S&M can be practised consensually and safelyCan it, though? People can actually get hurt when you sadistically dominate them, and masochists can hurt themselves. And many people injure themselves as a coping mechanism, something they stop when they get actual love and support.
And as you say, some people use domination as an excuse to abuse people. Do their victims realize and understand this? Has an abuse victim ever fought to protect their abuser, to deny that anything is wrong? There certainly are ...somewhat healthy S&M relationships, but you have to admit it's much more complicated and hairy than treating people with kindness and respect.
There's also the problem of normalization of violence. Once you have an elaborate fantasy of people born into submission, and paraded around in bondage by a world that accepts this and enforces anyone who tries to escape, people actually start wanting this to happen. It's like violent video games except you're actually beating people up. I have to be a little 😬 at that.
Personally I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't be such big babies and complain that what people want is scary and mean, but we also should be very careful before approving of it, and I'm definitely worried about its growing prevalence. People are copying what they see that turns them on, and we are seeing a lot of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism these days.
I mean arguably the more loudly we complain and attack weird sexual deviants, the kinkier everyone gets, because nothing makes you a sexual freak more than lifelong suppression of your natural urges. So I'd say less restriction, but less um... approval? If I want to interfere in someone's relationship, I'm going to make damn sure that there's something actually wrong. But I'm still going to encourage people to have sex kindly. It's healthy to not want to hurt yourself, and not want to find vulnerable people to hurt.
CC: @light@noc.social
No approval-no disapproval policies are just disapproval with extra steps.
Yes S&M practises can be dangerous, so can vanilla straight sex, or bungee jumping or alcohol or weed.
Individuals don't always make the best choices for themselves or others but by framing that as intrinsically the fault of S&M you're moralizing an amoral activity and painting with broad strokes over the numerous well documented safe and consensual practices
Sadism also comes with mental health risks one of which is "dom drop", a feeling of guilt after a scene for hurting someone they care about, doms need aftercare just as much as subs
Some of your arguments sound similar to arguments of "cultural degeneration" that sexual deviants are becoming too unashamed and their inherently harmful practices are leaking out into "polite society"
Either S&M is fundamentally abusive in which case we should oppose it unambiguously, or it is not intrinsically abusive and the problems you're talking about have a deeper root cause that we should focus on rather than villainising people practicing safe and consensual sex