New horizons

I’ve not written for a while, because I’ve been busy moving. I’ve left Yorkshire, the county of my birth, yet again, but this time for France, the beautiful Provence.
I’m looking out over the rooftops of a medieval village, from my own house which dates back 500 years. Cliffs with Troglodyte dwellings rear up behind the village, and my own house nestles into them, with cellars cut from them.


Early November, and the sunny days are a welcome change from the cold grey of Yorkshire. Some days are warm enough or alfresco eating on the roof terrace, but a log fire each evening is a comforting link to the Pennines mill cottage I left.


I’m delighting in the cultural differences between here and the UK, and one day, soon, I hope, I’ll delight in the language too. But just at the moment, it’s a frustrating trial, taking far longer to master than I’d hoped or planned. Still, it’s giving me an unusual viewpoint of the society I’m in, very much an observer, very different from my usual position of being in the midst of it all. It won’t last, ex-pat I may be, but outsider, never.


My work has changed, too, over the last few months, a deepening into directions unplanned, seemingly with a life of its own. Quite where it will go as I settle into my new surroundings I’m not sure. Certainly, there’ll be some of the same, but new avenues open too, and I’ll write about these soon.

Our society cannot handle sex

It’s a bold statement, and I would like to consider it to be tongue-in-cheek as I make it. But I’m not sure that I can, because it looks like it might actually be true.

I’ve touched on moral issues in my previous blogs, and postulated that moral values were held largely by the church, and that they are no longer. So legislation, the heavy hand, has had to step in (mixing metaphors, slightly, but never mind).

But maybe there’s more to the current rising tide of anti-sex legislation, which sees a man convicted last month of sexual offensives for downloading six images from the Simpsons. And a sixteen year picking up a sex offence registration for life after sex with a 15 year old. Is it simply that our society cannot, in fact, handle sex anymore?

Sex is a hugely powerful driving force, and control of the sexual urge is obviously high up on the agenda of any society wishing to maintain law and order. The church, as a respected authority, took much of the brunt while it was a respected authority, but now, in the UK anyway, it isn’t. Government has taken over, in its clumsy nanny-ing way, but not only does it have a heavier touch than the Church did of late, it has to contend with the liberation of stimulating and informative sexual material on the internet, and the proliferation of computers in the home and workplace.

So we have an unhappy dalliance of a more liberated sexual element to our society and a more censorious overall society view which the poor old Government is trying to keep up to. It’s the old popular media trick, of course: we’re all pretty much interested in sex, illicit sex and kinky sex, but we cover our own interest (it’s the royal ‘we’ here, of course, as I personally don’t cover my interest at all) by feigning horror and outrage at everyone else’s interest. Which creates a wonderful tabloid market: they can rant and rave at sex, we buy it because we simultaneously want to rant and rave and feel outwardly disgusted while inwardly being thoroughly interested and entertained by it.

The tabloid readers, of course, are then outwardly anti-sexualisation because the paper tells them to be, and it saves them sticking their necks out in a socially uncertain situation, while the broadsheet readers are conditioned into believing sex is evil or at least, not very nice anyway. So that gives a large electorate for the Government to pander to who really don’t want sex out in the open, or even peeping out from modest cover. So, a-pandering they go. Soon, sex offenders registration will be like an asbo, a must-have to prove street-cred, where it’s absence will mean your sexual appetite extends no further than missionary position, with the lights off, with your married partner, and not more than once a month.

So, maybe it is true. Our society is unable to handle sex. The double whammy of no effective religion holding a moral code and the internet fuelling sexual appetites, together with our increased sophistication, greater freedom with looser working and school hours and more cars making affairs and liaisons much easier to manage: has the primal sexual urge now been enhanced to the point where it’s in danger of getting out of control?

But I don’t for a moment think that legislation is the answer. Like the plan to tax chocolate, it’s short sighted, it doesn’t hit the root cause, it doesn’t engender respect, it doesn’t help people, it doesn’t help society.

Whereas a more open attitude to sex and relationship might.

