Yanari wrote:
In my life as an armchair psychologist, a fetish is a sign of obsessive behavior, which is a symptom of a mental disorder. Many mental disorders can be treated.
[soapbox]
A fetish is NOT an obsessive behavior, it's simply an orientation, just like being gay. Trust me on this, as a sometime practitioner of BDSM, I have spent a lot of time analyzing the psychological mechanisms behind my kink.
I've asked myself what "made" me a submissive? Was it childhood sexual trauma? No, I was having submissive fantasies years before I was sexually molested, even as early as the age of five. Was it witnessing the behavior of my slutty alcoholic mother? No, because up to the age of five or six when my fantasies first began to manifest, my mother was actually flying fairly straight, it was only after that time that she really began to act out.
I could probably dig deeper than that to try to find a cause--maybe I would even succeed--but why should I? Even if I found a "cause" for my own kinkiness, I know fifty other BDSM practitioners who wouldn't share it, or necessarily be able to identify a cause at all. Maybe we were born that way, maybe we weren't. Either way, what does it matter? My fetish isn't harming anyone, including me. I'm a perfectly healthy, normal, well-adjusted, socially productive adult with a well-adjusted, normal, socially productive spouse. So what if I like to be tied up and whipped from time to time? Why should that be treated as a "mental disorder"?
Not too long ago, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness in the DSM (II or III, I am not certain.) There's a reason why that classification was removed. Because it was a non-coercive behavior that in no way impaired a person's ability to function as a self-supporting member of society; in other words, it wasn't an "illness". BDSM or other non-coercive fetishes have no place being treated as mental illnesses either, as long as they are exactly that:
non-coercive..
There ARE coercive paraphilias. Exhibitionism, voyeurism, frotteurism (rubbing a non-consenting person with one's genitals) or toucherism (manually fondling a non-consenting person). All of these involve a person inflicting their fetish upon a non-consenting public. Obviously, these DO need to be treated as mental illnesses, and crimes, because they do inflict harm upon others
It's neither accurate nor fair to lump BDSM in with these, because most practitioners of BDSM scrupulously make certain that consent is in place for all activities and that boundaries are clearly established and negotiated and that safety mechanisms are in place (hence the concept of a safeword.) How many "vanilla" lovers take such precautions to make sure that the experience is safe and healthy and fulfilling for both partners?
[/soapbox]
Anyhow, I am wondering what I missed in the article that made this discussion zero in on BDSM, which it seemed like the Attorney General was focusing on **** in general.
Edited, Sun Oct 2 18:22:16 2005 by Ambrya