Discussion:Le Pouvoir érotique

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Version du 26 mai 2008 à 08:19 par Thanalie (discuter | contributions)
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Résumé en anglais / Summary : Scott, Gini Graham, Erotic Power: An Exploration of Dominance and Submission, Secaucus. N.J.: Citadel Press, 1983, 257 p. First published under the title Dominant Woman, Submissive Men.

Dominance and submission refer to practices of consensual power exchange in which one partner, usually the female, plays a dominant role, while the other, usually the male, assumes a submissive role; although it encompasses sadism and masochism as well as bondage and discipline, it is not restricted to those more extreme arenas. For two years, sociologist Scott was a participant/observer in two San Francisco Bay organizations that were composed of D&Sers. On the basis of her research, she introduces the general reader to the world of dominance and submission. Unlike past research by psychologists and psychiatrists, that have focused on case studies of troubled individuals, Scott describes the typical participant in D&S, a practice that cross-cuts most social categories.
Each part of the book explores one aspect of the cultural and social organization of D&S. Part I is devoted to how and why people become involved in it. Most participants find female dominance erotically stimulating and emotionally satisfying. Most males are attracted to sexual submission as a way to counterbalance a primarily dominant lifestyle. Likewise, females may find sexual dominance appealing as a balance to an overall submissive lifestyle. A predisposition to D&S stemming from fantasies of submission in childhood and/or emotional and situational factors account for the pull of individuals into these practices.
Part III describes the psychological and sexual dynamics of a D&S power exchange. D&S relationships have much in common with other types of sexual interaction in terms of duration, frequency, kinds of erotic exchanges, and variety. Part III, IV, and V describe the activities and behavior of the relatively small number of people (20,000) who explore D&S publicly and seriously. Part III, "Joining the Scene," focuses on the workshops, foursomes, organized groups, and parties that allow individuals to become more comfortable about assuming unconventional sex roles. Part IV deals with the psychological dynamics of the power exchange. In order for the power exchange to work, the dominant must maintain control, but the submissive must set limits. It is within this context that fantasies, toys, pain, bondage, humiliation, and other facets of power manipulation associated with eroticism are discussed. The final part discusses the commercial aspects of D&S: professional mistresses, the professional session, and magazines and books.
Scott concludes that, unlike the social stereotypes of D&S, at the core of D&S communities are “mostly sensible, rational, respectable, otherwise quite ordinary people, for whom D&S is a way of playing with unique, bizarre, unusual, and often taboo forms of fantasy and erotic expression, as a release from the everyday world"; they "avoid truly dangerous or harmful activities" (p. 253). Since between 15 and 75 million adults are estimated to engage in some form of erotic activity in which the female is dominant and the male submissive, D&S can be considered to be part of the continuum of “normal" sexual behavior. (SGF)

Source: Studies in Human Sexuality. A Selected Guide, second edition, Suzanne G. Frayser, Thomas J. Whitby, Libraries Unlimited, 1995, 737 p. / p. 357. --Thanalie 26 mai 2008 à 12:19 (UTC)