An open relationship, a new sub and a new dom

3 years into my primary relationship, we both feel its time to expand into a poly relationship. Exciting, but to some extent, scary; dynamics we have never played with at this depth, a stimulus to our existing relationship that both challenges it and may strengthen it, but has the potential to destroy it. Playing with fire, in many ways.

The starting point is a dominant who may become part of my life, in conjunction with my primary partner, my Master. They are in dialogue, and the proposal is that control and authority is passed to this man a couple of days a month when I visit London, where he lives, on my working trips. He offers a slightly different kind of domination that I would benefit from, but also, chiefly, a different personal dynamic, which will keep me on my toes. Bringing into lifestyle that which I have noticed in play: with one top, it’s easy to tune into his feelings and predict, to some extent, the course of play, while with more than one (ideally, four….) this becomes less easy and a greater submission, a more thorough giving in the feeling and sensation becomes necessary. With the commensurate greater experience through the process.

The balancing factor will be a new female submissive for my partner. His reason for being is as the healer of broken wings, and it was with broken wings that I met him. I’m flying again now, and while I will always fly back home, I do need the cage taking away. My partial release to the wild will be easier with the advent of another bird to heal, will balance the dynamic in the relationship and will add greatly to the household. And will be another relationship I can take part in too.

That I now need administrative help with my business, we both need extra hands around the house and we have room in the house spare is simply icing on a delicious cake. We’re both looking forward to an exciting future as part of a dynamic and growing relationship, even though we’re not always sure just how it will go or if, indeed, we will be able to control or even steer it.

And I’m beginning to get very nervous that two doms colluding may be bad news for me!! In the very best of ways, of course.

Sporting risk, lifestyle choices and the Human Rights convention

Why is sporting risk so readily accepted?

In primitive times, when it was important to go out and fight neighbouring tribes, or go in pursuit of dangerous animals, it was vital to imbue young men with an aggressive, competitive spirit. The endorphin rush of such activity gave such warriors and hunters a tremendous high, but add in community spirit and revelry in victory, the high was shared by many more and heightened in the young men.

But between times, it was no good expecting those young men to happily don Marigolds and get on with the washing up. Responsible community activity was not the way they were trained or conditioned, and maintaining fitness to fight was more important than the dishes anyway. So sport emerged, I guess, in tandem with homo-sapiens evolving into a sentient societal species. A way of keeping physically fit, a way of establishing competence in martial arts, a way of establishing pecking order and a functional team. Sport was extremely important.

Lifestyle choices

Sport in its original role was a way of achieving competitiveness, teamwork and physical fitness in an elite group, who were of great significance to the wider community. Today that significance is still felt by many, but its connection has been lost: when we have to fight a war or a common foe in order to eat and put a roof our heads, we don't look towards Leeds United to sort it out for us.

And in this modern age, where the way we live is often very isolated from the essentials of basic survival, by a complex society, by technology, by an all-pervasive financial system, connection with the need to work in order to survive has largely also been lost. ‘Work’ is now often separated from the sense of fulfilment, from the soul: it’s drudge and the buzz of hunting or harvesting enough to eat each day, of building your own shelter, of feeding your fires has been lost. A substitute is sought by many. This can be provided by sporting activity, but frequently in its wider and more personal role: mountaineering, sailing, hill walking, fishing, cycling.

Such activities, therefore, have passed into lifestyle choices: the mountaineer seeks not to beat the elements but to find himself, the cyclist seeks not to win races but to get a sense of space, the sailor looks for freedom from a crowded world. And this lifestyle choice is afforded that same risk and injury potential that competitive, hallowed sport is, without a murmur of dissent. No-one has to fear a day’s hill walking because if something went wrong and an injury did occur, even if only a scratch, they might end up in jail for it.

In this context, bdsm is very much a lifestyle choice and is close to those wider sporting activities in intent and benefit. It’s a buzz, it’s personal endeavour, personal connection, a route to self-exploration and personal honesty. A breathing space in a complex world, a challenge against which to grow.

