So rhubarb means no, we know that much. A Politics/Philosophy post.
From http://twitlonger.com (edited/proofread 2010-10-13)
http://www.newsmill.se/inlagg/2010/07/27/bara-hora-lite @VickiQvarnstrom #blogs in #Swedish on #prostitution, also getting into #bdsm. Some bits I strongly agree with (like most prostitution is ugly stuff, with the prostitutes being on the losing end and certainly not people we should be judging), some I might want to put up reservations for, but the interesting parts are those that really get me thinking. With prostitution I think there is a situation that I guess (with great emphasis on guess) comes up almost but not quite never in our culture, and which could be and perhaps has been more common if the stigma was lesser or non-existant, where someone (man or woman) would really not be damaged in any way by being a prostitute, but rather actually thrive on it (not only in a monetary sense). But yeah, I really believe that is a very marginal kind of case in our society. So: To what extent should legalization take this kind of marginal case into account? Same kind of reasoning could go on legislation on recreational #drugs, though I believe the relative amount of people who come out more or less "on top", or at least relatively undamaged, is hugely greater there; it may even be a majority, if you include everyone who's tried marijuana once or twice, but I would not go so far as actually saying that it is. Including drugs that happen to be legal in Sweden maybe doesn't change so much in the case of alcohol. With tobacco included the I wonder if the numbers don't actually get worse, as cigarettes... from what I've heard of them, not a user myself..., today the definitely most common form of tobacco, damage you so badly for so little actual payoff. Caffeine? Common painkillers? Sugar...? I really don't know. The debate gets into another field there, and though the connections are there and perhaps it is one place where this debate should be (whether for seriously discussing some kind of [further] restrictions on these things or for getting another perspective on currently illegal drugs) I feel it gets a bit different and in some sense harder... but maybe that's just because I am a caffeinist with a serious sweet tooth.
A rather strong believer in consequence ethics and some manner of hedonistic utilitarianism, I think that the answer should lie in pragmaticism, in deciding that whatever we do it really shouldn't be based on anything as idiotic as pure principle alone... if nothing else, we must use that principle because we believe we have it for a reason. And, yeah, if you can parse the phrase "hedonistic utilitarianism", you understand that to be acceptable - or, well, understandable (I certainly accept that anyone can and should bring anything they feel is relevant to a democratic deliberation, though I won't necessarily agree that it's relevant) - to me, that reason needs to somehow connect to reducing harm (or "pain" if you will, or "negative emotions") or, well, "maximizing pleasure", though I might prefer in this context to say something like "allowing people to seek pleasure". (Oh, and in the case of prostitution, I really don't think the buyers' pleasure should come into the discussion much - or it should come in very late, when most conclusions are drawn anyway. Stating this categorically may make me a bad utilitarianist, but... screw that. Though, in fact, I'm pretty sure there are good utilitarian arguments to be made for this position. I'm just not sure it's very useful to get technical about this matter... though it may certainly serve as a sort of interesting real world case of the sadist-baby-boiling oil example.)
To be clear, the not-on-principle-alone thing really goes both ways. This is very much not ok (this is hypothetical reasoning to illustrate a point, not my evaluation of any legislation on prostitution or a serious attempt to reconstruct the reasoning behind it): "Ok, it seems pretty clear now that these laws hurt the conditions of sex workers in more cases than not - while they're still not getting fewer. Also, new research strongly indicates that there actually is a sizable group of prostitutes who like their work, and clients who are very serious about only seeking out exactly those and treating them with great respect - and this research also shows we're giving them great trouble. And the existence of the law doesn't seem to be changing anyone's ideas about prostitution either way. But we just really don't _like_ prostitution, so let's keep the laws anyway...". This is equally not ok: "Well, seen from outside the results of relieving the sale and use of all drugs of any kind of restrictions might look bad. Use of heavy drugs has exploded, and many of the users might not look very happy to you, though of course, you do not actually see the inside of their minds... And it's true the 'less crime with legal drugs' thing didn't turn out to fully match up with reality, so you don't really want to go out these days without private security, but, well, people choose whether to get that security... That's the thing, people choose, including the users. Yes, there were those 'joy of crack' ads with celebrities and some less serious medical doctors they found, but that's the thing - people choose what to believe what to follow from the great marketplace of ideas..."
