gypsygrl
Posts: 1471
Joined: 10/8/2005
From: new york state
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I appologize for the really really really long post. I guess I've been feeling energetic this morning.
So my questions are:
If you identify as a slave or as owned, do you have a right, or is it realistic, to expect others to accept your self perceived identity as reality?
While I don’t think its realistic to expect others to accept my self-identifications as reality, I would be put off if they didn’t and take it as a sign that they didn’t respect me. If I say something about myself, no matter how implausible it might sound, I do expect others to engage me on it especially if they think I’m out of line. The issue is one of acknowledging my basic ability to know myself. In rejecting my self-identification as a slave, the other is basically saying that I don’t know who/what I am and lack the basic equipment for self-awareness. If they had even a minimum respect for me, they would at least try to understand why I would make such an apparently incredible claim. Granted, they might not be successful and never really see things the way I do, but they should at least recognize my right to describe myself in whatever terms I think appropriate and accept those descriptions as valid whether or not they really get it.
In general why is it so important for us to be understood by people we don't even know?
I wasn’t going to post in this thread but something happened the other day that made me really think about this question of why its important to be understood by people we don’t know. I was at the Laundromat doing my laundry and reading a book in preparation for a class I’ll be teaching this summer. The book itself, For and Against Method (ed by Matteo Motterlini) is a collection of writings documenting the intellectual relationship between Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, two philosophers of science who were friendly rivals. Lakatos was a rationalist and consistently adhered to a notion of truth and felt there was a scientific method that would lead to the truth of whatever matter was under investigation. Feyerabend, an anarchist, had no truck with such notions. So, I’m sitting in the Laundromat reading a 1968 letter Feyerabend wrote to Lakatos (they carried on a lovely, almost romantic, correspondence) and came across the following:
“The only theoretical restriction (or definition) of science which I am prepared to tolerate is what follows from a principle of general hedonism: all those elements of science which are inconsistent with hedonism must go (which, of course, does not mean that people will be forbidden to be masochists; only that they should exercise their masochism privately and not advertise it as a principle of truth or professional integrity, thus misleading themselves and everyone else; they can even be sadists; but again they should choose their friends not by misleading propaganda—“you are now going to the most important thing that man has invented,” but honestly: “I am a sadist; you are a masochist; so let us have some fun together”).”
Reading this made me really happy, so much so that I started laughing. I don’t know Feyerabend, and never will (He’s dead) nor do I have any stake in his opinion of me (He wouldn’t have had one as he didn’t know me or even that I existed) but it still made me happy to see him give the nod to SM. If he had gone a different direction, as Richard Rorty seems to have done in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, and treated SM and its intellectual variants as being suspect though something we must tolerate in a liberal society, I would be less sympathetic to his other philosophical commitments, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with SM. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider them but I would be suspicious, and it would be harder to convince me that he’s right.
Even more important than the fact that Feyerabend gives the nod to SM is the fact that he seems to share my understanding of what its all about: fun and having fun with each other. For me, it’s a hedonistic practice with no justification other than the fact that it brings pleasure to its participants and should be accepted on that account so long as its practitioners are honest about what they do. He understood that masochism is itself a form of pleasure and the pursuit of pain can be fun, even if some of us masochists take ourselves all too seriously at times.
Later on in the same letter, Feyerabend confides to Lakatos the feeling that he’s lost now that he’s given up the notion of truth. He writes,
“In some way, you are much better off than I and I envy you for it. You believe in something such as the truth, you have some ideas how to reach it; and…you proceed steadily. Right now, I am lost, and it is largely your doing. Listening to your lectures on Popperianism meant the end of my dogmatic slumber [Karl Popper was another philosopher of science]. Now I am awake…Still, I must admit that I am somehow lost and the best one can get in such a situation is criticism. So, can you let me have some criticism…?”
I can’t help but read into this something of the relationship between a Dominant and a submissive or an intellectual sadist and masochist. Not only that, Feyerabend takes the bottom position. Go him! The Dominant (Lakatos) has undermined the submissive’s (Feyerabend) feeling of security provided by the notion of truth. This wakes up the submissive but sets him adrift at the same time. He is no longer in a dogmatic slumber, but must confront the feeling of being lost. So, what does he do? The submissive, in effect, returns to the Dominant and asks for more! (Please, Sir, may I have another?) It’s as if he’s saying, “You’ve robbed me of my illusions, now criticize me!” as if being as if adding the insult of being criticized will compensate for the injury of having been robbed and help him find his way. I can’t think of a more masochistic logic (and one which I pursue all the time).
So, in addition to giving the nod to SM and presenting it in a good light, Feyerabend sweetens the deal by adopting a submissive position in an intellectual exchange: not only does he understand SM in a general sense, but he seems amenable to a submissive perspective pointing to a different, more specific understanding.
For me, such understanding from a dead stranger is somehow important. Not only does it give me a sense that my choices are valid but it gives me a feeling of community and makes that dead stranger less strange, though it does nothing to affect the fact that he’s dead. :)
So I ask you this, is a slave a slave, as your define a slave, without a master/mistress?
I agree that self-identification is important, but I, personally, don’t think its enough to make a slave a slave. Self-identification is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. The way it works for me is that I recognize a lot of traits in myself that I consider to be slave-like, almost embarrassingly so but I’ve never identified as a slave for a couple of reasons. First of all, most of my self-identification in the direction of being a slave comes through the study of philosophy, political theory and psychology. I realize have a lot of traits that would put me in the category of an ‘un-free person’ even though, as a citizen, I have all my civil rights. (This has surprisingly little bearing on how I live my life) Also, in reviewing my relationship with my ex-husband, I was a slave in every sense though we had a vanilla relationship and no lifestyle interest. (Well, I’ve always been interested in SM but his preferences overrode mine so I never pursued it which kind of supports my point lol) But, I came to this self-knowledge before I learned of ‘the scene’ at a time when I thought the SM community was composed only of gay men. It just wasn’t something I ever thought much about and had little bearing on my own assessment of my personality/ relationship style. Second, I’ve never been in an M/s relationship, so I’ve never withstood the test of ownership. I’ve never even been collared as a submissive. So, to identify as a slave seems like false advertising particularly when seeking a partner. In all honesty, because I’ve never done it, I can’t know for sure if I can do it. There may be something about me that’s very unslave-like that I’m not aware of that might prevent me from actually being a slave in an actual M/s relationship. I know I can submit, because I’ve done that. But, more than that, I don’t know. So, I’m not a slave because I’ve never been one.
< Message edited by gypsygrl -- 3/3/2007 5:29:10 AM >
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“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.” ~Walter Benjamin
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