A Rant on the Perniciousness of "Damaged" Characters in BDSM Stories

[Smittenkitten_]

My own input

Well, from my studies and what not, I really just think peoples views on what is right and what is wrong are screwed. Haha I could go into detail, but rather for those who are interested, read the geneology of morals by nietszche a philosopher. I've just read the first two of his essays, but it was good. If you wana educate your self a little, read it (mind you it may see so brutal at times, but then i just recomend you read the interpretations of the test rather, easier to understand that way anyway). Anyway my point is that even though overs deem the behaviour of BDSM 'not normal', they should re-evaluate their morals, heh, people in many stories take pleaser in giving harm. Anyway this could be irrelevant but its food for thought :3

 

[Stella_Omega]

I get such a kick out of people who know what other people "Should" do, especially when those people are never going to do that thing.

Look, if you worry about the consequences, congratulations, you are thinking like an adult. Only kids expect universal petting and approval for everything they do and say-- and kids are so often disappointed for that matter.

Stop with the entitlement, already. Keep your sex life out of the faces of the people who don't need to know about it.

 

[Smittenkitten_]

Agreed fully.

I get such a kick out of people who know what other people "Should" do, especially when those people are never going to do that thing.

Look, if you worry about the consequences, congratulations, you are thinking like an adult. Only kids expect universal petting and approval for everything they do and say-- and kids are so often disappointed for that matter.

Stop with the entitlement, already. Keep your sex life out of the faces of the people who don't need to know about it.

 

[xssve]

Gentle (or not) readers,

I've read 50 Shades and many other novels; I've seen The Secretary and several other films. I'm getting profoundly annoyed with the creators' subtext that either the dom, sub, or both are not right in some emotional way, and that they seem to have to be so in order to enjoy a BDSM relationship.

I'm not saying that all media always assert this, or that it's never true in reality, but I'm seeing an annoying trend.

It just pisses me off that the implication the masses are getting is warped in this way. Is it supposed to help them to understand WIITWD? Enable them to parse it better because "poor dears had a rough time that rendered them abnormal." It seems as though the damage is supposed to be an excuse for otherwise-unacceptable or unfathomable behavior. Would it be that scary for a normal, red-blooded guy (maybe even the captain of the football team) to enjoy a full-out spanking (given or received)? Is it that hard to imagine that the soccer mom and PTA president is a slut with a penchant for needleplay when she's not pouring juice at the spring carnival?

Am I the only one seeing this and becoming overly sensitive about it?

I suppose I should wonder if it's even really a problem, but I've already made that decision. I just hate the idea that, should I ever be out (voluntarily or not), someone will inevitably wonder what went so horribly wrong in my childhood to make me "like that." Hrmph!

It's the old Calvinist value system, which is heavily dualist, and in any dualist there has to be some way to tell one thing from the other, in Calvinism, that's usually sex, for fairly complicated political reasons I believe, having to do with events at the time, but the upshot of it is, wealth is a the more pure abstraction than sex, which is messy - since it's not an abstraction - carnality by it's nature is of the flesh and of this world, hence symbolic of the corruption of the physical world - if one craves "purity" one is out of luck if one has physical existence at all, since the physical is inherently, uh... physical - a pure abstraction by contrast, has no physical existence except as a pattern of neural energy in somebody's head, it's pure - and sterile - it can begat nothing but further sterile abstraction.

It seems safer, however, than embracing the flesh, with it's flaws, it's uncertainties, it's finite nature - hence Calvinist asceticism seeking the divine through denial of the flesh- sex for reproduction only, reduced to mechanical breeding, virtual pastoralism - rather than a more classical ecstaticism - seeking connection to the divine through immersion in the flesh, to fully experience the flesh, embracing even it's flaws because that's what makes us human.

Neither is really "right" or "wrong", Calvinism is simply a centripetal hierarchy, better organized politically, whereas ecstaticism is the more diffuse and existential ethos.

To move towards a recognition of ecstaticism, carnal or otherwise, requires challenging the religious claim - in this case, mostly Calvinist - to moral monopoly.

The first step there, is to establish that there is more to morality than what specific living flesh one penetrates or allows to be penetrated by other living flesh, which really, as you correctly observe, isn't really anybodies business.

There is a public safety argument there, to be sure, but that's a legal, and not necessarily a religious argument, and it's and argument that can be legally satisfied.

Basically, what you have here is the Constitution, separation and equal protection, which is is huge obstacle to any attempt to impose an arbitrary religious value system w/regards to sexuality, but obviously, there are always those motivated to do so, by any means at their disposal, fair or foul.

Straight up, within certain limits, they have no legal leg to stand on, and possibly you are referring to social coercion, slander, calumny, blacklisting, etc., all of which are more or less arguably illegal, but common as dirt.

The argument there is often "custom", but it's kind of spurious argument: carnality seems to have a much longer and richer history than asceticism, to the point that asceticism is really the oddity, it's just that nobody makes that argument when the subject comes up, partially perhaps because those making that argument often go to great pains to secure a captive audience and make sure nobody who would make that argument, or any other, is allowed to make it.

That would brings us back around to Calvinist predispensationalism, but that would require many more paragraphs to describe.

In some case there are moral clauses, etc., that will hold up in certain professions, legally challengable perhaps, but only at the expense of airing all your laundry in public, which is ironically, what such clauses are presumably intended to avoid.

i.e., it might be one thing if a preschool teacher likes gangbangs, perhaps another if she's selling pictures.

