Tom Tickle
TMF Master
- Joined
- May 12, 2006
- Messages
- 667
- Points
- 0
Hi there.
I don't usually post on this section of the site, but i'm pretty active on the tickling art front. I just felt the need to put the problem with 'fringe' activity in the media and society across to you, because it seems that in England, our press has a few moral issues with two or more consenting adults enjoying themselves.
The Daily Mail, an almost fascist tabloid enjoyed by middle-class fogies and neurosis-riddled malcontents, published an essay today about a man who indulged in BDSM activities and was filmed by another tabloid. Okay, so he was going at it with call girls, but that wasn't the point of consternation.. it was the fact that he was dressed as a Nazi and indulging in whipping, spanking and blood-letting. The writer said that his wife wouldn't be quite so devastated if he'd merely been caught having straight sex with a hooker.
Of course, the purient Mail put two and two together and came up with twenty five. Apparently, despite the Judge saying 'S&M is pretty harmless', they're using this as a chance to have a pop at everything that isn't vanilla, straight up sex. It's 'loveless' (as they put it) sex. Well shock horror... so is a lot of it - hence the term casual sex.
Apparently, Doctors and Nurse roleplay, cosplay and all forms of BDSM are deviant, deranged and morally bankrupt. I guess they'd include tickle-sex in that bracket too, which is what makes this relevant to this lovely site, full of caring, considerate people.
According to the Daily Mail (a paper which ran a headline saying 'hooray for hitler' in the 1930's), we're all out to harm people with our 'morally damaged' sexual predilections, even if it's consensual. No room for love or tenderness here. We all indulge in our own 'sordid private hell' which is right up there on 'the scale of wrongness'.
I've written the following letter in reply;
Dear Sir
In response to the Saturday Essay; Privacy vs. Morality (Mail), I have to say that I do not see what right Steven Glover thinks he has to impose his own narrow sense of moral decency on events that have no bearing on public life.
I’m not an apologist for Mr Mosley or anyone of his ilk, and I don’t take part in Sado-masochistic sex-acts, but despite the well-deserved critique of the News of the World’s lurid coverage of this event and their sanctimonious moralising, I believe Glover, and by extension the Mail, have fallen into this very trap.
To many people, dressing up as a Nazi and blood-letting may not be the key to a great sex life, but they obviously are to some. If these acts are consensual and the ultimate responsibility lies with two adults, then questions of morality are neither here nor there. Max Mosley isn’t a public figure, as the judge pointed out. He’s involved in a sport (Formula One) that promotes excess and a sun-kissed, daredevil, high-octane, millionaire life style. In reference to the judge’s view that ‘most people think S &M behaviour …is harmless’, I would agree. There is a choice involved, unlike rape or paedophilia where the unwilling victim is forced to sexually gratify the assailant.
Glover goes on to say that, ‘This is not a ‘fun’ party, as Mr Mosley claimed, but close to a vision of hell’. Well, it might be hell to Mr Glover, but that’s his own personal view, and therein made the subconscious link with Christian morality, from where it seems this whole diatribe is based. The term ‘loveless sex’ is also amusing, as this occurs all over the country every Friday and Saturday night.
Is it because it occurs in the context of ‘fringe’ sexuality that makes it so worthy of condemnation?
The assertion that his family were hurt because his infidelity was not ‘normal’ is unsubstantiated nonsense. The idea that his wife was ‘devastated’ because he was found having a Nazi cos-play orgy rather than just having straight-up sex with a prostitute doesn’t say a lot for Mr Glover’s own sense of decency.
The fact that Mr Justice Eady has shown considerations of privacy over morality in the past are neither here nor there; the case must be judged on its own merits, and anyway, when the word ‘morality’ is used, which ‘morality’ are we talking about? I’m not exactly a Nihilist but even I know there is no one overarching morality in our fragmented society.
I’d also like to raise a few points about the following quote;
‘He (Mr Justice Eady) took the view (in an earlier case) that adultery does not matter because marriage has no greater intrinsic value that any other arrangement. Will he now take the view that Mr Mosley’s far more egregious behaviour is also morally neutral?’
Well, I hate to be the one to bring Mr Glover crashing forward into the twenty-first century, but people are realising that marriage is as much for convenience and business as it is for anything else. Today, the financial benefits of marriage have more bearing than the stigma of ‘living in sin’. Once again, the use of ‘egregious’ is highly subjective. For myself, ‘egregious’ behaviour is any conduct that seeks to upset or harm other people. In this case, consenting adults had made financial arrangements to thrash the living daylights out of each other for fun. That is egregious but boxing isn’t? And this is coming from a paper that frequently condemns ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety’ culture!
