Comments Elsewhere

Twisty wins at contemptuous invective!

Les: The thing about BDSM is that it gets people off by being transgressive, etc.

I believe that part of the point is that BSDM isn’t. It’s practitioners just really, really want you to believe that it is.

Aero: Many of the commenters need to remember that making assumptions about something you know nothing about is not an intelligent thing to do. Especially the comments about doubting the consensuality of a BDSM scene. Hell, that’s why I like kinky sex; because there is so much more communication going on before, during, and after than usual vanilla sex.

More than one commenter (Dim Undercellar, in particular) is speaking from personal experience in the BDSM “scene.”

Noting this in passing, I move on to ask: if one of the benefits of “kinky” sex is supposed to be the greater level of communication, what’s to stop you from communicating with your partner before, during, and after so-called “vanilla” sex? It seems like the alleged benefit here is not all that closely connected with BDSM and other forms of “kink.” So if that’s what it is that gets you off, why the specific draw to fetishes that have nothing essentially to do with it? (N.B.: it’s not as if anti-BDSM radical feminists haven’t criticized the attitudes that get brought into the bedroom with so-called “vanilla sex”, for involving, among other things, too little in the way of communication and clear boundaries. Andrea Dworkin wrote a whole book on the subject, entitled Intercourse, just to take one example.)