Therapy and BDSM Lifestyles

Therapy and BDSM Lifestyles

Andrew Robertson

University of Phoenix

Dr. Lori Travis

April 3, 2008

Abstract

There is a long, dark history of the psychiatric community's bias against the BDSM community and their practices. Starting with the DSM-II, Sexual Sadism and Sexual Masochism were classified as paraphilias, most likely due to the historical writings of authors such as Freud and Krafft-Ebing. Oddly enough, for a practice that is so based in research and the scientific method, there is no research to date that proves these activities are harmful to the participant's mental state, or that they are indicative of pathology. Therapist's bias can be very harmful to the mental health of their patients; at best a therapist's negative bias can make clients distrust the therapist and the psychiatric community. In some cases, it can damage their self esteem, and can cause other issues as well. There has been a surge of positive and supportive research in the last several years that has demystified and even supported BDSM as a non-pathological sexuality by psychologists, psychiatrists and medical doctors who identify as kink-friendly or kink-aware.

This article aims to add to that positive information to assist in education to prevent continuing this harmful trend of negative therapist bias towards people who engage in BDSM activities.

Therapy and BDSM Lifestyles

Imagine, if you will, that your therapist might look at you badly because of the way you choose to have sex; especially the foreplay that leads up to it. Suppose they said you would need to stop participating in that kind of sexual activity as a condition of further therapy. Suppose that no matter what the reason was that you decided to go to therapy, your therapist decides to focus on your sexual activities and treat that aspect of your life simply because they believe that the types of sexual activities you participate in is wrong. How would this make you feel?

It is surprising and disturbing just how much a therapist's bias can interfere with their ability to provide effective service to their clients; in some cases this bias can hurt the client. In just the last few decades, homosexuality has been removed as a paraphilia and more often therapists are providing objective and effective therapy for this group, thanks to the efforts of the Division 44 Committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns Joint Task Force, who established the Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients (APA, 2000). Sadly, there is another group of people who practice sexual activities that are also not considered normal by societies standards, and therapists tend to have the same bias towards this group that they used to have for the gay and lesbian communities not too long ago: practitioners of  Bondage/Discipline/Dominance/Submission/Sadism/Masochism, also known as BDSM.

Through the course of this paper, we shall strive to educate on what BDSM is and the practices of its participants, the general views on the psychiatric community, the damage that can be done by a therapist's bias and what can be done to help prevent this from being an ongoing problem.

Kinky sexual activity falls under many varied terms and acronyms, including, but not limited to, Sadism and Masochism (SM), Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (D/s) and Master or Mistress and Slave (M/s). There are many other terms used to describe the kinky acts that people in this community engage in, however, for the purpose of this paper, we will use the term BDSM as an umbrella term.

In his landmark book SM101, Jay Wiseman defined BDSM as the “knowing use of psychological dominance and submission, and/or physical bondage, and/or pain, and/or related practices in a safe, legal, consensual manner in order for the participants to experience erotic arousal and/or personal growth” ( p. 10, 1996). This is an intentionally broad description of what BDSM is to those who participate in kinky sexual or sexually oriented activities. The reason for engaging in these activities varies from person to person, but can include spiritual growth, enhanced sexual arousal and even to bring one closer to one's chosen partner or partners. It is generally agreed upon that most people who engage in BDSM activities do not do so for the pain specifically; rather, they choose to use pain to increase their awareness, their spiritual growth or their sexual arousal, or even just to feel the sensation. These are the same reasons that people considered normal by the standards of society engage in what is generally considered to be normal sexual behaviour, or, as BDSM participants call it, vanilla sex.

Some individuals prefer to engage in what they call scenes, where the BDSM activities are limited to the duration of the scene only. These scenes can be very physically and emotionally gratifying to a large number of people, and normally one individual takes on a dominant role and one or more individual take on a submissive role. These scenes are considered Erotic Power Exchange, or EPE, where one individual has more power over the other for the duration of the exchange. There are, however, a number of individuals interested in long-term scenarios called 24/7, meaning 24 hours a day, seven days a week, where they choose to live their entire life in such a relationship dynamic. These individuals so closely identify with the dynamic of power imbalance that they feel more gratification from a relationship structured entirely around this dynamic. This 24/7 relationship is called Total Power Exchange, or TPE, and one person has more power over the other ongoing, and is not limited to any particular time frame (Dancer, 2006).

