The 'ethics' of casual 'bdsm'

[BLoved]

Again - you completely ignored my post about the biochemical realities of human bonding.

Because biochemistry is incapable of explaining the complexity of the human psyche.

 

[Etoile]

Why should gender make a difference? People are people and we are all hard-wired for pair-bonding.

I can agree with this. I guess what I disagree with is your suggestion that play outside of a pair-bonded relationship is somehow harmful to that relationship (if it exists) or preventing the person from forming a relationship (if they don't have one). I don't think play prevents people from having or forming loving relationships. It's an extracurricular activity. It can get out of hand, but I don't think it is inherently bad.

Kind of like football. By itself, a high school kid playing football is not going to have problems keeping up good grades. If he spends all his time on football, his grades are going to suffer. But football itself isn't the cause of that - it's his lack of focus on his studies.

I tend to think "casual" BDSM (I call it "play") is the same way. You can have fun doing it and it doesn't have to hurt your loving relationship(s).

For the record, if it wasn't clear, I am talking exclusively about open relationships. If one partner is cheating on the other, I don't care what you're doing, that isn't cool. I don't think kinky play outside of a relationship that allows for it is a problem. If the relationship doesn't allow for it, it doesn't matter at all, that's just not cool.

 

[Netzach]

Pseudoscience BS - it's what's for dinner.

 

[eastern sun]

You are not looking back far enough.

Consider the odds a single pregnant mother has of defending herself from Pleistocene predators.

Consider her odds while giving birth to offspring, or afterwards while trying to provide for a helpless infant. How is she to travel from food source to water source and back to the cave while holding an infant whose hands have lost the ability to clutch the mother's hair as is done in chimps? How is she to gather food, hunt, handle predators with an infant in one arm?

How is she to do this with an infant who screams when alone?

Without pair-bonding to a male, her odds of survival are much too small, which is why no other mammal has made a similar attempt with offspring so helpless.

Without a pair-bonded male to hunt for and to defend herself and her offspring there is little chance she will be able to accumulate the protein needed to sustain her child's brain development, just as there is little chance of her avoiding predators.

Without pair-bondng there would be no humanity.

30,000 years into the evolution of this survival strategy big-brained humans developed culture, and to handle the increasing population with the concommitant demand for members of the opposite sex for mating, cultural standards were developed to facilitate pair-bonding.

In cultures where the mortality rate amongst males was disproportionately high, rules developed to protect the orphans.

In all cases the rules developed were to minimize internal conflicts over mates and to ensure the survival of offspring.

We are still hard-wired to associate intimate behaviour with intimate emotional bonding: pair-bonding.

Even in cases where reproduction doesn't occur (such as with male and female homosexuality) pair-bondng still occurs (which is why same-sex marriage is legal here and why the demand to recognize it is so prevalent elsewhere).

It is only in societies where the pair-bonding process is interfered with that dysfunctional behaviour becomes an issue.

Casual 'bdsm' interferes with that pair-bonding process, by insisting intimate behaviour is completely unrelated to intimate emotional bonding.

I always thought our prehistoric ancestors coped with the world in clans, except for Adam and Eve, of course.

 

[Etoile]

Pseudoscience BS - it's what's for dinner.

Really? Because I was thinking of having some leftover pad thai.

 

[TypicalDeviant]

Really? Because I was thinking of having some leftover pad thai.

Hey! I'm getting pad thai for dinner tonight (chicken, as hot as possible). It's the good luck charm that will ensure that my team wins tonight.

 

[TypicalDeviant]

Pseudoscience BS - it's what's for dinner.

Which part is pseudoscience? The minds supreme control over the body or 30,000 years of evolution mean that dysfunctional societies eat single men.

...I don't think I remembered that last part properly, but you know what I'm asking.

 

[Netzach]

We ARE all hard wired for pair bonding.

We are NOT hard wired for pair bonding with only ONE mate. Quite the opposite. We are hard wired to pair bond all up and down town.

Social systems, control of female sexuality, control of male sexuality, incest taboos, personal preference, marriage, polygamy and polyandry, monogamy - the entire spectrum of human behavior and the myriad ways that different cultures encourage or discourage different behaviors (are the tibetans dysfunctional because a woman has multiple husbands, or just different?) - that is all EXTRA BIOLOGICAL culturation.

The idea that western marital monogamy with a romantic component is "more natural" is wrong. Period.

