On the use of the word "torture"
It seems to me, it all stems from the paradox that tickling is.
First off, tickling, as practiced by some community members, involves the same kind of bondage equipment and some of the same lingo as the more hard-core S&M. So let's consider S&M for a moment. Consider whipping (which no, I'm not into at all). In consensual S&M relationships, the sub chooses to be tied down and whipped. Is it torture? Of course it is. Does the tortured party like it? Again, of course, hence the word for which the letter M in S&M stands.
Now, turning to tickling. Obviously, it's very different from whipping, but even for a consenting ticklee, the natural impulse while being tickled is to try to get away from it, hence the bondage equipment. There was a thread about bondage some weeks back, by the way, in which numerous ticklees described their favorite positions of being held down in order to be tickled. So, it has elements of torture, but it's torture for pleasure, and much less adverse than something like whipping.
So, I wouldn't get too bothered by the word, though of course one thing that stands out about this community in general is that different people experience the phenomenon in different ways, and feel comfortable with different sets of vocabulary to describe it. As long as we keep what we do safe and consensual, I think we can live with the variances over terminology.
