‘More acceptance’ of S&M needed

[Imnobody4]

talkradio.co.uk/news/more-acceptance-needed-sm-activities-19032230392
My morning isn't starting well. Haven't heard the programme - not sure I could stand it.

Also, obviously anything public is not ok, as any onlookers have not consented to witnessing your kink.

Choice isn’t made in a vacuum, and BDSM is no longer the sole preserve of the BDSM ‘community’.

There is nothing safe or sane about shoving a spray bottle of bleach up a woman’s vagina, but apparently, if she is dead and unable to give evidence, a judge may well decide it was consensual.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-killed-millionaire-sex-game-13600748

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3459232-We-Cant-Consent-to-This-all-the-sex-game-gone-wrong-defences

agirl please feel free to search my other thread, saying something was BDSM apparently makes injuring someone legal. It’s an excuse for harm.

"Kids should be taught that any sex acts - particularly including violence - need to be consensual or else it is abuse, as well as telling them that they can be prosecuted for ABH if they don't obtain consent."

How about teaching them all violence is abuse, straight up? No "it's ok to choke her if you work out a yes"?

" I have a question - what do you consider “mild” and “extreme” BDSM?"

Having been a victim of that evil community who has since been freed, I can assure you - whatever you think is extreme today will be laughed at as being "not extreme enough" tomorrow and you will be pushed to force yourself into even more pain and humiliation to force your ego out of existence for the enjoyment of your master. There is only one way to go in BDSM and it is ever more extreme to prove you aren't "vanilla".

How about teaching them all violence is abuse, straight up? No "it's ok to choke her if you work out a yes"?
I agree with you, I only meant that there needs to be some sort of campaign directed at young men thinking they can get violent with women for sexual kicks that they could go to prison without consent, and that women have a right to prosecute (although criminally, we have seen examples where the law has failed women on this). I have no desire to defend BDSM whatsoever, but was only recognising that there are those who do give consent to engage in it.

Wow, lots of misconceptions about what BDSM actually is, on this thread, and massive lack of knowledge of the "rules" of the community.

No-one should be doing anything to a woman sexuwlly, without her knowledge and say so beforehand. Personally, the people I know in the BDSM world all avoid choking as it is too dangerous.

Limits of what is and isnt ok sexually should be discussed way before the first sexual encounter. These limits are sacrosanct and taken seriously within the community.

Each party can stop the activity at any time, and if one is gagged, they do something like hold keys they can drop to indicate wanting to stop.

50 Shades was the biggest lot of shit. It didn't reflect true BDSM. It was rapey and featured activity without prior consent. A huge no-no.

Some men will obviously use BDSM as a way to prey on vulnerable women and abuse them. Proper Doms absolutely don't. It is against all the BDSM community stands for.

I was raped by a man who tried to make out that he was a Dom. He wasn't. He violated my consent and didn't discuss anything in advance before he did it to me.The people who made me realise it was rape.....other Doms.

There is a huge difference between real Doms and abusive wannabes. Sadly, the 50 Shades phenomena has enabled men who are not truly into BDSM, to abuse women.

Women and men, entering into the BDSM world tend to be advised by others to go slow, agree beforehand, and stop at the first sign of trouble. They look out for each other.

The problem is not the BDSM scene. It is abusive men exploiting the interest of women with little knowledge of true BDSM.

MsLucyLastic
I think people here are very aware of BDSM and how those in the community stress the importance of consent, not least because they love to drone on about their kink to all and sundry. The issue is that non-consensual sexual violence has been normalised through mainstream porn and is happening on a mass scale, meaning women are being violently attacked during sex, with no former conversation about it, no consent, and no-one is being prosecuted for it. You may defend BDSM and say this isn't what it's all about by your standards, fair enough, but that doesn't change the fact that women are being raped, beaten and tortured in the name of it, and something needs to be done about that.

It is the very fact that the BDSM community exists that is now causing harm. It is the fact that the community positions itself as edgy, cool, and more enlightened than vanilla, that is causing harm to women and girls who are now regarded as likely to have consented to abuse until their own murders.