Again, I suspect it’s all about the context: the unsavoury world of BDSM (Bondage, Domination and Sado-Masochism), rather than the safe, vanilla option of extra-marital sex with a call girl at a travel tavern.
You’ll forgive me when I say the last column was entering the realms of typical tabloid hysteria, as one baffling attempt at baiting public outrage was to ask the reader to ‘imagine if Mr Mosely had been caught in an East End massage parlour; whipping not lusty twenty something …prostitutes…, but reluctant and unhappy 16 year-old Lithuanians’ and later, to ‘imagine that… Mr Mosley was a prominent cabinet minister or a senior bishop in the Church of England. In such a case it would surely be in the public interest for us to know about such extreme and abnormal behaviour’
Why, when the more serious problem of paedophilia amongst priests is so prevalent, would a reader be that surprised or bothered? I can imagine quite a few scenarios, including one that pretends the News of the World had never filmed this at all, but rather than indulging in fantasies (forgive the pun) Mr Glover, you could stick to the story.
The freedom of the press is a honourable notion, but one that mustn’t be so blatantly hijacked to push a petty and pious moral crusade against people’s consensual sex lives; I’m not into anal penetration (giving or taking) but I’m not riling against it’s practitioners, Hetero- or Homosexual. In this case, a private citizen with no responsibility of public trust is using The Human Rights Act to make sure a tabloid doesn’t spread misinformation and prejudice about his outré peccadilloes, and something that some otherwise ‘normal’ people enjoy and don’t force on others. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we could always just live and let live.
Using terms such as ‘a scale of wrongness’, ‘sordid private hell’ (please!) and ‘moral damage’ is telling, and assumes there to be a moral high ground, which when you look at this without blinkered vision, there is not. There is no social need for the public to know about this, and no effective position from which to place judgement, unless you’re his wife and children.
I hope that Mr Justice Eady’s verdict falls on the side of the accused, because it would deter more tabloid hysteria over something that is ultimately harmless, and none of our business.
Oh one last thing; if a man and a woman role-playing Doctors and Nurses is harmful, then this really is the ‘Nanny State Gone Mad’.
Yours sincerely
(Kitchenaut's real name)
I don't usually post on this section of the site, but i'm pretty active on the tickling art front. I just felt the need to put the problem with 'fringe' activity in the media and society across to you, because it seems that in England, our press has a few moral issues with two or more consenting adults enjoying themselves.
The Daily Mail, an almost fascist tabloid enjoyed by middle-class fogies and neurosis-riddled malcontents, published an essay today about a man who indulged in BDSM activities and was filmed by another tabloid. Okay, so he was going at it with call girls, but that wasn't the point of consternation.. it was the fact that he was dressed as a Nazi and indulging in whipping, spanking and blood-letting. The writer said that his wife wouldn't be quite so devastated if he'd merely been caught having straight sex with a hooker.
Of course, the purient Mail put two and two together and came up with twenty five. Apparently, despite the Judge saying 'S&M is pretty harmless', they're using this as a chance to have a pop at everything that isn't vanilla, straight up sex. It's 'loveless' (as they put it) sex. Well shock horror... so is a lot of it - hence the term casual sex.
Apparently, Doctors and Nurse roleplay, cosplay and all forms of BDSM are deviant, deranged and morally bankrupt. I guess they'd include tickle-sex in that bracket too, which is what makes this relevant to this lovely site, full of caring, considerate people.
According to the Daily Mail (a paper which ran a headline saying 'hooray for hitler' in the 1930's), we're all out to harm people with our 'morally damaged' sexual predilections, even if it's consensual. No room for love or tenderness here. We all indulge in our own 'sordid private hell' which is right up there on 'the scale of wrongness'.
I've written the following letter in reply;
Dear Sir
In response to the Saturday Essay; Privacy vs. Morality (Mail), I have to say that I do not see what right Steven Glover thinks he has to impose his own narrow sense of moral decency on events that have no bearing on public life.
I’m not an apologist for Mr Mosley or anyone of his ilk, and I don’t take part in Sado-masochistic sex-acts, but despite the well-deserved critique of the News of the World’s lurid coverage of this event and their sanctimonious moralising, I believe Glover, and by extension the Mail, have fallen into this very trap.