I should also say I think you can let prostitution and drugs switch places in my example above. Though there are certainly differences, connected among other things to who in a transaction we would see as a victim (that's a problematic word, but let's use it for now - if you wish with some emphasis on "see as"), that doesn't really change my belief that you can come to some very bad decisions if you're maximally liberal on principle with prostitution or maximally paternal and restrictive with drugs on principle. So please, let's not do that either.
But, while I believe that we can get rid of some bullshit by stating that what we want is to reduce harm while allowing people to seek pleasure and generally end up with the universe being just that little bit happier a place than if we'd have acted otherwise... that's really all we've done. (And to be honest, we've probably introduced some new ways for bullshit to be introduced, possibly in a more insidious form.) We'll still have the same debates between the same sides, though for what it's worth we'll have set up some ground rules for how they can phrase their arguments. (And here, of course, is another sweet little problem. Some people may have trouble to accommodate to those rules even though they have valid arguments. How to accommodate for them? I don't know, except at the very least they must still be allowed to take part in the discussion.) That, and perhaps also to have introduced the idea that at least in some sense there are facts to take into account, facts that it is imperative that we make a very serious attempt to look at as extensively as possible (while not waiting until we've found all facts to take any kind of action) and with as open a mind as possible. But the thing is, we won't realistically ever have all the facts, or be able to look at them without prejudice. And there will be some facts that are so abstract and hard to get a hold of, that some people might prefer to call them values... So where do we draw our lines? I don't necessarily know.
I guess somewhere here I'd put democracy into the equation. I kind of like democracy. Or... well. Say what you will about http://en.wikipedia.org/Winston_Churchill , but if he actually did say something on the lines of "it's a really bad system, but all alternatives are worse", I'd say he was onto something. And as you may guess when I quote Churchill, for me this really isn't _only_ about some utopian "true" democracy; I really do have a fondness for representative, "bourgeois" democracy in the form that it actually exists and works (especially with proportional representation, first-past-the-post and all that I do find kind of fishy, but that's another story...) And I think that's what we in the end have to use to decide about those lines. What that will give us is the risk of the tyranny of the 51% (who may then not be evil, but just ill-informed), but also a bit of protection from the tyranny of the 49%, or the 5% for that matter... And we can hope that our society is heterogenous enough, and the power spread-out enough, to have (enough) people get somewhat more inclined to be considerate of minorities because they would tend to belong to at least one themselves (and thus both become both more understanding and more wary of having that 51% tyranny turned against themselves).
That, and another sense of democracy... The idea of deliberation, of many voices being heard and allowed to influence the final outcome. And this is valuable because people has to get to speak for their own interests, but also because noone has the whole story, but if everyone gets to speak we will have so much more of it.
In some sense it is a cop-out in a discussion of "issues" to say that the decision of the people must be what gets to decide (though one that has to be allowed in a democratic society, for example if you don't really feel you have any meaningful input to give), at least if you then refuse to comment on what you as a member of the community would try to bring into the decision-making process, or what you as an outsider would (humbly or less so) advice. So: I very much do not have all the answers, and do not _know_ exactly where we should draw those lines. I also don't think anyone does (though many surely know more than me), and however cliché it may sound I would say you should distrust anyone who claims to (though you should also listen to them as they may well have valuable insights). I really think that what I really want to bring to this debate are the things I've said here. Let's try to at least cut out any "pure principle" bullshit, as these things are too important. Let's accept that there are different valid arguments, or if you don't really feel that to be the case, at least try to still hear other people out. Let's try to hear a lot of people out, including those science people (of the "soft" and "hard" sciences alike)... and see where we can agree to end up, hopefully after having agreed that the end goal is making the Universe a little less Hell and a little more Paradise (though if for some reason we have trouble agreeing on that, for example because of getting hung-up on some philosophic technicality, we should probably cut past that and discuss more practical issues). Let's accept that it will be about finding a balance, and that striking that balance right will be hard and that we will surely not get it perfect anytime soon, but that there are things to try to build a rational decision on and that we really have to try, to keep seeking the answers and adjust our policy as we find them. And through all this, perhaps most importantly, let's treat everyone with respect. (Which I would say you can do even while having an opinion on what they should do, and even while trying to force them to act or not act in a certain way - which certainly does not mean it is always right or even at all acceptable to do that.)
