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The softer side of S/M In his new collection of stories, Stephen Elliott examines his experiences with torture and love through admirably clear eyes. By Donna Minkowitz [2006-11-29]

• A Group or a Creed

  >Ad Hominem. Just all all into BDSM all really just sick sadists and abusers, so too all Germans are Nazis and all blacks lazy and all whites racist and...<

  Charles Baker

  I think you are misunderstanding me, either that or deliberately twisting what I have said. I am addressing people who have a devotion to a specific creed. This Creed believes that accepting violence and humiliation into a relationship is desirable, and some adherents claim that it is superior form of relationship that can only be achieved by accepting this creed. So no all Germans are not Nazi’s, but those who accept a specific creed of German superiority and anti-semitism promoted by the NSDAP would be …….eeeerrrr Nazi’s?.

  >What if someone is into BDSM that involves no pain or torture whatsoever? Is that still abusive and sick?<

  Charles Baker

  I think we really need to be clear what we are talking about here. Even by BDSM’s own classification only Sadomasochism is about torture; bondage and domination are about humiliation. So if someone is into BDSM, but claims theirs is a ‘nicer’ form because they only humiliate, then they fulfil the criteria set out in ICD 10 “Sadomasochism A preference for sexual activity which involves the infliction of pain or humiliation, or bondage”

  A tactic sadism has used is Blurring the boundaries. When I talk about sadism I am talking specifically about people who enjoy humiliating or hurting another person, be it by tying someone up, assaulting them or controlling them. However sadism has claimed ‘as there own’ practices which are not specifically sadistic. For example I read a BDSM ‘educator’ recently who ruled authorativly that if anyone has ever used cream as part of their sex life this was proof that they are a sadist.

  Why do they do this? If they are able to paint such innocuous practices as being sadistic, then they are able to gain some credence for their particular abuses. It’s a classic double bind situation, ‘how dare you criticise me for my abuse, when you are an abuser yourself’

  So if you torture, tie up, dominate or humiliate to fulfil your needs, even if you accept another person capitalising your name as some form of reverence to you, then you are an abuser. If you don’t do any of these you are not, but you do not fulfil the criteria for BDSM either.

  Is it sick? Well I don’t like using words which are deliberately designed to hurt, I believe that if you are presenting a position it is best to use courtesy, otherwise any arguments hold no water. If you were to ask me in common parlance is someone ‘sick’, as in do I think there is something that they do which I find particularly distasteful, then I would have to say yes. I believe that someone who tortures, hurts, ties up, or humiliates another person to gain personal gratification is, in common parlance, sick.

  >Irrelevant. "Someone else uses a similar argument to justify something bad, so you must be wrong."<

  Charles Barker

  Not irrelevantly, Bernd Jurgen, the victim of the cannibal was well known in the BDSM scene in Hamburg. Sharon Lopatka was also involved in the Internet BDSM scene in the US and used BDSM to solicit a sadist to torture her to death. Both used the concept of ‘Informed Consent’ as elevated by BDSM, and as they had learned within BDSM to excuse their murder. Both murderers where found guilty, the courts threw out Informed Consent as a defence.

  >But you are sure that you are right, which in my experience is the source of half of all faulty logic in the world, at the least. Feeling good about being able to spot logical phallacies, Sparty? Turn that powerful lens inward, huh?<

  Charles Barker

  I have never claimed to have any special knowledge or to have some higher form of understanding, unlike others. My arguments are out there for others to knock down. However I have been attacked, called idiotic, and been castigated for simply proposing an argument that others dislike

  -- Spartacus
  Permalink Flag Thursday, December 7, 2006 03:34 AM
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• corrections

  Thanks for giving my son a good review. Just a few of the usual corrections:

  1. I did not throw him out at 13. He ran away at 14, and was always welcomed back.

  2. He did not suffer any violence at the Jewish Childrens Bureau group home, where he lived with only 6 other children.

  -- Neil Elliott
  Permalink Flag Tuesday, January 2, 2007 05:01 PM
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