To many people, dressing up as a Nazi and blood-letting may not be the key to a great sex life, but they obviously are to some. If these acts are consensual and the ultimate responsibility lies with two adults, then questions of morality are neither here nor there. Max Mosley isn’t a public figure, as the judge pointed out. He’s involved in a sport (Formula One) that promotes excess and a sun-kissed, daredevil, high-octane, millionaire life style. In reference to the judge’s view that ‘most people think S &M behaviour …is harmless’, I would agree. There is a choice involved, unlike rape or paedophilia where the unwilling victim is forced to sexually gratify the assailant.
Glover goes on to say that, ‘This is not a ‘fun’ party, as Mr Mosley claimed, but close to a vision of hell’. Well, it might be hell to Mr Glover, but that’s his own personal view, and therein made the subconscious link with Christian morality, from where it seems this whole diatribe is based. The term ‘loveless sex’ is also amusing, as this occurs all over the country every Friday and Saturday night.
Is it because it occurs in the context of ‘fringe’ sexuality that makes it so worthy of condemnation?
The assertion that his family were hurt because his infidelity was not ‘normal’ is unsubstantiated nonsense. The idea that his wife was ‘devastated’ because he was found having a Nazi cos-play orgy rather than just having straight-up sex with a prostitute doesn’t say a lot for Mr Glover’s own sense of decency.
The fact that Mr Justice Eady has shown considerations of privacy over morality in the past are neither here nor there; the case must be judged on its own merits, and anyway, when the word ‘morality’ is used, which ‘morality’ are we talking about? I’m not exactly a Nihilist but even I know there is no one overarching morality in our fragmented society.
I’d also like to raise a few points about the following quote;
‘He (Mr Justice Eady) took the view (in an earlier case) that adultery does not matter because marriage has no greater intrinsic value that any other arrangement. Will he now take the view that Mr Mosley’s far more egregious behaviour is also morally neutral?’
Well, I hate to be the one to bring Mr Glover crashing forward into the twenty-first century, but people are realising that marriage is as much for convenience and business as it is for anything else. Today, the financial benefits of marriage have more bearing than the stigma of ‘living in sin’. Once again, the use of ‘egregious’ is highly subjective. For myself, ‘egregious’ behaviour is any conduct that seeks to upset or harm other people. In this case, consenting adults had made financial arrangements to thrash the living daylights out of each other for fun. That is egregious but boxing isn’t? And this is coming from a paper that frequently condemns ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety’ culture!
Again, I suspect it’s all about the context: the unsavoury world of BDSM (Bondage, Domination and Sado-Masochism), rather than the safe, vanilla option of extra-marital sex with a call girl at a travel tavern.
You’ll forgive me when I say the last column was entering the realms of typical tabloid hysteria, as one baffling attempt at baiting public outrage was to ask the reader to ‘imagine if Mr Mosely had been caught in an East End massage parlour; whipping not lusty twenty something …prostitutes…, but reluctant and unhappy 16 year-old Lithuanians’ and later, to ‘imagine that… Mr Mosley was a prominent cabinet minister or a senior bishop in the Church of England. In such a case it would surely be in the public interest for us to know about such extreme and abnormal behaviour’
Why, when the more serious problem of paedophilia amongst priests is so prevalent, would a reader be that surprised or bothered? I can imagine quite a few scenarios, including one that pretends the News of the World had never filmed this at all, but rather than indulging in fantasies (forgive the pun) Mr Glover, you could stick to the story.
The freedom of the press is a honourable notion, but one that mustn’t be so blatantly hijacked to push a petty and pious moral crusade against people’s consensual sex lives; I’m not into anal penetration (giving or taking) but I’m not riling against it’s practitioners, Hetero- or Homosexual. In this case, a private citizen with no responsibility of public trust is using The Human Rights Act to make sure a tabloid doesn’t spread misinformation and prejudice about his outré peccadilloes, and something that some otherwise ‘normal’ people enjoy and don’t force on others. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we could always just live and let live.
Using terms such as ‘a scale of wrongness’, ‘sordid private hell’ (please!) and ‘moral damage’ is telling, and assumes there to be a moral high ground, which when you look at this without blinkered vision, there is not. There is no social need for the public to know about this, and no effective position from which to place judgement, unless you’re his wife and children.
I hope that Mr Justice Eady’s verdict falls on the side of the accused, because it would deter more tabloid hysteria over something that is ultimately harmless, and none of our business.
Oh one last thing; if a man and a woman role-playing Doctors and Nurses is harmful, then this really is the ‘Nanny State Gone Mad’.
Yours sincerely
(Kitchenaut's real name)