Do you still want to know what I would do with Swedish laws on drugs and prostitution if I could dictate them autocratically right now, but was not allowed to talk to a single person, not read a single Wikipedia stub or weird angelfire advocacy page as research, or for that matter read the laws as they are now - which I don't really know that deeply? Well, it would be rather strange if I could do that, wouldn't it? So I guess for that reason alone I would leave it as it is, not really understanding how my changes could have legitimacy and not trusting myself to actually know how to make things better. Also, for disclosure I guess, I don't necessarily feel the current laws are that bad (I think I'll get back to this in a moment). There are some things I might do outside of actual legislation. I would try to make sure a lot of people, with different backgrounds and viewpoints, are working out what those actual facts I was talking about are. And though I believe it would be very much as it should be that some of these people have some clear ideas of what the facts will look like and what they should tell us, I would want to make sure here that there is some people involved who are interested in looking at these things as open questions to investigate, prepared to be surprised (or even certain not to be surprised because of total lack of pre-conceptions) - and structures for them to be doing this. This, and I would cut a check to medical treatment of various kinds for addicts (heroin detox in Gothenburg I think is pretty high on the list).
But the laws... Yeah, I actually quite like the idea of the Sex Purchase Act. It rather clearly says that we will not pretend that prostitution as it exists in Sweden today is nice and unproblematic; rather, it is quite ugly and damaging to the prostitutes, and a person who buys sex is contributing a bit of that damage and is thereby committing a crime; still, rather than criminalizing the victims we accept the paradox that for this criminal act it is not actually a crime under certain circumstances to encourage someone to commit it or even to help them commit it and gain financially from it. That sums it up, I guess, and I think it's rather clever and rhymes well with how I look at, well, the ethics of "real" prostitution. Of course, whether I find it "clever" or not is not what we're interested in; it should be subject to the same pragmaticism I've been discussing all this time. I do know that there are rather a lot of people who argue that the facts then lead to it being pretty clear that we should scrap the law. I don't recall all the arguments, but I have read some of this from time to time and don't think they have ever managed to fully convince me - so I wouldn't use my autocratic power to immediately remove the law. With drugs, well, my general understanding is that they tend to end up as primarily BadStuff, both on the societal and the individual level. This certainly includes alcohol and tobacco, which is why society in various ways tries to control and limit their use (well, there may be less noble reasons as well, I guess...) - only they are so ingrained into European society that a ban is not the most effective or humane way to accomplish that, and also is not likely to be something we agree to make a law in the near future anyway given the amount of smokers and drinkers around. (Oh, more disclosure... I've mentioned I don't smoke. I do drink, more or less in moderation.) It is quite possible that new drugs could enter this position, just as I actually have some hope of seeing the day when we say goodbye to cigarettes. Then, there is the very real value of allowing adults to live in a society where their choices are respected... that certainly must weigh in. But the choices will in some cases be very far from being informed; they will not always be made by adults; they will strongly and negatively affect people who were not involved in making them... Also, I might be prepared to upgrade to VeryBadStuff, especially if it comes to introduction on a large scale of a new drug to a society that has no tradition in place on how to actually handle the use of that drug. In the end, pragmaticism seems to tell me that banning is the least bad solution... But all this is just my two cents. My bigger message, my quarter if you will, is that we all need to talk, and investigate with an open mind to try and find the best answer, and with everyone giving their two cents and quarters... perhaps in the end we'll have a whole dollar! :) (And suddenly we're in the US, but I'm pretty sure people outside Sweden can take something out of what I'm saying here as well, so it's kind of ok...)
