I’m taking this opportunity to respond to statements made by Vice President of Student Affairs Thomas Hill in the Jan. 27 ISU Daily article, “Some on campus see investigation of Cuffs as unfair.”

First, Hill suggests there are no rules governing Cuffs. This is untrue.

Cuffs exists to abide by and educate its members in the rules of safe, consensual, non-exploitative BDSM.

He then goes on to say, “With the nature of flogging, do we have people who are competitive, or do we have dominant and submissive participants?”

I can only assume I misunderstand him when I see in that statement the suggestion that it is OK to hit someone competitively, but not out of love and mutual desire for one another’s well-being.

Hill is also quoted as saying, “With sports and sports organizations, everyone is equal. I don’t think this is true with Cuffs.”

I can see two things this might mean. The first shows a common misconception about BDSM — that BDSM relationships are in some way coercive or abusive.

In a healthy dominant/submissive relationship, the boundaries of the submission are negotiated between the partners as equals, and the dominant must always respect the submissive’s limits.

Further, the submissive can at any time end the scene and return himself or herself to this position of equal footing with the dominant.

Compare this to an abusive relationship, something the uninformed often think a BDSM relationship is synonymous with.

The abuser does not know or care about the abused partner’s thoughts, feelings and boundaries and does not honor the abused person as equal to the abuser.

The second is that in a scene, the two people are not equal, and this is indeed true (that’s the point of the scene). However, these scenes do not occur at Cuffs meetings, which makes this point meaningless.

Were a submissive’s request that something stop be ignored by a member, the entire group would immediately intercede, and the offender would be ejected from the meeting while the submissive would be made to feel safe and given appropriate care.

Cuffs is here to protect its members, both from the danger of ignorance and the danger of the predators that sadly do exist.

Since this investigation started, I’ve had roughly half a dozen people contact me saying they wanted to join an organized BDSM community. Every day they spend unable to join the community Cuffs has built is another day they spend without that protection.

Duane Long Jr.

Cuffs President

Senior

Psychology