To thine own self be true?
There is a bit of a buzz going on at the moment about The Wizard of Oz being remade into a darker film with BDSM undertones. As if slave Princess Leia didn’t fuel enough fantasies, now there comes slave Dorthy, complete with a branding on her hip.
Not the only character from Oz with kinky undertones however. Now is a good a time as any for me to explain about The Hungry Tiger. I have used this name as an email and chat handle for years. And even after I ‘came out of the closet’ with my real name, people who have known me a long time still call me The Hungry Tiger.
I never meant for it to be my name. It is actually a statement about my view of ethics and a rebellion against what I feel is a incorrect philosophy adopted by the BDSM community. As such, its much more a reflection of my moral outlook than an alternative persona.
See, The Hungry Tiger was a character out of the original Oz books. Princess Ozma has two bodyguards. One everyone knows is The Cowardly Lion. The other is The Hungry Tiger. Like any tiger, he is a vicious wild beast. One who would crush bones between his powerful jaws and rip flesh apart with his sharp claws. More than anything he longs to eat nice fat babies. But unlike other tigers, he has a conscious. He knows that attacking people and riping them limb from limb is wrong. So therefore he never does it. He choose to remain hungry on purpose rather than give in to his basic nature.
This is a theme with many characters from the Oz series. The drive to grow above and beyond your basic nature. The scarecrow didn’t have brains, but instead of saying to himself “this is how I was meant to be, this is my true self’ and then striving to be the best idiot he could be, he rejected that aspect of his own character and strove to become something more.
This is in very sharp contrast to the Gor novels. The overarching theme in those books is that there is an absolute way that you as a person are meant to be. Natures way. And only by embracing this as your true self can you ever achieve inner peace.
For the moment, lets skip the lame old ‘natures way’ argument that is always pulled out by the Gor-novel thumpers. Its crap anyway. Read ‘Biological Exuberance’ by Bruce Bagemihl for a rather thourgh debunking of the myth that the majority of species fit into a controler/controled sexuality. The real question is if it is moraly corect to folow your ‘basic nature’ or to strive to rise above it.
The first time I realy began seriously questioning my own sexuality was watching ‘Unsolved Mistries’ doing reenactments of rape and kidnaping cases. When I was in college and stumbled across a book in the campus libary on the topic of rape and sex crimes. The way these aroused me caused me a great deal of worry and confusuion. To the point where I began to wonder if my ‘basic nature’ was that of a psychopath.
(I also felt incredibly guilty about it. Years later I met someone who actually masturbated to Amnesty International reports. Now I don’t feel like the biggest sicko in the world.)
Thankfuly, it wasent much later than this when I discovered BDSM. I realised that I didnt have to be the person that my desires drove me to be. I learned that it was posible for me to dream of an activity, but simitualasny not want to actualy engage in it.
But with the discovery of BDSM, came the comunity aspect of BDSM. The group. The family. The feeling of home and being accepted as you are. It was this group-think that began hammering away at me that the only path to true happyness was to give myself over fully to my ‘true self’.
I cant even remember how I happened uppon the Oz books at that time. But it gave the the realisition that I didnt have to give in to my basic desires in order to find fufilment. Like The Hungry Tiger, I could have ‘hungers’ but not give in to those ‘hungers’. I coudl strive to not give in to my more basic instincts, because I knew that harming others was moraly wrong. To fufill my desires I didnt have to ‘be real’ and actualy grab a woman in a parking garage or corner a woman in an elevator.
Since then I have kept the name. Mostly because the near witch-hunt porportions againt ‘fakers’ has continued to sprawl through the BDSM comunity. Defiantly, I embrase my fakeness. I am proud of my choice of fantisy over reality.
And you thought the name had something to do with oral sex? Didn’t you?