What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (Full Version)

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[Poll]

What year would You like to have been into Bdsm


1. Medevil times
  25% (6)
2. 1800
  4% (1)
3. 1900
  0% (0)
4. 1930
  0% (0)
5. 1940
  0% (0)
6. 1950
  0% (0)
7. 1960
  4% (1)
8. 1970
  4% (1)
9.1980
  8% (2)
Or the present suits You.
  54% (13)


Total Votes : 24
(last vote on : 8/25/2007 9:57:07 PM)
(Poll will run till: -- )


Message

knees2you -> What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 7:09:29 AM)

1. Medevil times 2. 1800. 3. 1900 4. 1930 5. 1940
6. 1950 7. 1960 8. 1970 9.1980 10. Or the present suits You.



Estring -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 9:41:00 AM)

I would choose the year 2525. If man has still survived...



happypervert -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 9:59:19 AM)

Present times suit me.

However, if I was really sadistic, then I'd go for the 1800s or before. Back then there were plenty of job opportunities working in the dungeons (like chief torturer for Ivan the Terrible, for example), or perhaps since I'm an engineer back then I could have been a device designer. Somebody had to dream up gizmos like the rack, Iron Maiden and other stuff. Yeah, the good old days, when torture was a way of life, not a "lifestyle".



MistressDREAD -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 5:10:21 PM)

OK wheres the all of the above choice?
UPDATE!! UPDATE!!
I wanna drive a time machine and live in all of em.......



LadyAngelika -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 6:06:57 PM)

I actually have to pick Ancient Greece, which is not one of the above choices. It was a sexually liberated society.

Then again, the 18th century might not have been bad... I could have had a glass of wine with the Marquis himself and picked up a few pointers.

Then again, wait another century and I could have played with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch...

And yet another century or so and I could be in Berlin in the 1930s living it Cabaret style, again, such a liberated sexual era!

I'm with Dread. I want a time machine!

- LA



basiasubrosa -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 9:40:40 PM)

Lady Angelika, forgive me if i am being ignorant, but how was ancient Greece sexually liberated? There was Plato's Symposium, and Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and strong female characters here and there, and openness to homosexuality or pansexuality, and the social oddity of Sparta, but from what i've learned, ancient Greek society was still very very patriarchal.



WayHome -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/3/2004 11:51:09 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: basiasubrosa

Lady Angelika, forgive me if i am being ignorant, but how was ancient Greece sexually liberated? There was Plato's Symposium, and Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and strong female characters here and there, and openness to homosexuality or pansexuality, and the social oddity of Sparta, but from what i've learned, ancient Greek society was still very very patriarchal.


LOL. Here we have a problem of ambiguity. "Sexually liberated" could mean "equality for men and women" and is used that way, though "genderly liberated" would be a more accurate term. Ancient Greece did not have much in the way of "women's lib" but they did have a tremendous amount of acceptance of diverity of sexual experience.

I had a professor that said "Platonic love" is misenterpreted to mean non-sexual love when it means homosexual love because Plato felt that true love could only exist between equals and a woman could never be the equal of a man, furthermore vaginal intercourse exists for the purpose of procreation and thus is base and rooted in animal nature whereas other forms of sex were free from instinctual drive in order to be able to be expressions of higher aesthetics. A lot of Geek ideas get filtered though Semitic ideals.

Plato would have been very anti-BDSM as we practice it. He was not opposed to the mentor system whereby younger males sought sexual relationships with older males in order to recieve guidance as well as material and social clout, but such a relationship was of a lower order than that between true equals.

It's funny that very straight and conservative men often use Sparta as an example of manly men. They were manly men, but they also universally practiced gay sex. That's what happens when children are removed from their families to live in a barracks and finish adolescence before ever having access to women. The same thing happens in prison.

Medieval Europe might be nice if you could be guaranteed of being a wealthy noble. Rome might be nice, if you were a citizen. Greece could be cool, assuming you had citizenship in a city-state that was on the winning end of the constant battling that year... You get the point.

Leto



LadyAngelika -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 8:36:46 AM)

First of all basia, nothing in your post makes me even remotely think you are ignorant. This is a discussion forum, no? And I know I learn new things every day here.

As far as I know basia, all the societies listed thus far in this thread have been patriarchal, even the one in which we live now. I agree with you that the society was highly stratafied. However, it was very sexually liberated for the reasons you enumerated: "Plato's Symposium, and Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and strong female characters here and there, and openness to homosexuality or pansexuality, and the social oddity of Sparta"

Slavery was huge in Greece. In fact, some anthropologists report that there may have been more slaves then free people. (More on ancient Greece slavery.)

There is also a ton of D/s undertones in Greek mythology, not to mention beastie stuff which I know is not a topic to be discussed on these boards and in any case, is not at all my kink.

I'd love to discuss more of this with you basia if you like. I actually had the opportunity to study ancient Greek sexuality to a certain amount of depth. But that doesn't imply that I'm an expert or that I cannot be enlightened on the subject.

- LA



LadyAngelika -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 8:39:02 AM)

Ah Leto!

I didn't read your post before answering to basia. I appreciate your contribution and you explained it much better then I did!

- LA



cheeba0228 -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 9:12:13 AM)

She said sexually liberated, It was run mainly by men but as far as sexual preference almost nothing was Taboo.



cheeba0228 -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 9:14:26 AM)

The only reason I say present times is because all those wonderful invention they had back then are still available today along with so many more. The only thing missing the the ability to legally own slaves and do with them as you wish.



