THERE IS NO EXCHANGE RATE FOR POWER
Power is a word that gets thrown around a lot in BDSM circles. The problem is that it seems that BDSMers have no concept of the real thing and thus they tend to make fools of themselves when they speak of it. So let me make myself clear when I use the word power. I’m referring to power as it works in the real, physical world, power being what comes from the barrel of a gun. Power is force--material, political, economic force. It is the means by which things are done in the face of opposition. It is something that BDSM groups for the most part lack simply because they do not understand either its nature or its use.
Lacking power, they are forced to fall back upon its weaker substitute, authority. Now authority is a purely psychological thing. It has no real force behind it unless it can bring power to bear and when power and authority clash, power crushes it. Any authority lacking power can be ignored with impunity. Now let us be honest and say that this is not only something in the BDSM world, it is found in the outside world as well and the two things get mistaken many times but there seems to be a tendency in BDSMland to really mix them up so you get the occasional nonsense comparing rules in BDSM to laws of the state. As I always point out to such fools, the state has guns and BDSM groups don’t. The most they can do is kick the person out and he just starts his own group. Power, in the final analysis, is in direct relation to the capacity to coerce behavior. Lacking that capacity, all that is left is persuasive technique and the hope that it will work.
Now, the more intelligent BDSM folk out there (and there are a few of us) know this. So rather than make stupid appeals to brute force which are truly laughable, they appeal to the tools of persuasion, particularly authority and arguments from it. This is why you get people saying, “the Old Guard did X,” as if it mattered what the Old Guard ever did about anything. They cannot come up with internal reasons for their arguments so they appeal to an almost mythical authority. Unfortunately for them they get the answer, “So what?” The weakness of any argument by authority is that both sides must accept the authority being quoted. As I always say, you don’t quote papal encyclicals to a Baptist and expect him to listen.
If power does not exist and authority is lacking, what then is the state of control mechanisms in BDSM? The state is pretty weak. There is no stricture in BDSM that cannot be ignored if you have sufficient personality resources, in other words, a group of friends who are going to stay your friends no matter what anyone else thinks. And there are forms of real power that do exist but the people who hold them are very careful about how they are used if they intend to keep them. Business are dependent upon the goodwill of the customers. People with large mailing lists are people who can hurt a business or help it. This is economic power at its most obvious. The owner of a dungeon may not like someone, but that person is friends with someone with one of those lists and the listowner is going to be very mad if his or her friend is mistreated. But, the owner of the list knows better than to use that power except in extreme circumstances or the list will shrink very quickly and their power will disappear.
The resulting situation is a subtle dance, a truly Byzantine jockeying for position in which who is up and who is down is followed like prices on the stock exchange. Who can be offended and who cannot is something that is watched very carefully. But in the end it all comes down to power, and there is no greater disaster that can befall anyone in the scene than to think they have it only to find out that it is not there. The scene is littered with the bodies of those who issued edicts only to see those edicts ignored.
Power is a word that gets thrown around a lot in BDSM circles. The problem is that it seems that BDSMers have no concept of the real thing and thus they tend to make fools of themselves when they speak of it. So let me make myself clear when I use the word power. I’m referring to power as it works in the real, physical world, power being what comes from the barrel of a gun. Power is force--material, political, economic force. It is the means by which things are done in the face of opposition. It is something that BDSM groups for the most part lack simply because they do not understand either its nature or its use.
Lacking power, they are forced to fall back upon its weaker substitute, authority. Now authority is a purely psychological thing. It has no real force behind it unless it can bring power to bear and when power and authority clash, power crushes it. Any authority lacking power can be ignored with impunity. Now let us be honest and say that this is not only something in the BDSM world, it is found in the outside world as well and the two things get mistaken many times but there seems to be a tendency in BDSMland to really mix them up so you get the occasional nonsense comparing rules in BDSM to laws of the state. As I always point out to such fools, the state has guns and BDSM groups don’t. The most they can do is kick the person out and he just starts his own group. Power, in the final analysis, is in direct relation to the capacity to coerce behavior. Lacking that capacity, all that is left is persuasive technique and the hope that it will work.
Now, the more intelligent BDSM folk out there (and there are a few of us) know this. So rather than make stupid appeals to brute force which are truly laughable, they appeal to the tools of persuasion, particularly authority and arguments from it. This is why you get people saying, “the Old Guard did X,” as if it mattered what the Old Guard ever did about anything. They cannot come up with internal reasons for their arguments so they appeal to an almost mythical authority. Unfortunately for them they get the answer, “So what?” The weakness of any argument by authority is that both sides must accept the authority being quoted. As I always say, you don’t quote papal encyclicals to a Baptist and expect him to listen.
If power does not exist and authority is lacking, what then is the state of control mechanisms in BDSM? The state is pretty weak. There is no stricture in BDSM that cannot be ignored if you have sufficient personality resources, in other words, a group of friends who are going to stay your friends no matter what anyone else thinks. And there are forms of real power that do exist but the people who hold them are very careful about how they are used if they intend to keep them. Business are dependent upon the goodwill of the customers. People with large mailing lists are people who can hurt a business or help it. This is economic power at its most obvious. The owner of a dungeon may not like someone, but that person is friends with someone with one of those lists and the listowner is going to be very mad if his or her friend is mistreated. But, the owner of the list knows better than to use that power except in extreme circumstances or the list will shrink very quickly and their power will disappear.
The resulting situation is a subtle dance, a truly Byzantine jockeying for position in which who is up and who is down is followed like prices on the stock exchange. Who can be offended and who cannot is something that is watched very carefully. But in the end it all comes down to power, and there is no greater disaster that can befall anyone in the scene than to think they have it only to find out that it is not there. The scene is littered with the bodies of those who issued edicts only to see those edicts ignored.