Words From 30 Years Ago
In the mid-1970's an advice column in Playboy magazine referred to submissives as victims, and concluded that "the master and slave roles are devoid of personality. Pleasure is uncertain, pain guaranteed. A sadist never asks his partner if she came or, for that matter, if it hurt. We'd advise caution: these situations have been known to backlash."
A charter member of The Eulenspiegel Society responded to these comments with a letter to Penthouse Variations, and in doing so, provided a public affirmation of consensual S&M practices. The following excerpts are from that original response 30 years ago:
"In the Playboy Advisor, you tackled an inquiry from a couple who are groping with their inclination toward S&M and whose apologetic phraseology reveals them as ripe candidates for guilt complexes. Unfortunately, you proceeded to lay just that on them, and on all your other readers, with arguments indistinguishable from those of old ladies who used to warn that masturbation causes baldness.
"It is, right off, a vivid demonstration of your abysmal ignorance to refer to the submissive partner as a "victim" and to assume that it is a "she". Victims are involuntary subjects of criminal acts, not our partners, nor the girlfriend of that inquirer. Your choice of the word indicates that your sources are not intelligent sadists engaged in the serious practice of S&M, but probably perverts who were or should have been in jail.
"As for your assumption that it is the female who appears in the submissive role, anyone who knows anything about S&M is well aware that there are as many relationships with the male submissive as there are with the female submissive. Of course, this is probably incomprehensible to someone with a typical Playboy macho psyche.
"Turning to your so-called factual assertions, the proposition that S&M necessarily involves an impersonal relationship is a patent absurdity. It is actually much more likely that relationships will be superficial among those oriented to your playmate concepts than between those who enter a "master/slave" situation.
"When you equated "slave" and "victim", it was clear that you had perpetrated an obvious mistake, for submission to the role is voluntary. There has not been a legally enforceable slave-master relationship since the Emancipation Proclamation. Just what kind of idiot do you imagine would submit to a stranger's chains for an impersonal round of "slavery"?
"As for the "master," there are two factors leading to closeness with the partner. A psychological aspect involves the notion of the master's owning the slave; this arouses an instinctive proprietary attitude which has him or her bestow on the slave a value and attention your writer probably experiences only when polishing his Mercedes.
"Of heavy practical concern is the fact that the slave is a volunteer. To win that submission certainly takes much more courting and interpersonal rapport than getting some playmate to drop her pants inthe back seat of a car. While ostensibly taking, the master must truly be giving pleasure lest the slave not volunteer next time.
"If a master in fact doesn't ask the if the slave came or if the treatment hurt -- a supposition your writer is arrogantly dogmatic enough to asset as an absolute -- it is because most masters are so intimately aware of their partner's experience that they already well know.
"Also, proposing an inquiry as to whether the procedure hurt is a doltish redundancy anyway: spanking, strapping, and whipping are supposed to hurt. But not grasping this elemental point is an appropriate closing for a piece that never did touch upon the questions with which the inquirer was struggling.
"Finally in this area, you might try to bring yourselves to recognize the distinction between "hurt" and "harm", as well as you seem to understand the difference between marijuana and heroin, and we'll take it from there.
"While the master-slave relationship originates in mutual consent, the terms of the situation immediately strip away that consent -- and with it, all the face-saving devices. There's no feeling your way with inquiries whether your partner would like to do this or that, and there's no excusing yourself for failing to do something because you thought your partner wouldn't want to. You're on your own, friend, and you're destined to open up just as much of yourself as that submissive lying under you.
"Assuming, by now, you understand that S&M is lovemaking and that its goal is, as in any other form of lovemaking, to produce a mutual pleasure, consider how sensitive and sensually artistic the "master" must be to read the "slave" and orchestrate the scene to achieve fulfillment for both. There's nowhere to hide any inner cloddishness from this partner.
"S&M is really no more than exactly what the Playboy Philosophy has been advocating all along, a means for partners to provide one another with mutual pleasure.
A charter member of The Eulenspiegel Society responded to these comments with a letter to Penthouse Variations, and in doing so, provided a public affirmation of consensual S&M practices. The following excerpts are from that original response 30 years ago:
"In the Playboy Advisor, you tackled an inquiry from a couple who are groping with their inclination toward S&M and whose apologetic phraseology reveals them as ripe candidates for guilt complexes. Unfortunately, you proceeded to lay just that on them, and on all your other readers, with arguments indistinguishable from those of old ladies who used to warn that masturbation causes baldness.
"It is, right off, a vivid demonstration of your abysmal ignorance to refer to the submissive partner as a "victim" and to assume that it is a "she". Victims are involuntary subjects of criminal acts, not our partners, nor the girlfriend of that inquirer. Your choice of the word indicates that your sources are not intelligent sadists engaged in the serious practice of S&M, but probably perverts who were or should have been in jail.
"As for your assumption that it is the female who appears in the submissive role, anyone who knows anything about S&M is well aware that there are as many relationships with the male submissive as there are with the female submissive. Of course, this is probably incomprehensible to someone with a typical Playboy macho psyche.
"Turning to your so-called factual assertions, the proposition that S&M necessarily involves an impersonal relationship is a patent absurdity. It is actually much more likely that relationships will be superficial among those oriented to your playmate concepts than between those who enter a "master/slave" situation.
"When you equated "slave" and "victim", it was clear that you had perpetrated an obvious mistake, for submission to the role is voluntary. There has not been a legally enforceable slave-master relationship since the Emancipation Proclamation. Just what kind of idiot do you imagine would submit to a stranger's chains for an impersonal round of "slavery"?
"As for the "master," there are two factors leading to closeness with the partner. A psychological aspect involves the notion of the master's owning the slave; this arouses an instinctive proprietary attitude which has him or her bestow on the slave a value and attention your writer probably experiences only when polishing his Mercedes.
"Of heavy practical concern is the fact that the slave is a volunteer. To win that submission certainly takes much more courting and interpersonal rapport than getting some playmate to drop her pants inthe back seat of a car. While ostensibly taking, the master must truly be giving pleasure lest the slave not volunteer next time.
"If a master in fact doesn't ask the if the slave came or if the treatment hurt -- a supposition your writer is arrogantly dogmatic enough to asset as an absolute -- it is because most masters are so intimately aware of their partner's experience that they already well know.
"Also, proposing an inquiry as to whether the procedure hurt is a doltish redundancy anyway: spanking, strapping, and whipping are supposed to hurt. But not grasping this elemental point is an appropriate closing for a piece that never did touch upon the questions with which the inquirer was struggling.
"Finally in this area, you might try to bring yourselves to recognize the distinction between "hurt" and "harm", as well as you seem to understand the difference between marijuana and heroin, and we'll take it from there.
"While the master-slave relationship originates in mutual consent, the terms of the situation immediately strip away that consent -- and with it, all the face-saving devices. There's no feeling your way with inquiries whether your partner would like to do this or that, and there's no excusing yourself for failing to do something because you thought your partner wouldn't want to. You're on your own, friend, and you're destined to open up just as much of yourself as that submissive lying under you.
"Assuming, by now, you understand that S&M is lovemaking and that its goal is, as in any other form of lovemaking, to produce a mutual pleasure, consider how sensitive and sensually artistic the "master" must be to read the "slave" and orchestrate the scene to achieve fulfillment for both. There's nowhere to hide any inner cloddishness from this partner.
"S&M is really no more than exactly what the Playboy Philosophy has been advocating all along, a means for partners to provide one another with mutual pleasure.
posted by gem at 6:32 PM
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