BDSM revisionist history

For my slave’s birthday I took her to the ABO ruins in Mountainair. (For the record her birthday is the only time I hate being this poor.) 

The ruins had been an established and bustling community for generations until the 1660’s when they were taken over by a Spanish priest.  Within 75 years a drought had forced the town to move to the Rio Grande. In the 1800’s settlers came and homesteaded the ruins. Those homesteaders are still there and living on site.

When we went to the ruins we were unprepared for the extreme racism of the revisionist history in both the pamphlet that served as the monuments guide as well as the big freestanding placards that stood on the trail. It was unreal. It talked at length about how the Spanish priest designed and “built"  the town. Not that he was building over native sacred sites or that it was the slave labor and forced Indian converts that actually built the site. 

It talked about how the kiva (?)     (And that is how it was spelled at the grounds “ kiva (?)"  )  was probably not a kiva, even though it was shaped like a kiva, had prominent ground like a kiva, and had a hole for smoke like a kiva. When the kiva(?)  was excavated it was found full of trash and no one could figure out what that meant. A kiva full of trash and they didn’t know what that could mean...... 

All of the priest’s quarters had backdoor secret entrances. (Their words not mine.  “Secret” entrances.)  I could go on, but the placards with the very happy Indians smiling at the priest and thrilled to be kneeling on the ground during mass still burns in my mind. 

Finally to add insult to end all insults, one of the Spanish homesteaders is buried on site and their grave is kept spotless and memorialized.

All of this got me thinking- what are we going to say about our own history 200 years from now?

Already as we look at our history it is blurred and skewed. It is difficult to separate what actually happened from fiction, literally.

According to Wikipedia- (I’m not a scholar here so doesn’t expect me to site a historian from Brown, Harvard, or Yale.)

1)  One of the oldest graphical proofs of sadomasochistic activities is found in an Etruscan burial site in Tarquinia. Inside the Tomba della Fustigazione (Tomb of Flogging), in the latter sixth century B.C., two men are portrayed flagellating a woman with a cane and a hand during an erotic situation.

2) Another reference related to flagellation is to be found in the sixth book of the Satires of the ancient Roman Poet Juvenal (1st–2nd century A.D.), further reference can be found in Petronius's Satyricon where a delinquent is whipped for sexual arousal.

3) Anecdotal narratives related to humans who have had themselves voluntary bound, flagellated or whipped as a substitute for sex or as part of foreplay reach back to the third and fourth century

4) Historians attribute Kamasutra to be composed between 400 BCE and 200 CE.  It describes four different kinds of hitting during lovemaking, the allowed regions of the human body to target and different kinds of joyful "cries of pain" practiced by bottoms.

5) There are anecdotal reports of people willingly being bound or whipped, as a prelude to or substitute for sex, during the 14th century.

6) Some sources claim that BDSM as a distinct form of sexual behavior originated at the beginning of the 18th century when Western civilization began medically and legally categorizing sexual behavior.

So if the westernization of BDSM was what is considered the beginning, then you can count on revisionist and racist history, it is one of the few things that we do consistently well.   BDSM did not start in the West, it started in far off countries, centuries ago, by people of color.  For centuries the idea of pain and pleasure, dominance and submission were looked upon as normal and wide spread sexual acts.  There was a general understanding that BDSM was a normal part of sexual and relationship pleasure. 

Now it is outlawed and we are fighting for our place in this society.  

So next time you pick up a flogger- think about the centuries of history that you are holding in your hand.  And remember, our history did not start with the end of a war, the writing of Mr.  Benson, or the Market place. What we are doing started way before us and hopefully will continue way after we are long gone.