Stream of Consciousness Journaling: On Functional vs Dysfunctional SM Communities, Consent, Power and getting back into the Rope Zone

OTE: This is a super long one, and as stated, it's stream of consciousness, I"m just rambling away in thought. Don't read it if that kind of writing style bothers you. friendly smile. It's from a post on Fetlife. But I was thinking, consider I bitch, bitch, bitch about things here, I better share the positives as well! Ha, Ha, Ha!)

I have found a woman who is going to come with me, along with her male boy to the next Rope Practice Night and be my protector “Rope Top.:” I told them about my first incident of being fully bound and immobilized and as soon as I was some guy (not part of the scene, I only play with gals) coming up to me and grabbing my tit and they were appalled.

Even the guy was just like, “It doesn’t matter if you hadn’t been touched by a guy in twenty years or if you were touched on the breast by a guy yesterday, it’s your BREAST and that was a complete and utter violation. Completely, totally against the rules and boundaries of BDSM.’

It’s soo nice to have people respond in a healthy, functional, sane way to obvious boundary violations, rather then having to deal with denial, rationalization and blaming the violated person, whoever they may be.

I have to admit, I feel much safer in the BDSM community where I now live, because their “talk” and their “walk” go hand in hand, almost point for point. People here are extremely serious about their BDSM and they are extremely serious about touch boundaries. If some guy who wasn’t in a scene with me at all, walked across the room and up to me when I was fully

bound and grabbed my tit, he’d be kicked out the place. And not just by the leader, the rest of the guys would rise up and kick him out. They are very protective of their women here, as all tops, male and female are protective of their bottoms, ALL bottoms, regardless of sex. They simply do NOT TOLERATE any kind of even the smallest of body violations here. You simply do NOT do it. End of story. I guess you could say it’s a “zero tolerance zone.”

Still, I have been wanting to check out the local pansexual rope bondage practice group in town, but I have been quite shy and nervous because of my first experience of being completely immobilized and basically the distrust it established in me.

BDSM communities I’m finding are a lot like Lesbian and/or Womens Communities. (I can’t’ really give my two cents on Gay Male communities, not having much experience in them.) Some of them are healthy and quite functional and others of them are extremely dysfunctional. This is of course no different then in straight communities. I once read a great definition of Dysfunction:

“Dysfunction is about how a problem is dealt with Not the problem itself.”

In other words, if someone breaks into another persons scene and grabs an immobilized womans genitals or breasts, is that person harshly reprimanded, do they get a serious “red flag,” put upon their name and a kind of “three strikes your out of the community,” kind of treatment. Are they taken aside and explained that their behavior is not acceptable and viewed as assault, a violation of a bottoms body, trust and personal space, the kind of behavior that makes all SMers look bad in the eyes of the mainstream public? OR is his behavior minimized, rationalized, explained away, and is the bottom who is grope blamed for being “oversensitive,” and “making a big deal out of nothing,’ and “rocking the boat and causing problems.”

Is the blatant and obvious body violation denied and the person whose violated, even in the tiniest way, shamed and socially shunned for speaking up and out against such a violation? If she’s a lesbian, do other lesbians and bisexual women rise up in anger and protection against the violator of their sisters body and rally in support around her, does the single lesbian even feel safe enough with the leaders of her particular Leatherdyke community to turn to them for help, support and validation if she does end up being violated in some way while playing within pansexual space? Does she and other “Jane Average,” dykes in that community have faith that her leaders are there for HER and “their people,” representing them and their issues within the larger pansexual community? Or is she afraid to even go and talk to the leaders, too fearful of the leaders themselves, to even turn to them for help when she needs them?

Are there issues of racism, classism, ablism, or just everyday cultural differences that make her perceive her leaders as “out for themselves,” vs as “representatives of the people?” How do the lesbian leaders or other lesbians respond to the dyke who gets violated by anyone, male or female in pansexual or even monsexual space? Blame her, say she somehow “wanted it,” and use the concept of “consent” to being tied up, as a statement that it means one “wants to be touched by all who choose to touch her?” Or to they hold true to a “you don’t touch any woman unless she’s specifically negotiated, agreed to play with you in some way?” boundary? Nor do you use your position of influence and authority in the community to pressure, intimidate, coerce or threaten a novice or person in a lower position of influence and authority to do or go somewhere with you. EVEN, if you truly believe your doing it for "their good," you still accept "No means No." In ALL areas, not simply sexual.

