It seems you regret your behavior as monitor – but recall, the Dom and sub you mentioned chose to stop; and they choose to share knowledge with you, which could be understood as an appreciation for your intent and role.

SSC and RACK and a few other guidelines developed out of concern like yours. If you have an alternative, I would love to read it. If you don’t – well, maybe you should consider drafting one. And when ready, I would very much enjoy reading it, it would be an honor.

As for the Post 32 I was not looking for therapy, I was looking to see where others might draw the line between interpersonal conflict and abuse. I also was hoping to draw out a similar line between a non-abusing BDSM relationship and an abusive BDSM relationship. You claimed that “Identifying abuse is not art”, and though that is not what I said at the time, I thought about it some more, and went back and read several accounts of submissives being in abusive relationships in the BDSM life, and came to the conclusion that it could indeed be very difficult to separate between the two when you are in the midst of such a relationship. Abuse is often only indentified when it reaches a breaking point, sometimes tragically, and then later when looking upon the relationship retrospectively it becomes realized that it had been building up to its climax all along. We as outsiders to the relationship, particularly in the BDSM life, have a hard time recognizing it and even when we think we recognize it we aren’t always sure if it isn’t just part of that couples relationship and therefore dismiss it or just tuck the thought away for further evidence to corroborate it.

Another backtrack point of reference I will expound upon regards my argument with the “BDSM is based upon the Safe, Sane, Consensual Theory” as it is used with trying to teach the BDSM newcomer how to do what we do:
About 11 years ago, I was one of those newcomers to the public dungeon BDSM scene. SSC and RACK were the mantra of the day and after a couple of years of playing at this dungeon I was asked to be the Dungeon Monitor. I felt I was a pretty good judge of what was and wasn’t Safe, Sane, and Consensual. I was more experienced than most in the dungeon.
However, occasionally, someone who didn’t come all that often, but who appeared to be very capable, would come in and play. On one of these nights, an older leatherman came in with his submissive and proceeded to put together a suspension scene. They were obvously very familiar with one another and worked together seamlessly. However, the type of suspension bondage they were doing was outside of my experience level. I noticed they were not using quick release links and knowing that I had to protect the dungeon and its other participants against any possible legal harm I intruded upon their scene and insisted on the taking down of the submissive from their suspension apparatus. They did so,though somewhat disgruntled, and after doing their aftercare, they promptly left. Several months passed by and then I saw them again. However, this time they didn’t go directly into the suspension room. The Dominate sought me out and we sat down and had a conversation. I learned alot about him and his submissive in that conversation; how long they had been doing this kind of suspension scene, what other activities they liked doing(which were also outside of my experience), and so on. Something else they educated me on too, those quick release links I was so fond of were actually hazards in the type of suspension they did. The falling of a 250+lb dead weight submissive from one of these was more likely to damage the submissive than the relatively slower easing down of the submissive with the winch. The links they used also were of much greater strength than you could get with those quick release links.
I realized I had failed to recognize something. I had failed to because I was so ingrained with the SSC and what I thought it meant. What I failed to recognize was that when it appears that both the Top and the Bottom really knows what they are doing with a particular type of play or scene and they have signed that they understand the principles behind SSC, then they probably know better than you do what is actually Safe, Sane, and Consensual to them.
This relationship between myself and them turned out alright, however, I have seen several scenes which were obviously of a highly experienced nature stopped by DM’s or dungeon personnel due to their own lack of experience with the elements of the scene. This often results in the loss of that couples participation there forevermore. It can be argued that SSC also extends to the non-participants of a scene and therefore such edgy scenes should not be done except in the presence of only others of equal or higher expertise in the scene type. The question then becomes how low will the bar be set and how long thereafter will such mundane things such as bondage cuffs and heavy floggings become too much because the newcomer is shocked by their use and doesn’t believe that it could be Safe, Sane, or Consensual. Guiding advice, which can or not become someones guiding principles is one thing, but holding out a standard and saying that this is what everyone in this life must use is another. I still believe that the bacic ideas behind SSC is sound advice but I have seen it used to throw shadows on several very good BDSM’ers reputations. That is why I have both fondness for the term and contempt for it. That is why I think we, those of the BDSM life, need to rethink it, retool it, and give the newcomers something better to work with.
With love in the BDSM life, -LordSir Ninetails

And as this discussion is starting to use rather nasty rhetoric and personal insinuations, I think I will walk away for now. FYI my inner peace is pretty much found.

