Fascinating IamA on Reddit

[Tim]

This was one of the most interesting things I'd read in a while, so thought it was worth sharing here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f5...as_a_full/

[Mark]

Indeed.

[Chaos]

S&M still makes me feels uneasy... I think the best thing I'm able to do is accept it but I find myself unable to understand it, specially the situation the girl is describing. After all that situation with the Frank guy and being a slave girl for 18 months borderlines brainwashing from my point of view and has the potential to be really dangerous, even if he stops when she says her safeword. Interesting read though.

[Tim]

Oh no doubt about it; that shit cray. But it's amazing that this kind of stuff is happening in the world around us everyday. What lives people live...

I agree on the brainwashing to some extent; obviously that wasn't a totally healthy relationship for the girl, but it's also amazing how he had all this power over her, and yet never really forced her to do much she didn't want to do, and then when she decided she wanted to leave, he just let her. Obviously we wouldn't be reading it if he hadn't... but still; that's fascinating that he was that into but could still end it. I think Mark's point about submission being so much more powerful than we give it credit for applies here to some extent. It's not just about an unhealthy need for affection or power here, it's about exploring a whole number of possibilities in a very extensive manner. Human sexuality is so complex...

[SeXyBaCk]

Someone tell me that guy won't turn into Joseph Fritzl and lock up the next girl against her will if he can't find a directionless desperate girl to take advantage of in future? He's obviously obsessed with nurturing a slave woman. He's lost the plot.

That's not a sexual fetish when you want to permanently lock someone up. That's just another type of Hannibal Lecter. Imagine him being your neighbour. You feel good having such a neighbour? Not me. Call me intolerant but that's not just a sexual fetish. it's a personality disorder.

Maybe Mark wants to elaborate if he feels his statement applies here.

[Chaos]

Sexyback, on the other hand she always had the possibility to call out her safeword and indeed the moment she did he stopped completely and provided after care and even helped her get a job and provided a shelter for her for a couple of months.

I find my self disturbed by the psychological aspect of S&M, and indeed for that particular case there are voices in the reedit thread that suggest he might have been irresponsible with respect of the sense deprivation and the lack of sunlight. Still is useful to remember that it is still consensual, he's not doing anything she doesn't want him to. You might find it hard to understand (I do), and in fact the dominant (as far as I understand it) is usually required to have understanding of the limits of the submissive and a "touch" of when things are going to far even if the submissive is not using his safe word. Anyway, the moment she did he stopped.

I'm trying to understand the topic myself. I don't feel particularly attracted to it, but I can deny there are certain aspects of the soft stuff that I enjoy (senses deprivation, tying, role games)... this articles helped me a little bit although I admit I'm still having a hard time understanding it (I also had a hard time accepting it while reading Clarisse's Book)

BDSM versus Sex. Part 1
BDSM versus Sex, Part 2
What happens after an S&M encounter "gone wrong"
BSDM FAQ
BSDM Scenarios

The part I'm struggling the most with is "out of sex" BSDM and psychological S&M... you should read Clarisse Book, sometimes is BRUTAL... I can understand physical pain and fetish as pleasure in the context of sex, I have a harder time understanding it in any other situation. Still this segment (bold mine) helped me accept the whole thing while I was reading (as well as remembering the whole time that, despite what you may think, it's always consensual):

Quote:The DSM-IV asserts that "The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors" must "cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" in order for sexual sadism or masochism to be considered a disorder.
[...]
Moser's results were supported by data presented to the 2007 World Congress of Sexology by Juliet Richters, Richard De Visser, Andrew Grulich, and Christopher Rissel. The researchers found that BDSM practitioners were no more likely to have experienced sexual assault than the control group, and were not more likely to feel unhappy or anxious. The BDSM males reported higher levels of psychological well-being than the controls. It was concluded that "BDSM is simply a sexual interest attractive to a minority, not a pathological symptom of past abuse or difficulty with normal sex.

[Mark]

What I find most interesting is how her consent was more or less useless given in the low state she was in and her complete non-understanding of what she was getting into. BDSM'ers and feminists are always harping on consent, but this is an extreme example of a time that demonstrates we often don't fully understand what we're giving consent to.

[Chaos]

(04-11-2012 03:52 PM)Mark Wrote:  What I find most interesting is how her consent was more or less useless given in the low state she was in and her complete non-understanding of what she was getting into. BDSM'ers and feminists are always harping on consent, but this is an extreme example of a time that demonstrates we often don't fully understand what we're giving consent to.

Agreed but consent is consent, taken to an extreme case you can accuse the guy of being insensitive or careless about handling the situation but I think is really difficult to draw the line anywhere. After all, for a 18 year old girl you can make the same assertion just relating to sex. Specially when she describes sex as a way to get love (no matter how twisted), and still you can't qualify it as rape, or in other words you can't expect everyone to be able to morally say "no" based on what they think it's going on in the other person mind.

You can't throw all the responsibility on one side and none in the other.

