She’ll answer

beyondbdsm:

fiction-is-not-reality:

shipwhateveryouwant:

just-antithings:

unquietpirate:

BDSM and “kink” are not interchangeable terms. Webster defines “kinky” as “marked by unconventional sexual preferences or behavior.” That’s a HUGE umbrella including basically any erotic desire or activity not considered normative in your cultural context. “BDSM” is an extremely narrow subset of kink.

And this is important: The BDSM subculture is defined and controlled by a tiny minority of sociopathic humans whose kink is acting out rape, torture, and abuse fantasies “for fun” i.e. without any meaningful consideration for what it means to enact those fantasies on human minds in the context of a world where rape, torture, and abuse are already broadly normalized.

In fact, the sheer blitheness with which BDSMers – both “tops” and “bottoms” – treat sexual violence as No Big Deal is part and parcel of their fetish. It’s not just that they find rape arousing. (Lots of people get turned on by thinking about rape. Truth.) It’s that they find it arousing *that* rape turns them on; instead of being turned on by rape and finding that, say, disturbing, or confusing, or at least worth asking questions about. Their kink is not for rape-play itself. Their kink is for rape apologism.

Here’s where you come in: This sociopathic sliver of wannabe (and often actual) rapists are not the majority of kink-loving people. They are not even the majority of the BDSM Scene. But they do tend to be very powerful, influential people in both the world and the Scene, and they have a lot of control over how people understand “alternative sexuality.”

The fact is that most of the erotic activities lumped together under the “BDSM” label have almost nothing to do with one another. But by co-opting a vast diversity of unrelated kinks and fetishes and calling all of them “BDSM” — as if that is a single way to play — the abuse fetishists have created a fiendish cover for themselves. They’ve suggested that BDSM is all one thing, and thus if you criticize anybody’s kinks, you’re criticizing EVERYBODY’s kinks.

There are lots of kinky ways to play that don’t involve apologizing for rape or trivializing abuse. My classic example is puppy play in which all of the players are puppies. Teasing your partner with ice cubes. Rope bondage for the comfort of constriction and the joy of knots. There are even erotic ways to (very, very carefully) explore themes of rape, torture, humiliation, slavery, gaslighting, and physical, sexual, and psychological abuse without apologizing for or downplay the severity of horror and trauma involved when those things happen in real life…

But the BDSMers have convinced their flock that if anybody questions them jacking each other off to the fantasy that “Sexual Violence is No Biggie,” then those critics are also threatening every person’s right to get their rocks off in whatever other kinky ways feel fulfilling to them. That it’s either an 100% abuse-trivializing no-holds-barred free-for-all or vanilla sex in the missionary position with the lights off forever — and that you’ve already chosen a side, because you let someone blindfold you and fuck you with a strap-on once and you really liked it, so it’s only a matter of time until you’re a gibbering desperate perverted mess of uncritical rape-loving jelly.

How have a handful of abusive sociopaths convinced thousands of otherwise thoughtful and compassionate people to stick up for them?

As an astute friend once pointed out to me:

“The pattern I’ve seen with BDSM’ers is *all about* exaggerating costs of failure; they want to believe they’re playing a higher-degree game than they are, and so they do all sorts of things to make that *appear* to be the case, even and especially when it’s not. This makes sense: the formalized BDSM structures are designed to put people who consent to uncomfortable experiences into uncomfortable situations, but not to the point of putting them in dangerous ones. Which means that BDSM’ers have a fantastically well-honed ability to dress up lower-degree games in the appearance of higher-degree games.”

They’re using you, kinksters with ethics, to protect themselves by convincing you that you and they are the same kind of people. But you’re probably not.

Meanwhile, the “kink shamers” have fallen right into the BDSMers’ trap by decrying ALL kinky eroticism “shameful” and making the BDSMers’ whisper campaign into a reality. By attacking “kink” as a whole and making it about random individual peoples’ sex lives, rather than specifically targeting the rape apologism and abuse denial of BDSM’s priesthood, they’ve pushed people with kinky desires but some skepticism towards the BDSM Scene, people who might otherwise be on the fence, right into the lion’s den. They’ve made the abuse-denying sociopaths’ prophecy self-fulfilling: “Anyone who’s a threat to us is a threat to you.”

Of course, I understand the desire to push back against anyone who is shaming and limiting your sexual expression. Erotic fulfillment is a core human need. But when you push back against the “kink shamers”, make sure you’re standing up for YOURSELF, not someone else. And stop enabling sociopathic abusers by describing your healthy, thoughtful, and ethical kinks as “BDSM”. Unless what you gets you hot is trivializing others’ experiences of abuse and violence, they’re not.

Just Anti Things: calling people that enjoy BDSM sociopaths

OP for the love of god, you’re so ignorant about this, you NEED to shut up

I just find it amusing how people who know shit about BDSM go around talking about it like they’re Ultimate Experts on the matter. It’s even more amusing how they’re trying to pin kinksters against BDSMers.

Alright buddy, listen up.

BDSM IS kink. 

Any kinky sex you have WILL ALWAYS HAVE TIES TO BDSM.

Does your partner like their hair pulled? Guess what, that’s masochism. (Hence the S & M in BDSM).

Does your partner like to be tied up in bed? Guess what, that’s Bondage. (Hence the B & D in BDSM).

Kink IS BDSM.

Does everyone who likes their hair pulled or neck bitten during sex somehow a full fledged member of the BDSM community now?

Of course not.

But BDSM is essentially anything that is NOT conventional sex, i.e anything that is not anal, oral, or sexual intercourse. 

