'Vanilla DS?'

[~Blacklace~]

mutually beneficial I'd say

 

[RJMasters]

This is a great topic Pure. Thanks Catalina for the bump

As you said there are some undercurrents here which require some careful thought. In truth I am not sure I fully understand but kinda get a feel for what is being presented here. It would be interesting to see you come back to this thread after all this time and share your current views.

Lately I have come to express in my post D/s/BDSM. I do this because I see a differation between D/s and BDSM, though there is certainly no hard and fast rules other than what individuals would set.

I think behind my thoughts as to the seperation of the two, lies my view to your topic.

If it is accepted that a person can have a dominant nature and their mate has a submissive nature, then whether or not they chose to label themselves as such or define themselves as being in a D/s relationship "can" be a matter of sematics. Saying that, there is still a clear difference in the two people actually stating or admitting they are in a D/s type relationship than those which occur on a natural level. I think you hit upon a key concept in introducing BDSM elements which often go hand in hand with D/s relationships.

The term Vanilla to me is a term which I see applied more about BDSM(sexual activities) than to D/s. Thus I can comfortable say that vanilla D/s relationship do exist on both natural and clearly articulated levels. When you begin to introduce sexual activities such as S&M, you begin to see a clearer distinction. This doesn't neccessarily mean that S&M cannot occur also on a natural level as well, however if asked to analize the difference between the two, the adding of the S&M activities would push my judement that the relationship was of a D/s/BDSM type and not of the vanilla D/s type. Again the people may not even acknowledge this as it may be that naturally they are both respectively Dominant/submissive and Sadist/Masochist.

I think that there are many people who have relationship where they practice individually and jointly both D/s and BDSM without so much as a knowledge of the D/s/BDSM community at all. But it is also clear to me that if each person in the relationship makes a declaration to each other...

I am "your" Dom/Domme
I am "your" submissive

There is a significant difference than to those relationships with may occur on a natural basis.

Where I see a much larger distinction to what I see you purpose here, rests(for me) upon how the term vanilla is applied. I apply it "more" to relationships which lack any B,D,S,M elements regardless of the conscience acknowledgement of the type of relationship it is. If you were to press me if this "acknowledgement" or lack there of, could also be grounds to apply the term vanilla, I wouldn't argue against it.

 

[Pure]

Hi RJ, LS, Netz and distinguished others; Special thanks to Catalina

It's a complicated topic, and your contributions have helped clarify.

I guess at the back of my mind is an assumption that, for our society, some forms of sex are subversive and destabilizing; that was an impetus of the early gay and the early gay/lesbian 'leather' movement.
(terms like 'deviation' and 'perversion' have those implications.)

To eroticize power over or infliction (or suffering) of pain has, imo, this quality.

Yet 'power over' is as old as the hills, e.g., there has always been real slavery. There has been for 3000 years at least, patriarchal arrangments where hubbies owned and controlled the wife and his-and-her "issue" (from her body).

So what makes the *deviation* of S/M or D/S?

To give an example, this is based on a movie summary, of 'the Night Porter,' which is on the top of my 'to see' list. A woman in a concentration camp has a erotic relationship with her nazi jailer, and then her later life (and re encounter with him, iirc) is traced.

THAT is certainly a taboo topic. Why, because genocide, torture etc is pretty common; maybe even some kind of 'thrill' in rape and pillage.
But here is an eroticization of it. Not unlike an eroticization of 'rape.'
So therefore a perversion or deviation. (Try to research erotic response to rape, and you'll see it's pretty taboo, and hardly ever recounted; when it is, a counsellor is instructed to say, 'that's just the body, just physiology, it means nothing.')

So it's pretty diffuse, but an effort to look at the essence of 'power' and S/M in some sense that's not just like Orthodox Jewish or Fundamentalist Christian family life.

 

[bridgeburner]

Thanks for bumping, Catalina, this is something that's generally not too far from my mind. I hope we can entice Pure back to this discussion. I'll have to see what I can do to lure him.

Something Psiberserker said particularly resonated with me: the idea that for outsiders it's the S&M smacking, whipping, leather and latex aspects of BDSM that are most recognizable. They don't understand the power-plays because it's a forest for the trees kind of thing. This goes a little toward what -- was it Lark? -- was saying as well.

In my own life, my earliest sexual responses weren't sparked by pain but by power imbalances particularly as they manifested in threatening or potentially dangerous situations.

Every living creature deals in power and powerlessness every minute of its conscious existence. We respond to that sexually whether or not we're aware of it. A Vanilla woman might be drawn to a real man's man, an alpha male, and it would never cross her mind to think of him in terms of being a sexual Dominant or Top or herself as a bottom or submissive. People not in the know are conditioned to believe that BDSM requires a uniform and the apropriate props. You can't properly Dominate your slave with a wet dishtowel and an ice cube? Ah, silly 'nillas. Of course you can. You can Dominate your slave with a glance.

If that's the case, then certainly you can have D/s within a sexually vanilla relationship, but I think the issue is whether or not you can call it D/s if the parties involved don't acknowledge it. And then there's the problem of whether or not the definition is reliant on the parties involved.

Just because you want to call your game involving a bowl of warm jell-o and half a dozen marshmallow peeps Baseball doesn't make it so.

Clearly there is a BDSM community even if it exists on a varying spectrum. Clearly not all sadists belong in that community - roll out Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer etc. Clearly not all masochists belong in that community - roll out the religious flagellants, depressive cutters and self-mutilaters etc.

I'd say that since all creatures great and small exist somewhere on the D/s spectrum that they cannot all be considered part of the BDSM community. So while there is some element of D/s in all relationships and there is room for even LARGE amounts of D/s in vanilla relationships it would be a fairly rare one that would qualiy for recognition from the more mainstream BDSM community.

Assuming that recognition would even concern such a couple. I'm with Psiberserker on this one --- there are plenty of vanilla couples living like this and it would never even occur to them that they're living anything but normal lives as dictated by their biologically assigned gender roles or socially/familially conditioned personalities in the case of Female dominated households.


-B

 

[catalina_francisco]

Thanks for bumping, Catalina, this is something that's generally not too far from my mind.
-B

Nice to see you back around here bb.

Catalina

 

[bridgeburner]

Obviously I need to pay better attention since Pure was already here and I completely missed that fact.

Sorry! Very glad to see you!

-B

 

[bridgeburner]

Nice to see you back around here bb.

Catalina

Good to be seen!