When being a prisoner femdom style feels safer than participating in a scientific experiment
Last month Philip Zimbardo passed away. Most likely that name doesn't ring a bell but perhaps the Stanford Prison Experiment does. In 1971 a group of 24 volunteers was divided into 12 guards and 12 inmates. The 1971 psychological experiment was designed to study participants' reactions and behaviors in a prison environment over the course of 14 days. However from the very start guards became increasingly brutal in their tactics to stop the prisoners from escaping. Christina Maslach visited the experiment on day six and was troubled by what she saw. The psychologist confronted Zimbardo, who played the role of superintendant and as such was in charge of the guards. He ended the experiment that same day.
Today many consider the Stanford Prison Experiment to be unethical. One element that directly casts doubt on it's scientific merit is the fact that those who responded to the ad, mostly did so for monetary gain, making the pool of participants all but random. Volunteers were paid $15 per day, roughly equal to $113 in 2023, meaning that for the whole fortnight, participants were paid $1862 for the full duration of the experiment. Zimbardo also "instructed guards to find ways to dominate the prisoners, not with physical violence, but with other tactics, verging on torture, such as sleep deprivation and punishment with solitary confinement", thereby directly intervening in the outcome of his very own research project.
The project went of the rails so bad that when one participant staged a hunger strike, the other prisoners, rather than considering this inmate a hero "and following along in his strike, they chanted together that he was a bad prisoner and a troublemaker."
Looking back half a century later, a consensus that seems to be forming is not so much that William Golding was right in 1954 when he wrote Lord of the Flies [2] [he was not] but that the guards were led towards extreme behaviour by Zimbardo himself. Not only did Dr. Zimbardo not stop his guards, he even instructed them in the way they should behave. Nature or nurture, the answer will forever be blowing in the wind.
For quite some time now I've been wondering about the recent increase in the popularity of prison play - or so it seems. Then again perhaps it's not so much that whole prison scene but the warden in chief and her crew behind it. The question that remains is what happens to a man, how does his attitude change, when he signs up voluntarily for femdom prison? One day, one day I'll tell you.
Interesting article in the Financial Times about the Doctor Who theme song.
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| Delia Derbyshire, who helped create the Doctor Who theme in 1965. |
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Notes
[1] Keep in mind that the standards in the 1970s for scientific experiments were different from today.
[2] In the novel Lord of the Flies boys turn into beasts after their plane crashes on a deserted island.
[3] In the real Lord of the Flies, six boys are shipwrecked for 15 months. Rather than fight for power, they cooperate. “One day, in 1977, six boys set out from Tonga on a fishing trip ... Caught in a huge storm, the boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island. What do they do, this little tribe? They made a pact never to quarrel.”