Post 32: Your relationship with your wife, if it harms either or both of you, deserves loving attention; the nastiest abuse is often not physical, but conflict is not by definition abuse. I don’t do therapy over the Internet, LordSir, and I also don’t even pretend to have all the answers on all relationships.

Now, some 30 years later in life, I still know how to do it.
When my wife, whom I love dearly, recently asked me to go to the nearby fast food joint to get her something to eat, I got up from the computer I was intently working with,went to the door and turned back to her and I replied,”What would you like from there?” She usually says something like “Whatever”, which she knows gets under my skin, but occasionally she actually has a taste for something specific and tells me, which I find satisfying because I now no longer have to guess. So this time she says, “Whatever you want to bring me dear.” My ire is raised. I hesitate for a second and then say to her “You know I don’t like when you do that Honey!” It’s loud. She is instantly angered by the attack, “Then I don’t want anything!”, she says, and then in an underbreath,”if your gonna snap at me that way.” I know what she means by that and I feel sorry for having such an outburst. But I also know I am tired of her little game. Still, I go out to the car and go and get some food. I guess at what she would like this time, and wonder if she will even accept it when I bring it back. I guess wrong, of course, as usual, but she accepts the effort, gives me a kiss, and takes the food. I love her and she loves me. Our spirits are sometimes at odds with one another but we always seem to get past them.

To me, this is not an unusual scenario in a married life, and does not constitute itself to being considered as abuse.
What do you think? Do arguments over domestic issues, personality differences or spiritual clashes mean that you are in an abusive relationship? Usually, you know each other well enough to know exactly which buttons to push to get the reaction you want.

For me the real issue is with what are the participants intent in the argument? To win the argument of course is one, and sometimes this is achieved by the one with the better logic. But how often is it won by the one who is the loudest or meanest in their argument? Is it then abuse?
What if its the only way someone gets heard? Who is the abuser and the abused then?

Please feel free to let us on this blog know what you think.

With Love in the BDSM life, -LordSir Ninetails

The points I made were this; First, you have no right to claim the acronym “BDSM” as meaning that every person who uses BDSM does so under the pretext that they accept Safe, Sane, and Consensual as their mantra. It is not yours (or mine) to take and decide what it should mean to everybody.

Second, there are abusers who are into BDSM or in the BDSM life. There are also people in the BDSM life who judge others in the BDSM life by their lack of knowledge, experience, or political agenda. They then abuse the veteran BDSM’er by claiming that what they are doing is not SSC or RACK or some such ridiculousness when in fact it usually is something far better.

Third, great BDSM is art and can only be done with love for the human spirit. Abuse is just violence, overt or covert, aggressive or passive, it is hatred of the human spirit.

Fourth, I almost regret having played the counterpunch to your obviously close-to-home passions on the subject of abuse. However, it is a complex subject in the BDSM life and should be explored and better understood.

With love in the BDSM life, -LordSir Ninetails
I hope that you find peace with yourself one day

You want Old Guard customs and structures, no guiding statements of ethical principles, and for the young to STFU and let only the “experienced” identify abuse? Why? The experienced, in dungeons or elsewhere, cannot handle predators or the merely as yet ignorant alone. Identifying abuse is NOT art, the young and experienced need to learn to protect themselves and each other better and THAT is the point of SSC and RACK and going to workshops on whipping and ropeplay and all the rest. There was no BDSM Golden Age, when everyone knew instinctively what to do and not to do… not yet.

Now lets take a look at the second part of DomSubFriends list. As I read it I realized it wasn’t accurate(IMHO). See if you would agree with my comments to the side of each item?

Real abuse is actually the opposite to all the pionts made above:

