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BDSM lifestyle
BDSM lifestyle
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A third accomplishment through the BDSM performances is the consensual exchanges of power, and the ability to take on a power role that may be the opposite of what one has been forced into in their daily life. This is not only powerful for those participating, but can be emotionally moving for those who witness it. I believe that this is the main difference between those who practice BDSM privately, and those who are willing to put on a more public performance, although it is still hidden from mainstream dominant culture. This is illustrated in a quote from panther, in Techniques of Pleasure:
For a lot of people, BDSM is not about whips and chains, it's about control, it's about power exchange. I think there are a lot of people who can relate to the power exchange: losing control, who holds the remote, who holds the checkbook, who chooses the radio station, who is driving, who decides where we're eating, where we're going on vacation. It's like the classic joke: 'we know who wears the pants in that family' or 'she knows her place.' (Weiss 143)
These performances fly in the face of dominance and oppression. The practitioners negotiate terms, set up safe words, and the one in the submissive role has the option to set up safe words and end a situation at any time. Although the BDSM subculture does perpetuate certain aspects of the dominant mainstream hegemonic culture, such as being full of primarily white people, and mostly men filling the dominant roles, the choice to participate in the performances or not, and witness or not, makes it transgressive. Perhaps most interesting at all, some BDSM practitioners reenact traumatic events from earlier in life as a way to take back control over what happened to...
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...s a subculture isn't hurting anyone, and making people happy or helping oneself or others in some way, it is clearly effective, whether or not the goal is to be resistant.
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Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. PDF.
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990. Print.
Weiss, Margot Danielle. Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print.
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
Rock n’ roll gave people the voice they did not have in the early years. As the genre of music became more wide spread, people actually began to speak out. Altschuler touches on the exploration of how the rock n' roll culture roughly integrated with replaced and conflicted with preceding cultural values. Many of these values were very touch topics. Besides black civil rights, sexuality were one of the most sensitive t...
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One of the central themes of theatrical form is identity and the catalyst by which identity is formed is the body. In using the body as the site of formation of individual identity, women are “uniquely identified with their anatomy” and specifically the parts of their anatomy that differ from that of men (Callaghan 30). Because women are thus defined by their relation ...
Wigley, Mark. "Untitled: The Housing of Pleasure." Sexuality and Space. Ed. Beatriz Colomina. Princeton Papers on Architecture, 1992. 327-389.
The reading assigned titled “The Socially Constructed Body” by Judith Lorber and Yancey Martin dives into the sociology of gender with a specific focus on how the male and female body is compromised by social ideals in the Western culture. She introduces the phenomenon of body ideals pressed on men and women by introducing the shift in cosmetic surgery toward body modifications.
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control by taking away their sense of power and ultimately their own manhood. A direct
Jones, Barry A. "Resisting The Power Of Empire: The Theme Of Resistance In The Book Of
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Carl Wittman, "Refugees From Amerika: A Gay Manifesto (1970)," The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition, ed. Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John McMillian (New York: The New Press, 2011), 583.
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Exact Beauty: Exploring Women's Body Projects and Problems in the 21st Century. Mandell, Nancy (5th ed.). Feminist Issues: Race, Class, and Sexuality (131-160). Toronto: Pearson Canada, Inc. Schulenberg, Jennifer, L. (2006).
Leary, Timothy. "Evolution of Countercultures." CyberReader. Ed. Victor Vitanza. Mass: Allyn & Bacon, 1996. 364.