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subMan4Madame -> RE: Lame posts: "No, I'm not into that. Sorry" Why bother? (1/21/2010 3:24:57 PM)
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I'll say "nay" here.
When I read the yea-voters in here, then "moral majority activists" is what I make of them mostly. I admire activists and the fine people going all "yea" in here are no exception to me, but the "moral majority" smell of it all is what spoils the scene to me.
The main "discourse tactic" of a moral majority is non-argumentation, so let's list a few problems of interpretation here:
1) BDSM is about erotization of (mainly) power themes, so WIITWD is essentially about a collection ("grocery store") of lust themes.
2) In my view, most people actually prefer a potential partner to understand their particular fetishes. This requires communication or negotiation but presenting yourself silly in this respect will only get you ignored. That's the normal way to learn about insufficient social skills and awkwardness. No need to call this level of understanding to be about "relationship matters": there's nothing wrong about a desire for wish fulfillment coming from a one-trick-pony completely focused on kink. What that pony has to learn is simply that non-commercial WIITWD is indeed not merely as simple as "take-away fetish", but that it will require meeting a potential partner's terms as well. That is not particularly hard to understand and most will learn as part of R/L negotiations. If the fetish is a fixation that person will be rejected and righteously so.
3) OttersSwim's requirement for "rational introspection, and participation in intelligent discourse" is really a minority approach. Most people learn simply by having fun with a partner.
4) More OttersSwim: "People think to find others who are 'into' their kink as a good way to break the ice. In reality, it shows that they have not thought enough about what is really involved here - in short, they don't understand where they are, and who they are dealing with."
Actually, this type of interaction is simply called a T/b-mindset. Nothing wrong with that.
5) I doubt that engaging in T/b-negotiation is much of a problem in maledom (NB: the outcome of finding a suitable partner is a different matter). But in femdom there is clearly no shortage of ideologists denying T/b dignity, at least not when the internet is involved - then it's all about "horny net geeks". That femdom ideology (as found on internet message boards) is the moral majority's discourse pattern to fend off the awareness of the non-emancipation problem found in that environment: (a lot of) dommes not being able to negotiate WIITWD at a mere play level. (But non-emancipation is a topic in its own right, too big to handle here now.)
6) Even in D/S, relationship matters are conditions on the side of the core lust themes, not the other way around. The latter is just moral majority's ideological thinking. And I do refer to the deceptive meaning of the word ideology. The mismatch is typically between the moral majority's presentations on the message boards and the data in the ads sections of a BDSM website. Without exception these ideological statements are vague and suggestive about numbers, often using merely the word "many" (i.e. totally abstract) and always carefully taken out of context. Profiling qualifications are always missing (or else the moral majority would simply be documenting its own factual minority position).
Let's simply quote Akasha as found earlier in this thread:
"The women/femdoms who read and respond on this message board are a very good representation of the lifestyle femdom pool at large. "
The first (unconscious?) manipulation is about context: "lifestyle femdom pool at large". What the people with the "lame" questions want to learn is what an estimated potential for the (T/b-oriented) play ads pool could be like, not the lifestyle femdom pool at large. The latter includes well-vested and settled people, many not even on the outlook for a new (play) partner, yet participating on the boards.
The second suggestion is that ladies of high standards (with an impeccable desire for warm communications and similar relationships beyond mere play partners) make up for an overwhelming majority in both message boards and "dating" pool of personal ads.
I have no statistics on message boards and the opinions presented in there, but no need: the fora are dominated by "warm and fair femdoms". No probs there.
But the personal ads dating pool in femdom? My impression as a hetero male sub (and I'll restrict myself to my years 2000 web experience): no, "warm and fair femdoms" never were an overwhelmingly large majority, not even after removing the pro ads from the pool stats. (NB: not implying that pro's are not warm and fair here ;-)
To give you an idea of my data:
in Sept09 I did a checkup of the CollarMe domina dating pool for Belgium. Of the 25 records "last active" in the 9 months of 2009 only 13 were potentially available for play or relationship (i.e; after removing self-identified pro's and "networking motives"). Of those 13: play motive (mostly "friends with benefits")= 5 , LTR = 4 (of which 3single) and 4 were totally unclear (blank profile; domme may have turned sub).
So no majority, equal share at best.
A similar test on another website in 2005 was even poorer in LTR potential.
(Note: yes, "last active" stats are not ideal, but play-domina's have less data to check than relationship-dommes, so the "turnover" of play dommes is likely higher.)
So I say 'nay' because
1) the above (moral majority)
2) I see BDSM as a cyclical human activity (like the business cycle) and at this moment we're at a "low activity level" which is typically dominated by the moral majority. When a virtuous cycle starts (maybe in 2 years time?) participation numbers grow, aggression rises on the message boards, and less conventional BDSM and fetish initiatives or projects will rise to a more public surface again. That's when today's (bashing or not) "not many are like that" will have to be taken a step further up with a full-blown "that's not BDSM and/or immoral". In 2005 this was the case (in the Low Countries) for dominants with exploitation or prostitution fetish; large-scale boot camps, young girl "indoctrination" manuals, etc. These people were effectively driven off the message boards at that time, nipping their initiatives in the bud. (Personally I spoke out against ads like 'who can come and paint my house?' as rip offs and bad examples.) Today, I would prefer not to see those ads pulled. There's people who want to participate in those schemes and it is a learning experience for them.
Cheers!
Rob
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister.
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