Therapist's bias has often caused therapists to treat patients improperly and for problems that the patient truly does not have. Nichols writes, “Unfortunately, the prevailing psychiatric view of BDSM remains a negative one: These sexual practices are usually considered paraphilia, i.e., de facto  evidence “of pathology”(Nichols, p. 281, 2006). Further, Nichols writes that:

“Certain “paraphilic” preferences are statistically abnormal but pathologically “neutral”; i.e., no more inherently healthy or unhealthy than mainstream sexual practices. Psychiatry has a rather shameful history of collusion with institutions of political power to marginalize certain subgroups of the population, particularly women and sexual minorities. Most psychological theories are unconsciously biased towards the preservation of prevalent social mores. Therefore, it is particularly critical, when evaluating behaviour that has controversial social meaning, to base judgments of pathology strictly on factual evidence. At this time, the data do [SIC] not exist to support the idea that BDSM activities are, by themselves, evidence of psychopathology, nor that their practitioners are more likely to be psychologically disturbed than the rest of the population” (Nichols, p. 282, 2006)

Sexual Sadism and Sexual Masochism were first listed in the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Revision Two, or DSM-II, as sexually deviant behaviours and were classified as paraphilias in 1968. This listing may have been due to historical psychological literature of authors Freud and Krafft-Ebing. In the DSM-II, these paraphilias were given provisional categories of Sadistic Personality Disorder and Masochistic or Self-Defeating Personality Disorder. Although the definitions of these have changed throughout the revisions of the DSM, which is currently in Revision Four, this historical negative outlook has seriously biased much of the psychiatric community of past and present (Kolmes, Stock, & Moser, 2006). In the DSM-IV, these have been declassified as paraphilias unless the practice thereof interferes with one's ability to function in normal society. Unfortunately, the damage has been done, and BDSM practitioners have been persecuted in much the same ways that homosexuals used to be, and to some extent still are. Until the majority of the psychiatric community accepts BDSM as a non-paraphilia, this will continue.

As with most issues in our society, there is no easy solution to changing prevailing negative views in the psychiatric community about people who engage in BDSM activities. Education is going to be an important factor in changing these views, and is essential in creating a large network safe psychological environments where BDSM practitioners will not feel embarrassed to discuss their sexuality or lifestyle with their therapist. There has been a surge of positive and supportive research in the last several years that has demystified and even supported BDSM as a non-pathological sexuality by psychologists, psychiatrists and medical doctors who identify as kink-friendly or kink-aware.

Consequently, there is a long road ahead of BDSM practitioners before they will be accepted as a sexual minority rather than as sexual deviants with psychological issues. A therapist's bias against BDSM can damage their client's outlook on their self esteem as well as their willingness to acquire further psychiatric care from that or any other therapist. BDSM is used by participants for mutual gratification and often for spiritual growth using emotionally and sexually charged themes and activities to do so, and there is no research to prove that these activities are harmful to the participant's mental state. Alas, it all boils down to knowledge and tolerance; therapists need to educate themselves on what occurs in a BDSM setting and relationship and practice tolerance of other peoples sexual tendencies regardless of their own personal beliefs. Fortunately, the number of kink-aware and kink-friendly psychologists and psychiatrists is growing, and they are slowly expanding on education to the psychiatric community at large.

References

American Psychological Association (2000). Guidelines for psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients. American Psychologist. 55(12) 1440-1451. Retrieved April 7, 2008, from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pdh&AN=amp-55-12- 1440&site=ehost-live

Dancer, P., Kleinplatz, P., & Moser, C. (2006). 24/7 SM Slavery. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 81-101. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=aph&AN=21269114&site=ehost-live Kolmes, K., Stock, W., & Moser, C. (2006). 

Investigating Bias in Psychotherapy with BDSM Clients. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 301-324. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21269624&site= ehost-live

Nichols, M. (2006). Psychotherapeutic Issues with Kinky Clients: Clinical Problems, Yours and

Theirs. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 281-300. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http:// search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21269620&site=ehost-live

Wiseman, J. (1996). SM 101. San Francisco: Greenery Press.

