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Najakcharmer -> RE: Etiquette houses for BDSMers? (2/12/2007 9:23:04 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Poetica
P.S. I do realise that etiquette didn't actually exist until the Victorian era because people wanted to be "cultured".
If you examine any culture from hunter-gatherer primitive to North American industrial, you will find it interwoven with innumerable totems and taboos that serve essentially the same social function regardless of whether they state "you must use only a butter knife to cut butter" or "Elk clan hunters must not eat the liver of their totem animal". Totems and taboos, otherwise known as etiquette, can be quite radically different in different cultures, but tend to have close parallel structures. It is difficult to look at the structure of your own society's totems and taboos in an objective way, and most people are convinced that the society they themselves live in does not have any.
Etiquette can be fun as a play toy. Pick a culture and amuse yourself by adhering to the rules, or making your subbie do so. But there is really no such thing as universal etiquette, or rules that have any meaning outside their cultural and historical context. Our society today looks back at the quaint customs of the Victorian age, hemmed about with social and sexual inhibitions, and considers them quite rigid and complex. But the social customs we adhere to in North America today are actually equally complex, though they represent quite a different social meme. You will find the same to be true of the most primitive hunter-gatherer societies still in existence.
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