And under the European Convention of Human Rights, lifestyle choices are protected. We should be free to pursue our lifestyle choice as a basic human right. To deny that choice needs good justification. 'Trifling and transient' does deny the fulfilment of bdsm lifestyle, and I don't see a good justification. Certainly not risk and injury potential, and there's no evidence to say it encourages and increases sex crime, quite the opposite.

So, does 'trifling and transient' conflict with what we as a society have chosen to regard as our rights??

Moral evolution

Termites, bees and ants live in very successful societies. In terms of numbers alone they should perhaps be described as mega-societies. They are extremely stable in evolutionary terms: they need to change little over millennia to remain viable.

Each individual in those societies has a biological response to external circumstances that make it behave for the best of the society. Drones (male bees), for instance, when they have mated and have no further use to society conveniently fly off into the cold autumn and die, rather than stay in the hive and eat precious resources.

Because each individual is programmed to the best for the society, almost no communication, language or hierarchy is needed. No moral code, no ethics, no leaders, no government, no politics, no police, no military.

Conversely, human beings in society are driven primarily by selfish desires. One of the great separators of us from the rest of the world: we are the only species of self-seeking animals that live in society. Most other self-seeking creatures live solitary lives. Beyond the primary selfish drive, a human being seeks, in order, to look after it’s own, in an ever-widening hierarchy: partner, children, family, relations, friends, social group, regional or tribal group, cultural group, national group, international group and finally, the global group, the species.

And part of this selfish and self-group desire is a strong urge to pass on their own genes, to procreate not for the benefit of society, but for their own part of that society.

Please note: I attach no value to the term ‘selfish’ here: simply an observation that that is how the human being works at base level. Only after the application of morals does this behaviour change into a more societal one, a stage this analysis hasn’t reached yet.

So let’s have a look at where the apparently selfish human being starts to get it right.

The human being uses intelligence and a wide range of strong emotions to live, unlike other mammalian species. We use moral and ethical codes to create rules for our society to live by, and we enforce them through leadership and hierarchy. We use language and communication to facilitate this process. Every human society is a new society, every human being is unique, therefore the evolutionary rate of society (but not the species) is high. Termites will only evolve their societies as they evolve their DNA, on a timescale of thousands of generations. We evolve our societies as we evolve our thoughts and morals (and technology), and the timescale is less than a generation.

The strength of the termite’s society is its stability. The strength of our society is its instability. The termites are the 747 airliners: a stable platform that will almost fly itself, that isn’t required to duck and dive, whereas our society is the Russian fighter plane or the jump jet: almost un-flyable in it’s instability but fantastic at out-manoeuvring everything else.

The need to procreate is a strong biological reaction in the human, sometimes stronger than the more basic sex drive. To understand the difference, consider hunger and the desire for delicious food: the desire for a tasty meal fulfils most of our nutritional needs, but this isn’t the same as the hunger that drives a starving man to find something, anything to eat. The desire for sex takes care of most of our procreational need, but the drive for a baby when the hormone levels start to dip outstrips it. We have the capacity to become obsessed by the need to pass our genes on, to further the family line, the ‘selfish’ group behaviour outlined in the opening paragraphs.

But this is simply like the termites, a straightforward biological response to ensure continuance. And there’s a logical problem here, because our society is predicated on values, morals and ethics, at least as much as the specia and the family genetic line.

Isn’t the need to pass on a good way of living and being, a good sense of what’s right, a good way to be concerned for the health of our whole society at least as important as passing on our genes? It’s arguable that that moral societal sense isn’t encoded in DNA, there just hasn’t been time, and now never will be with our species evolution halted by healthcare. Societal values are passed on by expected and taught behaviour, by values, by morals. And this can be passed on to anyone close in the society group, it doesn’t have to be through birth.

So is our strong feeling of the need to procreate a little anachronistic? Should we highlight the need to pass on good values, should we place equal importance on this alongside giving birth? In a global society that is already living beyond the long term means of the planet it lives on, this may be an important point to consider.

