Call it whatever you want, it's still kink.

It's very typical of BDSMers, particularly those who live their BDSM roles 24/7, to insist that what they do is "real" and not roleplay. Which is shocking to outsiders, of course -- especially when the role has echoes of real-world oppression (black people who like to bottom to plantation-slave scenarios, Jews who dig Nazi roleplay, et al).

But the fact is that this *is* consensual erotic roleplay. "Domestic discipline" is explicit code for spanking play, regardless of the gender of the participants -- you could just as easily find "domestic discipline" groups whose stated purpose is female-supremacist.

In other words, your initial instincts were correct. These are folks who are dressing up their spanking kink in Christian dogma. Not my kink, but I'm all for more eroticism in the world. If they're happy, I'm happy for them.

- Janet Hardy (aka Lady Green, author, "The Compleat Spanker")

I think the world might be a better place if more heterosexual men had the chance to find out what sexual harassment feels like. However, making it a job requirement seems unreasonable.

It's a lesson wasted, really. These firefighters are too angry -- and rightfully so; they've been abused by their employer -- to be able to learn anything from their experience.

I wonder if one of them might be willing to write a firsthand accounting of what it felt like, for Salon or some other publication? I'd certainly read it.

Has anybody considered what will happen in NYC when they have to close down the multi-Tony-winning smash "Spring Awakening," whose showstopper is called "The Bitch of Living"?

Having spent the last many years of my life in BDSM subcultures, I read this and wonder whether what I'm seeing here is a consensual enactment of dominance/submission.

A lot of folks play with sexism and other oppressive dynamics for erotic fun, then leave them behind when egalitarian communication is what's called for. It's a way to get the cave(wo)man turn-on of this sort of behavior, without having to live with it day in and day out.

I'm not prepared to judge this issue until I see how these women treat each other at home. I'm wondering if the club behavior is a persona, as erotically "meta" as a leatherman's chaps and studs.

This is all outside my cultural milieu so I don't know for sure about these particular women. What I *do* know is that in erotic power play, things are almost never what they seem.