Savage Love

[madmusic]

By DAN SAVAGE
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 6:00 pm

I’d love to hear you weigh in on the case of Jason Fortuny, the person who posted an ad on Craigslist posing as a woman looking for a dom male, and then posted all of the responses, including the pictures some men sent him. As a person who receives voluminous amounts of damaging and embarrassing e-mail from people who count on your discretion, I thought you might have an interesting perspective.

It’s a sad state of affairs that of the commentary about this so far, all of the articles have gone out of their way to condemn the victims of this breach of privacy for not just being careless about their privacy, but also for engaging in BDSM in the first place. The tone is generally, “What Mr. Fortuny did was wrong, even though those sick fucks probably had it coming.”

—Chuck

Okay, on to Jason Fortuny: I’ve been following this fucked-up story, Chuck, and it pisses me off in so many ways that I hardly know where to begin. In what Fortuny grandly called “The Craigslist Experiment,” he posed as a kinky woman and posted a sex ad with a photo, then invited “str8 brutal dom muscular” males “who like 2 give intense pain and discipline” to write and respond. Now, an experiment is a test designed to discover whether a particular theory is correct, and Fortuny’s grand hypothesis basically amounted to this: Would extremely kinky men respond to a personal ad that they believed had been placed by an extremely kinky woman?

more: http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lawcontent&task=view&id=14516&Itemid=9

[flamingyouth]

1. That story's been in the news quite a bit here

Pretty fucked up.

[madmusic]

2. First I've heard of it.

Hope it's not a dupe.

[flamingyouth]

3. By "here" I meant Seattle

I don't know if I've seen it on DU (should have clarified that).

Yeah, the guy who placed that ad lives in a suburb here, so it's been in the news here.

Edited to add a link from the Seattle P-I: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/284734_robert12x.html

[madmusic]

7. Thanks.

[Downtown Hound]

4. Jason is a fucking asshole

Yeah, I'm a BDSM'er, and not the least bit ashamed of it or embarrassed by it. Real BDSM has very strict rules for policing itself and while abuses can and do occur, they are no more common than those that occur in the "vanilla" world and I personally believe they are far less common, although I have no statistical information to back that up. Jason needs to get a life and stop harassing those that have one, even if it's different from his. Although he's probably just jealous that no kinky woman would ever touch him.

[madmusic]

6. Is it possible to hate someone instantly?

BDSM has nothing to do with it. This whole finger pointing zeitgeist is the reason BushCo thought he could get way with creating brown-shirts to rat on their neighbors to aid in "the war on terror." What bullshit, but maybe only a few years and another Trade Center-like bombing too early.

One site is having a contest to predict what will happen to this rat.

1) Civil suit.
2) Criminal charges.
3) Physical harm.

I'm betting and hoping for 3.

Edit: typing too fast

[hotforteacher]

5. I will unto him the singletail from a pissed-off Sadien Domina.

People in the lifestyle have to deal with enough judgemental jackasses without some pindick, self-righteous fuckchop deciding to play "god" in the kinky fray.

Yep, some of these people are deciding to play with fire (those with spouses or partners not in the know), and this is part of getting burned. That being said, I hope the peckerwood has the longest dryspell known to humankind for this stunt.

Savage was on the money when he stated that it is the responsible thing for a Dom worth his/her salt to give their RL telephone number or address and photo. It is responsible to both s/he and the sub, both for their safety and the first step to garnering trust. You don't fuck with that trust. There are too many really good people out there practicing BDSM, and it is too dangerous to push them underground.

It makes it easier for the filth that invariably reside everywhere to abuse men and women who are just looking to satisfy their desires. The shitbag perpetrated even more harm to our communities.

:grr: