Don't think the results of the Milgram experiment apply except to group scenes. Don't know how common they are, but suspect comparatively rare. Rational choice basis for this: coordination problems, hard to get agreement and cooperation among more people. My understanding is that more typically in kinky sex you a have a bilateral situation in which a sub or would be sub has sought ought a top without being subject to social pressure to do so (the social pressure is all the other way in the general society), and the two negotiate the limits and nature of the activities they intend, the sub explaining her/his limits and the top explaining what he will do and expect. If they reach agreement, they do what they do. Is that correct, Brian? That's what the books say, anyway.
So the basic structure of the Milgram experiment, people -- ordinary people who, incidentally were being deceived about the nature of their activity -- being subjected to social pressure by authority figures -- and not to submit to pain but to inflict it. So if anything, you could use Milgram only to explain how social pressure induces tops to being tricked into topping. I can't imagine this happens very often if ever. It doesn't apply in any direct way to subs being induced to give false, unreal, or unwilling consent to subbing, outside a hypothetical group scene with several tops.
--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> From: Group Minds by Doris Lessing
>
> One is known as the Milgram experiment. I have
> chosen it precisely because it was and is
> controversial, because it was so much debated,
> because all the professionals in the field probably
> groan at the very sound of it. Yet, most ordinary
> people have never heard of it. If they did know
> about it, were familiar with the ideas behind it,
> then indeed we'd be getting
> somewhere. The Milgram experiment was prompted
> by curiosity into how it is that ordinary decent,
> kindly people, like you and me, will do abominable
> things when ordered to do them-like the innumer-
> able officials under the Nazis who claimed as an ex-
> cuse that they were "only obeying orders."
>
> The researcher put into one room people chosen
> at random who were told that they were taking part
> in an experiment. A screen divided the room in such
> a way that they could hear but not see into the
> other
> part. In this second part volunteers sat apparently
> wired up to a machine that administered electric
> shocks of increasing severity up to the point of
> death,
> like the electric chair. This machine indicated to
> them
> how they had to respond to the shocks-with
> grunts, then groans, then screams, then pleas that
> the experiment should terminate. The person in the
> first half of the room believed the person in the
> sec-
> ond half was in fact connected to the machine. He
> was told that his or her job was to administer
> increas-
> ingly severe shocks according to the instructions of
> the experimenter and to ignore the cries of pain and
> pleas £from the other side of the screen. Sixty-two
> per
> cent of the people tested continued to administer
> shocks up to the 450 volts level. At the 285 volt
> level
> the guinea pig had given an agonized scream and
> become silent. The people administering what they
> believed were at the best extremely painful doses of
> electricity were under great stress, but went on
> doing
> it. Afterward most couldn't believe they were capa-
> ble of such behaviour. Some said, "Well I was only
> carrying out instructions."
>
> ******************************************
> MB:
>
> Isn't this mind set, this psychological character
> structure, this acceptance of
> dominance and submission at the heart of *why* the
> working class is socially
> and politically conservative?
>
> Isn't this mind set part and parcel of the dominant
> ideology summed up in the
> Wobbly song lyric: "Shake hands with your boss and
> look wise"?
>
> Ah yes, the wage-slave knows s/he had to submit, but
> smiles because in
> *knowing*, s/he is superior to the boss. S/he's
> being realistic and accepting
> of "human nature", which as we all know is constant
> as "the more things change,
> they remain the same." There is no social
> conditioning to give up authority to
> the already existing dominants. After all, the
> educators have been educated
> and know best, just like father. As children, we
> "learn" to live with our
> "natures" (as reinforced by a thousand punishments)
> and submit. Those who
> don't submit are cast out. They are abnormal.
>
> ***********
> Lessing from the same piece:
>
> Again: a group of ordinary citizens, researchers,
> cause themselves to be taken into prison, some as if
> they were ordinary prisoners, a few in the position
> of
> warders. Immediately both groups start behaving ap-
> propriately: those as warders begin behaving as if
> they were real warders, with authority, badly treat-
> ing the prisoners, who for their part, show typical
> prison behaviour, become paranoid, suspicious, and
> so forth. Those in the role of warders confessed
> after-
> wards they could not prevent themselves enjoying
> the position of power, enjoying the sensation of
> con-
> trolling the weak. The so-called prisoners could not
> believe, once they were out, that they had in fact
> behaved as they had done.
> *****************
> As Bill Bartlett said on this thread:
>
> And regardless of the issue of consent, I still
> wouldn't accept the
> notion that someone who gets their kicks out of
> inflicting pain
> and/or humiliation is entirely sound mentally.
> Perhaps I'm old
> fashioned or perhaps it is simply wishful thinking
> on my part to
> reject the idea that this is a normal and healthy
> way to interact
> with someone you love. But I don't like the
> implications and prefer
> to believe that it is a symptom of either a
> psychological, or more
> likely a deeper social, problem.
>
> *****************
>
> My opinion is that none of us escape the abuses
> flung at us from birth on in
> psy-war of the politically dominant and this is
> because we are brought up
> within an historically obsolescent set of social
> relations, relations based on
> top down political/economic power. We are taught to
> accept it: TINA. This is
> why equal political power is considered naive by
> both conservatives and
> liberals, not to mention lots of leftists.
>
> Isn't it that the philosophers only understood the
> world, but the point is to
> change it? Change it to a society where the freedom
> is each is condition for
> the freedom of all. Not by criminalizing sexual
> behaviours, but as Lessing
> puts it:
>
> Imagine us saying to children: "In the last fifty or
> so years, the human race has become aware of a great
> deal of information about its mechanisms; how it be-
> haves, how it must behave under certain circum-
> stances. If this is to be useful, you must learn to
> contemplate these roles calmly, dispassionately,
> dis-
> interestedly, without emotion. It is information
> that
> will set people free from blind loyalties, obedience
> to
> slogans, rhetoric, leaders, group emotions." Well,
> there it is.
>
> What government, anywhere in the world, will
> happily envisage its subjects learning to free them-
> selves from governmental and state rhetoric and
> pressures? Passionate loyalty and subjection to
> group
> pressure is what every state relies on.
>
> ***************************
>
> Best,
> Mike B)
>
>
>
> Watch the communist manifestoon!
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oGIffyVVk
>
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