10 Questions & Answers about BDSM

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Detecting the Fakes in an Online World of Femdom

Courtesy of: MissBonnie © collarncuffs.com

Every day I am confronted by friends, acquaintances and those recommended to seek Me out with questions regarding a person (or people) that they feel may be perpetrating a scam against them. I don't mean the common E-Mail scams (such as “Viagra Cheep” or “Lose 40 pounds by Summer”) but the much more insidious scam involving the creation of one or more fake personalities. The scammer then uses the pseudo-persona's to deceive, hurt or abuse their victim or victims.

Because the internet offers so many easy ways to hide, to become someone fake, or to even impersonate a whole group of people, it is often very difficult for those that are not “Net Savvy” to detect and defend themselves against such scams. The purpose of this page will be to help those needing general info .. or just wanting a little more knowledge .. to recognize the common scams before they can become dangerous or injurious.

Common Techniques

Before we can get into how to recognize a scam, we should review the most common tricks that scammers use. We will explain what makes a person “Real” and how scammers use the various Internet programs to appear real.

Email Accounts

The popular “Portal Sites” (such as Yahoo, MSN, Google, etc.) all offer free or low-cost E-Mail accounts these days. In recent years they have all taken steps to prevent automated systems (such as those used by Spammers) from signing up for these accounts. However they do allow a single person to create multiple accounts with no trouble. This is a common “exploit” (or trick) used by the fakes. They will create one or more fake E-Mail accounts and then flesh them out with personal details to make it appear that each account belongs to a separate person. Fortunately for us, the big-name E-Mail services store information in every message sent that can help us narrow down the real sender and detect when one person is sending out E-Mail under multiple different names. A little further down, I will show how to find and use that information.

Chat Names

We all use various Internet Chat programs (or “Instant Messengers”) these days. Fakes will routinely use the various bogus E-Mail accounts they've created to create companion Chat Names (or “handles”). While it is possible to have multiple handles on any one computer, it is generally not possible to log in to more than one at a time. This is important to remember since it requires a faker to log out of one handle before logging in to another.

However, since the faker can run many different chat programs at once (and most of us do have more than one program installed), they will sometimes have different handles for each type of chat program. This is also important to note. Because most of us do have handles for many different chat programs, someone that only has one program installed and refuses to (or claims to not be able to) install another chat program may be suspicious.

Chat Profiles and Pictures

Most (if not all) of the common programs allow the user to fill out information about themselves. This information is called the “Profile”. Most fakes will take extra care to put real sounding info in the Profile as a way to lend credibility to their fictitious persona. But the problem is they can't use a “real photo”, so they will borrow one from the Internet or leave it blank. Be extra cautious of anyone who uses a “commercial grade” photo in their profile. While it does not necessarily mean they are a fake, if the photo isn't a real person (usually taken with a webcam or digital cam) then your level of caution should be a bit higher.

Also make note of their geographic location in the profile. If not listed there (and it often isn't for basic 'net security reasons) then be sure to find that out during your conversations with them. Fakes that create more than one persona will often scatter them around the world or the country … and that bit of fabrication will help you “out” them a little later on.

Pictures Sent Via E-Mail or IM

Fakers will often need to (or want to) send pictures of “themselves” in order to prove their existence and reality. However, as with Profiles, they must find a source for the pictures they send out. Fortunately for us, most commercial sources (and many picture sites) will “watermark” or put digital information into their pictures that indicate the true source. Fakers can't easily remove this information and thus it will be visible to you after you receive the picture. All you need to know is how to look at it and what it means.

If the Faker sends a picture file as an attachment to an E-Mail, you should also keep the E-Mail for use in determining the real origin. The information stored in the “Headers” can be compared with those in E-Mails from other people to determine if they are indeed from separate computers and regions, or in fact from the same one.

Internet “Connections” During a Chat

Most chat programs will create a “connection” between the two computers engaged in a chat. While the connection may be only temporary and exist just when the chat starts, certain types of chat activities (such as sending files or viewing a webcam) can establish a connection that lasts much longer. On computers running Window 2000 and Windows XP, there are programs you can use to list all the connections, both the “IP Address” (similar to a street address) and the “Port” (similar to an apartment number). While the program and function you are using controls the Port, the IP Address can help you determine the other person's general location, or at least let you determine if it is the same as another persona in the Faker's “community”.

The Nitty-Gritty Techno Babble Stuff

Now that we have a general idea of what sort of things can expose a faker, it's time to get into the dirty details of how to get the information we need. Primarily the data comes from a few different sources and types:

1.IP Address - The unique address (or location) on the Internet assigned to every computer.

