Why did you start right out by referring to BDSM as a "sexual perversion"?
Because it's making an interesting point; and because it's true. Many people do think of BDSM as a sexual perversion. I didn't invent this reality; I just live here. And the interesting point is that they might find it acceptable to do something similar in other areas of their life, perhaps just because sex isn't involved.
I didn't call it a sexual perversion. I said that "many people think of it as a sexual perversion." My post says that engaging in SM may be a lot like eating spicy food or watching horror movies. That's probably more sympathetic to your view than anything you'll find in mainstream media, or even in psychology journals.
I resent any implication that it would ever be reasonable to tell me that I "shouldn't" do BDSM.
If that means that you resent discussion of the idea, this website isn't right for you. We discuss things that make us uncomfortable, because we want to know the answer. (And the more uncomfortable the answer, the more interesting we find it. Perhaps it's our own special style of masochism. :)
You might consider being particularly critical of evol-psych theories that imply that: 1) masochism is always maladaptive,
It's almost impossible by definition for an evol-psych theory to imply that masochism is always maladaptive.
Check out my blogroll for any number of excellent BDSM blogs that will provide any number of excellent BDSM theories from any number of angles.
Could you post some links to specific pages discussing theories?
:::::::::: Many people do think of BDSM as a sexual perversion. I didn't invent this reality; I just live here. ::::::::::
This answer strikes me as a bit facile. Sure, lots of people think of BDSM as a sexual perversion. Lots of people also consider it a sexual preference. You chose to use words that stigmatize BDSM, and you chose not to present words that don't stigmatize BDSM. You could have made the same point without using stigmatizing words. Stating that you have no opinion after the fact is an attempt to dodge responsibility for that.
The way we ...
Followup to Stuck in the middle with Bruce:
Bruce is a description of masochistic personality disorder. Bruce's dysfunctional behavior may or may not be related to sexual masochism [safe for work], which is demonized by most people in America. Yet there are ordinary, socially-accepted behaviors that seem partly masochistic to me:
Question 1: Can you list more?
Question 2: Doubtless some of the behaviors I listed have completely different explanations, some of which might not involve masochism at all. Which do you think involve enjoying pain? Can you cluster them by causal mechanism?
Question 3: When we find ourselves acting masochistically, should we try to "correct" it? Or is it part of a healthy human's nature? If so, what's the evolutionary-psych explanation? (I was surprised not to find any evo-psych explanations for masochism on the web; or even any general theory of masochism that tried to unite two different behaviors. All I found were the ideas that sexual masochism is caused by bad childhood models of love, and that masochistic personality is caused by other, unspecified bad experiences. No suggestion that masochism is part of our normal pleasure mechanism.)
Some hypotheses:
My guess is that, if it's a side-effect (e.g., 3) or a non-causal association (4), it's okay to eliminate masochism. Otherwise, that could be risky.
These all lead up to Question 4, which is a fun-theory question: Would purging ourselves of masochism make life less fun?
ADDED: Question 5: Can we train ourselves not to be Bruce without damaging our enjoyment of these other things?