[SeXyBaCk]

So we have a barely past legal-age teenager with no money, coming from an abbusive/neglectful background (which she is desperate to escape from) with a drug abuse habit... giving her consent to what exactly? I'm struggling to think of a better scenario of older man taking advantage of younger girl. I'm sure you could bring in experts of the opinion she was in no condition to give her consent to anything, let alone her abduction.

I'm sure it's a very grey area in legal terms, but I'd still quite like for some ambitious DA to prosecute this fellow or at least scare him a little.

I don't see how anyone can argue locking someone up 24/7 for 1.5 years of their youth is an expression of sexuality. Sexuality is something that happens in the timeframe of hours.

[Mark]

It's a messy situation all the way around.

And the most fucked up part is this whole episode with the guy is probably what saved her life.

Salvation through slavery?

[Chaos]

Try this experiment (this is something I do a lot): flip the gender of the participants and analyze what kind of gut feeling it produces in you.

I like to think I'm really neutral and mostly feminist, but I'm not free of preconceptions. Switch genders and you have a girl in his late twenties confining an eighteen year old guy for consensual slavery that lasts for 18 months, same exact situation and background.

Do yo still get the same feeling? Would still your ambitional DA pursue the case? I don't get the same feeling when I exchange the situation, in fact it changes to something that, while being extremely weird, based on the mutual consent, the guy seems to enjoy and have under control, and that usually is a big red warning about how gender preconceptions are influencing my judgement.

[SeXyBaCk]

Doesn't change how I feel about it. You're maybe thinking out of our adult perspective would it have been hot if an older woman would have taken us in, and taught us all kinds of stuff about sex it might have been hot? Although I don't recall his age being in the post it sounded like he was well into his thirties (possibly). As far as I'm concerned 18,19 is still a child. And remember she hadn't left the building in over a year, no dentalcare no OBYGYN, no vacinations no outside social contact. That is not a sexlife, it's false imprisonment.

Quite possible this guy did 'saved her life' while potentially scarring her for life in the process.

I generally don't care what people do, to each his own. But when there are minors involved, or individuals who clearly lack judgement on what is good and healthy for them I'd like to think I step in. Some creep talking to children on public transport? I tell him to get lost.

And according to the DSM manual (which in europe is considered inadequate) I'd say in this case the criterias for a sexuality disorder are met. The female had no social life, couldn't take up an occupation or get an education.

[Mark]

Most BDSM practices are classified as sexual disorders in the DSM... but then again homosexuality was considered a sexual disorder by psychologists up until a few decades ago.

[Tim]

(04-11-2012 08:06 PM)Mark Wrote:  Most BDSM practices are classified as sexual disorders in the DSM... but then again homosexuality was considered a sexual disorder by psychologists up until a few decades ago.

EXACTLY. I don't think we understand enough about it yet to judge. I can imagine there's something incredibly empowering and healing about completely submitting to someone else, as well as it being potentially damaging.

[SeXyBaCk]

(04-11-2012 09:14 PM)Tim Wrote:  

(04-11-2012 08:06 PM)Mark Wrote:  Most BDSM practices are classified as sexual disorders in the DSM... but then again homosexuality was considered a sexual disorder by psychologists up until a few decades ago.

EXACTLY. I don't think we understand enough about it yet to judge. I can imagine there's something incredibly empowering and healing about completely submitting to someone else, as well as it being potentially damaging.

I can't fathom anything empowering let alone healing about being someone's footrest? It's just degrading to me. I get that people are turned on by being degraded, that's fine with me, we all enjoy different things, but it's not healing. It's just another kink. What was described though went way beyond that.

I'd say a sexual affinity becomes a disorder when it's interfering with human function of modern life (work, social, health), like someone who can't climax unless they're fondling pantyhose at the same time.

And something being in the DSM manual or ICD-10 doesn't mean it's outlawed or stigmatised, it just means it can be diagnosed and health insurance will be more obliged to cover for it's treatment.

[Zac]

Quote:It's just degrading to me.

A lot of the times, that is the entire point and turn on for both people involved.

[Mark]

I shared this IAmA with Clarisse Thorn (a submissive and BDSM practitioner) and she passed along a couple links that are relevant and interesting.

http://sm-feminist.blogspot.com.ar/2008/...story.html
http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2012/04/09...ion-model/

I should add that I'm not a huge fan of how the guy in the Reddit story treated the girl, and that she's lucky she turned out for the better. But I do sympathize with BDSM tendencies, although I don't believe I have very strong one's myself.

[FirstAidKit]

You know, I'm mildly kinky myself, and even for the stuff I'm not into I can kind of 'get' the level that some people like it.

But.

That story SKEEVES ME THE FUCK OUT. It's not so much the 'full time slave' thing - if that turns your crank, sure, and he obviously respected the safe word... but deliberately targeting someone that young, with drug issues, with no support network.... that is someone who is picking on vulnerable people who aren't going to know what they are getting into.

I'd think the same of an older woman/younger man, though I think that's sometimes easier to swallow as usually the man is stronger (implies he could leave if he really wanted).

