That Silly Old Real Slave Debate
» BDSM, D/s, S&M: Speculations
It should’ve been obvious.
My how magazine racks have changed.
Much discussion of BDSM is built around the specific form of chattel slavery from the period beginning with European imperialism to the American plantation system. Understandable since that is all most people know about.
My D/s desires emerged before any real awareness of how slavery was once practiced in my own country even though I grew up in what was once a center of thriving cotton plantations. Were my sexuality connected to that it would seem polluting.
Even more curious is that a failure to want to emulate the status of those slaves is is treated as a personal failing. Have you ever noticed how some people often discuss D/s in ethical terms as though putting yourself in the role of property is somehow morally mandated?
Pinpointing these sources and clearing them out of your brain is probably a good beginning to thinking more sensibly about M/s roles.
Laura Antoniou wrote:
Slavery has never meant lack of free will, either, since slaves have, historically, run away, damaged or killed themselves in order to deprive their owners of their value, bought themselves free, earned freedom through service, or waited upon Jubilee years to be freed. Owner culture sometimes considered that slaves were inferior beings, occasionally sub-human, but the range of behaviors within the enslaved is very wide. It’s almost impossible to compare, for example, the slavery of Republican Rome with Celtic tribal slavery with Hebrew bond-servant slavery (check out the slavery laws in a Bible near you…) with American chattal slavery of Africans.
…
Also, when someone is saying that they are willingly entering the state of being enslaved, at the time of their statement, they are *free*. That is what gives them the ability to make the choice. “Slave” is historically a social position, a class, and not an internal identity. The default for a person not yet a slave is “free.”
Comments
I arrived at the idea that BDSM slavery is based on Atlantic slavery after a long detour into classical slavery. Specifically, it was about abolitionist literature that was against slavery but also had a weird tendency to eroticize the depictions. See Marcus Wood’s book “Blind Memory” for examples.
Posted by: Peter Tupper | December 27, 2006 2:31 AM
I don’t imagine most participants in BDSM - at least in America - would have much of a historical image of slavery other than the 19th century plantation system.
I did have something I’d been meaning to ask you. Who do you see as the first person to talk plainly about sadomasochism as an acceptable form of sexual fulfillment. Essentially I’m wondering who, say, Larry Townsend’s predecessors were.
Posted by: Richard | December 27, 2006 11:09 AM
Oddly, given the usage of the word “slave” I’ve never made the connection. If anything my associations were more along the line of ‘love slave’ or ‘sex slave’, with the purely kinky version of that being just a modified version of that, either without the love, or with (to ‘coin’ a phrase), a different kind of loving :)
This kind-of reminds me of the arguments musicians have about modern uses of old terminology such as fuges. One could argue for hours on what constitutes a bona-fide fugue, or one could just go with the spirit of it.
And I generally tend to find going with the spirit of it more fulfilling!
Posted by: Alexandra | January 3, 2007 3:45 PM