maverick medicine babe

regarding the following slate podcast, and the current controversy around sadomasochism: 

stanislav grof did much groundbreaking in this area... using holotropic breathing to return his subjects to the uterine period and its birth drama, he found that the expulsion from womb to the world outside involved pressures, sensations, and emotions that mix together fear, discomfort, asphyxia, and orgasm... we also know that our associations around sex and intimacy are coloured by not just our own experiences but the persona of the moment that we bring to bear on those experiences... in short, it's a fluid alive thing, in flux and subject to change. the BDSM lifestyle wants to remove self-inquiry from the link between violence and arousal, thanatos and eros, for fear of loosing 'kink' if its analyzed too much... yet these practices create more and more of an association between violence, powerlessness, shame and orgasm, and more and more of a handicapped need for these in order to access sexual release... the spiritual potential and kinetic apparatus of sex can be applied toward self-knowledge, growth, intimacy, respect and life-affirmation, but it can also be distorted by caprice, choice, or circumstance into a ill-thought-out quickening of the deconstructive instinct... what is certain is this, the more we reduce others to mere tools or instruments of pleasure that we "do" or are "done to," the more difficulty we will have looking at the world through grounded, compassionate, non-exploitative eyes...