“I always thought the vanilla thing came from vanilla being the default icecream flavor, ie if there’s only one flavour of icecream available, it’s going to be vanilla. Thus making BDSM, I don’t know, the Spumoni of the sex world.”

Yes. It’s an intentionally condescending term, and frankly I think it’s disingenuous in the extreme for vocal BDSM advocates to pretend like they don’t mean anything derogatory by it.

I don’t have much in the way of an opinion on whether it’s possible to have a social environment in which abortion is safe, legal, and also rare. It seems to me that this is an empirical question that hasn’t adequately been answered.

But whatever the answer may be, why anyone should care about minimizing the number of abortions as a policy goal in the first place? I mean, really, who cares? Is there supposed to be something wrong with having an abortion?

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.

Womble, the distinction between meaningful democracy and majority tyranny, as those terms are usually used, has to do with protections for minorities and individual rights. It has nothing in particular to do with whether or not “anti-democratic” parties can be elected to office.

Do you think that believing in an inalienable right of free political association, or simply not trusting the incumbent government to be able to make the decisions about which competing parties are sufficiently “democratic” and which aren’t, is not only mistaken, but in fact an insane form of “blind ideological fanaticism”?

And, just to be clear, when you say that anti-democratic political parties ought to be suppressed by the government, just how far do you think that they ought to go in the name of democracy? Banning the anti-democratic party from competing in parliamentary elections? Banning members of the anti-democratic party from standing for individual sets? Dissolving the anti-democratic party by government diktat? Restricting their rights to electioneer or lobby or contribute to campaigns? Restricting their rights to meet or publish political literature? Rounding them up and shooting them? Less? More? (I ask because this bears partly on just what’s entailed by your answer to the first question.)

belledame222:

I validate that BB had a bad experience of BDSM and does not want any truck with it.

Well, that’s mighty big of you.

It would be nice if y’all could recognize that other people have different experiences, and that ours are also valid.

Look, experiences aren’t “valid” or “invalid.” Experiences just are. There’s a question here, though, about what some people’s personal experiences with BDSM, in and out of the formalized “scene,” mean. That’s not necessarily just a matter of “Well, you had your experiences and I had mine.”

And for the record, there *is* a recognized difference between abuse and BDSM, and while there are plenty of assholes within the scene(s), there are also plenty of healthy, evolved people who would immediately understand that what BB went through was coercion by any other name.

Part of the question here is whether it’s just some big accident that there are plenty of assholes in the scene in addition to the people you’re comfortable with, or whether there’s something about the scene (or about BDSM itself) that encourages that.

(And before you mention it, I know that there abuse and coercion happen in non-BDSM sexual relationships too. Most feminist critics of BDSM do think that there are plenty of things about normative sexuality in our society that encourage that, and criticize them at length. Part of what we are asking y’all for is not to just stop applying that level of scrutiny and criticism when it’s your own sexual “scene” that’s in question.)

Q Grrl:

Belladame, how can they be negotiating for what they want without simultaneously negotiating for what they don’t want: being pushed beyond their comfort levels.

Brava. This helped clarify what it is that bugs me so much when BDSM advocates are talking about the supreme importance of “negotiation,” in particular, in BDSM sex. Consent is unilateral, based what each partner wants to happen to her own body. “Negotiation” over “boundaries” is something that warring states do to work out territorial claims in order to avoid a conflict. One party suggests that they take X but give Y, the other says they want to take Z instead of Y, they either hash out a tit-for-tat compromise or else they get the guns and fight until their positions in the negotiation changes, and then they try again with a bit more quid on the table and bit less quo.

Sex shouldn’t be like that.

BritGirlSF:

I think a lot of people are failing to distunguish between the actual BSDM scene and the facsimile of it produced by the porn industry. … Honestly, I think that part of the problem is that the porn industry loves to use BSDM themes, and that gives people a distorted picture of what it’s really about. In my experience it was always a playful thing – silly at times, absurd at others, but certainly never scary,dangerous or abusive.

I think that this has it backwards. Sadomasochistic pornography is not taking “themes” from the “scene” and making “facsimiles” of them. Sadomasochistic pornography predated anything like the “scene” you’re involved in (going back, as it does, to de Sade and Sacher-Masoch). Of course, if people try to mechanically apply what they know about sadomasochistic pornography to the scene that you’re involved in they may say any number of things that are ignorant or selective. But I think that a responsible discussion of BDSM as a cultural and social phenomenon does have to discuss not only the scene that you’re defending, but also pornography (both the stories that it tells, and also the “scene” involved in the real people used in its production); it also has to discuss people involved in forms of BDSM who haven’t joined any sort of formal (or even informal) “scene”. The kind of community defense mechanisms that Dim talks about are worrisome when they obscure the fact that we’re talking about something broader than just the community that you’ve found.