Own it. Then figure out what to do about it, and do it.

I'm very sorry and angry to hear what happened to you, it has become far too common. My question is how is it possible to regulate something like BDSM so that only 'legit' people can do it, and abusive men don't get off with violence against women? This is the problem, it might be very clear cut to those into the BDSM scene what the boundaries are, but it certainly doesn't seem that the police do. These abusive men you speak of are sadly very common, it's mainstream.

I think that toxic masculinity needs massively addressing in regards to sexuality. I also think that police and judiciary need to be more aware of what BDSM is and isn't.

Abusers are always going to abuse, and will always find ways of doing so. The man who raped me didnt rape me because of BDSM. He raped me because he is a rapist. He had also had vanilla relationships with people.......he is still a rapist.

There is nothing wrong with safe, sane and consenting practices between two adults who care about each other, know each other's boundaries and respect those limits.

In the same way that vanilla sex and vanilla porn are not responsible for rape, why in the world would BDSM sex and porn be responsible for doing so? The only difference is that in BDSM, consent is explicitly obtained to each different act.

If people are using the existence of BDSM, bastardising it for their own ends, making dreadful porn based on a false reflection of BDSM, and THAT gives rapists ideas, then that is awful but not the responsibikity of BDSM. It is always the responsibility of the rapist.

Lack of knowledge on the part of the police and judiciary, and bad decisions in law, are not the responsibility of people into BDSM.

It is currently illegal to consent to assault. So the law isnt being applied properly. Maybe that is where people's ire should be directed, rather than the private sexual activities of consenting adults.

@MsLucyLastic you've made the same point I was trying to, but much more eloquently.
People will always find ways of abusing things, if that's what they are going to do, if we started to ban all those things there wouldn't be an awful lot left and rapists and abusers should be held accountable for their actions, not people who are in a private and consenting relationship, causing harm to no one.
BDSM used to be a very small, very close nit community and I agree that its popularity has made it more likely that disgusting people will abuse it, so understanding what it actually is, how we keep ourselves safe, do's and don'ts and general awareness about why it's so different to abuse is vital in keeping people safe.

the community positions itself as edgy, cool, and more enlightened than vanilla
And for what it's worth I consider myself none of these things. No one in my real life even knows about my relationships and I am more inclined to feel like a loner or weird than I am cool and enlightened.

Actually Lucy my letter from the police about why the man who violently abused me stated specifically that the level of violence able to be consented to when it involves sexual pracitices is now no longer clear cut because of challenges from the BDSM community.

So yes your sexual practices and the community harm others and the laws around it need to change. Perhaps a contract triple signed in front of a solicitor and with prior counselling to ensure the “sub” isn’t traumatised of coerced into it. Something has to change.

And I believe for someone to get off on that they have to have something in the brain that links trauma to soothing. It would be better to address that first.

In the same way that vanilla sex and vanilla porn are not responsible for rape, why in the world would BDSM sex and porn be responsible for doing so? - Because BDSM porn is now mainstream, what teenagers grow up on thinking it is regular sex, and doing it without asking. Many dating again after a break have mentioned their shock at being violently assaulted during sex, because this is considered the norm now. Porn doesn't show all the rules and regulations of the BDSM community, it just shows violent abuse of women, and this becomes what men expect to be able to do, excusing their abuse as BDSM.
Lack of knowledge on the part of the police and judiciary, and bad decisions in law, are not the responsibility of people into BDSM.
I don't believe I've said anywhere that consenting adults are to blame for the rise in violent sex, in fact it would be good if we could all pull together to condemn the non-consensual, increasingly violent sexual abuse women are being expected to put up with. It would be helpful if those into the scene were to advise the police about what is and is considered acceptable.

Fuck, sorry, my typing's all over the place today!

Qsandmore
I can't say how sorry and angry I am for what happened to you.

