09-30-2016, 04:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-30-2016, 04:33 PM by rva_jeremy.)
There's a few things I'd like to mention:
1. I hope that when we're discussing sensitive matters like this, we can avoid any connotation of judgment. For our sakes at the very least. I don't get down with all that stuff, and probably would hold my nose except that I read some literature that gave case histories on the healing and liberating nature of people being able to express themselves like this. Reality is weird, y'all, and people are going to do this. And it's my understanding that polarity is an energetic phenomenon at its heart, so there's no foolproof way to conclusively arrive at the polarity of any action in the abstract (I get this might be controversial, and I'm happy to start another thread on this if anybody wants to talk it out). So it seems completely besides the point to, for instance, debate whether something like S&M is STS or not--it's not a coherent question in the first place. I'm not accusing anybody of anything; just throwing out a comment.
2. Does anybody really think there's a literal measurement in any way that is meaningful to us in the here and now to determine polarity? Confederation sources state over and over again that we can't know our exact true position on the scale. I've always just considered the 51% figure to be an approximation of something more deep and subtle than I can possibly imagine. I don't think of myself as a balance scale, in other words--except when the metaphor, and I stress metaphor, is useful. In fact, if harvest is determined by the ability to enjoy a certain intensity of light, who's to say it's not utterly subjective to the entity in the first place? I just think it's confusing to insist on too much rigor around these matters when we all know that metaphysically we're playing with crayons when we try to reason with words about them.
Just a thought; I'm not an authority and I'm happy to state that I'm just another bozo on the bus. For what it's worth, I think riccdaw made better points defending the polar neutrality of kink than I have. And I guess part of my point is that anytime we don't maintain a neutrality about this stuff, we risk getting judgmental, and that comes back to bite in my experience.
1. I hope that when we're discussing sensitive matters like this, we can avoid any connotation of judgment. For our sakes at the very least. I don't get down with all that stuff, and probably would hold my nose except that I read some literature that gave case histories on the healing and liberating nature of people being able to express themselves like this. Reality is weird, y'all, and people are going to do this. And it's my understanding that polarity is an energetic phenomenon at its heart, so there's no foolproof way to conclusively arrive at the polarity of any action in the abstract (I get this might be controversial, and I'm happy to start another thread on this if anybody wants to talk it out). So it seems completely besides the point to, for instance, debate whether something like S&M is STS or not--it's not a coherent question in the first place. I'm not accusing anybody of anything; just throwing out a comment.
2. Does anybody really think there's a literal measurement in any way that is meaningful to us in the here and now to determine polarity? Confederation sources state over and over again that we can't know our exact true position on the scale. I've always just considered the 51% figure to be an approximation of something more deep and subtle than I can possibly imagine. I don't think of myself as a balance scale, in other words--except when the metaphor, and I stress metaphor, is useful. In fact, if harvest is determined by the ability to enjoy a certain intensity of light, who's to say it's not utterly subjective to the entity in the first place? I just think it's confusing to insist on too much rigor around these matters when we all know that metaphysically we're playing with crayons when we try to reason with words about them.
Just a thought; I'm not an authority and I'm happy to state that I'm just another bozo on the bus. For what it's worth, I think riccdaw made better points defending the polar neutrality of kink than I have. And I guess part of my point is that anytime we don't maintain a neutrality about this stuff, we risk getting judgmental, and that comes back to bite in my experience.
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