•Abuse is not negotiated (Actually, it can be, though the victim may not know that is what they are doing)
•Abuse is an out of control environment (Doesn’t have to be, it can be carefully planned abuse aka a psycho)
•Abuse does not have safe words (okay)
•An abuser does not give a damn about the victim (not always true at all-many abusers do love or like their victims when they are not in the process of abusing them. They actually hate themselves more than they hate the target of their abuse)
•Abuse is always one sided(again, not always – sometimes both sides are abusers)
•Abuse is never negotiated. (actually, in a way, it is, as the victim takes the abuse and refuses to do anything about it, they encourage the escalation of abuse)
•In abuse, no one is enjoying the results (I’ll go with that if you are talking about the end results-the abuser does get a little lift while in the process of abusing before analyzing what they have done.)
•The abuser is into non consensual violence (really? as opposed to consensual violence? okie-dokie but I’ll just call it violence, period.)
•The victim has no respect towards the abuser(wrong, they did at first oftentimes, and may even have some left for them afterwards if they feel they “deserved” it – a low self -image problem)
•In abuse the victim is harmed (yes, and often the abuser too)
•In abuse both parties are left unfulfilled(unless destruction of the relationship was the objective)
•The abuser always feel they are superior(actually, its because of their own feelings/fear of inferiorness that drives them)
•A person does not ask for abuse(Well, some do just because they are so fucked up in their head)
•In an abusive relationship there is no trust(again, not always true-they trust the partner with some things but not others – for awhile.)
•The abuser does not care for consent(not true, it justs makes it easier for them to think they are right)
•Abuse has no trust(in the beginning, the trust is there long enough to catch the victim by surprise, and sometimes even long enough for the victime to believe that the abuser could get better)
•Abuse destroys self esteem(though for those who recover I have seen some pretty miraculous changes in the way that a former victim can gain a high self image or esteem of themselves from surviving the abuse and rebulding themselves)
•An abuser destroys the spirit of the victim(I wouldn’t use the term “destroys” but instead “weakens” as the spirit is indestructible, but it is transformable and able to be rejuvenated to a stronger, healthier one.)

Okay, I think you get it. I and anyone who is in the BDSM life for all the right reasons deplore those who use BDSM as a form of abuse. There are abusers in all walks of life including our own. How can you distinguish the BDSM abuser from the BDSM non-abuser? Listen to their target. Do you hear real terror, real fear? When you have enough experience you can tell the difference. Take the time in your playing to listen. Learn how pleasure in pain sounds different from terror in pain, how elation sounds and feels different from fear. Love for the human beings who share our passions is the difference. With Love in the BDSM life, -LordSir Ninetails

You may say that is why we must have those silly lists and acronyms and classes is so they don’t bring down the house upon the rest of us, but I say, maybe we should let them swing from the gallos and maybe it will turn them off to it as a hobby. BDSM survived for a long time before trying to make it appealing to everybody and it would survive afterward. But before we go to the radical extreme lets try making it personal again. Lets take the ideas from the past and refresh them, give them new life, we are networked today in a way that they could never have imagined back in the “Old Guard” or “Old Victorian Style” days, but we need to bring the element of one on one personalized experience back into the fold – we must insist on mentorship and/or apprenticeship in order to advance in our way of life. We must re-tune our conferences and get-togethers to impart information on a closer one to one basis with an emphasis on the dynamics of living a BDSM life not just how to swing a whip or put on a clamp but one-on-one hands-on knowledge and feeling for what we are looking for in mastery of the art of BDSM, for real BDSM is more art than science.

I am sorry for going on these little jaunts of the mind, I am on medication for a severe head and chest cold this past week and my mind has a hard time staying on track. My apologies. With Love in BDSM life, -LordSir Ninetails

