CallaFirestormBW
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quote:
ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
This, I think, is a great starting point to discuss. I think I agree with you here...except, the problem I keep running into is that it becomes fruitless to have anyone but the individual themselves gauge what "function normally" and "make reasonable daily decisions effectively" constitutes. Those, to me, seem inevitably subjective questions.
Either we are surrendering those parameters to someone else to decide for us (in which case we're back, potentially, to geocultural argumentum ad populum...which would put the WIITWD community in a bit of trouble) or we let the individual decide how/if they are hampered...in which case we still need at least one universal measuring point, unless we absolve ourselves of the competence/incompetence dichotomy altogether and say there are just infinite shades of gray. But that, I think, is also incorrect.
There's a really great example of this, -truly- stretched out for the world to see, in the character of Monk on USA network. Monk is a clinically recognized hypochondriacal, obsessive-compulsive flake. The thing is, he's also functional, within established parameters, and capable of living his life. I am pretty sure, though, that a lot of people would be -really- uncomfortable having someone like that as their s-type, or even as their bottom. The bottom line (ok, keep the pun, really, you can have it...) for me, though, is "what is functional"? It can't be judged -strictly- by internal criteria, unless a person is willing to separate hirself from society and live as a hermit. I don't consider hermits to be necessarily dysfunctional, but their method of coping with function is to put themselves in a situation where their capacity is not stressed by the 'normal' world. On the other hand, there is a broad spectrum of adaptation possible to allow a person to function, with or without cognitive and/or physical challenges.
I think that a lot of this we take for granted. I was going to say "I look for someone who is functioning as an adult.", but what does that -mean-? Well, to me, I think it means being able to live on one's own, maintain ones responsibilities (paying bills, getting up for work, etc.,), and being able to understand things like "It's not ok to steal...", but then I started thinking about some friends I have who are from another culture, and their culture doesn't recognize 'personal belongings' -- if someone admires something of theirs, they have to give it to the person -- and if they admire something of mine, by the rules of their culture, I should offer it to them -- if I don't, according to the rules of their culture, they are within their rights to -take- it and I would be considered 'rude' and 'uncivilized' by their criteria. I don't consider what they do or how their culture interprets things as "wrong"... I have, however, put anything that I might not want to lose away when I knew they were coming to visit... which implies a level of selfishness in my friendship with them that, now, in this moment, coldly evaluating it, I find... strangely reprehensible. Either they are my friends or they are not -- if I accept them as friends, then it -is- rude of me to hide my favorite things so my friends won't take them, right? Or is my protection of my personal property more important than my friendship, as is so often implied by my own cultural upbringing?
In the same way, I would consider an s-type who was clearly in frenzy. I would consider an s-type who was barely functional in hir life due to lack of control. I would even take on an s-type who had been declared incompetant or mentally ill at one point in hir life or another. At the same time, I've had s-types that I ceased communication with when it became apparent that they weren't connected -- that they clearly didn't grasp that I was -never- going to be/do 'thing a', and where they kept attempting to morph the relationship to -force- me to do 'thing a'.
I think that what it boils down to, for me, is that I just find myself unwilling to live by the criteria of the "common good". I am able and willing to find exceptions -anywhere- when it suits me to do so, I am sufficiently intellectually capable as to be able to find justification, however thin, for those exceptions, and I hate being tied down to cultural expectations. Truthfully, it seems that much of what I believe about myself and society would make me an anarchist at best, and I'm guessing that some would consider me asocial at worst. After all, I have no problem making permanent changes to another person's body that they would be hard-pressed to have reversed, inflicting pain, and performing acts that are clearly outside the mores and laws of the common culture, just on the thin grounds of that person's verbal willingness to participate, and my own subjective evaluation of their capacity to make that agreement. It is only when someone else, who appears as willing to set aside cultural mores as I am in at least these areas comes along that there is even the opportunity to consider that I may not be completely asocial. However, in that other person's very resistance to those same cultural mores, does that not make hir every bit as much asocial as I am? And if that is the presumption, then is there a place for the functional, asocial individual who practices hir preferences within the framework of agreement to participate, to exist in a culture in which law and cultural mores deem hir 'unstable'. Legally, the obvious answer to that, as determined by society-at-large is 'no'. Either 'no' -means- 'no', and every case of WIITWD that includes something forbidden by law makes those who participate functionally asocial, or 'no' means something else, and those who expect law or culture to be able to provide a legitimate framework for human behavior are delusional. It seems to me that, even here, those of us who know ourselves to be somehow socially unfit, by society's standards, are creating shades of gray that are nothing more than a smokescreen to attempt to justify our asocial behaviors. In other words -- as a cultural misfit, are there -any- criteria by which I could deem the fitness of another cultural misfit that would make what I do acceptable to the "common culture"... and if the answer is 'no', then any criteria that I use would be suspect, as I would be considered unfit, myself, under that same umbrella of 'common culture'.
The more I think about this, the more that I realize that one of my (few) issues with the BDSM community, as it has developed in the past decade, is that it has embraced groups of individuals who -do- retain the cultural mores, since I believe that there is a danger of extreme misunderstanding between those who are completely individually driven and who have developed a framework of self-ethic that runs counter to cultural mores in many areas--anarchistic and, to some, asocial by definition... and those who are primarily bound to the cultural mores, even at the very edges of those mores, but still firmly bound by the rules and judgments shaped in the 'common culture'. In a sense, they are like I was, until this morning's brutal self-examination, with my friends from the other culture -- hiding their valuables (in this case, the cultural mores) so that we won't be inclined to 'steal' from them, while still calling themselves 'friends'.
Calla Firestorm
< Message edited by CallaFirestormBW -- 10/4/2008 7:41:53 AM >
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Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"
"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer
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RE: Sanity & Consent and the Veils they wear. - 
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