We have the Sundance Channel on cable now. As I'm writing this there's a show about S&M called 'Whipped' being broadcast. So far, what's been made apparent is the need of those involved to qualify what they're doing as a different expression of love.
Pardon me, but that's simply bullshit. Love is an all-consuming fascination with the good of the loved Other. Sadism is an all-consuming fascination with the pleasure of the Self, just as Masochism is, though they each have entirely separate expressions.
The Sadist does not love the body he tortures, much less the person. He loves the pain of the body, and the subservience of the person. In the moment of true Sadistic exaltation it is only an innate cunning, a self-interested calculus of risk and gratification, that prevents him from exerting his will in a frenzy of self-gratification - not love.
The Sadist does not love the Masochist he tortures as he tortures her - but she is the absolute and total center of his attention, the burning and perfect moment when he is at rest in everything he is and does while being perfectly, easily, in motion.
That's not love. That's riding the body and pain and blood and spittle and tears of another out into the infinite to meet with God, a consummation that's entirely selfish.
So let's put aside once and for all the idea that there's love in Sadism or Masochism. There isn't. There's lust, terror, and obsession; there's pride and there's rage and there's understanding. In those perfect moments there's no love, only an unfettered but calculating self-interest. And the same is true for the Masochist, who uses just as much as she's used. And for the same reasons, reversed. It's no wonder that Masochists make such good dommes. They know what power looks like from the far side, and they can mimic exactly how it works.
It wasn't a bad show. But it tries to make Sadism and Masochism warm and fuzzy.
They aren't.
