sexualites and intellectuals.
Like they say: Don't start no mess; won't be no mess.
^^^^^^^
If you look at the few individuals who have been caught abducting people and torturing them were they people who otherwise engaged primarily in vanilla sex or were they BDSM practitioners? Is the sample of such people large enough and well documented enough to draw any conclusion from? My feeling is there is no correlation between the BDSM and such horrific practices but since I cannot stand reading sensational reports about such crimes I know little about these types of criminals. If you want to infer that a correlation exists between the two behaviours you need to offer some proof beyond, "It sounds reasonable to me."