Home Fires Burning

I'll be returning home in around a week for the first time since coming out about my submissiveness to my mother. In preparing, I've been greatly helped by Eileen's posting about her being outed to her family. Like mine, hers isn't as simple as a rigidly intolerant, closed-minded bigotry; I've weathered God hates fags; I can weather the charge of perversion of the natural order. If it were so, it would be easy; I could cloak myself in the mantle of righteous rebellion, refuse to let the intolerance of small minds prevent me from pursuiing the life I deem best, and not really grow in the process.

Of course, her objections are far more principled than that, objections I have to answer for myself as well as for her. If you want a succinct statement of the principled objection to my lifestyle, look no further than the spanner decision:
"In principle there is a difference between violence which is incidental and violence which is inflicted for the indulgence of cruelty. The violence of sadomasochistic encounters involves the indulgence of cruelty by sadists and the degradation of victims. Such violence is injurious to the participants and unpredictably dangerous. I am not prepared to invent a defence of consent for sadomasochistic encounters which breed and glorify cruelty [...]. Society is entitled and bound to protect itself against a cult of violence. Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing. Cruelty is uncivilized."

What defence to this indictment can I offer? Certainly, from the outside, I can see why it would seem a dark place. Screams, in more extreme instances blood; the disgusting arousal of the sadist, the degradation that the masochist craves; how could one spring to their defense? Even from the inside, you will often run across profiles of people bragging that they revel in the darker side of human nature.

Except that framing has never rung true to me. I think back on the night I lost my virginity, the ecstasy, the caring dominance of Socrates, how my heart exults when I reflect on my submission and his dominance- and the only thing I can see is joy. I KNOW, with the certainty only emotional engagement can bring, that there was nothing shameful, nothing degrading, about that joy.

But, if I ever doubt my own virtue, I know this much: I REFUSE to believe that that is Socrates. The man who performed the most sterling moral action I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing; my lover, my Master- he is not some corrupted deviant, not the high priest of a "cult of violence," not driven to the archevil of human affairs by an impurity in his soul! Whatever one can say of me, I know this- Socrates is good at his core. He has too consistently proven his goodness for me to believe anything else.

And, of course, the damnable thing is that I can't just react angrily, tell them to get the fuck out of my life and be done with it. Even more painful than if this were borne out of hatred, my mother is doing this precisely because she loves me, because she's worried about me, because she thinks that I've gotten myself into something that's physically and emotionally risky, and potentially spiritually degrading.

Of course, it had to be her. The disappointment with which the majority of my extended family would receive it, I can dismiss as closed-minded intolerance. My sister and my father's rejection would hurt, but I can live without their approval. But she is so intelligent, so even-handed, and so much my role model that, should I fail, I'm not sure I could ever be certain of my goodness again.