Social commentary from Miss Betsy
Last night ABC news reran a segment of Primetime, where they demonstrated the willingness of so-called ordinary people to inflict pain and humiliation on others. Many of these were carefully controlled laboratory experiments. The famous "Milgram" experiment reproduced the results Dr. Stanley Milgram found almost 50 years ago: a typical person will electrocute another person to merciless levels, even levels they believe are fatal, if told to by an authority figure in a lab coat! Men, women, students, anyone. It suggests how readily some dubious authority figure can control other people, and persuade nastiness from them.A second experiment, the "Stanford Prison Experiment," gave us grainy video footage from 1971 of college students humiliating fellow students in a mock prison. They had no authority figure telling them what to do. They were simply named as 'guards,' with their charges designated as 'prisoners.' And left without any guidance, they degenerated rapidly into the worst possible persecutors. The experiment shut down after a short time because their brutality was causing nervous breakdowns in the prisoners, and starting to lapse into unbridled violence.
But these were tests. Lab stuff in a controlled environment, which people have cheerfully overlooked. It "can't happen here," and "I wouldn't do that," are natural responses. Or are they. I think they're socially conditioned responses. We all know damned well we'd abuse power if we had it. We all know we'd follow orders if we were told to. But we're conditioned by society, at least our democratic experiment in 'freedom,' to claim we are better than that. It's easy to feel disgusted at the 'others' who are cheerfully being brutal. Then we distance ourselves from them by claiming heartily, "I wouldn't."
The truth is, clearly, time and again they've proven a very large sampling of people WILL.
And that's why Miss Betsy has such respect for the self awareness of spankos. You and I who channel our love for power, or attraction for pain, and our pleasure in exchanging those roles, are really healthy. We've found a safe, sane and wholly consensual means to deal with this aspect of human nature. Socially, we are called abnormal, perverse, freakish, for enjoying power exchange over the knee. I doubt any of us would allow this kind of conduct with a non-consenting adult. Or a child. The truth is, the nominally normal in our world will. 67% of the time, according to ABC News.
Thank you, spankos. You restore my waning faith in humanity. Someone out there is willing to admit they will spank another person, and enjoy it. And they're responsibility honed that admission into a safe lifestyle, built on respect and trust. That's something unique we offer the world.
posted by Aunty Agony at 1/07/2007 12:12:00 AM
7 Comments:
Before dizzying ourselves in an orgy of self-congratulation, we kindly, well-adjusted, virtuous spanking enthusiasts will have to prove,(as we cannot), that no elite member of the SS, for example, was ever one of us...
While there are a cluster -- a relative minority, I'm afraid -- of sanely enjoyable websites on the subject, a very large number -- often those praised most enthusiastically by the listers -- use the spanking theme as portal to an unpleasant and disturbing compound of vicious sadism and dehumanizing consumer-goods eroticism -- and yet I'm sure those who support such nastiness claim themselves to be "spankos", no less than the mild-mannered subscribers to the consensual fun-and-fancy sites. Enjoy what you enjoy, but don't start claiming any special merit beyond enjoyment for your kinks.
Congratulations on another significant posting.
I'd like first to comment on Belmasetto's remarks (above). My feeling is that these other kind of supposedly spanking websites – the sort that you can easily find through search engines but not through links from blogs or sites in the spirit of Aunty's – have no real authenticity behind them. It's like they were put together by porn corporations whose marketing departments identified a demand for this sort of thing. But typically these kind of sites exhibit no deeper understanding or personal feeling for the human dimensions of the spanking experience, and that's why their work comes across as so shallow and meaningless. At least that's my take on it.
On to the main theme: These kind of experiments give people an excuse (or a social framework) to do things they otherwise would not readily allow themselves to do. The experiments show two things, first how ready many people are to follow orders from an authority figure (scary), and second how ready many people are to inflict pain on their fellow human beings (maybe less surprising).
I'm with Miss Betsy in thinking that spanko culture is doing good for society by bringing these kind of desires into playful social settings. May we all gain some useful self knowledge and have some fun with modes of social intercourse that have too long been the exclusive preserve of those who would subjugate, repress and enslave us.
Well put belmasto. My only proviso would be that probably many of the listers don't give a rats arse about the content per se, and just want the contents of your pocket, and probably (being not real spankos) chuck out stuff that they think "WE" want to see. Apart from that I think you are bang on the money.
Thank you for this posting, AUnty. It's refreshing to be praised rather than avoided, even if it is only among more of us "spankos."
I will argue politely that we are like any other group or class or species... not all good and not all evil.
Power can be a heady thing, just as can pain and pleasure. But for those of us who have learned to use it to control ourselves rather than rule us, we are the truest of winners.
ANd those poor foolish majority choose to fear what they do not know, including not only us but the monsters within. In contrast, we have not only faced our monsters (most of us) but have flung open the closet and basement doors and shone brilliant light of love into the darkest places of our souls and our pasts... and stepped into the light with new realization!
Hugs... sorry to ramble.
Tiggs
I have no conception of what belmasetto is talking about in his comment. Where did he get the idea that I was engaged in an "orgy of self-congratulations?" I said that safe, sane and consentual spanking fun was a health way to practice power exchange. Gee, how did that statement manage to be controversial on a blog about spanking. Belmasetto's comment about the SS is totally illogical. (In fact, for those of you who are not writing majors, it's a logical fallacy called "special pleading.")
What if they were spankos? Hitler bred German Shepherds....does that make all German Shepherd breeders genocidal? Who could possibly care what the sex lives of SS guards were? They killed millions of people: no other similarity between them and the rest of the human race is relavant.
I claim no "special merit beyond [my] kinks." Like I said, I think spanking enthusiasts, BDSMers and anyone else who has a safe, sane, and consentual power exchange in their relationship is being honest with themselves. And I think many of the people out there who condemn consentual adult practices are not, in fact, immune from enjoying the use and abuse of power well outside the confines of a consentual relationship. This concerns me. I do think that it's better to be self aware, and to channel any enjoyment of power into a consentual relationship.
My praise of honesty and consentual sex among adults was not intended to be dizzy, or orgiastic. It was, as other comments noted, an effort to be "significant," and hopefully interesting.
There is a play about the Milford experiment that I believe was called "The Tenth Switch". The acual experiment is described here: http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/WWI/obedienc.htm
Sadly, I couldn't find a link to the play itself, but the researchers didn't think that they could have been coaxed into torturing the subject in the chair (they were better than that!), but it was pointed out that they tortured the subject of the experiment.
Somethings like that play should be required viewing of everyone. BDSMers tend to have more empathic people that the general public. Lets hope that we don't leave that empathy in the bedroom when we aren't playing.
Hi all:
I have just started reading your blog Aunty. When I came across this I was amazed that no one noted that Mood Pictures did a parody of "The Stanford Prison Experiment". Surprisingly called "The Standford Prison Experiment". The mood pictures version was all women while the original was all men.
As it happens I watched it earlier today :-).
Cheers!
Gary
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