2.E-Mail Headers - The digital fingerprint of every computer that an E-Mail passed thru on its way to you, and the fingerprint of the true sender.

3.Digital Signatures or Watermarks - The digital numbers stored inside a picture or document file that indicates its true source.

The following will discuss some simple ways to find the information you need, how to interpret it (or websites that can interpret it for you) and other details you might like to know about what it all means.

IP Address - Where Are You Really?

Every computer that talks on the Internet has a unique address called its “IP Address”. Different Internet Service Providers (or ISPs) have blocks of addresses that they use for their customers. Often times the IP Address can even identify a general location too. A Faker that has more than one bogus persona may remember to log into the right account, but they seldom if ever can change their IP Address too. Thus the IP Address can be compared between two “people” to see if they are in fact the same person (or at least using the same computer). Some programs (such as IRC chat sites and programs) convert the IP Address into a unique “Ident”; thus while you may not know the exact IP Address, you can at least be sure that two people with the same Ident are in fact using the same computer.

Techno-Geek Note: Some ISPs (such as AOL dial-up) use “connection farms” that totally obscure the origination IP Address. However, since Fakers often do not disconnect and reconnect when switching persona, you can usually find the same IP Address from two of their persona. Techno-Geek Note 2: The more savvy will notice that there are cases where the same IP Address will be shown for two different computers. The most common reason for this is home-based networks where a “Router” is used. However, if the same IP Address shows up for two people who claim to be miles or continents apart, it's a safe bet they are fakes and liars.

Turning an IP Address Into a Location

Finding the real location of an IP Address is not such a simple thing. While there are special databases that convert an IP Address to an Internet Name and vice versa (the so-called “DNS” process), there isn't an “official” database to find the location of a specific IP Address. However there are a few companies that have created their own databases … and they even provide access to them over the Internet. Some of them even provide free access to their database (but on a limited basis though). One of the databases that I use periodically is from a company called www.IP2Location.com . When you open the website you will see a list of the services and products they offer along the left-hand edge.

Near the bottom of that list is a section called “Free Resources”. Their main page also includes a “Live Product Demo” section on the upper right-hand side as shown to the left.

Note that “your” IP Address is automatically filled in for you when you open their website. You can highlight the entry and replace it with any IP Address you desire, then press the “Find Location” button to view the location information they have on file. When I clicked the button, the results I received are shown here:

IP Address Country Region City Latitude/Longitude ZIP Code Time Zone *deleted for site safety* AUSTRALIA Victoria Melbourne 35.283-149.217 - *edited*

Net SpeedISP Domain

CCADIALPOOLS2-CCCONNECT.NET.AU

it shows that I live in Australia, that my Internet Service Provider (ISP) is CCADIALPOOLS2-CCCONNECT.NET.AU and that my Time Zone is +10 hours GMT (“Greenwich Mean Time”; the universal home base of Internet Time services).I have deleted some of my details for site safety. Right here is all the information you need to determine approximately where I live. If I had been telling you that I actually lived in Minnesota USA (for example), this one test would prove to you that I'm lying thru my teeth. Clearly I am not in Minnesota, USA, I live in Victoria, Australia. (Or at least I am connected to the Internet from Australia. But since most fakes are cheapskates and freeloaders too, it's a safe bet they are not making tons of long distance calls to other states or countries just to disguise their real location.)

Techno-Geek Note: As can be seen from the example above, the actual physical address of an IP Address does not absolutely pin down a house address. You cannot use an IP Address to find someone's house, workplace or other highly accurate location. The best you can do is narrow it down to a region of the country or world. So if you're concerned that your IP Address will lead stalkers to your house, don't be. Bad guys can no more find your home address from your IP Address than you can.

Let's do another example test. Suppose we find the IP Address of 207.46.248.67 for someone that we often chat with. (The IP Address is actually that of a Microsoft E-Mail server, but this is just an example.) After you do your first “Find Location”, the page where the results are shown will include an entry box and some brief instructions on how to perform another test (as shown below).

The results I received for our test IP Address are shown here:

IP Address Country Region City Latitude/ Longitude ZIP CodeTime Zone 207.46.248.67 UNITED STATES WASHINGTON REDMOND 47.6738 -122.089 98052 edited due to publish time

So now we have a handy (and free) tool to help us locate the real location of someone, once we have their IP Address.