Saved from yes all of the above, Cloud, and the judgemental eyes of the general public who want to put us into a neat little box and try to crack our nuts when we stick our beady little heads out of it. These same BDSM people you talk about defending other BDSM’ers have put themselves in harms way (they are on a multitude of governmental, moral minded, and ethics groups blacklists I am sure)but may have missed a critical point about BDSM. BDSM is NOT something for everyone to do. Those who are into BDSM as a life (I hate the term LifeStyle too – this is not about what is fashionable or en vogue, but an actual way of life). BDSM is still considered to be Torture or Abuse or Coercion by the great majority of civilized countries populaces whether we call it Consensual, Safe, and Sane or what not. They have history to prove their point. We have a fairly recent idea (SSC/RACK) to try to distance us from our past, our roots. Yet, time after time, when it is held up as proof that we have changed, evolved, it really just looks like a poor mask to cover our true nature. What we really need to do is to stop trying to use cute little acronyms and neat little lists to try to describe what we do. There is no way to fully describe what we do; it changes everyday, and when we try to summarize it, we limit our ability to go beyond the summary because those looking in, the ones who hold the laws, and even the ones who want to try it, will point to the summary and say “but you said, this is what you are, but now you are not doing what you said, and therefore you are not what you said you were, so off with your head(oops,was that BDSM?)or some such dickery.” Ouch! And then the door (of acceptance) gets shut on our poor little fingers again. Too much time is being wasted on trying to be more acceptable to the mass human market. We really need to get back to the basics of personally teaching the ways of BDSM without trying to get cute about it and ending up making a much distilled experience for the sake of trying to be appealling to people who probably shouldn’t be in, or even be aware of, the BDSM life in the first place. Elitist attitude? No, in fact, if you go back and read those “Old Guard” rules and think to yourself about why they made a particular rule, think about the practicality of the rule. Yes, they did separate some(not all)of the chaffe from the grain, and yes, they did enforce a certain amount of discipline, including some uniformity, but the underlying factor was practicality. The practicality of wearing certain things at certain times, some as a statement of your differentness, others for the purpose of discretion, others for stating what you wanted, and so on…practical. The practicallity of having an order…Senior Dom, Dom, Senior Sub, Sub, and so on…practical. Why would they want only those who have shown fiscal responsibility to be in the group? It limits liability…practical idea:0
Interesting huh? Do we apply this type of practicallity to the masses yearning to be BDSM’ers? No, because we would turn them off to it and those great aspirations of wanting to make BDSM mainstream would vanish. But, What if we did? What if we did scale back, make it harder for them to “enjoy” us? Would it be a bad thing? Would there be less scrutiny or more? Would novices stop trying to judge the experienced players by their own lack of experience and maybe start paying attention to the details the experienced player shows them a little more? Would it then get Safer? Would it then get Saner? Would it then be known to be more Consensual? Would it? Without the cute little lists and acronyms and what have you, making up that nice little box of a coffin for some competitive interest group to use against us? With Love in the BDSM Life, -LordSir Ninetails

Discipline does not cost one individuality, freedom or creativity (unless discipline is defined as uniformity); on the contrary, discipline enhances them. Part of discipline, for BDSM, for many things, is developing risk assessment, risk avoidance, and risk reduction. You can do more fun edgy things IF you increase your abilities in these skills, you can play better.

Understanding the difference between abuse and BDSM play is not a coffin or box. You use the term “allowed to do”; I use the words “choose to do”; I have and exercise in life a degree of freedom and personal choice which many people shy away from, and I perceive personal responsibility for choices to be truly inalienable. No one here has listed activities and said, “these are BDSM, anything not listed here is abuse”. Definitions and discipline and ethics are not tyranny; they are the personal choices and personal expressions which express one’s personal freedom and sociability.

IMHO of course, LordSir. I look forward to your elaborated thoughts.

LordSir, you say SSC and RACK are both outdated, undefendable and dangerous. Let’s take them one by one.

“Outdated”: by what? has human behavior changed so that ethical commitments are un-necessary? (Sadly, no. There still are in 2009 submissives getting actually raped, abused and tortured by predators preying on the BDSM communities. There are still dominants who get accused of crimes when consent was assumed, ambiguous or not understood.) Or have the problems which caused people to develop these ethics so changed that they have no ressonance? (Again sadly no. Consent. Safety. These remain basic issues. Advances in electroplay does not change that.)

“Undefendable”:
Most of the reasons you use to condemn both SSC and RACK are close to the rationale for teaching RACK in the first place. For those unaware of that history, here’s a resource: http://www.evilmonk.org/A/rack.cfm But arguing that all risks cannot be known, that no general agreement of what is sane or relatively safer (or as some prefer it, “safer”), is a bit absurd. (A nice article which considers “risk management” in BDSM: http://www.evilmonk.org/A/jay.cfm ) The terms were never intended to be used as legal defenses in courts of law, and criticizing their use for a non-intended use is a bit unfair. They were intended as social norms, adopted and defined and defended and taught BY the community FOR the community. But in fact – BDSMer HAVE gone public to defend each other, and explain What It Is We Do, more than once, AND have also condemnded pedophilia, rape and abuse and explained WHY they are not and cannot be BDSM. Have they endured “scrutiny”? Yes, and sometimes harrassment. There ARE heros, and leaders, and community educators in our world.

“Dangerous”: You say SSC and RACK are being used against the people who constructed it – how? who? If you mean critique of Old Guard, or of kinky people from before articulation of these ethics – well, in fact, we critique our ancestors all the time anyway. Damn few Scandianvians go a-viking these days, in the old sense of rape pillage and plunder, and most Scandinavians, even the kinky ones, seem to think that is an improvement.

You say “it has replaced the essential qualities of what it takes to be a BDSM’er with a flimsy construct of propoganda designed to make everyone feel safer when they really aren’t.” What are the essential qualities it has replaced? And why are people NOT safer when they are encouraged generally and with specific practical advice like Jay Wiseman’s article on breath play, for example, to take a moment to THINK, THEN PLAY?