 

[BLoved]

Friedrich Nietzsche

"I don't understand how you manage to love a mob of birds that has just tried to kill you."


"Oh, Fletch, you don't love that! You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love. It's fun, when you get the knack of it."

--- Richard Bach, "Jonathon Livingstone Seagull"

 

[eastern sun]

You provided me with details regarding your relationships and you asked me for my opinion about those details.

And then, in response to the opinions you asked for, you say "It can be very distressing when somebody keeps telling me that I am [in an abusive relationship]."

All I can say is if you find the opinions you asked for so distressing, don't ask for them, or at least tell me what those opinions should be so as to avoid distressing you.

If you are going to complain about how distressing those opinions are to you, at least acknowledge that they were only given in response to you requesting them.

I'm sorry. I was simply trying to empathize with your beloved.

 

[CutieMouse]

Because biochemistry is incapable of explaining the complexity of the human psyche.

Biochemistry is part and parcel to Evolutionary Biology. You're the one who started this Evolutionary Biology thing; I'm simply explaining the hormones behind human interaction/love/etc.

BTW thank you for the apology; so gracious of you.

 

[CutieMouse]

I'm sorry. I was simply trying to empathize with your beloved.

That was exactly how I read your post ES.

 

[BLoved]

Wait, if we're hardwired for monogamy, how do you explain sperm warfare? A huge number of the sperm in your ejaculate aren't even capable of fertilizing an egg. Instead, their sole purpose is to block the oviducts or attack and kill "foreign" sperm.

That's right, even your testes assume that your beloved has been with someone else...

That trait pre-dates humanity. I'm pretty sure it is common amongst all mammals.

 

[CutieMouse]

We ARE all hard wired for pair bonding.

We are NOT hard wired for pair bonding with only ONE mate. Quite the opposite. We are hard wired to pair bond all up and down town.

Social systems, control of female sexuality, control of male sexuality, incest taboos, personal preference, marriage, polygamy and polyandry, monogamy - the entire spectrum of human behavior and the myriad ways that different cultures encourage or discourage different behaviors (are the tibetans dysfunctional because a woman has multiple husbands, or just different?) - that is all EXTRA BIOLOGICAL culturation.

The idea that western marital monogamy with a romantic component is "more natural" is wrong. Period.

Yes.
We also live significantly longer than we did as prehistoric man. Hell, we live significantly longer than we did as Victorian Era man. How can one use evolutionary biology to support spending one's entire LIFE with their mate, when "life" used to mean from the age of about 13 until [maybe] 37 or so, and now it means into one's 90s?

 

[BLoved]

Now that is some fascinating stuff to chew on (the bolded part).

I think divorce is the natural product of what happens when a couple realizes they aren't really right for each other after all. With your view of pair-bonding, it was a mistaken bond. Divorce is just how you go about fixing that.

That is how I view it also.

Pair-bonding is primarily for the support of reproduction. The time it took a child to reach self-sufficiency in the Pleistocene is something on the neighbourhood of 13 years (which is why teenagers are still capable of giving birth). Average life expectancy was something on the order of 30 years, give or take.

In theory, once a child had reached an age of self-sufficiency, the need for the pair-bond would end. At that time, perhaps couples parted. More than likely (given the absence of birth-control) there were other, younger children who needed support and thus the need for the pair-bond would continue.

 

[BLoved]

What about people who are asexual?

I'd be curious to know whether this is the result of genetics or experience.

To my knowledge this question hasn't been resolved.

 

[CutieMouse]

That is how I view it also.

Pair-bonding is primarily for the support of reproduction. The time it took a child to reach self-sufficiency in the Pleistocene is something on the neighbourhood of 13 years (which is why teenagers are still capable of giving birth). Average life expectancy was something on the order of 30 years, give or take.

In theory, once a child had reached an age of self-sufficiency, the need for the pair-bond would end. At that time, perhaps couples parted. More than likely (given the absence of birth-control) there were other, younger children who needed support and thus the need for the pair-bond would continue.

Or maybe, by then, one or both of the pair had died. Or maybe, the mother died during birth leaving the father alone to care for an infant. Or maybe they were part of a clan and the male of the pair was inseminating as many women as possible to gain biological control his clan/group/society.

 

[BLoved]

I thought about this too. Asexuality is a desire for emotional intimacy WITHOUT physical intimacy.

I have only heard of one person who was asexual, and he expressed a desire to avoid emotional intimacy.