In the blog post, there is a story of a "girl who had a Master", a #bdsm story of sorts. It kind of stands out, it doesn't really come out as part of the general argument... but in fact it is, in the sense that Qvarnström uses it as an example (while, as it seems, herself searching for the right way to think about prostitution) of how sexual abuse does not have to be connected to material rewards (in fact, she ponders if such could lessen the abusive factor). For in any case, this is very much a story about abuse. We don't know that this was the whole story, but I don't really see too much reason to doubt Qvarnström on it having been at least a big part of it. And in any case, that's not really the point here, because there would be other cases where it were... if only because that is the case in all to many relationships in general. So... though Qvarnström acknowledges that "in BDSM (WP-link here) circles there are also clear rules, like taking care of one's submissive. Especially mentally, where the big challenge takes place. Noone becomes dominant without the consent of a submissive, that is the rule. Thus the fundamental power is with the submissive, who gains some kind of personal kick and satisfaction from the game, which is altogether serious", it is possible to read her here as dismissing and vilifying all BDSM, which I would then not agree with... But then, what do we make of it? And actually, let's split up that "we" a bit. What should the BDSM community (which is not actually "we for me" at the moment, and what details may come up in the little narrative I make here is conjecture or hearsay) do with it?... so, you're very much safe, sane and consensual and you feel pretty sure the friends you know well and have talked about this extensively (even those you haven't actually played with) are... But is every dominant you've come into contact with, in the privacy of their dungeon, certain to have the best interests of the submissive in mind? Is every submissive strong enough to resist if someone tries to push them past their most definite no:s? Well, a very quick and easy google search (abuse in the bdsm community) shows us, hardly surprisingly, that this is not an issue that has been totally missed in all "internal" BDSM discussions. If you want some insight into such internal discussion, or just a much much more useful discussion of the issue than I could hope to achieve, read what Clarisse Thorn writes at http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/09/28/the-alt-sex-anti-abuse-dream-team/ . So if you actually read that (or for that matter, when I look through it after already having pasted the link here...), you see a discussion (in the sense of "treatment"... there may be comments but I haven't seen them yet NOTE: There are, and they're worth looking at.) of this issue inside the BDSM community - stating that there are some serious problems with how this is discussed within the BDSM community. So yeah... And then, how should outsiders trying to figure out how to think about BDSM take this? And, getting back to what was the focus in what I wrote earlier about prostitution and drugs, what about courts and lawmakers? Because regardless of what you think of any laws in existence or the courts' handling of cases involving BDSM, we probably agree that there are potential situations where it is quite right that the machinery of the law continues to come into play... So when and how? What kinds of answers should they be giving to what questions? Well, I guess it's the same thing again. Talk, look for answers, show respect... and bloody well remember that rhubarb means no.
http://www.newsmill.se/inlagg/2010/07/27/bara-hora-lite @VickiQvarnstrom #blogs in #Swedish on #prostitution, also getting into #bdsm. Some bits I strongly agree with (like most prostitution is ugly stuff, with the prostitutes being on the losing end and certainly not people we should be judging), some I might want to put up reservations for, but the interesting parts are those that really get me thinking. With prostitution I think there is a situation that I guess (with great emphasis on guess) comes up almost but not quite never in our culture, and which could be and perhaps has been more common if the stigma was lesser or non-existant, where someone (man or woman) would really not be damaged in any way by being a prostitute, but rather actually thrive on it (not only in a monetary sense). But yeah, I really believe that is a very marginal kind of case in our society. So: To what extent should legalization take this kind of marginal case into account? Same kind of reasoning could go on legislation on recreational #drugs, though I believe the relative amount of people who come out more or less "on top", or at least relatively undamaged, is hugely greater there; it may even be a majority, if you include everyone who's tried marijuana once or twice, but I would not go so far as actually saying that it is. Including drugs that happen to be legal in Sweden maybe doesn't change so much in the case of alcohol. With tobacco included the I wonder if the numbers don't actually get worse, as cigarettes... from what I've heard of them, not a user myself..., today the definitely most common form of tobacco, damage you so badly for so little actual payoff. Caffeine? Common painkillers? Sugar...? I really don't know. The debate gets into another field there, and though the connections are there and perhaps it is one place where this debate should be (whether for seriously discussing some kind of [further] restrictions on these things or for getting another perspective on currently illegal drugs) I feel it gets a bit different and in some sense harder... but maybe that's just because I am a caffeinist with a serious sweet tooth.