[Chaos]

(04-12-2012 10:04 PM)FirstAidKit Wrote:  I'd think the same of an older woman/younger man, though I think that's sometimes easier to swallow as usually the man is stronger (implies he could leave if he really wanted).

Thx, that was exactly the point I was trying to make, I do get the same feeling... Still she was also able to leave whenever she wanted). I think because she's a girl we get the impression of abuse... Even when that isn't implied anywhere...

We immediately jump to assumptions about how she didn't know what she was getting into, and how much value her consent had...

I don't know... It gives me a headache just trying to figure out what I think about it, I still have my doubts (I'm defending the other point of view because I like to explore both).

[SeXyBaCk]

I'm struggling to see how you folks can have ambivalent feelings about this. Okay, had it been a 30 year old house wife who made the decision to leave her stable home & husband to move in with this queer, fine. Kinky and weird, but okay...consenting adults and all. But this isn't how it went down in the description. Assuming this is true, what did she leave out of the story? I'm just getting this tang of child/adolescent abuse from this story. It's not the sex that rings wrong to me, it's the keeping in the house and not having any social contact for 18 months. That is worse than any maximum security penitentiary, happening to her at a critical age too.

A whole other issue is that abuse is not absolved by consent. Morally or legally. You beat your wife you still belong in prison even though she kept coming home to you. Children are often abused without being aware what is going on. What I'm trying to say is a victim of abuse doesn't have to be aware of it being abused to actually make it abuse.

[Tim]

I think you're being slightly too patronizing here. I can understand the reaction that says even if consent was given it was done under coercion. But from what she says in the description and comments, she shows plenty of self-awareness and honesty about her feelings in the whole thing. She was certainly in control of when she wanted to leave, and she realised when it was time:

"I had enough. I had been forbidden to talk for the previous few months and I no longer felt good about myself like in the beginning. I had forgotten who I was, what I wanted and simply couldn’t take it anymore."

She doesn't try to claim that it was totally a healthy thing, and she dealt with that to a certain extent:

"I stayed with Frank for another 5 months but I wasn’t his slave anymore. We did continue to have sex and even do a little BDSM play but we were back to the talking phase we had in the beginning. We spoke a lot about what I had gone through and I shared all my thoughts and emotions. He apologized for the last part where he asked me to stay silent for so long."

And in the end, she thinks it was for the best:

"Somehow, what happened in those 16 months almost helped me reboot my life. I don’t think it was because of the BDSM itself, but perhaps it was simply because someone had loved me and taken care of me almost like a child for the first time in my life.
Conclusion
What scares me today from time to time is that if he hadn’t begun to impose long term rules like the no speaking part, I might still be there, without the attention of a dentist and slowly losing sense of who I was.
But I grew out of that and slowly defined who I was and what I wanted and didn’t want and even learned today to say no to my boyfriend, something my mother was never able to do."

I think there are some consent issues here. At times she wasn't strong enough to define boundaries, and obviously the no speaking part did do some damage to her. But she was strong enough to enter the agreement, and eventually she was strong enough to leave it. She developed an ability to say no out of it, and that was obviously very important for her. To me the decision to start it and to end it are the two most important ones in terms of coercion, and she reached those with a clear enough mind that I think it would have been wrong to intervene.

[SeXyBaCk]

So if this was your daughter or you sister rooming in with this guy, you'd be cool with it? That's the question i ask myself when it comes to moral issues.

Sounds like the crack or whatever she was on really messed up her teeth, as it does.

[Tim]

By rooming you mean sharing an apartment but not being involved with his sex life? If I knew the guy, and trusted him as much as I'd need to trust any other guy she lived with, then yeah.

[SeXyBaCk]

I'm asking: if this girl was your sister or daughter (or friend for that matter) and she had communicated her desire to go live with some guy who is a self proclaimed dungeon master for 18 months, cutting all other other contact, you would be comfortable with this and let her go with your blessing?

[Tim]

Well it's hard to say for certain, because I'm not a brother to a sister or a father to a daughter. So I can't be certain of how I would really feel. But I imagine that if I was, and they wanted to do something like this, then yes I would have a strong initial reaction against it. But I would have a strong initial reaction if she was sleeping around a lot, even though I'm fine with that in general, or if she began experimenting with certain drugs, even though I do so myself occasionally.

I see what you're trying to say here, but it's not that simple to draw a parallel. Because if I was that girl's father I would never have let her be so unloved, or abused her mother, or whatever. If I had a daughter that I believed I had raised well, and she truly wanted to do this, I would have to think about it very long and hard, but I wouldn't absolutely forbid it. If I was the father in that's girl's situation, I would be taking into account very different things than I am in a hypothetical situation in the future with my own potential daughter.

I don't think it was necessarily a healthy situation, I'm just pointing out that according to her account, it was overall a good thing for her. And I'm saying that from what she wrote, I trust her judgment on that.

I also don't think what happened was illegal, or should be made so. I think it would be damaging to our individual rights to forbid that sort of relationship, or even to morally oppose it, because we don't understand what it's like to be in one like hers.