Metaphors

Thinking about this topic is part of what prompted the early note about the diverse ways of realizing our needs as people with ‘fetishes.’

Most people I’m sure can happily do without looking for metaphors for D/s and S&M. Not me: I like exploring such images.

And I two come to mind most often:

• Theater
• Dance

BDSM as theater is an image that annoys some folks. They find it frivolous or suggesting falsity. I don’t mean High School Musical. In classical times the presentation of life through dramatic art was taking very seriously. Something akin to the catharsis that Aristotle wrote about is one of the products of many a good scene.

And we are often collaborating in the creation of fictions. No one is literally a slave however seductive that word is. Though we may be degraded we aren’t really worthless.

With dance I think of two people, one leads the other follows. Together they create beautiful patterns. They collaborate for happiness and pleasure.

North American chattel slavery may have provided a metaphor that does damage. It contributes to that nasty old One True Way business by suggesting that a true slave is like an involuntary plantation worker denied any right of expression. Slavery in the Roman and Ottoman empires was very different.

Do you have any models for BDSM in your life? Not that anyone should take metaphors seriously. Often they do reveal hidden assumptions, explain preferences.