As for Twisty, who was explicitly talking about the “official” BDSM scene and not the phenomenon of BDSM as a whole, well, she didn’t say that the scene defended by BDSM defenders was scary, dangerous, or abusive. She said that it was self-important and dorky.

Lis Riba:

I think people may be missing the cause-and-effect.

Part of the reason there’s so much more communication regarding BDSM scenes and so much more emphasis on active consent is because BDSM can so easily be misread or misinterpreted as (or possibly even slide into) abuse. … Because the actions taken in so-called vanilla sex are not seen as inherently abusive by mainstream society, participants don’t feel the same need for negotiation and explicit consent. It’s quite easy for people in the heat of the moment to slide from first to third, because there aren’t as many risks if somebody goes too far and the other objects.

Right, I understand why the necessities of BDSM (in particular) are supposed to demand much more explicit discussion of boundaries and consent, and I’m sure that it does often work out that way in much of the “official” BDSM scene. (My own concerns about BDSM lie elsewhere.) My point is that this situation isn’t unchangeable; there’s nothing about so-called “vanilla” sex that prevents communication between partners and explicit care about consent. Talking as if it were just a choice between communication-rich kinky sex and wordless, manipulative non-kinky sex — which is what Aero was doing above, even if that’s not what s/he intended — confines the issue unnecessarily. And that this isn’t something that feminist BDSM critics are unaware of, or sanguine about.

Look, Harel said, quote, “Political discourse in this nation centers on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and there is a real paucity of debate on matters that actually impact the daily lives of Americans, such as the stunning loss of manufacturing jobs.” This clearly hints, if not outright states, that abortion is not one of the “matters that actually impact the daily lives of Americans.”

You yourself glossed Harel by saying that he was encouraging us to “focus on real politics.” This clearly hints, if not outright states, that abortion is not part of the “real politics” we should be focusing on.

My point is that neither of these claims make sense if you include the daily lives of women or the political issues that affect women’s daily lives when you talk about “matters that actually impact the daily lives of Americans” or “real politics.”

I agree with you that it’s ridiculou that we should have to spend time debating abortion; I also think it’s ridiculous that we should have to spend time debating unionism. The answers are obvious and the opponents illogical. But the fact of the matter is that we do have to debate these things, because both the availability of abortion and organized labor are under a systematic politicized assault from all three branches of government at the federal, state, and local levels. Such is life.

As for your “commenting on [my] disregard for the American worker,” you need to think harder about this. Or simply read more: I have posted repeatedly about labor issues on my website; in fact a few paragraphs down in the exact post you’re complaining about I offer some kind words for Harel’s defense of unionism as a serious issue for the Left. You may not realize this, but I do work for a living and I happen to be a dues-paying, card-carrying member of the labor movement.

Disregarding my fellow workers has nothing to do with it. The point that I was raising is that it is neither necessary nor acceptable to dismiss the importance of other people’s struggles (e.g. the struggle of women to defend their access to safe and legal abortions) in order to purchase credibility for your own.

Womble: No matter how significant a portion of Palestinians they represent, their racist, anti-democratic agenda, involvement in terrorism and the very fact of them being an armed group outside of the PA government’s control should have rendered them ineligible for elections in a real democracy. The Vlaams Blok in Belgium was the most popular party in Flanders, they were banned under the Anti-Racism Act regardless. The sheer armed force of the Hamas would likely make banning them dangerous, of course- but this is only a further proof of the non-democratic nature of the election process, because this means that the Hamas has thrusted itself into the election process while holding the Palestinian society at gunpoint.

Womble: In other words, your reasoning is not based on the logic of democracy or legality, but purely on the “realpolitik”. Well, at least it’s honest, for once. It doesn’t, however, justify calling the election of Hamas to the parliament democratic. It is, in the words of Nick Cohen, “barely political”.

So, just to be clear, Womble, you believe in having the government forcibly dissolve or suppress political parties (in the name of, what, “democracy”? Leftism?) when you find their political views sufficiently loathsome? And any view to the contrary to be a matter of crude realpolitik rather than any kind of principled political stance?

If not, I look forward to being corrected.

scott: “I mean that the US, EU, and others, should not cut aid or diplomatic contacts to the Palestinians because of a strong showing by Hamas, and that Israel should not increase its killing or assassinations either.”

I agree with you that neither the U.S. nor the E.U. nor Israel should escalate military conflicts with the P.A. (because I think as a matter of general policy that no governments should escalate military conflicts with anyone over anything). I’m a bit puzzled, though, by the reference to “foreign aid” (i.e., government-to-government transfers). Do you think that the P.A. should be receiving any tax-funded aid at all? Do you trust governments to pick and choose the best places and best people for the money to go to, or that governments are the best entities to receive it? Haven’t government-to-government aid payments historically been used as a fuel for tyranny and militarism throughout the Third World and the Middle East for the past several decades?