Many times, it’s not simply the violation that causes the trauma, but how the violation is dealt with afterwards. If the person violated is validated, supported and helped and the person who did the violation held accountable in some way and warned against doing the violation again, ‘you do that again, you’re not welcome in this play space,” then it might not be a big traumatic deal for the Bottom involved. But if the bottom is told she’s exaggerating, that she’s making a mountain out of a molehill, or in the case of being a lesbian, that she’s “just a man hater trying to cause trouble,” or, “a closet bisexual who really wanted it, proved by her playing in pansexual space in the first place,” kind of attitudes are displayed, even the tiniest violation, which, if dealt with appropriately could have been nothing can become quite traumatizing if dealt with inappropriately.

Healthy communities do not make excuses or rationalizations for their members, especially those in positions of authority and influence within the community for their unethical behavior. They don’t have two rules of “law” one for the novice with no relative position of power in the community and one for those who are leaders. Healthy communities say, “a body violation is a body violation, irregardless of how small or large, that’s not the point. The point is our bottoms put themselves in extreme positions of trust not just with their tops, but when in group space, with everyone else in the room. If we continuously break that trust, eventually either noone will play with us, or the only ones who will play with us are self destructive, unhealthy people who accept without question or complaint their boundaries both bodily and otherwise being broken. Either way, in the end, we all suffer as it becomes harder and harder to argue that BDSM is NOT abuse to our enemies as they simply get too many wounded bottoms eventually turning to them for help and healing, having had trust in us and our communities shaken or perhaps destroyed. We are literally in these cases, giving our enemies the rope to hang all of us with.

So why do some communities respond inappropriately and blame the violated vs the violator? I think it depends on the culture, etc. If you’re in a community where there are much stronger traditional sex and gender stereotyped roles generally speaking, as I was in the previous culture where I lived, then there tends I find to be a tendency to constantly try and find a reason why the violated person, regardless of sex is somehow “responsible.” As in, “well, just because she was a leader in the community and threatened you with complete non access to other leatherdykes if you didn’t consent to going to an event or playing with her, it’s your responsibility cause you still consented,” completely disregarding the fact that irregardless of whether I (or whoever) consented out of fear and coercion OR didn’t consent, that doesn’t somehow erase the person whose actually used threating, intimidating and coercive behavior responsibility for their own behavior. I mean give me a break. Just because a woman doesn’t “fight back,” while a man is raping her but lies there and “accepts it,” after having said no, doesn’t somehow relieve the man from his actions of rape. “Hello?”

If a male or female cop says to a woman, “either you get down on your knees and perform oral sex on me, or I’ll call the social worker and get your kids taken away,” she’s abused her position of power and influence, because more often then not, a woman will get down on her knees rather then risk the slightest possibility of having her kids, or a group of people she somehow needs taken away from her. Too often we talk about “Abuse” in terms of Domestic Disputes only, and we forget that the term “Abuse” is shortform for Abuse of Power and if you have more power, more influence, more authority and more ability to affect another persons life then they have over you, then one is expected to behave more cautiously and has a greater responsibility to assume an “ethic of care,” in regard to how one weilds that power in relation to people not in equal positions of influence, authority, experience, ie: power.

In Canada, at least, Abuse and Assault are considered to be about Power, not about Consent. For folks who are afraid they will lose their life, or access to a community important to them, or get failing grades or lose their jobs, or denied access or opportunity will always, almost 100% of the time say “yes,” because, what the hell else are they going to say? No, it’s not the consent of the recipient that defines whether the “actors” actions are abusive or not, it’s whats known as an Ethic of Care. Healthy BDSM Tops CARE about their bottoms, and they care about the reputation of all BDSM Tops and in turn, their actions show this.