Do you think informed consent for medical decisions is impossible? Should doctors should just go back to doing anything without giving all those ignorant patients any say? Should we go back to arranged marriages? absolute monarchies? serfdom? Because if you say that decisions in which all consequences and circumstances cannot be defined should be avoided, you beg for such tyrannies.

Many of the Old Guard rules had NOTHING to do with safety, or consent; they were style and etiquette agreements; not bad things, fun in ways in fact; one joined a secret society, an elite. But the mentor apprentice system broke down; people got hurt, or never found their way. It was generosity of spirit, a desire to help and grow the community, not judgement, which moved BDSM from the Old Guard rules to SSC and eventually perhaps to RACK.

Lastly: You would throw out all ethics and guidelines and standards, and offer nothing to replace them? You think a social standard of ancharchy is better than any rules? Ah if we were all saints and angels, maybe, but frankly I find it helpful to check myself, is my play consistent with my chosen values? And aside from the endless personal search for improvement – among our noble devils and demonesses are also predators – who ARE different from us, LordSir. SSC and RACK help us say how.

I sincerely enjoy differences of opinion or perspectives, and welcome such conversation, om this and anything in the blog. I am not so insecure in my opinions, or so fixed in them, that I would censor posts unless they are personal attacks (and I might even post those, if the one attacked were me and not a guest here.)

This isn’t a religion or cult; there’s no creed. But I do feel, rather strongly, that for BDSM, for vamilla sex, for medical decisions or business contracts, you cannot consent without meeting most if not all of those criteria.

I also feel that saying, anyone can do anything they want and call it BDSM, is wrong; I don’t consider pedophiles or real abusers to be doing BDSM. And I think lifestylers and committed practitioners have a civic responsibility, to guide the new, and – dare I say it? police ourselves. Master Stoltz just posted on extreme relativism in the piece Fuck Consent http://islandofpain.com/2009/05/07/fuck-consent/

What is your opinion, Sir? Or anyone else – post as you will.

You CANNOT consent if you are
* not a competent adult
* not sober
* not informed, and UNDERSTANDING what is proposed
* not able to revoke consent, at any time
* not able to communicate feedback OR confirmation/revocation of consent at any time (verbally or not)
* not able to trust AND be trusted
* not aware of your limits.

I will address some of your points for the sake of “mental contention” however:
Point 1: My sister (yes, I have one, and she knows my lifestyle choice as do both of my parents) would not move to one of these kind of cultures – her upbringing, and intelligence, dictate this.
Point 2: In my community, a priority has been set in law that the Sanctity of Life has precedence over religious values or cultural traditions.
Point 3: As I stated previously, knowledge giving, over a period of time, in combination with the forces of evolution, and humane aid, is my preferred means of changing the world. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. It is part of nearly every religous tome(though with different ways of conveying it).
Point 4: You are correct in that standing by and watching, or inaction when informed and aware, is NOT a neutral act. But, it also may not be what you think it is either. It may be simply standing aside to let God, Evolution, Nature, The Force, or whatever you believe is the unifying thread of Life, to take its turn at changing them. -With Love in BDSM, -LordSir Ninetails

My personal values tell me that socially sanctioned rape is the responsibility of everyone who CAN speak up, whether they choose to or not. I don’t ask anyone to take global responsibility – but also, I expect myself and therefore have somewhat of an expectation of others, that I and we do take responsibility for what we can and do affect. Standing by and watching, or inaction when informed and aware, is NOT a neutral act.

I have rather obnoxiously brought this issue to your awareness (and bear karmic debt for it). You now bear your own karmic burden for choices you make out of your own awareness and abilities. You are an articulate person, LordSir, one who can influence others. What are you going to do?

I realize you have deliberately taken a position that this is not personal to you. I think that is a mistake. Let me challenge that a bit. Imagine your sister is moving with your neices to such a country. Imagine in your own community a religiously fundamentalist enclave arguing for respect for their traditions including the right to beat or kill a woman who by their definition dresses in a sexual provocative manner (maybe showing an ankle or hair). Are you ok with seeking to maintain pseudo-peace and unity by sacrificing women you know to the IMHO pseudo-Higher value of cultural neutrality?

I enjoy our vigorous discussion and assume/hope you do also. Mental contention is a respectful activity to me, and I think to you.