Oh, I agree with you. I think we do need to examine these things. That's why I wasn't sure whether my answer to the poll was "Yes" or "Well, yeah, and..."
As for BDSM, that's one of those situations where my own personal answer to the soul-searching is: "I'm certain that the reason I find it a turn-on is because of some really nasty social factors, but what of it? In other areas of my life I work hard to try to make my society less power-obsessed and more egalitarian. If that goal should ever be reached, then maybe it's possible that people in the future would find BDSM very alien indeed. Does that thought bother me? No, not really."
The interesting thing for me there is that I think my personal answers are different.
I don't think it's obvious to me that my desires for BDSM totally stem from social weirdness. They're not about gender roles or conceptions of femininity. Some of my top persona may be problematically masculine, but if it is then I suppose so's the rest of me, in similar ways.
I see them as stemming from having to come to terms with physical pain, due to the physical parts of my abuse and several surgeries I endured as an adolescent. My relationship to pain changed drastically. I began to think a lot about the different ways we as humans experience pain, see it as a warning or a benefit or a curse, and why. I began to notice that certain emotional states, arousal being one of them, could radically alter how I and others experience pain. I found that, and find that, endlessly fascinating.
I think I find control fascinating for reasons that tie much more to this than directly to patriarchy, though I recognize that the sorts of harrowing nonconsensual experiences with control that happened when I was abused may well have imprinted problematic associations with "hierarchy" and oppressive systems in general.
To me, it's much more about SM than anything else (though I do a bit of everything), about using the body's natural systems and drugs to play with and craft experience. For people who are more strongly D/sers, perhaps societal expectations' influence is more blatantly obvious.
I think BDSM might look very different if there were no patriarchy/white supremacy/such hierarchies. But I do not think that sort of crafting of experience would not exist. The body is complex and interesting, and playing with its reactions and responses seems quite natural to me. As does playing with the mind's reactions to experience as well.
no subject
The interesting thing for me there is that I think my personal answers are different.
I don't think it's obvious to me that my desires for BDSM totally stem from social weirdness. They're not about gender roles or conceptions of femininity. Some of my top persona may be problematically masculine, but if it is then I suppose so's the rest of me, in similar ways.
I see them as stemming from having to come to terms with physical pain, due to the physical parts of my abuse and several surgeries I endured as an adolescent. My relationship to pain changed drastically. I began to think a lot about the different ways we as humans experience pain, see it as a warning or a benefit or a curse, and why. I began to notice that certain emotional states, arousal being one of them, could radically alter how I and others experience pain. I found that, and find that, endlessly fascinating.
I think I find control fascinating for reasons that tie much more to this than directly to patriarchy, though I recognize that the sorts of harrowing nonconsensual experiences with control that happened when I was abused may well have imprinted problematic associations with "hierarchy" and oppressive systems in general.
To me, it's much more about SM than anything else (though I do a bit of everything), about using the body's natural systems and drugs to play with and craft experience. For people who are more strongly D/sers, perhaps societal expectations' influence is more blatantly obvious.
I think BDSM might look very different if there were no patriarchy/white supremacy/such hierarchies. But I do not think that sort of crafting of experience would not exist. The body is complex and interesting, and playing with its reactions and responses seems quite natural to me. As does playing with the mind's reactions to experience as well.