They are CAREful, they treat their bottoms and members of the community, WITH CARE, they err on the side of caution, they are studious, exact, not CARELESS.They do not assume nor presume to know what a novice Top or Bottom “really wants,” but ask and check in and double check. They certainly don’t pull the whole, “bottoms are somehow responsible for the Tops actions,” BS.

No, bottoms are responsible for a bottoms behavior, and regardless of what a bottom does or doesn’t do, she can’t MAKE a Top cross the line, be Careless or act in a completely uncaring manner. Noone can make a person abuse power, abuse authority, abuse position or influence and this BS that Abuse is about Consent, is simply BS. Well, in Canada at least where the Consent Laws are very clear. Can't speak to America or other countries.

The concept that "Abuse is about Consent," is based on original Consent Arguments written by dykes almost thirty years ago, when the concept of Abuse of Power was in it’s infancy and noone knew anything about anything. Back in the day of “I never called it rape,” back in the day when in Canada it was still legal to rape ones wife, back in the day before there was anything known as Date Rape, when the concept didn’t exist. People were exploring this whole concept of “Abuse,” and Abuse of Power, and the arguments worked for the time, but for goodness sakes almost thirty years have passed in some cases, those arguments simply don’t follow the knowledge we now have on all sorts of areas of Abuse of Power, or the scientific proof that has resulted in the studying of how human beings respond in cases where other human beings have the power to affect their lives for the negative.

The National Leather Association of United States recognizes that there are Healthy BDSM relationships and communities and Unhealthy, Dysfunctional or even Abusive ones. It’s time we all stop acting like “Consent,” is some personally defined reality, when in truth, in Canada at least, it is a legal concept, and it isdefined in legal terms, and those terms can’t be bent by Individuals but only through legislation.

So WHAT if you “read it in her eyes,” or you, with all your experience, “know what the novice REALLY wants?” The point is, it’s not okay to force that knowledge onto another human being before their consciousness is ready to know, and the point is, “I read it in her eyes/body language,” even if what you interpretated, in the end, is correct, doesn’t help you in the court of law. In the court of law, one is expected to behave like Spiderman. “with great power comes great responsibility.” One is expected to use ones knowledge, experience, techniques, skills, authority, experience, influence, ie: power carefully, with an “Ethics of Care,” towards those with less then them.

It doesn’t matter if a person says “yes,” if they are too frightened to say “no,” or if they have been intimated, threatened, coerced or manipulated into consenting.

I am very lucky to have found in my new town, a BDSM community where those in position of power and authority are not ALLOWED to abuse it, where it’s not excused, rationalized or even, in some cases normalized. I am feeling quite grateful today for my new BDSM pansexual community. Even if, I am, the ‘Pet Dyke,” of the group. Ha, Ha, Ha! (get it? I’m a Pet Submissive, more often then not the only dyke at most of the local public play parties, so I’ve christianed myself the communities “Pet Dyke.” grin at least until theres other regular dykes like me out and about! )

I’m a Rope Slut who hasn’t been tied up in over a year. I’m very excited. The bisexual Fem Top lived as a lesbian for almost twenty years and I find she “gets me,” and my experiences a lot, understands more then some, where I’m “coming from and her boy bottom, well I get very good vibes off of him and he’ll be playing with someone else anyways, but still around for added protection if necessary. I don’t expect anything to happen, like I’ve just said, this particular community does not tolerate and it does not rationalize, minimize or make excuses for people who do even the most minor violations of body or personal space. But once bitten, twice shy as they say. And I’m grateful to have found these wonderful people willing to just, well, watch over me and keep me safe, until I had new experiences that rewrite the old ones. Proving my fears baseless instead of validating them. smile

It probably won’t happen until the fall as groups on hiatus for the summer. In the meantime, I’m thinking of trying to find myself some rope and practice, just some basic, basic knots on myself. Discussions last night at the kink event I attended reminded me that, in a pinch, I can always tie myself up!

Ms. Pet

EDIT: There's a meeting this WEDNESDAY! I'm gonna get tied up THIS WEDNESDAY! *squeal*