Anonymous said: Really glad you have this blog. I've always been pretty interested in BDSM but it always bothered me. I always sort of had a little voice in my head saying "well that's sorta abuse..." but I've never really persued that thought until now out of 'kink shaming'.
Really glad you found this blog. :) And, well then, if it’s new to you, you might find reading “This One’s For The Invisible Girl" really helpful, too. An excerpt:
So. BDSM. Knowledge about BDSM has been a double-edged sword in my life. On the one hand, knowing that fantasies about violence and abuse are normal helped me survive my fantasies without believing they meant I was a terrible person of some kind. YKINMKBYKIOK did help me to not feel ashamed. And that really matters.
On the other hand, being taught that fantasies about violence and abuse are just as uncomplicated and innocuous as fantasies about, say, whipped cream or Zac Efron was incredibly destructive for me personally – because, while the fact that I was having these fantasies didn’t mean there was something wrong with me, the WAY that I was having them was a sign of something that was wrong. A sign that I ignored for years and years, because everybody kept insisting through my tears and panic attacks that “my kink was okay”. If I was struggling with it, that just meant I had hang-ups I needed to let go of.
I know they genuinely meant well but — combined with sex-positive BDSM Scene rhetoric about how everything we’re doing is totally innocuous and uncomplicated — the message I took away was that even if my kinks were rooted in trauma, I should just get over it and get used to being traumatized. Otherwise, I’d be shitting all over everybody else’s good time; and that wouldn’t be very nice.
And I believed that. I internalized it. Deep. After all, if my kinks were complicated and problematic for me, that meant other peoples’ kinks might be complicated and problematic for them too – and I didn’t want to make anyone else feel bad about what turned them on!See also: