One of the things I enjoy about blogs is watching opinions and discussions ripple out across them. As a medium they exist somewhere between a newsletter, a diary and a conversation. The dynamics are complex and I’m often surprised by what posts will sink without a trace and what will trigger a storm of discussion and controversy.
One recent example of this was a post by that well known troublemaker Ferns on the subject submission, consent and the D/s dynamic. That was followed by this post by kinkinexile taking issue with the definition of dominance used. That provoked maymay into a series of posts written with his usual tact and subtlety on the theme that ‘Dominants are Rapists’. You can read them in chronological order as post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6, post 7 and post 8. That’s a lot of posts, so if you’re short of time then 1 and 6 are probably the key ones to read. Spinning off from all that was this post by Tomio Black and this by gingernic, plus no doubt others I failed to spot.
I was planning to stick my nose into the debate, but for the moment I’ll play the role of the lazy college lecturer and simply throw it out there for discussion. I am, after all, a resource site. Possibly I’ll come back to it in a future post. It should also go without saying that a link here does not imply endorsement of any particular viewpoint. The set of things I find interesting includes many which annoy or infuriate me.
As a meta-comment on the debate itself, I will say that maymay’s case is not enhanced by his tendency to classify the emotional and angry responses generated as proof that he’s getting close to the truth. I could post that all submissives are sad losers who don’t deserve a real relationship and generate a lot of strong responses. That wouldn’t constitute proof that I’d hit a nerve and was onto something. It reminds me of the old joke – ‘Yes, it’s true they laughed at the Wright brothers, but it’s also true that they laughed at Bozo the clown’.
I wasn’t really sure what image to go with here, but seeing as Ferns mentioned chores, I’ll run with that particular theme.
Kerfuffle is such a great word. I generally stay away from controversy these days. I have been involved in enough dust ups to know better by now. As a society we seem to have become so much less tolerant of each other and so quick to take (anonymous) jabs at anyone we disagree with.
When discussing BDSM I am am automatically wary of sentences that contain assertions like:
“All dominants are…”
“A true submissive will always..”
“Real dominance is…”
“True submission means…”
While it is human nature to try and analyze things and break them into categories I find that with BDSM the topics are mostly matters of opinion. Truths that seem self evident to one person seem completely alien to another. So many arguments seem to be over semantics. Things that once seemed black and white to me are actually full of grey areas. BDSM is largely based on fantasy after all. There are few absolute truths.
These kerfuffles seem to be caused by our inability to accept other points of view and our penchant to express our thoughts in a manner closely resembling the squabbles we see played out in partisan politics. The Internet has largely robbed us of the impulse to be civil to each other. After all if you are just an anonymous user name poking away at another anonymous user name you don’t have to take much responsibility for your words or their consequences. Most of the Kerfuffles I see on the net would never occur if people were forced to confront each other face to face.
I think part of my motive for writing this post was just so I could use the word kerfuffle :). Sometimes I write the article first and then the title. This was definitely the other way around.
A lot of BDSM is a matter of opinion. But I’m also of the belief that some opinions are more right than others 🙂
I saw a comment by someone the other day that said the best way to deal with a rude and obnoxious person on-line was to be extremely and excessively polite. The ruder they get, the more polite you get. It’ll annoy them and make you look like the mature sensible party to anyone reading. I like the idea, I’m just not sure I’ve mastered the technique just yet…
-paltego
oh wow
paltego, I sent you an email