Sundew02 -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 12:31:56 PM)

Smile, Ok Estring you have me humming that song. But since I can't get past the short portion you posted I am requesting the groups name so I can pull it up and hear it again. Laughing, that one active brain cell just doesn't have the RAM for keeping all the lyrics to the wonderful songs from my dim dark past. Sundew



basiasubrosa -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 6:00:09 PM)

Thanks, Leto and Lady Angelika for the elaborations. <coos> Do i sense a classics discussion ensuing? Goody, goody!

Let me clarify: I agree, for a free male, ancient Greece was about as good as it can get sexually. But from the female perspective (which is mine), sexual liberty or lack thereof was not much to be thrilled about. Granted, you have Sappho of Lesbos, but a good half or more of her poetry was lamenting the fact that lovely female relationships must be reft asunder to comply to male standards. And so much more of lyric poetry goes on and on about the tragic loss of (female) virginity and all sorts of wonderfully restrictive assumptions and demands. And then there are the legal records..... Even free women could only choose to be domestic slaves (wives), or sex slaves (courtesans), and not much else. I suppose exception may be made for the Bacchante or priestesses

Pax Romana was much kinder to its women. Not only do you have openess to whatever-men-may-engage-in, you have many more women being highly educated, choosing their partners, choosing their sexual practices, etc., without inevitable doom as the moral of the story. (Now _that's_ more like sexual (along with gender) liberation in my books....) As much as i am a hopeless Hellenophile, i would never never want to be a woman in ancient Greece. Not unless i got to be Aristotle's wife or legendary mistress, that is. [;)]

Just my take, and the classics lobe of my brain is quite rusty now, so i would much appreciate corrections and stimuli. [:)] (Waiting eagerly with abated breath for NoCalOwner to pitch in, too.)

Btw, i've been curious for a while-- Leto, as in the mother of the Twin Archers?



dixiedumpling -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/4/2004 9:28:56 PM)

I chose 1980. After college, before marriage. However, also before personal computers and the Internet, so how would I have ever have found a willing southern gentleman to spank my errant ass? Drawbacks to everything, huh?



WayHome -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/5/2004 4:47:33 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: basiasubrosa
Btw, i've been curious for a while-- Leto, as in the mother of the Twin Archers?


[:'(] ACK, that was a SHE! I'm all man, baby! [;)]Classically Leto was a feminie name, but I'm more of a geek than that. I got it from Dune [8|]

I figure more people probably know the later than the former anyway (sad but true, though in a way Dune was important literature too).

I wish I knew a lot more about classical Greece than I do. Some day I may take a grad class on it for fun. It seems that if you can think of a possible form of government, someone in Greece tried it first. I found the link on slavery in Greece to be very interesting. Though nothing in it appears to be incorrect, it did leave out some things that seem important to me for understanding slavery in the ancient world. Slavery was rarely an absolute the way it was in the Southern US. In many times and places slaves had quite a bit of freedom and status compared to what we tend to think of. Though "ownership" might have the same denotation, the connotation can vary widely. Blacks in the south were sepparated not just by their status, but by their biology. They were considered to truly be lesser beings and the sepparation was inescapable. On the other hand, slaves in ancient times often had no physically defining traits at all and sometimes shared the same racial, ethnic, and cultural background as their owners. It may seem a superficial distinction but the pychological dynamic is profoundly affected. A freed slave could technically (and in rare casses actually) achieve a high status and live with little or no stigma related to their former slavery. Warm relationships were much more common and the idea was that a slave was a slave as a result of circumstance rather than being ordained by God to be a lesser being with lesser intelligence and baser nature. Many owners knew that poor circumstance (or poor decisions like criminal activities) could possibly lead to their own slavery. That generally leads one to think about and treat their slaves much differently.

In Rome, there were slaves that owned slaves. There were slaves that owned businesses. There were even legal battles between said slaves and their owners over how much of their profits reasonably belonged to the owner. There were slaves who inherited their freedom from their masters and even a few who seem to have inherited property along with it (possibly to include other slaves). All of this fluidity of status is not to be confused with the kind of social mobility we enjoy today by any means, but it was also not the equivalent of the predicament of African-American slaves. Thus most slaves tended to be treated much better and the reason they were a slave mattered. A defeated enemy might suffer quite a bit if the war was bloody and vicious, or much less if their city enjoyed the respect of the conquerors. One made a slave as a result of crime would expect a very cruel fate, but one sold as a child might not.

The example of Athens police being slaves says a lot. Police must be trusted and depended on and must act with initiative and decisiveness under pressure. To expect such a thing from slaves indicates social implications of slavery that are beyond most modern individuals capacity to comprehend.

Incidentally, many African tribes in the 17th and 18th century had slaves and this often served as justification for US slavery, but the reality of slavery in Africa had a lot more in common with ancient Greece or Rome than with anything that happenned in the South.

I am as facinated by the diversity of societies as I am by the diversity of individuals who live in them.



Leto



smile2cu -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/5/2004 3:01:12 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: dixiedumpling
... However, also before personal computers and the Internet ... Drawbacks to everything, huh?

I was originally thinking of the sixties. Age of Aquarius, people tolerating far-out lifestyles, the open sexuality, etc. Seemed briefly to be a more caring world, but I really was too young to appreciate it.

There's a lot to be said for the present. There are still those of us who care and who are tolerant. Those of us who are sexually open not only still are, but have added a few tricks. [sm=tongue.gif]

~smile~



LadyAngelika -> RE: What year would You like to have been into Bdsm (9/5/2004 7:27:35 PM)

basiasubrosa

Thank you for that perspective. I'm thinking Pax Romana is sounding a lot more appealing indeed!

- LA



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