Finding a Location from E-Mail Headers

One of the best resources provided by IP2Location is a tool that uses their database and some nifty programming to analyze the headers of an E-Mail message. this service is free and easy to access; simply click the “IP2Location™ Email Header Tracer (Free)” button. At the top of the page you will see some brief instructions on what to do as well as links to specific instructions on how to find the E-Mail Headers for some of the more common E-Mail services

I use Microsoft normally, but I also use Yahoo and gmaill as well. Just remember that the techniques you will use to find the E-Mail Headers depend on YOUR E-Mail service and not those of the person that sent you the message.

There are a lot of cryptic computer details included in the headers, but you needn't worry; the IP2Location tool will figure out which of the header lines it needs and ignore all the rest.

Very Important Note: The last entry is of no significance to you; it shows the E-Mail server that you use and will almost always be the same. It does not show any useful information about the sender. Only the first entry shown above contains that information.

In the case of the email, I just last checked there is only one E-Mail Server “fingerprint” in the message headers. This is because Spammers often send their crap directly to your E-Mail server in hopes that their real location won't be visible. Of course, they are stupid because such tricks not only uncover their true IP Address, but also identifies the E-Mail message as “bulk”; a trait easily identifiable by Spam scanner and protection programs.

Picture and Image Files

One of the common problems that fakes encounter is the need to put a face on the “people” they create. Since they obviously cannot use their own pictures, they will often “mine” the Internet looking for pictures that they can use. Sometimes you can spot the fakes just by the pictures they provide; for example if the people or places don't match from picture to picture. However sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper.

Techno-Geek Note: You should NEVER accept files of ANY kind from someone you don't know unless you are very well protected by good antivirus software and you know how to use it properly. IMPORTANT WARNING: Always, always, ALWAYS check the full name of the file you've received. A lot of evil wicked people will send you a file claiming it is a picture when in fact it is a program that can harm your computer (or worse yet, allow them to spy on your computer). Before opening ANY file you received, scan it with a good antivirus program first and then double-check the file name by right-clicking on the file and choosing “Properties”. If you see a lot of spaces in the name, usually followed by ”.EXE” or ”.COM”, then delete the file and immediately cease communication with the sender.

Techno-Tools for digging deeper

Many times you will have to look “inside” a file to find out its true source. Two of the better of these free file viewers is called “V” and is available from www.FileViewer.com the other is www.Irfanview.com If you don't have one of these programs and feel they might be too difficult for you to operate, then by all means find someone you can trust that is able to help you dig some.

EXIF Data - The Extended Information Details

Most digital cameras and many of the picture editing programs available today will add additional details to any image file they create. This information, called the Extended Information (or EXIF data) is stored in the data bytes of the image file itself. Using a file viewer (such as “V”) you can easily find this data and possibly learn a bit more about how the picture originated and when it was taken.

You can see the name of the manufacturer and the model number of the camera itself When you receive a number of pictures from a faker and they claim they are all taken using their own camera, compare the EXIF data from each image file to make sure they really do all come from the same camera. If they don't match, or if some have the EXIF block and some don't, be prepared to ask more detailed questions and listen closely to the answers.

We've all heard this one “I just took this for you with my digital camera” This can be very useful statement when someone makes this claim… check are the date and time or are they from days, months or even years ago. Once again, you've caught them in a lie; a good reason to run away as fast as you can.

Copyright Notices in the EXIF Data

Most commercial photography studios and services will also add a Copyright Notice to the EXIF data in their image files. If you see such a notice in any of the images you receive from someone, be sure to ask them why they are distributing copyrighted works under false pretenses. Chances are pretty good they will be the ones to cut off communication … and quickly too.

Chat Handles - The Superman/Clark Kent/ ~wonderwoman/ Diana Prince Conflict

As mentioned earlier, Instant Messenger programs (such as Yahoo, MSN and AIM) allow you to have only one login active at a time. This fact can be especially important when you suspect someone may be using the programs to impersonate two or more people.

Let's assume that you have two of their pseudo-people on your Yahoo. You've probably spoken to both of them at some time or other, but you've never been able to find them both online at the same time. This is because the faker must sign out of one handle and then sign into the other handle in order to chat. Just like no one ever sees Superman and Clark Kent together or at the same time, you will never find both fake people available at the same time either. So how do you use this information? Or better still, what can you do to prove or disprove your suspicions? Simple.

