Taken in Hand, "When lulzblogging is a gift"

...so I gather you couldn't think of a way to answer my question.

It's possible for anyone to genuinely not want sex. If you don't have a procedure to ensure that anyone who really doesn't want sex can get out of it, I guarantee you you are going to accidentally rape your partner eventually.

I mean, it's not even that hard! "The safeword is pumpkinpatch, right?" That's all you need to say! It's one sentence! Why are you defending people who don't want to add a one sentence long procedure to their sex to ensure nobody gets raped?

EDIT: And B, yes these are people, but it should be abundantly clear from any amount of experience on the internet that people can only be counted on to think they're being reasonable.

edited 7th Nov '10 3:01:49 PM by BlackHumor

"...so I gather you couldn't think of a way to answer my question."

Translation: "Aw, shit... He's got me there. Time to be a snarky douchebag."

"It's possible for anyone to genuinely not want sex."

Then if you don't get off on being made to have sex whenever, you are probably not going to arrange for that to happen. Talk about a concept not being difficult... Is it necessary to illustrate?

"Hey, honey. You know how I like really rough stuff?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I really find it thrilling when I don't have an 'out'. That makes the experience very tense and exciting for me."

You made it sound like you'd respect Ti H more if it were closer to what you think BDSM is... But the fact of the matter is that BDSM does, indeed, include a concept of consensual non-consent, which is a kind of edgeplay. This can be dangerous if the two people involved do not understand each other well, but it is a type of play in which consent is ostensibly "suspended" (and, guess what? Both partners actually consent to this beforehand, after having discussed it, potential safety concerns, etc.). Edgeplay is understood to be risky... But, going by the logic you've presented in your posts, we should mock into oblivion anything that is risky because human beings are just incapable of not fucking shit up in horrendous ways. (Things we've thus lost: roller coasters, alcohol, going outside, socializing, inventing, any sport ever... I think this is actually the same logic that keeps weed illegal...) Yes, there's a potential for something disastrous to occur if caution isn't used, but it's condescending to say that, because of this reason, people should not be allowed to do it... That assigning the trait of childish irresponsibility to humanity — whether all or most, that's simply misanthropic and arrogant.

"Why are you defending people who don't want to add a one sentence long procedure to their sex to ensure nobody gets raped?"

It's incredible. Is your screen just not loading anything I posted or are you ignoring it on purpose? "Hey, honey; there's this system we could apply to our relationship in which you'd get to fuck me whether I provide any kind of explicit consent or not." "You'd like that?" "Yes, I would." "Well, what if you really, really, really don't want sex?" "I, personally, would be turned on by you simply fucking me anyway. That's the kind of thing that I, personally, enjoy." Or, alternatively... "Oh, wait... You're right. I don't like the thought of getting fucked anytime even when I don't want it. I therefore choose not to engage in that kind of play." Or alternatively... "That's a good concern. Maybe we should approach this idea cautiously, maybe not interpret it as strictly as it seems on paper. I'm pretty sure there isn't any cosmic law keeping us from tweaking things that we might be able to ease into the idea or test it out without the same risk." I'm pretty sure human beings can say stuff like that, if in different words.

" ...but it should be abundantly clear from any amount of experience on the internet that people can only be counted on to think they're being reasonable."

I guess I should defer to the clear expert on this.

edited 7th Nov '10 3:35:10 PM by osconchur89

First, phrasing everything you say like I'm an 3-year-old does not help your position at all.

Second, I think your definition of consent is too broad. Consenting to sex before it happens is not consent if you cannot withdraw your consent during the act.

Yes, I realize that roller coasters do not follow this principle, which is a problem. Unfortunately it's a problem caused by the physical properties of the roller coaster, which is a much different thing from a risk that can be gotten rid of with much less effort than it would take to convince anyone to have BDSM sex in the first place, which is why we're all mocking the TIH people instead of bemoaning the physical laws of the universe.

Most of the rest of your examples are just silly. Since when have you not been able to go inside if you wanted to?

"First, phrasing everything you say like I'm an 3-year-old does not help your position at all."

Acting like you're on some moral crusade doesn't help, likewise.

"Second, I think your definition of consent is too broad. Consenting to sex before it happens is not consent if you cannot withdraw your consent during the act."

There are, as I've demonstrated, people who would most certainly disagree with you. However, I've also demonstrated that, in one of my links, people who practice Ti H can have the same concerns as you do and even end up agreeing with you. Attributing one, very specific, hard-line ideology to any group of people (from Muslims to Christians to Communists to Republicans to Taken-in-Hand people to people who get their rocks off writing complex allegories about the then-changing world of mathematics and then presenting said allegories to a ten-year-old girl calling it a fairy tale) doesn't serve any purpose beyond setting up a joke. And when you go from jokes to using words like "disgusting," "misogynist," and phrases like "How could you defend [them]?" you've effectively gone from joking around to establishing an armchair moral crusade.