A rather strong believer in consequence ethics and some manner of hedonistic utilitarianism, I think that the answer should lie in pragmaticism, in deciding that whatever we do it really shouldn't be based on anything as idiotic as pure principle alone... if nothing else, we must use that principle because we believe we have it for a reason. And, yeah, if you can parse the phrase "hedonistic utilitarianism", you understand that to be acceptable - or, well, understandable (I certainly accept that anyone can and should bring anything they feel is relevant to a democratic deliberation, though I won't necessarily agree that it's relevant) - to me, that reason needs to somehow connect to reducing harm (or "pain" if you will, or "negative emotions") or, well, "maximizing pleasure", though I might prefer in this context to say something like "allowing people to seek pleasure". (Oh, and in the case of prostitution, I really don't think the buyers' pleasure should come into the discussion much - or it should come in very late, when most conclusions are drawn anyway. Stating this categorically may make me a bad utilitarianist, but... screw that. Though, in fact, I'm pretty sure there are good utilitarian arguments to be made for this position. I'm just not sure it's very useful to get technical about this matter... though it may certainly serve as a sort of interesting real world case of the sadist-baby-boiling oil example.)
To be clear, the not-on-principle-alone thing really goes both ways. This is very much not ok (this is hypothetical reasoning to illustrate a point, not my evaluation of any legislation on prostitution or a serious attempt to reconstruct the reasoning behind it): "Ok, it seems pretty clear now that these laws hurt the conditions of sex workers in more cases than not - while they're still not getting fewer. Also, new research strongly indicates that there actually is a sizable group of prostitutes who like their work, and clients who are very serious about only seeking out exactly those and treating them with great respect - and this research also shows we're giving them great trouble. And the existence of the law doesn't seem to be changing anyone's ideas about prostitution either way. But we just really don't _like_ prostitution, so let's keep the laws anyway...". This is equally not ok: "Well, seen from outside the results of relieving the sale and use of all drugs of any kind of restrictions might look bad. Use of heavy drugs has exploded, and many of the users might not look very happy to you, though of course, you do not actually see the inside of their minds... And it's true the 'less crime with legal drugs' thing didn't turn out to fully match up with reality, so you don't really want to go out these days without private security, but, well, people choose whether to get that security... That's the thing, people choose, including the users. Yes, there were those 'joy of crack' ads with celebrities and some less serious medical doctors they found, but that's the thing - people choose what to believe what to follow from the great marketplace of ideas..."
I should also say I think you can let prostitution and drugs switch places in my example above. Though there are certainly differences, connected among other things to who in a transaction we would see as a victim (that's a problematic word, but let's use it for now - if you wish with some emphasis on "see as"), that doesn't really change my belief that you can come to some very bad decisions if you're maximally liberal on principle with prostitution or maximally paternal and restrictive with drugs on principle. So please, let's not do that either.
But, while I believe that we can get rid of some bullshit by stating that what we want is to reduce harm while allowing people to seek pleasure and generally end up with the universe being just that little bit happier a place than if we'd have acted otherwise... that's really all we've done. (And to be honest, we've probably introduced some new ways for bullshit to be introduced, possibly in a more insidious form.) We'll still have the same debates between the same sides, though for what it's worth we'll have set up some ground rules for how they can phrase their arguments. (And here, of course, is another sweet little problem. Some people may have trouble to accommodate to those rules even though they have valid arguments. How to accommodate for them? I don't know, except at the very least they must still be allowed to take part in the discussion.) That, and perhaps also to have introduced the idea that at least in some sense there are facts to take into account, facts that it is imperative that we make a very serious attempt to look at as extensively as possible (while not waiting until we've found all facts to take any kind of action) and with as open a mind as possible. But the thing is, we won't realistically ever have all the facts, or be able to look at them without prejudice. And there will be some facts that are so abstract and hard to get a hold of, that some people might prefer to call them values... So where do we draw our lines? I don't necessarily know.
I guess somewhere here I'd put democracy into the equation. I kind of like democracy. Or... well. Say what you will about http://en.wikipedia.org/Winston_Churchill , but if he actually did say something on the lines of "it's a really bad system, but all alternatives are worse", I'd say he was onto something. And as you may guess when I quote Churchill, for me this really isn't _only_ about some utopian "true" democracy; I really do have a fondness for representative, "bourgeois" democracy in the form that it actually exists and works (especially with proportional representation, first-past-the-post and all that I do find kind of fishy, but that's another story...) And I think that's what we in the end have to use to decide about those lines. What that will give us is the risk of the tyranny of the 51% (who may then not be evil, but just ill-informed), but also a bit of protection from the tyranny of the 49%, or the 5% for that matter... And we can hope that our society is heterogenous enough, and the power spread-out enough, to have (enough) people get somewhat more inclined to be considerate of minorities because they would tend to belong to at least one themselves (and thus both become both more understanding and more wary of having that 51% tyranny turned against themselves).