Whenever you are talking to Person A, also open a chat box with Person B and leave them a message that sounds critical or interesting enough to get their attention immediately. It can be especially telling if you use something like “I just found out something really scary about Person A and I need to ask you something right away.” If you don't hear from Person B until after Person A logs out, and then you immediately hear from Person B … well guess what, A=B.

Conclusions

It can be very hurtful to find out you've been deceived by someone. Whether the deceit is in person or on the Internet, the common reaction is to blame yourself in some fashion. However, you must keep in mind that most fakers have honed their skills over many years and many lies. They become expert at what they do and how they do it. Even the best and most paranoid among us has, at one time or other, been duped by a faker. Do not be ashamed. Just take your lumps, learn to be a bit more skeptical, and then get back to living your life in a decent honest way.

If you spot a fake, or if you are suspicious that someone may be “less than honest” about who they really are, do not hesitate to call on other friends and have them help you corner the liar. Because fakes are habitual liars, they will often tell slightly altered versions (or sometimes wildly different versions) of their story to other people. This allows you to compare notes with your friends and hopefully catch the liar red-handed.

And always remember the three basic rules of Internet Chatting:

·Be Cautious and Reasonable - Listen carefully to the stories you hear, take everything with a grain of salt, and try to remain reasonable in your suspicions.

.Never Trust Anyone with Your Money - Never give out money, bank account or credit card information, or any financial details to anyone you cannot touch (and if necessary beat upside the head ).

·Live and Learn - When you find you have been deceived, take your lumps, get on with your life and go into the next experience a little wiser and a little better prepared to protect yourself and your feelings.

Hopefully the above information will help you and others around you stay safe and secure while still having fun and finding happiness in your lives. If you know of someone that could use this information, do not hesitate to pass it along. If at all possible, find a local “computer geek” that you can trust and that can help you understand some of the deeper technical issues you may encounter. And above all else, be ready to forgive. Forgive yourself and forgive others, because carrying anger and spite inside you will never solve any problems.

A scenario...from 'ASH'

It is late afternoon.

I am slowly making my way up the stone stairs to meet the one and only true mistress, Lady Leyla. Just outside the dungeon door, I stop and nervously look around, searching for people who can see me. No-one, good, but in the heart of hearts a bit disappointed. 

The weatherman says it is 2 degrees when I start to take out my jacket. I remove my shoes and socks balancing only on one leg. Now is the dreaded part. Slowly I unbutton my shirt to show a black bra underneath. 

Next I remove my pants to reveal a pair of girlie panties and black stockings. The cold breeze and the excitement is having its effect on me. I am shivering from head to toe. I carefully fold all the clothes and put it on the side. then kneeling in front of the door, in the full present position, I wait for Mistress. it may have been only 5 mins, but felt like an eternity. 

You open the door and look pleased. slowly kicking me on my balls, you order "Come in slut. you have a long day ahead!"

Book Review: The Submissive Activity Book

COURTESY OF: http://www.submissiveguide.com/2010/03/review-the-submissive-activity-book/

By lunaKM on March 3, 2010

In January I had a poll in the sidebar asking readers like you what books you’d like to see me review for Submissive Guide. The overwhelming response was that you wanted me to review The Submissive Activity Book: Building Blocks To Better Service by Shannon Reilly. I received the 184 page book without expectations of what I would find within its pages. No one has yet reviewed it on Amazon.

Flipping quickly through its pages it is first and foremost a workbook. There are pages and pages of forms for you to fill out to improve and learn the skills she puts forth in the book. According to Shannon the book was written for submissives not currently engaged in a D/s relationship that are looking to establish a structure in their lives that a Dominant normally would do. It is built to help the submissive learn and improve skills that a potential Dominant might desire.

The book is broken up into sections with activities towards different goals. From establishing a personal protocol with rewards and punishments, goal-setting, schedule making and planning, learning new skills and furthering education as well as budgeting and learning personal finance. The book’s second half has helpers for the submissive in understanding their wants and needs, how to negotiate and establishing limits.

Before each activity form there is a summary of what the activity is supposed to do for you and how it might help you grow. They are well thought out, but leave a lot to self exploration. The number of copies of each workbook activity are sometimes excessive in my opinion and the author encourages the purchase of her companion book to get more blank copies of the forms. In today’s technology age, I would have rather had one copy of each activity page; I can always make copies if necessary. I don’t think the companion book is really needed at all.