In short the real traditional social compromise here, dating back the Victorian era, is that you can get as freaky as you want as long as you keep in mind not everybody wants to hear about it - out of sight, out of mind, and is echoed in BDSM debates about public scenes in which innocent bystanders maybe non-consensually dragged into and it's an ongoing discussion as it should be, as there are times and places where you might get away with that - which leaves us with those who go out of their way to peep through keyholes in order to feed their outrage, which is technically, a violation of the compromise as well - it does require that if you're not into this sort thing you mind you own damn business, which is where the argument shifts the "role model" argument, although that one again, cuts both ways, given the failure of abstinence programs to prevent nature from taking it's course.

I mean logically, this should surprise no-one, you might as well tell the wind to stop blowing, but when it comes to Calvinist predispensationalist "morality", it's a pure, sterile abstraction, not a philosophy with a lot of practical application, and ultimately, that what we have on our side, the progress of science and law, in which doubt plays a central role, rather than blind belief in which, quite often, such a thing as "reasonable doubt", for example, is allowed to exist even as an abstract concept.

I'm tempted to call it "progressive primitivism", as clever as we are, we're still flesh and blood, and there is nothing as of yet that will change that, and that mean we're still gonna wanna fuck like Bonobos every now and then, no?

Something unnatural about not wanting that if you ask me, lol.

 

[xssve]

I should add that in the case of the keyhole peepers, I see nothing unethical in getting up in their face with your sexuality if you feel the need to - if they're compelled to look, then I say give 'em an eyeful.

"If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out".

 

[xssve]

Anyway, don't now if I answered your question, but it's basically the old psychological switcheroo: given that the easiest way to get along is to tell people what they want to hear and do what "they" say, and getting along is "sanity" then doing anything but conforming is crazy.

It's amateur psychologizing however, culture, and nature, thrives on diversity, not conformity, or rather a healthy balance between conformity and diversity - life is change, conversion of energy, diversity is adaptation, and without diversity and adaptation, there is only stasis, and stasis is death.

 

[Eager2TRYRU]

At first I was somewhat bothered by what troubles you desertslave but, as I saw stories and blogs about the increase in sex related toys, listened at work to various people who "had a friend" whose wife ordered a butt plug off of Amazon... my viewpoint began to shift.

In browsing some of the previous comments I must say that Stella's comment "BDSM is not, and will never be in our lifetime, a readily accepted relationship or sexual preference," is spot on. And if it is accepted that mainstream America is not now, or in the near future, willing to accept that the local soccer mom, with no emotional trauma in her past, finds great sexual fulfillment by entering the bedroom at night dressed in black leather and whips her husband's ass with a flogger while trying out her new 10 inch strapon on his willing ass as he begs her to fuck him harder... then the choices become... no mainstream BDSM anywhere... or... mainstream BDSM made socially acceptable by portraying the participants as troubled.

Under those choices, I think 50 Shades has had a positive impact. Realistically, 50 Shades did not change anyone's mind regarding the mental health of those involved with BDSM... I don't believe that anyone has said, "I always thought people who engaged in BDSM were completely normal and well adjusted then I read that 50 Shades book and now I realize that they aren't normal, they're terribly troubled." Whatever notions, preconceived or otherwise, you brought with you into the book you left with when you finished the book. But, if from the safety of their homes after being reassured that only troubled people enjoy BDSM, a few thousand self-proclaimed normal people decided to try, say, some Ben Wa balls, a butt plug or two... an XOXO paddle... and find that they can enjoy a sexual life beyond their previously established comfort zone... then 50 Shades has opened up those people to the idea... the concept... that maybe not everyone that goes to bed with XOXO marks stinging their still warm ass does so because they have a mental health issues. And that is the value of 50 Shades having success.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yeah, but it would be really nice if these conversations didn't have to always start with "You've gotten bad information."

Witness some of the posts in the "punishment" thread-- at least before the hijack.

 

[xssve]

Still musing, haven't read Shades, don't intend to anytime soon, and wasn't aware of the "damaged" device - but, in literary terms, that's exactly what it is, a shortcut, a cop out.

We're all damaged, by that measure - obsessing over men you don't know theoretically having sex, or anybody for that matter where you are not directly involved, is some kind of damage if you ask me.

We engage in BDSM for as many reasons as there are people doing it - I'd be hard pressed to say why exactly I do it other than it makes me feel alive and whole in way that nothing else come remotely close to.

And I don't mean to oversimplify it as strictly dualistic, dualism itself is merely a linguistic device to differentiate one thing from another, it doesn't mean there are only Two things - any two things imply a Third axiomatically: thesis antithesis and synthesis.

So, asceticism; technically, withdrawal from the world, monasticism (but which might be further subdivided into monasticism and penitentialism to start), and tantrism, defined as active engagement with the world, synthesis, also subdivisible: we have gourmets and gluttons, lechers and lovers, all of which you can find within and without BDSM - we're really just talking the human condition here, in all it's complicated variations - Jung is probably a better place to start than religion to try to describe individual motivation - but if all you have to say is "damaged", and get away with it, then I guess it saves a lot of work at character development.

Probably not gonna win any Pulitzers, but obviously you can make a quick buck.

Thus, my previous thoughts on the subject probably go more to why a vanilla audience (the audience, which I believe, these book/s are marketed towards) might accept the "damaged" device without question.