That, and another sense of democracy... The idea of deliberation, of many voices being heard and allowed to influence the final outcome. And this is valuable because people has to get to speak for their own interests, but also because noone has the whole story, but if everyone gets to speak we will have so much more of it.
In some sense it is a cop-out in a discussion of "issues" to say that the decision of the people must be what gets to decide (though one that has to be allowed in a democratic society, for example if you don't really feel you have any meaningful input to give), at least if you then refuse to comment on what you as a member of the community would try to bring into the decision-making process, or what you as an outsider would (humbly or less so) advice. So: I very much do not have all the answers, and do not _know_ exactly where we should draw those lines. I also don't think anyone does (though many surely know more than me), and however cliché it may sound I would say you should distrust anyone who claims to (though you should also listen to them as they may well have valuable insights). I really think that what I really want to bring to this debate are the things I've said here. Let's try to at least cut out any "pure principle" bullshit, as these things are too important. Let's accept that there are different valid arguments, or if you don't really feel that to be the case, at least try to still hear other people out. Let's try to hear a lot of people out, including those science people (of the "soft" and "hard" sciences alike)... and see where we can agree to end up, hopefully after having agreed that the end goal is making the Universe a little less Hell and a little more Paradise (though if for some reason we have trouble agreeing on that, for example because of getting hung-up on some philosophic technicality, we should probably cut past that and discuss more practical issues). Let's accept that it will be about finding a balance, and that striking that balance right will be hard and that we will surely not get it perfect anytime soon, but that there are things to try to build a rational decision on and that we really have to try, to keep seeking the answers and adjust our policy as we find them. And through all this, perhaps most importantly, let's treat everyone with respect. (Which I would say you can do even while having an opinion on what they should do, and even while trying to force them to act or not act in a certain way - which certainly does not mean it is always right or even at all acceptable to do that.)
Do you still want to know what I would do with Swedish laws on drugs and prostitution if I could dictate them autocratically right now, but was not allowed to talk to a single person, not read a single Wikipedia stub or weird angelfire advocacy page as research, or for that matter read the laws as they are now - which I don't really know that deeply? Well, it would be rather strange if I could do that, wouldn't it? So I guess for that reason alone I would leave it as it is, not really understanding how my changes could have legitimacy and not trusting myself to actually know how to make things better. Also, for disclosure I guess, I don't necessarily feel the current laws are that bad (I think I'll get back to this in a moment). There are some things I might do outside of actual legislation. I would try to make sure a lot of people, with different backgrounds and viewpoints, are working out what those actual facts I was talking about are. And though I believe it would be very much as it should be that some of these people have some clear ideas of what the facts will look like and what they should tell us, I would want to make sure here that there is some people involved who are interested in looking at these things as open questions to investigate, prepared to be surprised (or even certain not to be surprised because of total lack of pre-conceptions) - and structures for them to be doing this. This, and I would cut a check to medical treatment of various kinds for addicts (heroin detox in Gothenburg I think is pretty high on the list).