Trifling and Transient

I've been contemplating breaking the law. Contemplating the subject, that is, of breaking the law, rather than contemplating breaking the law.

Although I may have been breaking the law, and I may continue to do so. Who knows, when the definition on which the law is based is wide open to interpretation? Less so now, following Max Mosely's case, but there's still a long way to go. As you probably know, the definition I refer to is 'trifling and transient'. Any activity in bdsm that causes an injury that is not trifling and transient is an assault and hence an offence.

In contemplating such issues, I tend to move quickly from 'the law' to 'social acceptability', as it is my understanding that the law is there to keep human activity within socially acceptable boundaries. The law should reflect what people want and define the moral stance of the age, and in untested law, as this is, that is what must be considered at the stage when it is tested and a firmer definition, through case law, pinned down.

'Trifling' is a word that with no given context is difficult to pin down. Looking it up gives definitions such as 'negligible' 'not worth considering' and 'of little importance'. These definitions also are context sensitive: a bruise from wild sex may be of little importance if avoiding it meant no wild sex. But a broken leg gained by falling off a step ladder hanging Christmas decorations and keeping you off work for 6 weeks may be well be of importance, at very least cannot be described as 'not worth considering'.

'Transient' seems easier to deal with. 'Not permanent' is an easy extrapolation, isn't it? But while a cane weal that sadly fades way after two hours is clearly transient, what of the bruise for two weeks, the broken leg of 6 weeks or the nerve aggravation of 2 years? They are, in fact, transient, simply because they are not permanent. By definition, transient is something that does not last ever, and in the context of an injury to living body, the only meaningful interpretation of 'for ever' is something that doesn't heal, while not 'for ever' is something that does heal. There's no time scale implied, though, just whether a healing process occurs or not..

So far, I have moved forward a little from the idea commonly held that injuries must be confined to something that isn't serious and doesn't last long. In fact, it doesn't matter if they do last a long time, just as long as they aren't permanent, as long as they will heal. But what constitutes trifling is still problem.

'Trifing' desperately needs a context, and to try to rationalise a context, I contemplated bdsm in terms of it's major constituent parts: sex and endorphins.

Sex, as far as I know, has never been outlawed on the grounds that it's dangerous, much as many people would seem to like to. I know of no cases where a charge of GBH or manslaughter was brought against someone for injury or death caused by the process of sex itself, although there must have been times when orgasm has triggered heart attack, or, at least, falling out of bed and getting a nasty bang on the head.

So, its safe to take out the sex element, and declare it not relevant to the law on assault. Which leaves us with endorphins. It is the seeking of endorphin rushes that leads to the risks in bdsm. Pain and the apprehension of being in vulnerable situations gives rise to adrenaline production, and seeking increasing levels of endorphins leads to more extreme play, and that is the crux of the problem: those levels of play can lead to injuries or risk of injuries that the law seeks to control.

In order to rationalise and hopefully then gain some understanding of what the law seeks to do, or should seek to do when the definitions it is based on are tested, I tried to look for similar, but socially accepted activity.

The obvious one is sport. The competition element in sport is much like the sex element of bdsm: it drives the whole thing but in itself, it doesn't cause injury. The rest of sport is made up of endorphin raising activity or injury, and often, the quest for the 'feel good' factor, the endorphins themselves, drive the whole process.

And, like bdsm, it has many different levels, from the jog up the street and back, right through to the extreme sports where life and limb are clearly at risk.

I'm not aware of much social censure of injuries gained through sport, beyond a move now against boxing. By and large, its accepted that a broken leg is perfectly acceptable in a rugby game, as is, for the few, the risk of getting frost bite and losing limbs or life on an Alpine mountain ridge. I'm not aware of charges of assault being laid against sportsmen who cause injuries or even death.

This, of course, drives a hole straight through bdsm's limitation that injuries must be transient. In sport, there's no such limitation, so perhaps we have to accept that endorphin rush through sexual activity is less acceptable than endorphin rush through sporting activity. 'Trifling' too, is hard to see at work as a limitation in sport.