Perhaps a contract triple signed in front of a solicitor and with prior counselling to ensure the “sub” isn’t traumatised of coerced into it. Something has to change.
I agree, it needs a legal framework like this and not the assumption that anyone consenting to sex is willing to also be violently tortured, just because some people happen to like BDSM.

@agirlhasnonameX thank you

I think the problem is that the intent to kill, which needs to be proven to obtain a murder conviction, is hard to prove in domestic circumstances.

If a man pushed a woman down the stairs and killed her, and didn't call an ambulance when ahe was bleeding to death, then he would still be looking at manslaughter rather than a murder conviction. Because intent cannot be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Even if a man grossly sexually assaulted the woman and DIDN'T use the sex game gone wrong defence, realistically it cannot be proven that he intended to kill, just that he intended to harm her. Hence manslaughter.

• the community positions itself as edgy, cool, and more enlightened than vanilla And for what it's worth I consider myself none of these things. No one in my real life even knows about my relationships and I am more inclined to feel like a loner or weird than I am cool and enlightened."

Likewise! It is news to me that it is seen as edgy and cool. But then, unlike a claim made by a PP, I never talk about it except for with partners.

MsLucyLastic No personal attacks intended, but there are plenty of exhibitionists who love the opportunity to do this in public, pose on their Instagram etc as a way to draw attention to how incredibly liberated they are, it's become a fashion as much as anything else.

@Qsandmore I am so sorry for what happened to you. And I also sorry for the response of the police. That is disgraceful. When I was raped, and assaulted in an extremely sexually violent way, I was assured that the police saw previous BDSM as irrelevant. As I didnt press charges, I have no idea how it would have proceeded.

I am so sorry, but what I do behind closed doors with a partner, really didn't cause your rape. Your rapist did that.

Police using BDSM as a means to avoid prosecution is a travesty.

The talk radio piece is about the president of the Spanner Foundation, a S&M Charity making a plea to weaken the law.
*The conviction of ‘Dr Evil’ for performing extreme body modifications has raised the issue of what level of harm a person can legally consent to.

The landmark “Operation Spanner Case” established in 1987 that people cannot consent to harm, after a group of gay men were convicted of ABH for their involvement in consensual S&M activities.

Speaking to talkRADIO’s Matthew Wright, Mr Cohen said: “The ruling set the threshold for injury you can consent to as extremely low.

“People go boxing or skiing and suffer brain injuries but because sex was involved of course common sense goes out the window and the fact that they were gay men didnt help either.

“The fact is you see a lot of S&M imagery in public and it’s much more accepted these days. In a sense the general mood of the public is way ahead of the law.”*
This is just another way for legitimizing violence behind closed doors, no witnesses, at a time when we can't even get the concept of consent to protect women.
Again it's exploiting the progress in LBG rights to usher in socially destructive behaviour as normal, compare paedophilia (does no lasting damage)

Because BDSM porn is now mainstream, what teenagers grow up on thinking it is regular sex, and doing it without asking. Many dating again after a break have mentioned their shock at being violently assaulted during sex, because this is considered the norm now. Porn doesn't show all the rules and regulations of the BDSM community, it just shows violent abuse of women, and this becomes what men expect to be able to do, excusing their abuse as BDSM.

So it is porn which is the issue then, surely? BDSM porn is such a misnomer, because the mental side of things (the most important bit) isn't shown. So actually, it is just violent porn. All violent porn should be banned. As should vanilla porn which overly focuses on anal sex.

Surely seeing those into BDSM as being exhibitionists is a bit self selecting? Not everyone who is into BDSM is an exhibitionist who would put details on Instagram. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to work out that there must be loads on people into BDSM who aren't exhibitionists, but by default you won't see anything from them online?

@Imnobody4 I agree with you. The law should not be changed to reflect the sexual mores of a fairly niche group of us. That is wrong.

Banning BDSM, as a pp suggested, that to me is Orwellian interference in someone's sex life.

If the BDSM community were not positioning itself as edgy, cool, and more enlightened, the term "vanilla" would not exist in the way it does, as something to disdain.

It was not the people who aren't into BDSM who deemed themselves "vanilla."