Rachel KB wrote this piece about the blanket judgement of bdsm practitioners that happens so regularly. IT reminded me of a train of thought I'd had while loading shopping into the car the other day.
When your friend tells you they're going to take up running, with a view to completing a marathon, chances are you'll be impressed and supportive. Well, you may think they're crazy and that you would never do that, but you would still think they're impressive. As people get obsessive about their running, and talk about how they are addicted to the endorphin high and can't handle their daily stresses as well without it, we continue to think it's great.
We don't think they're crazy for suffering through the lung burn and muscle spasms and knee damage and all the rest, to get to their goals of endorphin highs and fitness and competition.
Chances are a lot of people who like their sex a little rough don't suffer half as much physically as your average runner. But people are appalled at the thought. And feel free to comment derogatorily about people who enjoy denigration. Ironic!
I do think that fetishes are born out of unmet needs. I suspect that it's even possible to unwrite those fetishes, with a lot of work. However, I don't know that the onus is on kinky people to do that at all. Or that it's necessarily the right thing to do. I'm all for being self aware, but bdsm sex seems to award people such a huge amount of fun and satisfaction. If your fetish doesn't do anyone else any harm and you get something good out of it then... well, I wince more at people in knee bandages running on concrete than I might do at a little creative filthiness.
Female toplessness is legal in a lot of places in the US (although not where I live), and I’d be meeting the letter of the law with a couple of Band-aids. But I have a gut feeling that if I go anywhere that there are people—and particularly anywhere there are children—nobody’s going to be too happy about my Band-aids. The enforcement is social; women just don’t go around topless in the US.
It bothers me because it’s unequal, but it also bothers me in its implications: that my body is inherently sexual, and a man’s body isn’t. It feels like men are being viewed through the first-person lens of “it’s nice to feel the sun on my skin, and I don’t mean anything by it” and women are being viewed through the distinctly third-person lens of “it’s inappropriate for me, a heterosexual man, to see her sexy parts.” It ignores the experiences of people who are turned on by male chests and somehow manage to contain themselves when they see one.
