Sunday, July 18, 2010

Context

This goes without saying seeing as where it is being said, however, this whole game of SM goes nowhere without context.

It's not that you want someone to pull your hair, just out of the blue. That would be rather painful, and incredibly infuriating. You do not walk the streets hoping some complete stranger would yank on your submissive/masochistic chain (already!). Nor do you wish that random strangers would call you slut as you passed by. There must exist a framework through which you are open to these activities, otherwise, these scary, edgy activities we partake in would really be scary. This is my concern with all of the SM-laced torture porn you see in movies like Saw and Hostel. It has the potential to normalize acting without that context, taking steps to treat someone in these brutal ways without establishing that critical framework. And that is the really scary thing.

With the advent of free or pirated porn on the Internet significantly increasing the amount of sexual material consumed, there are many folks who are concerned with how the female porn star look seems to creep ever more and more into normal society. This is certainly supported by the media outlets that do nothing but cover the myopic obsession female "celebrities" have with going under the knife. I have equal concerns as i browse through tumblr and i encounter captions that seem to indicate every girl in every situation should be viewed as a "slut" "whore" or "slave". I might be a bit too alarming in this paragraph, but do believe it is worth mentioning. It takes a very specific, carefully crafted environment for those sort of terms to have an erotic effect on me, and most photos i see in tumblr do not achieve it.

But just as i have concerns about what these materials might say about any girl who would be interested in assuming the role of a submissive bottom, i'm equally concerned about what it seems to say about the dominant Top. If we took our cue from the torture porn movies, sadistic Tops are mentally unstable. We have some serious bone to pick with young women, and our lust for revenge is greater than our lust for our "victim".

I do not seek to spank every bottom that i encounter. I do not hanker to wrap my hands in every girl's hair and pull them to their knees. I do not wish to impose my dress code and manner of behavior on the entirety of femalehood. That would be psychopathic.

The summarizing point of all this is to say both me and my girl worked our asses off to design, establish and construct this context that allows us to operate the way we do. I don't want that diminished by someone who minimizes its importance because they don't understand, but more aptly, i don't want to see it made extinct.