Principles and Pleasures

Something I said in a comment thread, wrt the endless "Examine your desires" refrains:

I'm not saying "go wildly against your principles if it brings you momentary pleasure." I am saying "hey, if you're kinky and kink is against your principles because you analyze consensual hierarchy and nonconsensual hierarchy similarly... why not think about why there's no room for you to do what you want, rather than stressing your anti-hierarchy principles?"

I mean, for all they say people like us "don't examine" it strikes me that they have a real blind spot with regards to "examining" how they can fight the good fight AND enjoy life. Why is the question always "must I jettison this pleasure (or indulge it guiltily when I can no longer resist its pull)?" and not "how can my pleasure and my principles coexist?"

I really do think one thing that oft goes unexamined is our cultural history of mistrusting pleasure... especially sexual pleasure. US-ians, at least, are the ideological descendants of Puritans as much as we are anything else.

By that I don't mean that "radical feminists" of a certain stripe are prudish and that's that.

By it I mean we all are programmed as much to mistrust desire and pleasure as we are to believe in the patriarchy.