Another story that gives us bad press...

[DVS]

This makes me sick. This shit gives our lifestyle a bad name. People who know nothing about BDSM assume all relationships are similar. I think the suspects should receive the same abuse they dished out to the victim. She was obviously not giving consent.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I don't know-- there seem to be some very clear lines drawn there, between abuse and BDSM.

I'm sure a lot of people will not notice them, of course.

 

[StrayKat]

The defense expert would discuss whether Bagley’s alleged conduct, and the young woman’s participation, could have been part of a legal bondage and sado-masochistic lifestyle.

With mentally defected 16 years old child? They cant be serious.

 

[switchbitch]

grrrrrrrrr

 

[4bidnfruit]

This made me sick and even thought I don’t participate in the BDSM lifestyle; I am able to see the difference and think most people will. The article is written in a way that makes it clear that there is a difference between a psychopath’s and as they say “legal bondage and sado-masochist lifestyle”.

I am not looking to start a fire storm but in all my ignorance, there is this part of me that sees this as BDSM. I am just not sure I believe that BDSM equals consent. I understand that most people desire the consent and will fight for it but I’m not sure I believe it is required. It isn’t like there are bylaws and card carrying members. Perhaps if there were laws defining legal BDSM than I would reconsider. I just don’t believe that something isn’t BDSM just because someone doesn’t get consent. Yes, the psychopath didn’t get consent but that doesn’t mean he/she isn’t engaging in BDSM. I do see a difference in peoples’ morals but …I guess what I am trying to say is that I can see how some people engage in BDSM for sexual satisfaction and pleasure but there are people that engage in it for other reasons and that reason can be rage, anger, hate, or any other emotions that makes them not care about others.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The difference between BDSM as it's currently practiced, and abuse-- is consent. Concent is what defines and separates BDSM. If there isn't consent, it's abuse, by definition. Actually,that article gave me a bit of hope-- because the dude was so able to draw that distinction.

There certainly was a time when consent was hardly codified. All of this is pretty new, beginning after the second world war when men were coming back and were looking for a hierarchical lifestyle-- with a lot of sex. They created the leatherman society.

What we call BDSM among the hetero crowd mostly begins with the Janus society in San Francisco-- and the Gor novels were pretty inspirational too. As women grew in personal autonomy, the concept of consent became much more common.

Now its mostly a matter of constant education and outreach, peer pressure and gossip.

 

[DVS]

I got on Lebanon's local newspaper's community forum. I found a thread with a few local people's reactions. They seem to be taking it like I'd expect...amazed that it was happening in their area, and offering to give the suspects a dose of their own medicine if they get the chance.

I also got on another local newspaper's web site. Many of the articles are similar, but each has its own bit of information that another doesn't.

The part of the original article that says the investigation began after the woman was hospitalized gets more detail in the local paper. The shocking scene that Stokes says he witnessed Bagley repeatedly electrocuting the girl was what caused the hospital visit. She went into cardiac arrest. I'm sure she had burns on her skin that Bagley couldn't account for. They always seem to go too far at some point and get caught. This time, it didn't result in the death of the girl, but sometimes that's what happens.

Lebanon is a town south of the Lake of the Ozarks, in southern Missouri. The area is full of rocky hills that are covered with trees with winding roads that are just slightly large enough for two cars to meet. It's easy to do something in your house without the neighbor over the next hill even knowing.

It's not that far from the Missouri-Arkansas border, either as well as Branson...think Andy Williams, Dogpatch, Lil' Abner, etc. Conservative, God fearing family type people who love their country and country music.

 

[StrayKat]

God fearing family type people who love their country and country music.

Charges have alleged that the Bagleys sexually abused and tortured the young, “mentally deficient” woman for several years at their Lebanon residence and also forced her to dance at local strip clubs.

No comment.

 

[firenzi]

I remember that story in the news when they were first arrested. Awful, awful story.

I would hope most people would see it for what it is- an obvious case of sociopaths preying on a vulnerable victim. A 16 year old with possible mental deficiencies isn't capable of giving sexual consent to an adult, no matter the type of activity and no matter what the 16 yr old says or does.

I hope the poor girl is doing all right and receiving appropriate treatment.

 

[DVS]

Originally Posted by DVS
God fearing family type people who love their country and country music.

This was meant to give someone an idea of how most of the people in the area are, especially around Branson, which is a country music theater mecca and not much else.

Originally Posted by DVS
Charges have alleged that the Bagleys sexually abused and tortured the young, “mentally deficient” woman for several years at their Lebanon residence and also forced her to dance at local strip clubs.