The actions you exhibit during sex are what defines something as kinky or not. And all kinkiness, no matter how ‘vanilla’, or how mundane, whether it’s a bite in the neck, a hickey, or something more sinister such as a restrictive bondage scene, it does not matter because it’s all related back to BDSM. 

So now that’s out of the way. 

There is a very big difference between being kink-critical and being a kink shamer. 

I encourage EVERYONE to be kink-critical - it is SO, SO important for anyone participating in any kind of kinky sex to be critical when analyzing the who, what, where, why, and how questions.

• Why do you like (insert kink here)?
• When did you start liking (insert kink here)?
• How did you find out you liked (insert kink here)?
• How does (insert kink here) make you feel before, during, and after it takes place?
• What specifically about (insert kink here) do you like?
• Where do you like (insert kink here) to happen? Do you need to be in a specific place, do you need to have certain things by your side before you start, are there certain measures, sayings, phrases, or words you need to hear or say before, during, or after to ensure your safety and comfort during said kink?

In fact, being kink-critical is ESSENTIAL for BDSM to continue to be safe, sane and consensual. 

Without asking yourself these questions, and without understanding and being able to interpret their answers, how could you ever know if what you are doing is right for you? How could you know that what you’re doing is good for you, and will further you to grow rather than stall or even prevent you from healing and moving on from a tragic experience or trauma?

The point is, being kink-critical is totally helpful and always encouraged in the BDSM community. And if you come across someone who thinks it’s wrong to question yourself and your own intentions every now and then to make sure you are keeping on the right track to keep yourself safe, I encourage everyone to stray far, far away from them.

AND FINALLY,

Nobody can let this slide. 

anyone who calls someone a sociopath because they decide to explore BDSM is so, so, so dangerous.

Never believe anyone when they tell you that because you decide to practice unconventional sex, that you are now a sociopath.

Again, BDSM and kink ARE interchangeable. 

This is because the core of any kinky interaction originates from some subset or dynamic in BDSM. Whether it’s sadomasochism (feeling pleasure from pain or feeling pleasure from inflicting pain), bondage & discipline (structure and the pleasure from being restricted or restricting someone), or dominance and submission (the pleasure from submitting to someone or the pleasure of controlling or having authority over another), or any variation of these, because there is a LOT of variants of these basic concepts within niche communities within the BDSM community (we have Master/Slave dynamics, Dominant/Submissive, Caregiver/Little or Daddy Dominant/Little Girl or its variants, Pet Play, or the millions of others)

OP obviously isn’t well-versed in BDSM, and it would take me forever to go over all the different forms of BDSM.

Any sex that you partake in that is not conventional sex is considered kinky, and has ties to BDSM dynamics and its subsets. 

BDSM is the core of everything kinky.

The difference between being just kinky and being into BDSM is that the person into BDSM takes it a step further.

Kinky people might just want to spice it up. BDSM members are in love with all things kinky, and are usually looking for a relationship based upon some sort of dynamic within the BDSM culture, that goes beyond just the bedroom. BDSM is a lifestyle, kinky sex is just kinky sex.

There’s nothing wrong with just being kinky, but realize when you participate in kinky sex you are in fact participating in the various subsets of BDSM.

If you’re going to try to separate yourself from the BDSM community, you might want to skip the kinky sex all together, then. 

When you decide to participate in rape play, or some kind of edge play, you aren’t somehow trivializing what someone went through. It’s your decision to choose to engage in that activity; it’s also your decision to NOT engage in the activity. Nobody has a right to invalidate someone else’s sexual preferences or individual decisions they make because of their own personal trauma or experiences. I never want to make someone feel like their trauma or experience isn’t valid - it ALWAYS is. Anyone has a right to hate what we do, you have a right to not like it, and you have a right to block or disengage with anyone who chooses to engage in those activities. But you do NOT have the right to tell them they are trivializing YOUR trauma by engaging in play in the privacy of their own bedroom (or even in the privacy of their own blog on Tumblr, because hey, it’s not somehow against the law to blog about sex, either)

There is a very CLEAR line between BDSM and abuse, and if you knew ANYTHING about BDSM, OP, you would know that. (I have a Domestic Violence page that helps to distinguish the differences, it’s SO important for everyone to understand the differences so you know the signs and you know how to keep yourself and your partner safe)

BDSMers are NOT abusers…

Let me rephrase…

Any BDSMer who clearly practices the Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC) rule during all scenes, activities, and relationships are not abusing anyone. And they aren’t being abused, either, so as long as they entered the relationship and all activities with a clear line of consent. 

And nobody, let me tell you, NOBODY in the BDSM community thinks ‘sexual violence is no biggie’. Frankly, you can go fuck yourself, because it’s clear you have no idea what BDSM is.

And anyone who thinks they are a BDSM member and tell you that sexual assault isn’t a big deal, or they participate in non-consensual activities or choose to not take the correct precautions or safety procedures needed before doing scenes - they are NOT participating in BDSM. They are actively engaging in abuse and I hope they go fuck themselves, too. 

The BDSM community has more clear lines between consent and non-consent than the majority of the public. This is because we have things like safewords, negotiations before scenes, rules, regulations, limits, and more communication and trust - simply because BDSM requires these things in order to keep us all safe. And that, in turn, often leads to LESS sexual violence in our community. Actually, recent studies suggest that BDSM members tend to have less victim blaming attitudes in sexual assault cases because of the way we go about consent. There are even studies to suggest that people who participate in BDSM are more likely to be in better psychological health than people who don’t participate in BDSM.

So, OP,

Your post sucks.

Sincerely,

A BDSM activist.

Not something I would usually reblog, but… this ^