But the laws... Yeah, I actually quite like the idea of the Sex Purchase Act. It rather clearly says that we will not pretend that prostitution as it exists in Sweden today is nice and unproblematic; rather, it is quite ugly and damaging to the prostitutes, and a person who buys sex is contributing a bit of that damage and is thereby committing a crime; still, rather than criminalizing the victims we accept the paradox that for this criminal act it is not actually a crime under certain circumstances to encourage someone to commit it or even to help them commit it and gain financially from it. That sums it up, I guess, and I think it's rather clever and rhymes well with how I look at, well, the ethics of "real" prostitution. Of course, whether I find it "clever" or not is not what we're interested in; it should be subject to the same pragmaticism I've been discussing all this time. I do know that there are rather a lot of people who argue that the facts then lead to it being pretty clear that we should scrap the law. I don't recall all the arguments, but I have read some of this from time to time and don't think they have ever managed to fully convince me - so I wouldn't use my autocratic power to immediately remove the law. With drugs, well, my general understanding is that they tend to end up as primarily BadStuff, both on the societal and the individual level. This certainly includes alcohol and tobacco, which is why society in various ways tries to control and limit their use (well, there may be less noble reasons as well, I guess...) - only they are so ingrained into European society that a ban is not the most effective or humane way to accomplish that, and also is not likely to be something we agree to make a law in the near future anyway given the amount of smokers and drinkers around. (Oh, more disclosure... I've mentioned I don't smoke. I do drink, more or less in moderation.) It is quite possible that new drugs could enter this position, just as I actually have some hope of seeing the day when we say goodbye to cigarettes. Then, there is the very real value of allowing adults to live in a society where their choices are respected... that certainly must weigh in. But the choices will in some cases be very far from being informed; they will not always be made by adults; they will strongly and negatively affect people who were not involved in making them... Also, I might be prepared to upgrade to VeryBadStuff, especially if it comes to introduction on a large scale of a new drug to a society that has no tradition in place on how to actually handle the use of that drug. In the end, pragmaticism seems to tell me that banning is the least bad solution... But all this is just my two cents. My bigger message, my quarter if you will, is that we all need to talk, and investigate with an open mind to try and find the best answer, and with everyone giving their two cents and quarters... perhaps in the end we'll have a whole dollar! :) (And suddenly we're in the US, but I'm pretty sure people outside Sweden can take something out of what I'm saying here as well, so it's kind of ok...)
In the blog post, there is a story of a "girl who had a Master", a #bdsm story of sorts. It kind of stands out, it doesn't really come out as part of the general argument... but in fact it is, in the sense that Qvarnström uses it as an example (while, as it seems, herself searching for the right way to think about prostitution) of how sexual abuse does not have to be connected to material rewards (in fact, she ponders if such could lessen the abusive factor). For in any case, this is very much a story about abuse. We don't know that this was the whole story, but I don't really see too much reason to doubt Qvarnström on it having been at least a big part of it. And in any case, that's not really the point here, because there would be other cases where it were... if only because that is the case in all to many relationships in general. So... though Qvarnström acknowledges that "in BDSM (WP-link here) circles there are also clear rules, like taking care of one's submissive. Especially mentally, where the big challenge takes place. Noone becomes dominant without the consent of a submissive, that is the rule. Thus the fundamental power is with the submissive, who gains some kind of personal kick and satisfaction from the game, which is altogether serious", it is possible to read her here as dismissing and vilifying all BDSM, which I would then not agree with... But then, what do we make of it? And actually, let's split up that "we" a bit. What should the BDSM community (which is not actually "we for me" at the moment, and what details may come up in the little narrative I make here is conjecture or hearsay) do with it?... so, you're very much safe, sane and consensual and you feel pretty sure the friends you know well and have talked about this extensively (even those you haven't actually played with) are... But is every dominant you've come into contact with, in the privacy of their dungeon, certain to have the best interests of the submissive in mind? Is every submissive strong enough to resist if someone tries to push them past their most definite no:s? Well, a very quick and easy google search (abuse in the bdsm community) shows us, hardly surprisingly, that this is not an issue that has been totally missed in all "internal" BDSM discussions. If you want some insight into such internal discussion, or just a much much more useful discussion of the issue than I could hope to achieve, read what Clarisse Thorn writes at http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/09/28/the-alt-sex-anti-abuse-dream-team/ . So if you actually read that (or for that matter, when I look through it after already having pasted the link here...), you see a discussion (in the sense of "treatment"... there may be comments but I haven't seen them yet NOTE: There are, and they're worth looking at.) of this issue inside the BDSM community - stating that there are some serious problems with how this is discussed within the BDSM community. So yeah... And then, how should outsiders trying to figure out how to think about BDSM take this? And, getting back to what was the focus in what I wrote earlier about prostitution and drugs, what about courts and lawmakers? Because regardless of what you think of any laws in existence or the courts' handling of cases involving BDSM, we probably agree that there are potential situations where it is quite right that the machinery of the law continues to come into play... So when and how? What kinds of answers should they be giving to what questions? Well, I guess it's the same thing again. Talk, look for answers, show respect... and bloody well remember that rhubarb means no.