Consensual sex is when one or more participants grant permission and agree to perform in various sexual activities with one another. While reading multiple erotic texts I have found an extremely prominent connection between the asymmetries of consent and how the concept has evolved over multiple time periods. Within the Story of O, O’s consent is portrayed through her many accounts of submission experienced in the chateau. Before the masochist adventures were indulged throughout Venus in Furs, Severin and Wanda’s intensely dangerous relationship flourishes under the contract that was formulated early on. As early on as 385-370 BC, the ancient Greek Gods showed their own form of consent through the sexual exchange that was shared between older
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Throughout this analysis, I will be dissecting various erotic texts and how the history of sexual consent was portrayed and acted upon over time. Plato’s famous piece of literature, The Symposium, is striking with its speeches on the definition of eros, which later translates to desire. The special guests that attend the specific symposium that Plato discusses are Phaedrus, Agathon, Socrates, Pausanias, Eryximachus, and Aristophanes. Each god attempts the challenge of giving their own explanation of what he believes eros is and how love derived. Many of the Ancient Greek gods spoke so pervasively about pederasty that it has been called "the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens”. The term homosexual was not yet viewed as a form of identity and many God’s were expected to still have a wife and children in addition to the relationship between the loved one and the lover. The intense erotic relationship with a young boy and an older man was an important social institution by the elite upper class in society. The second speech given, and the one I will be focusing on …show more content…
O is the central character who explores consensual domination and the excruciating forms of love portrayed throughout the story by many lovers. Upon the first few nights of total submission from O, she ponders her fondness for her past experiences when she states, “O tried to figure out why there was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her or why terror seemed itself so sweet.” (22, Reage). The consent provided by O was consistently portrayed through her ultimate submission of her body and daily habits. Further along in the story, O admits that God had spoken to her and permitted the cruel rituals of love that her lover indulged in. She states that, “The word “open” and the expression “opening her legs” were, on her lover’s lips, charged with such uneasiness and power that she could never hear them without experiencing a kind of internal prostration, a sacred submission, as though a god, and not he, had spoken to her.” O was fully aware of the masochist treatments she would be receiving daily as well as the expectations that were carried along with her submissive role. When Rene shares O as his property for Sir Stephen’s pleasure she then provides her first form of verbal consent for the various BDSM sexual activities. She states her desire for the cruel treatment when she states, “The hardest
Throughout this analysis, I will be dissecting various erotic texts and how the history of sexual consent was portrayed and acted upon over time. Plato’s famous piece of literature, The Symposium, is striking with its speeches on the definition of eros, which later translates to desire. The special guests that attend the specific symposium that Plato discusses are Phaedrus, Agathon, Socrates, Pausanias, Eryximachus, and Aristophanes. Each god attempts the challenge of giving their own explanation of what he believes eros is and how love derived. Many of the Ancient Greek gods spoke so pervasively about pederasty that it has been called "the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens”. The term homosexual was not yet viewed as a form of identity and many God’s were expected to still have a wife and children in addition to the relationship between the loved one and the lover. The intense erotic relationship with a young boy and an older man was an important social institution by the elite upper class in society. The second speech given, and the one I will be focusing on …show more content…
O is the central character who explores consensual domination and the excruciating forms of love portrayed throughout the story by many lovers. Upon the first few nights of total submission from O, she ponders her fondness for her past experiences when she states, “O tried to figure out why there was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her or why terror seemed itself so sweet.” (22, Reage). The consent provided by O was consistently portrayed through her ultimate submission of her body and daily habits. Further along in the story, O admits that God had spoken to her and permitted the cruel rituals of love that her lover indulged in. She states that, “The word “open” and the expression “opening her legs” were, on her lover’s lips, charged with such uneasiness and power that she could never hear them without experiencing a kind of internal prostration, a sacred submission, as though a god, and not he, had spoken to her.” O was fully aware of the masochist treatments she would be receiving daily as well as the expectations that were carried along with her submissive role. When Rene shares O as his property for Sir Stephen’s pleasure she then provides her first form of verbal consent for the various BDSM sexual activities. She states her desire for the cruel treatment when she states, “The hardest