In these days the Italian BDSM Scene is fibrillating due to some very 50 shad-ish news which are confirming what I pointed out in my review of James’ book.
Details are still a bit fuzzy thanks to the shining professionalism of Italian media, but the heart of the story is that a somewhat cyber-famous couple composed of submissive wife and dominant husband ended up in court after eight years of marriage. She sued him for stalking and battery, and one of them used as evidence a “slavery contract” signed at the beginning of their relationship. And here is where problems begin to come up.
According to the more credited version of the story, the document should have been used by her as a demonstration of longstanding abuse; other sources say the contract, which formalized all the ‘Safe, Sane and Consensual’ tenets, was his way of proving her full consent in their BDSM games. Either way the battery charge was dropped, but the drama isn’t over yet.
This episode forced many all-too-virtual BDSM enthusiasts to face something that most extreme eroticism fans tend to underestimate: the huge difference between reality and the fantasies offered by novels and the Web. The sudden appearance of the complications imposed by the real world panicked many people who normally use such contracts themselves but never considered the implications of those “minor” aspects of their pastimes.
The Italian version of this news features a brief law lesson describing the actual legal standing of slavery contract in my country. I don’t have sufficient knowledge of the laws in the various English-speaking countries, so I am not even touching that topic here. I would like to direct your attention, however, to the absurdity of how sexual excitement sometimes turn sensible people into fools who dive headfirst into potentially serious situations simply because they took stuff like Histoire d’O at face value.
Many international ruling have shown that, generally speaking, divorce courts tend not to take the «and he forced me to do those horrible things» argument very seriously… yet I wouldn’t count on judges’ sensibilities.
So, how can you safely approach the real world complications of extreme eroticism? The answer should be obvious: by studying the limits imposed by law, physics, physiology, good sense and so on before playing, in order to then go wild within their bounds without fears. You can do that all by yourself, or make the most of the experience of those who walked this path before, saving yourself quite a number of headaches. If you wish, my BDSM – A guide for explorers of extreme eroticism was written just for this purpose.
