BDSM Communities?

There is no kink community.



There is no leather community or fetish community or BDSM community.



At least not in the way the many imply that there is.



In chat rooms, forums and blogs, the word "community" is tossed around with gravity. At leather title contests you hear the buzzword all the time. Ms Leather So-&-So and Mr. Leather Whatnot talking about how great it is to be supported by and serve the community. New erotic adventurers who come seeking knowledge and camaraderie are met with encouraging words of how the community helps one another, protects and educates their own. We exchange grave nods of approval at the utterances celebrating the strength of the community. From all this, you'd think that there's some card-carrying membership policy among a secret network of safe houses where rules are universal and the elders are wise.



There isn't.



Here's the current situation. There are multitudes of loosely knit connections of people who share similar sexual appetites or erotic aesthetics. The connections are made through the various methods available to the modern romantic, which were not available in the ancient days of 1990's and before. The blogs, the e-mail lists, pod casts, Craigslist and various Tribe and Friendster type network sites are de rigueur now.

People still connect at fetish-themed nightclubs and SM social organizations, but less so through the traditional leather bar cruise scenes. Little kink events once held on rare occasions in seedy clubs have blossomed into major destination events taking over convention hotels and drawing thousands of people with a large impact on the local economy.



Through all this, many people are still introduced through trusted mutual friends. Even the interests range wide in these communities. Today you can find every subgenre of fetishistic sex interest and erotic taste supported in web lists with accompanying events. Whether you are into silk scarf bondage or erotic cannibalism, there's someone out there that shares your interest. Enough mouse clicks and you can find them.



But does that make us a community?



This depends on how you define community and what you expect from it. The greater your assumptions and expectations, and in turn the dependency on these expectations, the more likely it is that you're going to be disappointed.



In a community one expects that we share many things in common. Various human communities are formed around religion, politics, belief systems, hereditary or ethnic lineage, history, language, laws and even brand preferences. So, do we as an aggregate agree and hold something in common?



We all like kinky sex, right? But what's kinky? I know people who enjoy spankings who do not think their sex style is kinky, nor do they feel they have anything in common with people who may practice bondage or flogging. Can we as a community agree that we believe in Safe-Sane-Consensual sexual activities or the how's and why's in the use of safewords? We certainly know that not everyone believes in or adheres to these codes of conduct. Can we assume that at least we can agree on politics that protect our rights to privacy in our bedroom and consensual sex among adults? No. Plenty of kinky people have shown with their votes that certain adults should not have sex, kinky or not, together -- especially when they're the same gender. Okay, so we can't agree on what kind of sex we have in common, basic kinky sex etiquette, who can have such sex or politics and civil liberties, yet we still identify ourselves as a group, bound by a common affinity. Curious, isn't it?



If there is a community, are the members entitled to certain rights and benefits? There is no Bill of Rights for kinksters beyond the law of the land. Sure, private clubs and organizations will have written bylaws and perks. If you qualify for membership in these, and behave in certain ways fit for those organizations, you have access to resources such as meetings, parties and outings. While rarely invoked, many clubs have the policy that misbehavior or breaking agreements can get a participant's membership revoked. These rules and benefits, however, do not extend beyond the organization. This means that there is no one designated to protect a perv among pervs in the general population. The unspoken assumption is that we're all adults and behave as polite adults. There is no one to whom individual responsibility and accountability can be abdicated… and this includes dominant/submissive or master/slave relationships.



If a kinkster encounters a crisis, is there some governing body that will come to their aid? No. Are kinksters entitled to mutual assistance simply for being kinky? No. Are there people who expect such aid? Yes.



In the end what are we left with? How do we find a place of belonging that we can call a community? It seems to be in our genetic makeup to seek out social groupings, a tribe, a village, to belong to. The soul hungers to belong and be accepted for who we are. Sex and desire is just as fundamental to the human condition as this desire to belong. Through technological conveniences and twists of words we often fool ourselves into a false sense of community to stave off the dreaded loneliness. As we lean more and expect more out of this shapeless entity we call community, we may feel more and more desperately alone and disillusioned with each disappointment.



So what is the leather / kink / perv / BDSM community?



In the end, the only community that you can count on is the one you make yourself. It's the network of friends that you actively create. To do so, you cannot hide behind a faceless screen name. You have to take the risk of making real human connections. The people you meet may come to care about who you are, but first you must care about who they are. You have to really get to know people, not just their on-line profiles and favorite quotes. When it comes down to it, the community and its quality that you experience is made by what you put into it, and the network of friends you personally make, eye-to-eye, handshake to handshake.

Written by: Fetish Diva Midori, 01/24/2006.

What do you all think about BDSM Communities?

Now before I get the typical "but I cant go to BDSM clubs" and other excuses, please stop and apply some thought to this.

Before you found this particular lifestyle did you actually think that you were in a community with every random person you ever met, or did you think that your friends and family ~ the people you spent time with doing real life things every day ~ was your community?

How can people claim that they are this or that when they have never actually experienced anything even close to a real scene? Typing "mmm yea, spank me Master, I've been bad" is entirely different than getting bent over and truly punished. The feeling of pain has very little to do with anything at that moment. Just as actually doling out pain is VERY different than typing about it.

I truly dont understand why respect is automatically given to people on a computer monitor because yahoo allowed them to make an Id with the word Master or Mistress in it. We have all seen the submissives bow, crawl, cater to, and attempt to dry hump their legs as soon as these "Masters/Mistresses" appear, but yet, when the submissive is asked "do you know that person?" the reply is almost always "no."

When did giving up your personal respect and boundaries become the IN thing to do? When did allowing every random stranger with a "dominant" yahoo ID to humiliate you become acceptable? When did it become OK to sacrifice your self, your worth, your needs, your wants, and your body to every random stranger you come across to achieve a status in a "community"?

Why do the dominants hold these submissives, who act in such self-disrespecting manners, in such "high" regard? is it simply because they always know who to PM when they are horny? or is it because they truly believe that as a submissive a person is EXPECTED to give up their entire personality and morph into some kind of super whore?

When did intelligence, common sense, self worth and logic get replaced with a free for all fuck fest that will be hand catered to those people who have a "dominant" ID?

How did people that join this "community" forget that BDSM relationships are just like any other ones? There is time, patience, communication, and mutual respect needed to make it succeed, just like anything else. Just because someone can type "cracks my whip" or "twirls my flogger" or "spanks your ass" doenst mean that person can actually DO any of those things safely and with any skill what so ever.

Just like anything else, I am so tired of the plastic facade. Lets get real people.

The picture I put in on this blog says it perfectly to me...do people really believe that submissives are on their hands and knees typing with a pencil held between their teeth because their hands are handcuffed?!??! Do submissives really believe that the "dominants" are sitting in front of their PC's wearing PVC and holding a whip to crack at their monitors!?!?

Where did reality go?!?!?!??!?!