Yes.

HarperJean on the latest BDSM and feminism kerfuffle:

"I've been thinking lately that any "examining" relative to sexual desires is better focused on their effects rather than their causes.

We could stipulate, purely for the sake of argument, that someone's desires for dominance and/or submission are the result of bad relationships, bad role models and sexist culture. So what? I don't think feminism is about abstract notion or morality or purity. The relevant question is not where desires come from but where they take you. Do your submissive fantasies and/or experiences leave you feeling good about yourself and your relationships? Do they contribute to safe and satisfying relationships? Do your dominant fantasies and/or experiences lead you to actually denigrate or abuse your partner, or others around you, or have other harmful effects? The Feministing commenter who said it would be better for people's communities if they didn't do BDSM seemed to hint at such an effects-based analysis, but didn't offer anything to support it.

Surely, some people do experience kinky fantasies or play in ways that are harmful to self-esteem, intimacy, personal autonomy or mutual respect. We might say that they're "in it for the wrong reasons," but whatever the reason what's important is that, at least in the ways they're currently doing it, being in it is not good for them or for others.

So, I think it is not helpful and can be hurtful to ask someone to examine and justify where their desires come from. By contrast, at least as a piece of advice, examining how you're going about it and what it is doing for you seems just fine. And in fact that's something how-to writes, presenters and other community figures often do advise.

Of course, either way it could still be used as a bludgeon, because it can still carry the assumption that the examining can only have one result and if you reach a different one you're just wrong."

http://trinityva.livejournal.com/1000547.html

Yes, exactly. I was planning a post along these lines, but she nailed it so well I don't think I have to. Suffice it to say that I've always found "where did this come from?" (which is inevitably the kind of answer feminists are looking for when they ask us to "examine" our desires) to be a singularly unproductive question. A thing's origin has nothing to do with its value, or its morality.

πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.

I will not run away.

If the unexamined life is not worth living, how much more the one without intensity! I've lived a waking sleep, a conscious death, moments cascading before the consciousness without appreciation or purpose. A dull listlessness, the rut of routine, robbing me of the little time I have here.

I will not live that way.

And the way out of that ennui is masochism. The harmonies and dissonances, the pains and the pleasures, the joys and the sorrows: it is the celebration of life, the absolute opposite of the death drive the psychologists have so erroneously imputed to us! What saccharine things are a song full of tonics and fifths, a life spent free from struggle and sorrow! The harmonies and dissonances of pain and pleasure make a sweet symphony for my soul to gorge upon, its intensity screaming with a pressing insistency: I am LIFE, I am wonderful and terrible, and all the better for having the two mixed into one!

I will no longer run away from what gives life its spice and its color, its meaning.

What would one want with heaven, anyway?

Live and learn

Owing to our long distance relationship, my Master and I have an open relationship; we can date other people. One of the people I was considering dating was a good fit for me in many ways, but there was a deal breaker. See, I like doing nice things for friends; I like using my car to drive them places, I like kicking in a bit more than my share of the booze money. I can take charge when it's necessary, but I'm more comfortable following another's lead. for her, all of these things were a sign of weakness, and every encounter was an adversarial one to get the better of the other. Not only did this make interpersonal relations with her troublesome, but it attacked my very sense of identity. I mean, all of these things that I had been taught from birth that made me a good person- my willingness to share, my lack of pushiness, my (at least self percieved) tendency to desire the good of others, sometimes at the expense of my own was to her a sign of weakness. I was pretty emotionally wrecked for awhile trying to win her approval before I realized I should just be comfortable with who I am.

So it will be quite a relief to return to my relationship with my Master, where such traits are celebrated and not denigrated. A space where I can be myself without it being because I'm too weak, but because we have mutually complementary roles that are equal in diginity. A space, in short, where acting what comes most naturally to me is understood as an examined choice and not a sign of weakness, that I would surely act differently if I had the power to be more assertive or assholish.

John Donne rocks my socks

"BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me,'and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me,'untie, or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."

Challenge: write a paper on this without referencing my masochism =)