Quote Originally Posted by damyanti View Post


I read most of those studies, and of course we arent any different from other people (well apart from arguably being more fulfilled sexually) . But that is not what The I's post was about anyway(!), it was about the fact that sometimes some people hide abuse in the guise of BDSM.

Percentage wise abuse and violence are no more common in BDSM community than they are in vanilla one, but we tend to forget about the % that is abuse and have a tendency to deny abuse exists at all due to (un)rational fear someone else will label what we personally are doing as abuse or unsane as well.

I think the closest definition for sane here would be someone who is able to anticipate and appraise the effect of their own's actions in order to discern which fantasies are best left fantasies.
Agreed. But I realize that my point is perhaps in part about something beyond sanity: conscience. It is about not just knowing the difference between sane and un-sane, but having the decency to ask the question in the first place!

I've never doubted my ability to know sane from un-sane, and I think that's why I've never had issues with other people being sadists when I had doubted my own intentions. When it came t others I've always been fairly confident I could know the difference between sane and insane.

What I see as the risk is stopping to ask ourselves the question if what we're doing is actually a good thing or having the honesty to answer ourselves truthfully. It doesn't have to do with whether this or that level of extremity is abuse. For me abuse doesn't have to do with whether it's sunday spankings or total power exchange. For me abuse is whether you stop having your partners welfare as the motivation for what you're doing.