Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post
One hopes that your not just going to make yet another not so vieled attack against Goreans in general leo since that would be completely blasie.
I hope so too. I'm sorry now I mentioned it, because the last thing I want to do is start that fight up again. It wasn't really fair, because Dr Lange is only relevant insofar as most other authors espousing such attitudes date to the '50s or earlier.
Dr Lange's (aka Norman's) philosophy may not have been presented in it's entirity until the 1970's yet it is completely applicable when making comparisons about male/female relationships and thus bdsm in previous eras since what the OP is touching on...that male/female relationships are to some degree catagorically and universally timeless despite attempts to repress them is quite relavent.
Let me try to explain why I have a problem with that.

When you read some puritan-feminist writer declaring that no woman could ever really want to let a man hurt and dominate her, that the claim that women have such feelings has been foisted on the world by male pornographers, and any woman who actually has such urges is either emotionally damaged or a victim of male chauvinist oppressive false consciousness... it's not just that it's wrong, it feels like a personal attack, because it denies not merely your experience but your own deepest feelings. Am I right?

Does that help you to understand how I (and thir and other women like her) feel when we are told that the only real and natural way for people to be is emotionally repressed aggressive competitive men and gentle nurturing empathic women, and the idea that men and women can be any other way is a lie put about by feminists, and any man who really feels what are supposed to be "feminine" qualities is either a freak or trying to bend himself out of shape in obedience to feminist ideology?

I went through my schooldays being called a queer because I just didn't want to compete and aggress like boys were meant to. The hippie movement was a liberation for me, not just for the political and sexual freedom, but because for the first time there were role models in popular culture of (hetereosexual!) men who were gentle and nurturing with flowers in their hair. (It took another ten years to learn that I could be all that and dominant and sadistic, but that's another topic for another day.)

When I see another flat statement that this is how men are, this is how women are, it's nature's way, you can't fight it... then I feel someone is once again trying to shove me (and my lovers and playmates, not to mention my children) back into boxes that never fitted us, that crushed us out of shape till we were able to break free. It denies not only my experience but my deepest feelings, and I can't help taking it personally.

I never, ever deny that you or anyone else feel the way you feel, are the way you are, have the nature you have. All I ever ask is that you return the courtesy, and allow that maybe the way I am is as "natural" and as real as the way you are, and that I (and the people I've known and loved) are not some weird unhealthy deviation from your natural wholesome norm. I get enough of that from mainstream puritans: I don't need it here.