Answering the ProKook, 2 of 2: BDSM is loving and consensual, not a cult

My last post dealt with Prokofy Neva's complaints about open source software. I'll turn now to his complaints about BDSM.

He and I have crossed swords about this before, on the old SL forums (before the current "community" website, a community where you're welcome only if you toe the LL line). From what I can decipher of his argument, it comes down to a refusal to believe that BDSM can be anything but violent and exploitative.

I guess he's never heard of the bedrock principle of BDSM. It's called SSC: safe, sane, and consensual. Any activity must meet all three requirements to be considered acceptable in the BDSM world. In practice, what is safe and sane is left up to the people involved, but the point is that they're both considered necessary and those involved must agree that what they're about to do is both. Consensual is the third part of that, and it underlies everything. Without it, it's just abuse. Some folks adhere to a slightly different principle, RACK: risk-aware consensual kink. It works out the same in practice, though, and both are recognized as valid.

Those who adhere to either philosophy have a shared commitment to only doing what is agreed on in advance, and strictly respecting limits set by anyone involved on what's permissible, and making sure to take care of their partner before, during, and after. Failing to follow any or all of this will get you ostracized from the BDSM community in very short order.

Fundamentally, it comes down to a basic principle: If two adults in possession of their faculties consent, then it's none of my $DEITY->damned business - and none of Prokofy's, either - what they do.

Now, he may have a complaint when he says "um, *you* get the fuck out of the public space with your fucking *cult*." It goes back to being about consent: if you're subjecting someone else to watching you whip your slave and they didn't consent to that, then you're violating their right to consent or not.

This isn't as cut and dried as it appears. What's "public"? If I were to rez one of my pieces of bondage furniture in the middle of Help Island, lock a slave into it, strip all her clothes off, and whip her until she made a big puddle of sexual juices on the ground, it would obviously be over the line. But there are many public spaces that are explicitly BDSM-friendly. I have a public playroom full of my furniture, and the public is invited to use it all. Obviously, if you walk in there, you should expect to see the kind of activity I just described, and if you're shocked by it, it's your own fault - and you have no right to demand any recourse other than the right to turn around and teleport the hell right back out.

It doesn't have to go to that extreme, either. There are many clubs in SL, for example, that are explicitly BDSM-friendly. If you go to an event at the Rubber Room, you shouldn't be surprised to see that kind of thing going on, and you have no complaint coming when it does.

I can't tell from Prokofy's ravings whether he merely objects to BDSM outside of that kind of space, or whether he objects to it in SL, period. If the former, then he's got a legitimate complaint. If the latter, then he can kindly fuck off, for this is no different from demanding that gay men and lesbians crawl back into their closet - a demand society is rejecting more and more as the years pass.

From his comments, I suspect it's the latter. Strange that someone bellowing about freedom wants to deny others the freedom to be who they are.