Re: [UUPoly-L] Report from PNWD AGM

["Laura Stewart" <mathlaura@gmail.com>]

On 3/1/07, Victor Raymond <vraymond@iastate.edu> wrote:
> At 02:49 PM 3/1/2007, you wrote:
>
> >I think I would find it personally distasteful, and I think it also
> >walks a fine line for me, but I can't really come up with a logical
> >reason for it to not be OK, so I would have to go on the side of not
> >having a problem with it.
> >
> >While having a slave on a collar may be an expression of sexuality in
> >a way, it's not people having sex in public.  If I kiss my girlfriend
> >and my boyfriend in public and we snuggle, it's a declaration in some
> >ways of what it is that we do in bed.  A person on a collar is more of
> >a declaration of what the people are doing in bed than an explicit
> >showcase of sexuality.
>
>  From a BDSM perspective, I would think that the maxim of "safe,
> sane, and consensual" would apply.  I would venture to guess that the
> reason why making a visual statement of a 24/7 relationship might be
> considered not the best idea is that it extends the scene into public
> view, and the public has not been given a chance to provide or
> withhold consent to their tacit participation in the scene.  Granted,
> in some spaces - like BDSM clubs - simply being there is a sign of
> providing consent.  But I would venture to say that many public areas
> are not thought of that way.

Why do people need consent to be exposed to a person on a leash, but
do not need to consent to being exposed to two men kissing, or three
people all kissing one another?  Why is an incidental observer
"participatint" in a "scene" if someone is on a leash, but not
participating in PDA?

> This is not to imply that all situations *ought* to provide tacit
> consent; I would suggest that making such an assumption would miss
> why the idea of consent is important.  And with all due respect to
> distinguishing between sexuality and what people "do in bed", people
> in a 24/7 BDSM relationship are likely to think of it as much more
> than sex (and probably more basic than sex, too).

That's exactly why I can't find a logical functional difference in a
BDSM relationship, a homosexual relationship, or a poly relationship.
Some people say "Eww!  You just want to have threesomes/have sex with
more than one person/not be commited!"  Poly people know that, indeed,
it's not [just] about sex.

> And what I am trying to do here is explore how this might look from
> within the kink community, and less so from an explicitly UU
> perspective.  Put another way, ostentatious displays of a 24/7 BDSM
> relationship might look kinda tacky, more than anything
> else.

I agree that they look tacky.  Looking tacky isn't sufficient reason
for me to say someone shouldn't do something that they want to if it
doesn't explicitely involve me.  (Though I am on the topic of "is this
acceptable to be in public as a UU" and not "what does the kink
community think of it".)

>  There's a lot more negotiation involved,

A lot more negotiation involved than what?  Than negotiation involved
in an only-while-doing-it BDSM scene?  Than negotiation in a poly
relationship?

>  and therefore I
> suspect that there are more people out there who are in 24/7 BDSM
> relationships than any of us realize from a surface observation.  On
> the surface, this is not unlike sexual orientation, which is not
> always visible - but there are much deeper functional differences as
> to *why* it is not visible.

So please, expound upon exactly what that "much deeper functional
difference" is.  Just asserting that there is a deeper functional
difference as to why a BDSM relationship is not or should not be
visible and why a gay or poly relationship is or should be visible is
just begging the question.

I'm certainly not saying people who ARE in a DS relationship SHOULD
tell everyone about it.  I think usually they don't want to, and I'm
peachy keen with that.  However, IF they indeed want to be totally
open about it including taking themselves to church on a leash, I
can't come up with a good argument that they shouldn't.

> Just a few thoughts, and not intended as anything other than my own thinking.

Well Victor, I tend to ask people why they hold their thinking and to
justify their conclusions, so hopefully you won't be offended.

-Laura