The bigger issue, though, is that people can and do disagree with you on this point. People feel like they are perfectively capable of consenting to participation in a scene over the course of which they will have no power to withdraw... People discuss this and its implications, be they philosophical, psychological, or physical, and feel like they can give their consent to this with this understanding. It is also entirely possible that, after discussing all of this, they say, "On second thought, no thanks. That doesn't sound so great."

Yes, I realize that roller coasters do not follow this principle, which is a problem. Unfortunately it's a problem caused by the physical properties of the roller coaster, which is a much different thing from a risk that can be gotten rid of with much less effort than it would take to convince anyone to have BDSM sex in the first place, which is why we're all mocking the TIH people instead of bemoaning the physical laws of the universe.

I think you misunderstood that what I was discussing was the assessment of risk and the consent to take risks. Mocking Ti H people because they don't "get rid of" that risk by implementing a certain safety net is a little like mocking someone because they do something they understand can be risky, but do so for the thrill of it. Surfing, for example, has been developed with danger in mind (that is to say, people have developed precautionary measures in order to greatly reduce the risk to the surfer). However, it is exactly those things that make surfing dangerous that define surfing... Sure, people don't necessarily surf because they're seeking out "dangerous" conditions, but, by your logic, surfers deserve to be mocked because they could easily avoid the potential risks of drowning or being stung or eaten by simply not going out into the ocean at all. The same goes for sky-divers... The parachutes seem like a completely superfluous measure, because the inherent risk in sky-diving can be completely avoided by not jumping out of a god damn plane.

Most of the rest of your examples are just silly. Since when have you not been able to go inside if you wanted to?

Let's go in the opposite direction with that. Have you heard of the Biosphere experiments? One of the central points of the experiment was that the participants couldn't simply up and leave whenever they felt like it. And yet they gave their consent to this, knowing full well they couldn't just withdraw whenever they felt like it. (There had to be exceptions for extenuating circumstances, I'm sure, but, then again, if you trust your partner enough to consent to non-consent, like we've been talking about, you trust your partner to stop fucking you if, say, you indicated that something injurious or otherwise deviant from the original plan was occurring.) Here's another example: the original Survivor. The contestants were rendered physically incapable of leaving the island without having been "voted off" or without being granted special exception (whether due to injury or some special reward or whatever). That was the entire point of the competition... If the contestants were able to just get off the island by whim or when things got unpleasant and they weren't enjoying themselves, that would have rendered impotent the competition's basic premise. And all the contestants knew this prior to consenting to being "stranded" on that island.

In each scenario there was an inherent risk against which certain precautions had to be taken. Likewise, participants couldn't withdraw on a whim. There had to be some kind of special circumstance, and even then it was at the discretion of the organizers, not the participants, to allow people to leave. The participants understood this. They went into these things consensually knowing that they were basically at someone else's mercy. Granted, the law did have some say as to what liability said organizers had with regards to injuries suffered by participants, but this is no different with Ti H people... Even if someone explicitly consented, at that very moment, to being injured in some way, the law makes it very clear that the injurer is still liable. (One of the links I posted, in fact, goes into detail about this.)

The whole point of this kind of thing is that the people involved do not want to be able to withdraw consent. This is inherently risky, but they understand this. They want the feeling of being handled roughly, being "ravished". This might be an odd desire, but it isn't an evil one nor is it indicative of any kind of psychological problem on the part of the "bottom" or the "top". The presence of the "out" of simply ending the scene or sex on a whim acts against the very things they're trying to achieve. The Biosphere experiments would've been rendered meaningless if the participants could just up and leave and get a pizza and see a movie because they didn't really "groove with" being locked up in an artificial ecosystem. And, for many Ti H couples, the whole Taken-in-Hand dynamic would be thrown off with the existence of certain "outs". You change the rules of the game, you're not playing the same game anymore. It's not really Monopoly if there's no fake money or property cards... That's no problem if you want to play Candyland on a Monopoly board, but if you want to play Monopoly then you want to actually ''play Monopoly." (And I swear to God, I'll kill someone if the response I get for this is "But you can stop playing Monopoly any time you want" or 'What does this have to do with board games?')

First, thank you for being a lot more civil that time.

But I still think the point you're making is wrong and that any consent protocol that allows someone to be accidentally raped is a bad idea and deserving of mockery.

Unfortunately we seem to be going on entirely different moral principles here, so I propose we agree to disagree and save ourselves a lot of pointless dickery.

That feels a lot like someone saw how long my post was and decided suddenly the argument wasn't worth pursuing... ಠ_ಠ

Probably because it wasn't.

...that is not entirely false.

But I have been known to read even longer posts when I was really fired up, so it's more "decided suddenly the argument wasn't worth pursuing" than "saw how long your post was".

So I'm guessing this thread is dead, then?

Leigh might be doing some livebloggening.

P Ms or a separate IJBM, people. leave your namecalling out of this.

You're kinda late, dude.

He's too late to put an end to our argument, but just in time to show us how much more mature he is.