Obviously, even though Lebanon only has about 15,000 residents, there are those who would do harm to another if they can get away with it...and with no concerns for their safety. The woman was said to have the mentality of a 13 year old girl. A mentally deficient woman isn't going to know much more than what the mean man with a loud voice tells her to do and not do. She's finally out of it, now, though...and the mean man with a loud voice is deep in it. In prison, it will be Bubba that's in him.

No comment.

There's no need to comment. We all know there are creeps and assholes all over. These are just a few more.

 

[4bidnfruit]

The difference between BDSM as it's currently practiced, and abuse-- is consent. Concent is what defines and separates BDSM. If there isn't consent, it's abuse, by definition. Actually,that article gave me a bit of hope-- because the dude was so able to draw that distinction.

There certainly was a time when consent was hardly codified. All of this is pretty new, beginning after the second world war when men were coming back and were looking for a hierarchical lifestyle-- with a lot of sex. They created the leatherman society.

What we call BDSM among the hetero crowd mostly begins with the Janus society in San Francisco-- and the Gor novels were pretty inspirational too. As women grew in personal autonomy, the concept of consent became much more common.

Now its mostly a matter of constant education and outreach, peer pressure and gossip.

I get this~ I do. I understand that it is abuse but I just haven’t gotten to the point of separating abuse from bdsm. I am not saying that all BDSM is abuse; I am just saying that without consent, abuse can be delivered with a bdsm flare.

For many years, I didn’t understand and quite honestly, I did believe that BDSM was for the psychotic. That doesn’t mean I believed being tied and spanked was psychotic, I just believed that once the lines were crossed it went from kinky to BDSM. Article like this force the BDSM communities to speak up about boundaries in BDSM and consent being the norm.

I read here all the time when people warn others to be careful because there are people who will use BDSM as an excuse for their psychotic behavior. I have no doubt it is used to mask many behaviors that are and should be illegal but it doesn’t change the fact that she was flogged, electrocuted, pimped out, and made to do things that are considered BDSM activities.

I know these stories anger people In the BDSM community and a small part of me understands why but I don’t understand why some of the anger is towards those that don’t understand. I don’t engage in BDSM and if I did, perhaps I would be angry about these type of stories as well but from my experience, stories like these, are dividing the psychotic’s from the BDSM community.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I don’t understand why some of the anger is towards those that don’t understand

I don't think there is any anger towards the folk who don't understand-- there is plenty of anger towards people like this whose actions might incite the mobs with the pitchforks against the eeevul that is BDSM.

And then too, some of us react with anger against the things that threaten us.

 

[4bidnfruit]

I don't think there is any anger towards the folk who don't understand-- there is plenty of anger towards people like this whose actions might incite the mobs with the pitchforks against the eeevul that is BDSM.

And then too, some of us react with anger against the things that threaten us.

You are correct. I should have found different wording. Perhaps signs of frustration and when i read i probably considedred past threads like this and I shouldn't have.

while i'm at it, I may as well say that my comment about not understanding the anger about the article was incorrect as well. I'd try to find the words to correct it but trying to keep my emotions out of it is draining.

Basically, i was just trying to say that these articles are getting better and educating the people that don't understand. it doesn't always have a negative impact.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Basically, i was just trying to say that these articles are getting better and educating the people that don't understand. it doesn't always have a negative impact.

I agree with you on that! I think this particular article is very clear about the difference-- I was surprised at how even-handed it was.

I try to educate people about the difference between psychotic behavior-type sadism or masochism, and the sensation and endurance play we call BDSM. There's a website called devicebondage.com for isntance, which looks mighty hardcore. You'd think the women would be maimed for life-- but in fact, not only are they unharmed (bruised and sore as fuck, I bet) but many of them come back for more.

Someone said something like; "Well, it isn't real," by which it seems he meant; "Well, they don't get killed. They get a joy ride." But that's exactly what defines BDSM.

 

[StrayKat]

We all know there are creeps and assholes all over. These are just a few more.

I know. But I dont want to know. It makes me angry and irrationally frightened for my children. And I cant if I live 100 years understand the hypocrisy of people who must have known what has been going on for years and never did anything to stop it. I think I blame more such "no see, no hear" folks than real villains.

But in my head the whole thing is so far from BDSM I cant even start making any connections. Maybe that is why I cant focus on "bad rep" for BDSMers part of the entire story and just see the horror itself.

 

[DVS]

I know. But I dont want to know. It makes me angry and irrationally frightened for my children. And I cant if I live 100 years understand the hypocrisy of people who must have known what has been going on for years and never did anything to stop it. I think I blame more such "no see, no hear" folks than real villains.

But in my head the whole thing is so far from BDSM I cant even start making any connections. Maybe that is why I cant focus on "bad rep" for BDSMers part of the entire story and just see the horror itself.

In that forum I linked, there was one guy who said he was glad that the wife was also arrested for the same thing as her husband. I guess she was interviewed on some local TV station and didn't seem remorseful at all or even act like what they had done was wrong. When she was interviewed, she had yet to be arrested.

