I came across david stein last year while writing a short piece on the history of conduct acronyms in BDSM. SSC, the earliest and most well-known of these, is often attributed to stein, along with leathermen Martin Berkenwald and Bob Gillespie, with whom he formed New York’s Committee of GMSMA (Gay Male S/M Activists) in the early 1980s. stein was the last living member of GMSMA when he died in 2017.
Interestingly, one of his biggest criticisms of it's contemporary use and context was that it makes the S&M subculture sounds like its trying to argue that S&M is inherently Safe Sane and Consensual, when the reality was that the term was made for a very different purpose, as he wrote:
"... rather than saying, "This is what S/M is, and it's okay, nothing to be worried about," the GMSMA statement of purpose said, in effect, "This is the kind of S/M we stand for and support. S/M can be damaging, crazy, or coercive, but it doesn't have to be, and together we're going to learn how to tell the difference." If someone was deliberately careless or irresponsible, or broke agreements about limits, we didn't say, "He's not doing S/M" but rather, "He's not doing the kind of S/M we can support." "
Its important to let newcomers know what kind of practice our individual communities stand for and that they can experience a level of security and education by joining us, but its also incredibly dangerous (in fact i think its kind of predatory) for us to lure people in with a false sense of security about it actually being a good thing that doesn't have any danger (as if we don't all know that all the sexually sadistic serial killers were/are, quite literally "valid" in their sadism). When we do the latter, we fail to teach newcomers how to develop a healthy compass, and this is doing a very harmful disservice to them.
David Stein wrote an essay about the origins of SSC, and his thoughts on its contemporary shortcomings: http://www.leatherleadership.org/library/safesanestein.htm
Interestingly, one of his biggest criticisms of it's contemporary use and context was that it makes the S&M subculture sounds like its trying to argue that S&M is inherently Safe Sane and Consensual, when the reality was that the term was made for a very different purpose, as he wrote:
"... rather than saying, "This is what S/M is, and it's okay, nothing to be worried about," the GMSMA statement of purpose said, in effect, "This is the kind of S/M we stand for and support. S/M can be damaging, crazy, or coercive, but it doesn't have to be, and together we're going to learn how to tell the difference." If someone was deliberately careless or irresponsible, or broke agreements about limits, we didn't say, "He's not doing S/M" but rather, "He's not doing the kind of S/M we can support." "
Its important to let newcomers know what kind of practice our individual communities stand for and that they can experience a level of security and education by joining us, but its also incredibly dangerous (in fact i think its kind of predatory) for us to lure people in with a false sense of security about it actually being a good thing that doesn't have any danger (as if we don't all know that all the sexually sadistic serial killers were/are, quite literally "valid" in their sadism). When we do the latter, we fail to teach newcomers how to develop a healthy compass, and this is doing a very harmful disservice to them.
Scary times!