Noah
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quote:
ORIGINAL: twicehappy
Between the watered down bdsm thread and the different ways of expressing WIITWD thread a lot has been said about the possibility or desirability of agreeing as a group on set(within reason) standard definitions of some of the titles or labels if you will that we use.
So in the interest of finding out if we can agree on definitions i am asking everyone who cares to add to this to give their definition of certain terms.
After a week or so i will add up the ones that are similar and see how it came out then post the ones who were the most repeated or agreed with.
If your vote is "labels or definitions are what they mean to you " this will be counted as a non vote. This is an experiment to see what the general consensus is.
Here are the terms;
...
Quite a thread you lit off here, twicehappy. Get a ball rolling and you can never be sure of where it will bounce, right?
As for the desired definitions I'd like to offer some observations.
When a question or set of questions adamantly and chronically resists resolution there can be a number of sorts of reasons, of course. One kind of reason can have to do less with the subject matter of the question than with the question itself, and the assumptions being brought to it.
I suspect that part of the trouble with the current discussion is arising from something which is in itself a valuable thing, a desire for precision. "Things seem too ambiguous here. Let's strive for some precision" Well that is very reasonable and seldom a bad idea to pursue.
We have a bunch of phenomena, let's use that very general term for a moment. We have this bunch of phenomena that we want to talk about but the conversations keep getting muddled. Surely more precise language will at least help things along. But the thing is that although increased precision often, even usually, adds clarity, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just doesn't help and the effort spent on it is just wasted in terms of the goal of greater clarity. And sometimes seeking greater precision actually obscures the issue further.
I suspect that in some regards this point has been reached in this discussion.
If you want a very clear definition of the word for something which is itself "well defined" in the other sense of that expression (sharp edges,) then go for precision by all means. You want to know where the real estate property boundary lies between you and your neighbor. Hire a surveyor with good skills, knowledge and instruments and get it down to the inch, or the half inch in case half inches matter for the issue at hand. But at some point not far from half-inches, lets say millimeters anyway, the issue of the location of the boundary becomes itself ambiguous. Real estate law has not evolved to adjuducate disputes about the ownership of a particular molecule of dirt straddling the boundary line. So conversations about that boundary should stop well before the molecular level or we can see that objective facts won't resolve them. Good sense will have to be relied upon instead.
The idea of boundaries in a broad sense belongs in this conversation insofar as people as people are attempting to draw or suggest boundaries as to what phenomema should be described by the term "submissive," or "top" or what have you.
If you are a bird watcher you may care about the boundaries of the range of a certain woodpecker. You would like to add it to your list on your next vacation and so want to visit some place within its range. But of course you don't go demanding that the entire bird watching community agree on a line on a map, accurate to within a mile. You acknowledge that "the range of a bird" is itself an ambiguous concept. The very clearest definition which can be offerred for it is accordingly going to be an ambiguous definition.
We can have a moment of rebellion against this if given our upbringing we value precision above other considerations, but really, won't things be better if we value clarity above precision in matters like this? Bird ranges change with climatic change, with habitat modification, with the overall size of the population of the animal and with other factors. In a given year a particular woodpecker may get blown off course by a storm and end up a hundred miles beyond any previously known sighting, and then fly immediately back to his home ground.
Do we have to include that bit of bird flight in our newly published definition of that species' range? Hell, I don't know. What I do know is that you can make your vacation bird-wtching plans without worrying about that bird's plight.
The words we are grappling with definitions for here are used to describe phenomema--people and their behaviors--which are themselves amorphous, not "well defined" in the figurative sense. There are gray areas between and there is overlap between just about any two phenomena in question here. If we try to force upon the phenomena a level of discrete delineation which does not exist in the phenomena being described by the words then it is only in an artificial and I think counter-productive sense that increased "precision" can be credited.
Marietoo's complaint, as I understood it, against the Noir guy's definitions are fair to make, I suppose, but just because one might feel unsatisfied with a certain level of ambiguity doesn't imply that one has some right or ability in every case to over-rule the ambiguity... which I believe marie wisely acknowledged herself as her post went on.
A picture of a fog bank can be taken into Photoshop and be made show clear, sharp, precise edges to the fog. But most of us have walked into fogbanks and know that they in fact lack clear, sharp, precise edges. Accordingly, this added precision from Photoshop is imparing the clarity with which it portrays its subject. If we want to use the picture to help train some desert dweller to cope and navigate when he encounters his first fog bank we aren't doing him any favor with this "precision".
I think a few bits of clarity have been highlighted in this thread, in amongst all the silliness.
Which of the following items can we agree on?
A. Attempts to define things should be addressed to defining words, not defining people or relationships. The people and relationships stand as they are whether we try to define them or not. The words are tools which can be made sharper--and sometimes perhaps too sharp. I for one don't want a razor edge all around my soup spoon.
B. When it comes to a choice between more precision and more clarity we should pause to see whether additional precision will aid clarity or impair it. Precision should be valued very highly and generally sought after but the limits of its value should be acknowledged too.
C. It is too bad, in a way, that words can't always line up precisely with things and events and ideas in the world, in each case ruling certain things in and all other things out. But that is indeed the way things stand. This slipperyness of language is what allows a lot of humor and a lot of poetry, though. So since that's the way the world is anyway, and it has it's benefits, let's accept it and work with What Is rather than rail against it.
D. Words like "love" have been working (and, yes, also causing problems for us) for a very long time. The failure to agree broadly on precise definitions has not resulted in the perishing of either love or the community of lovers. It is in a related way reasonable to figure that the community of BDSMers will persist for a while longer whether or not we can broadly agree on definitions for these terms. I mean I'm not planning to leave. Are you?
E. For TWUE (it is myself I'm mocking, because I don't know a better way to say it) understanding between two people, external things like definitions of words and rules for their application are great, more than great they are crucial. But they cannot always be relied upon to get the whole job done. Sometimes the best some words can do is get us in the ballpark. Then there needs to be some give and take, some willingness to hear the other person out. The give and take can proceed in a very adversarial, even nasty way. That can sometimes result in progress. But a cooperative approach focused more on clarity and mutual undstanding and less on winning a given argument, will usually serve at least as well, or better, than going at it hammer and tongs.
F. There are inescapably compelling reasons why it is not a worthwhile idea to teach a pig to sing.
G. Whoever invented the "Block" feature should get free beer and chocolate for the rest of his or her life.
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RE: BDSM Definitions? - 
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