Then, there was also some talk about her getting a free ride, if she implicated her husband. Someone else said she couldn't implicate her husband, because a wife can't do that. Another said it's true that a wife can't witness against her husband, if she only sees something. But, if she's arrested for the same thing, she can make her conviction lighter by ratting on her husband.

Another article I found stated that even though everybody who admitted guilt in this case were pretty much ratting on others involved, nobody was getting a lighter sentence because of it. I like hearing that. It always bothers me when someone gets off with a lighter sentence, just because he has information that convicts someone else. I see it as the police not completely doing their job and letting someone off with a lighter sentence by implicating another.

It does make a case a little stronger to have one felon point fingers at another, because he knows they were both involved. But, to let a felon off with a lighter sentence just because he snitched...it always looks like a "jail house witness", someone who often is assumed to fake hearing someone admit to a crime while in jail, just to get a deal from the prosecutor in return. This sort of thing is much more credible if the witness gets nothing in return.

 

[DVS]

I get this~ I do. I understand that it is abuse but I just haven’t gotten to the point of separating abuse from bdsm. I am not saying that all BDSM is abuse; I am just saying that without consent, abuse can be delivered with a bdsm flare.

For many years, I didn’t understand and quite honestly, I did believe that BDSM was for the psychotic. That doesn’t mean I believed being tied and spanked was psychotic, I just believed that once the lines were crossed it went from kinky to BDSM. Article like this force the BDSM communities to speak up about boundaries in BDSM and consent being the norm.

I read here all the time when people warn others to be careful because there are people who will use BDSM as an excuse for their psychotic behavior. I have no doubt it is used to mask many behaviors that are and should be illegal but it doesn’t change the fact that she was flogged, electrocuted, pimped out, and made to do things that are considered BDSM activities.

I know these stories anger people In the BDSM community and a small part of me understands why but I don’t understand why some of the anger is towards those that don’t understand. I don’t engage in BDSM and if I did, perhaps I would be angry about these type of stories as well but from my experience, stories like these, are dividing the psychotic’s from the BDSM community.

As for BDSMers not liking stories like this, think of a police scandal or some sort of authority figure who takes money on the side, against the law. Most people view police and prosecutors as being above that sort of thing, so when they go after someone else, they don't look the other way or can't be bought off. If you can't trust those who enforce the law, who can you trust? Those people carry guns. I'm not saying every cop is angelic, but for the most part, they try to do their job and do it right. A bad cop only makes the good cop's job more difficult. Without the trust of the general public, they're always fighting a loosing battle with that, as well as fighting crime.

It's the same for the military. We like to think we are the good guys. If some group goes rogue and kills a bunch of innocent people, it looks bad for the military as a whole. One bad apple, etc.

So, when a story like this comes out, people who don't know what the BDSM world is really like might assume it was a normal BDSM relationship and it just went bad, like they all eventually do (sarcasm). A good BDSM relationship is never heard of, for various reasons. All the vanilla crowd knows about BDSM is what they read or hear from those bad situations that were really just abuse with a BDSM veneer.

Sadly, there are some newbies out there who have a fake dom just like this and because they don't know any better, they assume they are in a BDSM relationship. Actually, they are just with a psychopath who will do his best to alienate everybody from the two of them, so he has complete and absolute control over her life. Eventually, she might end up getting hurt, or killed, or she might find someone to help her get away from him. But, the longer she's with him, the more control he'll have and the fewer number of outside people she'll have any contact with at all...when he's not around, that is.

This isn't a hate for those who don't know about fake doms and all, but I do hate that they don't know. I hate that they don't spend more time understanding things before they jump feet first into a D/s relationship, just listening to sexual urges and not enough to common sense. Less of these newbies getting in with the wrong kind of guy would maybe help to some day let the real BDSM come out into the open.

BDSM always seems to get a bad rap from stories like this, where someone is held captive against their will and tortured viciously. And to someone on the outside, a healthy, trusting BDSM relationship can look very similar to one that isn't, so the unknown is what we hate. Education the public would be good, but it's a slow process.

 

[4bidnfruit]

Someone said something like; "Well, it isn't real," by which it seems he meant; "Well, they don't get killed. They get a joy ride." But that's exactly what defines BDSM.

This comment blew my mind because I’ve been there and it also made me wish I didn’t jump so fast into this conversation. I have altered my opinion over the past couple years and no longer believe that survival is “vanilla” but I still have a ways to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I understand how the BDSM community can see these articles as negative, just as a dirty cop or rogue soldier can put a black mark in their organization but being dirty/rogue does not change the fact that they were still a cop/soldier.

