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stella41b -> RE: BDSM Activities: YKINOK (4/21/2008 6:20:21 AM)
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Quite a few years ago the medical professional believed it could cure transvestism through ECT or electro-convulsive therapy. The patient (male) would be required to attend an appointment during which he would be required to wear women's clothing. He would then be required to masturbate during which time he would be verbally humiliated by a psychiatrist and subjected to a series of electric shocks. This was known as aversion therapy.
Perhaps someone could explain the difference between this mental health therapy and say, a Dom of either sex equipped with a TENS unit meeting a submissive transvestite.
What is BDSM? Is not BDSM forming relationships with kinks and fetishes included between consenting adults where these relationships are based on human interaction involving a broad spectrum of diverse and different behaviours, rituals, attitudes, cultures, subcultures and lifestyles?
The very basis of a BDSM relationship is interaction between two or more humans. You cannot dominate yourself. If you are on your own, who can you submit to?
The basis of any interaction in a BDSM relationship is a transaction, the sadist needs the masochist, the control freak needs the doormat, a taskmaster needs a slave, and so on. I am being of course simplistic here, but I guess you can get my drift, in that you cannot satiate a need to dominate someone unless you find someone willing to submit to your domination, which as many Doms of both genders will tell you can be quite a challenge.
We have BDSM 'play'. It is called play for a reason, it is not real, it is nothing more than a role, a game, a series of transactions. However 'play' is only a small part of BDSM, where participants adopt a particular role or set up a scene involving various activities designed to provide satiation of a need to dominate or submit. This is to a varying degree only part of a relationship which is formed more or less like any other.
In a way BDSM play can be seen as a game.. very much like the games of Transactional Analysis developed by Canadian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr Eric Berne in the 1950's. What Berne did was to revise Freud's three ego states - the ego, superego and id into three ego states - Parent, Adult and Child and use these as a study of interaction between humans in the form of transactions, which would lead to strokes, payooffs, games, rituals and so on. His work served to popularize various psychoanalysis techniques and he is the author of twobest selling books 'Games People Play' and 'What Do You Say After Hello?' His theory was based on the assumption that our lives are all following a script and that we can resolve a lot of issues and problems simply by rewriting the script.
However if we were to replace the three ego states Parent, Adult and Child with Dominant, Switch and Submissive what would we have? Would it be really that difficult to draw a parallel between BDSM and TA (Transactional Analysis)? I think not. More can be found on Transactional Analysis at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis
And this is precisely the problem with YKINOK. If we are talking about something going on between two consenting adults, two adults who know each other, trust each other, who are aware of what they are doing, and who know the other person a bit more than a couple of meetings over coffee or a few exchanged e-mails, where is the risk of harm? Provided of course that there is complete honesty, trust, clear open communication, and that there is no permanent or long lasting physical, emotional or psychological damage caused to one or both parties involved.
The other thing is is that people tend to judge activities or relationships based on what they see or how they appear. They are usually unaware of the underlying reasons or motivations involved, those cravings from the soul that may lie behind such a relationship or activity. It is also worth bearing in mind that mental illness, especially when it comes to depression, psychosis, self-harm, self-abuse and so on can be hard to identify and diagnose correctly even for members of the medical profession, and even when the case history or medical history of the patient is known. Therefore how accurate can the assessment be of someone who hasn't had any clinical training?
But the thing is most people don't mind their business any more. They feel entitled to have an opinion not just about themselves and the people in their lives but also anyone else they come across. The social art of getting to know someone appears to have become a minority interest. The Internet is a two-edged sword. It's educational, informative, powerful in communication, but it not only provides artificial intelligence to idiots it also networks them and some of these idiots are encouraged by assuming everyone thinks like them. We rarely ask questions or bother to find out, we rarely try to understand, we just discover someone, we discover someone's nature and we make our assumptions and draw our own conclusions. Everything is fine until we hit a 'red flag' - quite often something we don't understand or accept - and we just move on or walk away.
One of the problems is BDSM, with it's supposed unconditional acceptance of someone for who they really are, kinks, fetishes and eccentricities included, has a tendency to turn perfectly rational, sane, intelligent human beings into complete dipsticks and wassocks overnight. Some people react to entering the BDSM community like a dog entering a butcher's shop left unattended but well stocked - they go nuts. Restraint and common sense goes right out of the window.. Women who appear socially respectable, hold down good jobs, have families, etc will travel across the country on a whim and beg to be raped or beaten.. Men will e-mail strange women demanding castration, to be shat on, peed on, beaten, locked in the fridge for weeks on end, people suddenly find Masters, Mistresses, and slaves all over the place.
But while being utterly ridiculous, perhaps rather squicky or having the makings of a comedy these people are merely further evidence that kink and stupidity are two of the most fundamental elements of human nature. Those who deny the existence of one or both in my opinion have very little understanding of human nature.
But this is why YKINOK is not acceptable. It is the modern day equivalent of net curtain twitching, of thin lips and harsh judgments. It is nothing more than stigmatizing other people on the basis of their behaviour, way of living, appearance and even we have 'tribal' stigma. You just have to mention Gor to some people to elicit a laugh or get someone to shake their head. Few people understand it, I myself am one of them, but I accept and respect Gor as part of the BDSM community just as much as I respect the leather family, the polygamists, people like me into the period lifestyle, whatever. But people tend to think in terms of 'us' and 'them', they start attaching labels, jumping to conclusions, forming assumptions and creating stereotypes.
Believing people to need mental health therapy on the basis of what kinks they're into is rather elitist and fascist as a way of thinking. It is judging someone to be inferior or ascribing false characteristics to them, in this case mental illness, based on your own preconceived notions and assumptions. I have already shown how 'mental health therapy' and such practices as psychoanalysis can resemble what we do in BDSM, though they are not the same, there are different motivations and I wouldn't be as foolish to suggest that BDSM activities should or could replace clinical medical help where necessary. But we live in an imperfect world where people do get abused, they get hurt, broken, emotionally damaged, and no matter how weird someone is, what lies in their past, what baggage they have, I feel they have the same right to acceptance, to happiness and to emotional fulfillment as the next person and this in this community is a right which is inalienable.
I feel that you shouldn't form a definite opinion about someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes, and that it's best to try and achieve a healthy balance between interest in yourself and an interest in others. Try to find yourself in other people and find other people as a part of you. Given where there is evidence of rational thought, communication and mutual understanding in my mind there can be no place for YKINOK anywhere in BDSM.
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