Mind you, I do not consider this experience conclusive regarding other asexuals.

 

[TypicalDeviant]

That trait pre-dates humanity. I'm pretty sure it is common amongst all mammals.

Humans, on the whole, are a week without TV and internet away from being animals. Minds may have matured with complex language skills, reading, and tools, but much of our "irrational" behavior is driven by rational, animal instinct.

 

[Netzach]

Or maybe they were part of a clan and the male of the pair was inseminating as many women as possible to gain biological control his clan/group/society.

I somehow see this as much more likely than starry eyed pleistocene men changing diapers and standing close by.

 

[00Syd]

I'd be curious to know whether this is the result of genetics or experience.

To my knowledge this question hasn't been resolved.

As far as I can tell, its a sexual orientation the same way heterosexuality and homosexuality is.

http://www.asexuality.org/home/

 

[BLoved]

I can agree with this. I guess what I disagree with is your suggestion that play outside of a pair-bonded relationship is somehow harmful to that relationship (if it exists) or preventing the person from forming a relationship (if they don't have one). I don't think play prevents people from having or forming loving relationships. It's an extracurricular activity. It can get out of hand, but I don't think it is inherently bad.

Kind of like football. By itself, a high school kid playing football is not going to have problems keeping up good grades. If he spends all his time on football, his grades are going to suffer. But football itself isn't the cause of that - it's his lack of focus on his studies.

I tend to think "casual" BDSM (I call it "play") is the same way. You can have fun doing it and it doesn't have to hurt your loving relationship(s).

For the record, if it wasn't clear, I am talking exclusively about open relationships. If one partner is cheating on the other, I don't care what you're doing, that isn't cool. I don't think kinky play outside of a relationship that allows for it is a problem. If the relationship doesn't allow for it, it doesn't matter at all, that's just not cool.

I view casual 'bdsm' as facilitating dysfunctional attitudes towards pair-bonding (ie love). It creates the illusion of intimacy through intimate behaviour, while denying the intimate emotional bonding that results from engaging in intimate behaviour.

From my point of view, this simply aggravates the dysfunction (misery loves company).

And then there are those who do not have dysfunctional attitudes, who engage in casual 'bdsm' without an understanding of how that behaviour affects one's attitude towards love, and without an awareness of how and why those engaged in casual 'bdsm' suppress the emotional bonding.

Abuse victims become abusers who create more abuse victims, the same way child abuse and domestic violence are transmitted from one generation to the next.

Some have sufficient healthy experience to avoid that trap ... some don't.

 

[BLoved]

I always thought our prehistoric ancestors coped with the world in clans, except for Adam and Eve, of course.

Too few males in the clan and the clan cannot defend its territory against encroachment by other clans.

Too many males and you have internal conflicts for mates, thus weakening the clan.

Evolution selected for 1 to 1 pair-bonding as the ideal compromise between too many and too few.

 

[BLoved]

We ARE all hard wired for pair bonding.

We are NOT hard wired for pair bonding with only ONE mate. Quite the opposite. We are hard wired to pair bond all up and down town.

Species where the male mates and leaves, providing no support to the female or offspring tend to produce offspring who are at least mobile within a short period of time, such as caribou and polar bears.

The fact our offspring are helpless and remain so for so long demonstrates our species didn't evolve in that way.

That 21st century humans can engage in such behaviour only indicates that the struggle for survival is a lot easier than it was throughout most of our evolutionary history.

It does not indicate that the hard-wiring has been lost (and the struggle for same-sex marriage indicates the drive to pair-bond is as healthy as ever).

 

[Netzach]

Species where the male mates and leaves, providing no support to the female or offspring tend to produce offspring who are at least mobile within a short period of time, such as caribou and polar bears.

The fact our offspring are helpless and remain so for so long demonstrates our species didn't evolve in that way.

That 21st century humans can engage in such behaviour only indicates that the struggle for survival is a lot easier than it was throughout most of our evolutionary history.

It does not indicate that the hard-wiring has been lost (and the struggle for same-sex marriage indicates the drive to pair-bond is as healthy as ever).

No it does not. It demonstrates that we live in a society that rewards one kind of relationship at the exclusion of other kinds monetarily.

There's nothing stopping me from getting with the girl of my dreams and having lots of sex and releasing tons of endorphins all over the place.

What's lacking is insurance coverage, legal parity, protection - all the stuff that marriage carries with it.