A messy but enlightening guide to a growing lifestyle.
A practitioner of BSDM for more than 30 years gives advice and safety tips for the beginner in this erotic how-to manual.
Cascia (I Am Adam I Am Eve, 2015) answers the question “Where do I begin?” for novices exploring the world of bondage-discipline and dominance-submission. The first word pairing does not necessarily incorporate the second one, and the author also stresses that neither has anything to do with sex. Rather, they are emotional/psychological/physical outlets that have more to do with relationships, trust, and boundaries. Since BSDM is so often confused with outright abuse or mislabeled as “sick,” he takes pains to describe the difference between mutually agreed upon limits and safe words in a pairing that explores intimacy and the uncaring and exploitative nature of partner abuse. Partner abuse, he asserts, is fueled by narcissism and a fear of intimacy. Consent is, of course, stressed, but Cascia emphasizes several times the importance of informed consent—neither party can proceed without a clear, mutual understanding of what is going to happen. Of course the amount of details will vary with the participants, but the author insists on a baseline of expectations. For example, never leave a partner bound alone in a room (a nanny cam must be employed if being “alone” is part of the fantasy) and adequately support the submissive’s head if face slapping will occur. The level of preparation, education, and trust needed deftly comes across here. The author also warns that the novice should be aware of the border between consensual role playing and true mind games. The manual’s content is intriguing and illuminating, written in a straightforward, if clumsy, style, more like a pamphlet than a book. But the many misspellings and syntax errors are unfortunate (“Needs to be thought-out and studied on an induvial basis”; “Communication is EXTREAMLEY INPORTANT!”; “collard” for collared; “INMFORMED CONSENT”). The mistakes are quite distracting, and the odd line breaks, sometimes in midsentence, do not help. But the text offers a helpful questionnaire and glossary and provides valuable insights and maturity in this portrayal of human relationships.
A messy but enlightening guide to a growing lifestyle.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-981138-77-7
Page Count: 110
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
