20,000 people and found that S&Mers "were no more likely to have been coerced into sexual activity” than the general population. But -- also for the record -- an S&Mer whose sexuality was associated with being abused would not be "less legitimate" than the rest of us, as long as that person practiced kink consensually. Because what makes S&M okay is consent, right? Right. S&M isn't okay or not okay because of its "source," whatever that might be -- it's okay only when it's practiced consensually, right? Right. So this is all actually kind of a silly conversation to have in the first place, right? Right. It's too bad stigma tends to make zero sense, isn't it? Stigma loves to trick you into debating on its own terms.)
It's much more entertaining to imagine how people would talk about S&M, if we lived in a culture where S&M wasn't wildly stigmatized. In fact, what if S&M were admired or seen as a great thing... instead of being repressed and forced underground and seen as a dark, evil, disgusting thing? I've known people who called S&M and other fetishes "superpowers," in a kind of ironic twist on this concept.
Many people have written about how S&Mers can offer lessons in sexuality that we gleaned from our outside-the-box perspective (there's a whole paper on this topic for clinicians, written by psychologist Peggy Kleinplatz and titled "Learning from Extraordinary Lovers"). I myself have talked about how S&Mers tend to use much more careful and precise sexual communication tactics than the mainstream (examples include checklists and safewords). But these lessons are hardly confined to S&Mers -- there are lots of vanilla people out there who are awesomely careful and precise about communicating sexually.
The superpower framework is a bit different....
+ For example, I already noted that it's been demonstrated that S&Mers are not more likely to have endured non-consensual acts -- so we know that despite what Freud would have had you believe, all S&M does not arise from childhood abuse. But maybe it does arise from a childhood experience... an awesome childhood experience. Maybe the Missing S&M Link is that something totally wonderful happened to S&Mers in our childhoods.
Hey, vanilla people? I'm so sorry you all had such bad childhoods. Really, you have my sincerest sympathies.
+ For example, some folks will say that we S&Mers have a wire crossed somewhere; some genetic inferiority. But maybe we are totally way superior. Maybe average dominants and sadists are, say, more empathic than the norm. (There is, after all, actual research showing that consensual S&M increases intimacy.) Maybe average submissives and masochists are better at processing pain and enduring challenges, both physical and emotional, than the norm.
Sorry vanilla people, but we're going to have to start screening for your gross vanilla genes in the womb. Nothing personal.
+ For example, one of my exes has a story about how he was down in Latin America and he only had access to incredibly cold showers. So he gritted his teeth, stepped into the shower, and told himself that a dominant woman was forcing him to take it. "Actually it
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