A journalist writes about a professional S/M porn shoot. Quite interesting. And quite different that one might imagine.
This again touches upon a recurring theme in this blog: personal freedom and live-and-let-live. From the article:
"The key that distinguishes BDSM from abuse is the simple but fundamental issue of consent. Having something done to you that you do not want or choose is abuse. Having something done to you that you willfully choose, that gives you pleasure, even if it's something that would be abusive to someone else, is nothing more than sexual preference. One person's horror really can be another person's ecstasy. So it all comes down to whether one group of people gets to impose its sexual beliefs and preferences on people whose sexual desires differ from their own."
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12 comments:
If that's what floats your boat, and you're of an age to be able to consent, then go for it. However it seems there must be a few crossed wires in the brain of someone who gets pleasure from experiencing pain. That's a legitimate criticism because of the evolutionary purpose of pain. We wouldn't have got very far if very many were wired that way.
Mm, yes, but you can't really use evolutionary fitness as a measure of right and wrong.
There's the evolutionarily critical stuff — the part which relates to staying alive, being stronger through society, and having many children — and there's all the rest.
Most of our sophisticated and meditative inner life is probably irrelevant or detrimental to the survival of our species; a mere side-effect in the light of evolution. Yet that is not something we would give up.
... because of the evolutionary purpose of pain.
On the one side that's true, on the other side there is another mechanism from evolution: If you get suddenly injured e.g. by an accident or by a wild beast, then your body releases some or maybe a lot of endorphines, so that you are still able to fight or to jump away. And these endorphines can have many effects, also giving a lot of pleasure. Maybe these people play with that effect - I don't know, because I'm not into this.
In my view there is rather the question (being consent assumed): Is it just one color between a whole palette of many different colors, sometimes used to "paint" within the sexual play, or is it the ONLY color somebody is using?
In the latter case I would say "dosis facit venenum" (dose makes poison).
Another important point (which is basically the reason why I'm not going into that direction) is inherently connected with the general functioning of our senses. It is the "Weber-Fechner law" (see www.tourl.de/8f) describing how all our senses are working. BTW this law can be seen as starting point of biophysics about 150 years ago.
Basically it says that you get much more sensitivity going into low levels of "stimulus background" ("going into silence", as Tantra knows since long time) than if you go into more and more "kicks".
Of course, if somebody is used to have "high levels of stimuli", then the body needs some time to get accustomed again to the lower levels - e.g. if you are dazzled by a flash light, then you have to wait until you can see again in a twilight ...
So, it needs a bit of discipline to stay mostly on lower levels, but it's worth the result ... I'm wondering sometimes why not more people are doing this, because the functioning of our senses is an everyday experience of everybody.
Anyway, I simply recommend to experiment with this. Probably it's healthier, too.
Oh well, my comments are becoming more and more "pascalesque";-) (SCNR:-)
Thanks for the link to that story. Nothing like our sex preferences to bring into focus the difficulty we have restraining applying our own biases - let alone likes and dislikes - to others.
Exactly!
Just a few years ago, a younger and more innocent Eolake thought that people who liked SM could not possibly like it if it actually hurt. And surely they were all older and not very attractive. But since then I've seen sites like spankingteenjessica.com for example, and had to revise that prejudgement. Jessica is young and pretty, and from the samples and the stories she tells, it's clear that she loves being spanked, and hard.
And so it goes with every variation. Sex is so emotional that we judge so much.
Interestingly, no country judges S/M harder than the UK, but when I arrived in this country I found out that *all* the erotic novels in the book stores here are S/M. Not nine out of ten, but ten out of ten. What does that tell us?
... Damn, this is too great a coincidence: right after writing that comment, I went back to watching my DVD with old comedy, and in came Dame Edna and sang a song about Britain. It had the chorus: "spank! spank! spank!"...
Having something done to you that you do not want or choose is abuse. Having something done to you that you willfully choose, that gives you pleasure ...
... at least there is a possibility.
This is true also in a more general sense. For example, if you are thrown against your will into sensory deprivation, then it's "white torture" (see www.tourl.de/8h), but if you want to explore it voluntarily, it's a great pleasure - for some years I have experimented with the "floating tank" (used first and investigated by John C. Lilly, see www.tourl.de/8g) as a tool for sensory deprivation as totally as possible. A great tool to explore yourself and especially the "low levels of stimuli" mentioned above.
Elise Shutton, after long investigation and experimentation, made a site to help those who want to establish
Female Domination and male submission within loving and caring relationships
Article as introduction:
http://elisesutton.homestead.com/FemDom.html
Seems the desire for S/M comes more often from the submissive one.
Comments?
/ I just made a short break in my work... /
Maybe sadist have more to overcome emotionally, since it's much more socially taboo to want to give pain than to want to take it.
Good point.
I once heard in a conversation that there are much more M than S, this is a problem in the clubs: everybody wants to get dominated!
Seems there is a lack of real sadists. :-)
In the Elis Shutton idea of this whole thing, sadistic attitude would develop step by step also because it is causing pleasure to the partner.
But if you spank your partner knowing that he/she experiences pleasure through it, are you still a sadist?
Mm, yes, but you can't really use evolutionary fitness as a measure of right and wrong.
You're right. Good thing I wasn't.
In a book on this topic, S/M has an alternate meaning: Sexual Magic.
The difference between pleasure and pain is a thin line, that alters with arousal.
Of course the UK laws are harsh, there is a long history of UK S/M. Something to do with public school. Witness the the extreme moralists who are also hypocrites, here in the US.
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