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Najakcharmer -> RE: Alleged Gorean "Master" Convicted of Attempted Murder. (6/18/2007 5:54:22 PM)
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Nearly forgot to add - from an outsider's perspective, this article could quite easily translate to*everyone* in the BDSM community being seen as a criminally insane or mentally ill rapist, kidnapper, torturer, killer, etc. When a publically kinky person does bad things, it looks to the outside world like all kinky people do bad things. Never mind that the person who did the bad things was directly violating our community ideals about consensuality and safety. If they did horrible enough things to make the news, then congratulations, they're our new public representatives. Never mind ILM and titleholders, there you go.
There's some remarkably fucked up people in all walks of life identifying with all kinds of lifestyles, racial or ethnic groups, religions, hobbies, sports team fandom, you name it. It is a statistical likelihood that someday you will have the bad luck to have someone who shares some publically known aspect of your life ending up in the news because they did something horrible, and then you'll have the fun of explaining to your neighbors that not all (insert your group identification here) are criminal lunatics while they look at you skeptically and back away slowly to slam their doors shut.
And won't that be fun. Goreans tend to get the short end of the stick rather a lot since there's a fairly large population of idiots attracted to the extreme philosophy who are entirely unsuited to living it with any sort of self-discipline or decorum. There's also some decent folks who do a pretty good job of appreciating and living a more "primitive" warrior's code that was described in the Gor novels, and in slightly more credible philosophic works on which the novels were largely cribbed, and which has really very little to do with kink or slavery. Whether you agree with their philosophies or not (I assuredly don't), it's fairly obvious that they are not the offenders. The lunatic fringe is. Whatever banner the individual lunatic happens to be waving when they did the crazy thing is where the blame goes, and the sane end of that community has no control over the lunatic's claims.
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