In the past couple days, I tried to respond to a few comments with a little more explanation but I keep deleting. I will admit that while trying to explain my thought process, I realized that my support of these articles can be used to prove that BDSM requires consent. I am not saying that I believe it defines BDSM but I will acknowledge that perhaps torture can be a tool that appears to be BDSM.

Well I doubt that makes sense but, for now, it’s the best I can do.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hmm. I think it's more like BDSM uses tools that torture also uses. In less lethal ways, and with different aims-- also, with a different set of rules, which the larger community has formulated over the years and by and large, honors. Sometimes, the difference in quantity and quality can be the defining difference. I mean-- if I swung a wrench through my windshield, I would NOT be fixing the car, right? Even though I was using a tool that could have tightened the bolts?

 

[huntersangel]

i have never participated in the bdsm lifestyle so....

please excuse this question, but doesn't "no" mean "no" regardless of a previous agreement?

 

[DVS]

please excuse this question, but doesn't "no" mean "no" regardless of a previous agreement?

Yes, no always means no, in a regular, consensual BDSM relationship, agreement or play session. But in this particular situation, there was no agreement. The couple that started out letting the woman stay at their trailer house used her mental deficiency against her, kidnapped her and forced her to preform sexual acts against her will. If the story holds true, she was also tortured and all of this is coming out as a BDSM type of group, using her against her will for their pleasure. Kidnapping is just the beginning. The phrase "no means no" doesn't apply.

 

[Stella_Omega]

please excuse this question, but doesn't "no" mean "no" regardless of a previous agreement?

yes, and that would be one more difference between BDSM community practices and torture.

 

[4bidnfruit]

Hmm. I think it's more like BDSM uses tools that torture also uses. In less lethal ways, and with different aims-- also, with a different set of rules, which the larger community has formulated over the years and by and large, honors. Sometimes, the difference in quantity and quality can be the defining difference. I mean-- if I swung a wrench through my windshield, I would NOT be fixing the car, right? Even though I was using a tool that could have tightened the bolts?

LOL~ I don't know what to say to that except, thanks for the laugh. I do see what you are saying though.

Yes, no always means no, in a regular, consensual BDSM relationship, agreement or play session.

yes, and that would be one more difference between BDSM community practices and torture.

I just read an article from the “what made you smile” thread and it made me wonder. It mentioned the 80’s and the need to protect people from HIV transmission. It sounded like that is when all the rules started to come into play so it leaves me wondering: is that when consent became the norm?

I realize that most people would have respected the limits of another person but during and prior to the 80’s would someone be able to justify their lack of morals when crossing those lines because rules were not in place. Wait… not quite right. Any psychopath could justify it to themselves, I just wonder if a psychopath would have found support in the BDSM community because …UGH
Point blank~ was consent part of the BDSM community during the 80’s and prior?

Not trying to hijack the thread, it just seems more appropriate here than the thread that led me to wonder.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Point blank~ was consent part of the BDSM community during the 80’s and prior?

Safewords and explicit consent became more common by the end of the 80's, more generally known with the advent of usenet in the 90's. The internet has done SO much for us!

There wasn't so much of a community prior to the 80's, in fact. There were a few groups here and there, that were difficult to find-- at least, from my point of view, because I never found any of them in those days. I personally knew of one called the Society Of Janus, but it was far away in San Francisco and I had no way, back then, of reaching them. And I knew about a couple of groups in NYC-- of course. It was all very dark and scary. I have a feeling now, that the NYC group I had heard about was actually a prodomme business, and not what I would nowadays call a "dungeon."

The largest network pre-80's was among gay men, what's called the leather scene. That had been in place since the end of WWII, and the protocols were -- and still are-- derived from military protocol. In those days, you gave consent by showing up. You had learned what to expect, more or less, and were willing to take the less-fun things along with the ones that you wanted. There wasn't much in the way of safe words, but the guys didn't expect to control their scenes so much. And there were no women in those scenes. Still aren't.

Now, this does NOT mean that hets didn't have BDSM desires too. It just means that there was very little out there for the general public to find. I would say that explicit consent and safewords are really het concepts, developed in order to deal with the physical disparities in strength between most men and women, and also-- simply because women are generally more verbal.

ETA: We had a well-known and long-time psychopath visit us here, andskimming his threads will give you some over view of community reactions to people like that-- do a search for the username Bloved. And take some aspirin before you start reading.

And here is a clever little story about an Old Guard Leatherman amongst the whippersnappers; Spontaneous by Dusk Peterson (GM BDSM)

 

[StrayKat]

I personally dont give a rats ass about "rules" and "norms", my own moral values generally work fine in any kind of community I met so far.
The way I see it - consent is what differs BDSM from abuse. If you talk about BDSM without consent you talk about abuse. Its apples and oranges for me.