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BondageSlaveMN -> RE: BDSM, a step backwards? (12/13/2007 1:45:04 PM)
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You will see that I have just recently joined this site and that this is actually my first post, but this is the kind of academic discourse that I most enjoy in life. The questions you ask are of a moral nature more than anything. In short, no one will have the correct answer to your inquiry since there is no model of moarlity that can account for every situation. That said, I will make it known that I believe in a very radical model of individualized morality. That is that morality depends on each person's personal beliefs and the only way to be immoral is to purposely and willingly corrupt one's own belief structures so as to make something that was previously immoral into something that is moral. For example, a person who believes that is is wrong to steal changes their beliefs for the sole purpose of making it ok to steal. In this radical view of morality, the term morality carries very few consequences because it allows psychopaths the luxury of claiming their wrong doings to be willfull and right because they are consistent with their beliefs.
From this perspective, D/s relationships and inflicting pain on a willing submissive is no less moral than building a house for a poor family to live in. Again, ideals are relativistic and are in no shape or form absolute. Ideals for one person will be different than ideals for another and neither person's ideals can be considered "greater" than those of the other. Every action can be justified in some fashion, except for a person who commits an act that they know to be wrong and has no rational justification for perpetrating. Again, in this case the person has willingly and intentionally subverted their own belief system and is immoral in their actions.
From this extreme relativistic viewpoint, it boils down to "if it's not your business, it's not your's to cast judgement upon."
It is really more important and interesting to anaylze the question from a standpoint of acceptability. Is it acceptable within the current context to perpetrate an action? Head hunting is an acceptable method of showing a coming of rights in parts of the world to this day. Head hunting, of course, is not acceptable in my home city, Minneapolis, MN. As such, it was be unacceptable for me to walk next door, lob off my neighbor's head and display it on my mantle. So then the question you must ask yourself is this: "Is it acceptable for a dom to subject his slave to pain if the sub is willing to receive it?" From this perspective, we see that it is in fact acceptable. You will not go to jail for inflicting pain onto your sub should the sub truely welcome it (at least not in my locale). This may not be the case in other areas of America where popular view differs.
To address the initial question of whether or not BDSM represents a step backwards, I must put forth a somewhat abstract argument. What is the ultimate purpose of humanity? What is the ultimate purpose of the social constructs of "civilization?" The ultimate purpose of humanity, on a biological level, is to reproduce and ensure the greatest success of human kind as a species. In an honest assessment, we are not doing terribly well in this department. Bacteria have outdone us many times over and we have completely undermined natural selection in terms of Darwinian theory (whether you believe in evolution or not, it is an irrefutable fact that natural selection operates in wild populaces). Civilization's ultimate goal is to build a society in which all persons are happy. Note that I did not say free, I said happy. For some persons, being owned and subjected to physical pain is gratifying and does in fact make them happy. So long as this D/s coupled dynamic does not infringe upon the happiness of other members of society, it cannot be unacceptable or unethical even when operating under a different model of morality than the one I outlined above (go ahead and bring up Hume or Aristotle or Mill and I will point out how my statement is supported by their models as well).
We can argue the semantics of the abuse topic all day long. For my purposes, I will use the first definition as given by Dictionary.com:
to use wrongly or improperly; misuse: to abuse one's authority.
This definition seems fairly consistent with other dictionary sources.
From this standpoint, inflicting physical pain or injury upon a willing recipient is not even considered abuse since it is not improper use of the subject. The subject intends and as a result is intended for the receipt of the action.
Lastly, from a sociological viewpoint, is BDSM a step backward? Sociologically, we care if we are making progress as a society. A better question is to ask: does BDSM impede social progress? The answer to this question could be easily debated, but I would hedge my bets that volutnary servitutde does not in fact impede the progress of society as a whole. One could argue that resources would be better served another way and as a result greater social progress would be accomplished and they would in fact be correct. Society and humanity can ALWAYS be made more efficient, but we are not machines. We are imperfect beings operating in an imperfect social construct in an imperfect world. To expect absolute efficiency is unreasonable.
So, to wrap things up. I feel and have argued that BDSM can neither be seen as a good nor a bad thing in terms of a greater social context. I, of course, am operating under my own social context. If I lived in a different place with different rules I might believe differently.
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