What is clear is that the acceptable limit for sport is on the basis of a risk / benefit optimisation: for the casual jogger, a stitch is as much discomfort as they would be happy to suffer, for the league football player, a broken limb isn't going to be of great concern in itself and for the extreme adventurer the risk of loss of limb or life isn't going to stop them. The benefit outweighs the risk. The value of the benefit is accepted by society: there are no calls for the costs of healthcare to be avoided, there is no feeling that the suffering or loss caused to family and employers is wrong, there is no feeling that the risk taken by rescue services to haul in the stranded mountaineer is wrong. Importantly, society is happy to accept the sportsman's own value judgement, his own sense of the risk it's worth taking to gain the benefit, and this isn't examined by court of law.

Which leaves us with two questions:

If we can't take a standard from a similar activity, where can we take it from?

Why is it different from that other activity?

It may be better for us, as a community, to contemplate these questions before we try to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Because at the moment we are having to try to take responsibility as a series of individuals with no knowledge of what we're supposed to be doing, and each carrying a high risk should things go wrong as, occasionally, they always will. I would certainly like to know that the 'risks' I take in bdsm practice are viewed by my peers as being within the range of acceptable behaviour, and I would like to know that if things did go wrong, the bdsm equivalent of being caught in an ice storm on the Alpine ridge, that I could point to discussion documents and recognised standards of play within the scene that showed that acceptability.

It's a wet and windy winter's day. The mud is inches deep, the two sides are locked in serious combat. The local rugby derby.

Jim, the slightest half back you ever saw has the ball, just hooked out from the scrum. He's accelerating away, but the full back, as wide as a barn door, has him in his sights. He's a big, big man, but he appears to be doing about Mach 1.5 just now, right on collision course with the 7 stone wet through Jim.

'Pinocchio' yells Jim, his safe word. This is a bit more than he bargained for. The match stops, and everyone goes away good naturedly.

The two mountaineers, bagging their Munroes in Scotland. Nearing the top of Ben Loyal in March, they get caught in an unexpected snowstorm on the icy arête. Suddenly, the day climb becomes very frightening as they begin to slip down the slope, the freshly fallen snow gliding easily over the ice sheet. 'Amber' shouts one, immediately upgraded to 'Red' by the other, and the snow stops, the dangerous overlay vanishes and they wander down for a nice cup of tea.

Declaring 'safe, sane and consensual', 'risk aware consensual kink', safe words, trying to fit within the obvious intent of 'trifling and transient' won't serve us. It will leave us with the equivalent of the above. We need to be bolder than that.

Primalism

I believe that evolution of the species stopped when human society became civilised, that is, when our societal groups became welfare-based rather than survival-based. From this point on, evolution, the survival of the fittest ceases to become the primary factor in gene selection, and other influences take sway.

Health and wealth become primary factors, both on an individual and societal level. Rich people can buy healthcare and good partners, and so further their genes, while rich societies develop comprehensive healthcare systems and so their people become immune to the effects of evolution: their gene pools go unchecked, unchallenged.

At the point just before our society became civilised and evolution stopped, which for convenience let’s call the stone age, our brain structure and function became almost fixed. Sure, gene changes will take place over the millennia, but without the focus of evolution, such changes will be essentially random and so will not tend to any significant singular change.

We now live in an extremely complicated and sophisticated society, and it can be very difficult to interpret or understand many of our emotional and behavioural responses to the world. But if we consider that in reality, all those responses were set in the stone age, and can be understood by analysing how we would respond in a primitive society, many ‘issues’ of today become much clearer. In particular, my interest lies in the responses of or connected to fetishism, gender role, personal and sexual confidence.

When I get time to indulge myself further in more musing, I’ll expand on some of these , but for now, that’s an introduction to my philosophy on human society, and which I refer to as Primalism. The study of primal response in primitive society on the understanding that those responses are now largely unchanged but set in the context of a modern and complex society.