My favourite activity section is the personal protocol. Shannon describes this section as a way to feel accountable for your actions even if you aren’t in a relationship. She walks you through behaviours you would want to encourage and discourage as well as a punishment and reward system that you manage yourself to keep your new behaviours in check.  For those submissives with a real desire to control and change their lives this is a valuable section.

I dislike the wasted pages that are used for a calendar. While I can understand that the section is about planning and scheduling, I would rather encourage the submissive to get a schedule book that is small enough to carry around with them in their handbag or shoulder bag.  This way the activity wouldn’t involve either carrying the book everywhere or tearing out the pages. Again this would be a good place to encourage them to make copies of the pages they desire to use instead of giving them an entire year’s worth of calendar pages.

Honestly though, this book is very much in keeping with the purpose of this website and I’d recommend it for those of you who want to experience structure and start working towards your perfect self without a Dominant. You will then be able to enter into a relationship with more preparedness and your personal value may be higher.

The Submissive Activity Book

Paperback: 184 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace (February 22, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1440470499

ISBN-13: 978-1440470493

Book Review: Where I Am Led: A Service Exploration Workbook

By lunaKM on May 30, 2012 

Courtesy OF: http://www.submissiveguide.com/2012/05/book-review-where-i-am-led-a-service-exploration-workbook/

 I’ve been hanging on to a fantastic book for review for over a year now because according to all book sellers it is out of print. I would hate to give a review, especially the glowing review this book gets from me, and then you not able to buy it yourself. But, luckily, I found a second edition that is in print! It doesn’t have the same title which is why it took me so long to connect the two, but when I did I was thrilled and you will be too.

The book I’m talking about is “The Path of Service – Guideposts for Excellence” by Christina “slavette” Parker. It has been out of print for years and if you go to the Amazon.com page for this book you can buy a used copy for over $200 right now. But don’t do that. I have a much better solution.

Buy the 2nd edition. Trust me on this, it is well worth it.

Where I am Led: A Service Exploration Workbook is the 2nd edition of the aforementioned book. On the Amazon page it says it’s the 2nd edition of the book that I coveted for a year but I didn’t know until I opened it up and read the introduction to the book. I about squealed with joy. I could now share with you a book that has value to my submission and I knew that it would help you as well.

It is a workbook, and it written in a way that you have space to write in your thoughts to the tasks, questions and projects that you find throughout the book. I’ve reviewed a workbook in the past, but this one is definitely more useful in the organization, inspiration and personal growth potential. Here’s what it has in store for you.

Monthly ProjectsWeekly Writing AssignmentsTwice Weekly Prompts and QuotesThoughts and General Advice

It’s organized quite well and I haven’t found a single page that isn’t worth my time and energy to think about.  You definitely want to read the “How to Use this Book” section at the beginning because it has useful tips for how to get started and to use the book successfully. You can do this book alone or with your Dominant. I even know of several submissives that are working through the book together.

If you only do one thing that I ask from you on this site, please do yourself a favor and buy this book. Where I am Led is an excellent personal growth tool for the submissive arsenal.

Product Details

Where I Am Led: A Service Exploration Workbook

Paperback: 190 pages
Publisher: Alfred Press (October 7, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0578035952
ISBN-13: 978-0578035956

You need help..but not from me

I have to laugh at some subs sometimes... honestly.....REALLY????

Clint McCance - you're a douchebag!

Isabella is reborn after a session

The Embodied Side of BDSM versus Sex (part 2)

The Second part of this beautiful article in taken from Clarisse Thorn's Blog - http://clarissethorn.com

The Embodied Side of BDSM versus Sex

Although Part 1 was all about how the divide between “BDSM” and “sex” is often nonsensical, or purely political, or socially constructed … that doesn’t mean that the divide does not exist. I once had a conversation about ignoring social constructs with a wise friend, who noted dryly that: “One-way streets are a social construct. That doesn’t mean we should ignore them.” Just because the outside world influences our sexuality, does not mean that our sexual preferences are invalid.

Some polyamorous BDSMers have very different rules about having sex with outsiders, as opposed to doing BDSM with outsiders. For example, during the time when I was considering a transition to polyamory, I myself had a couple relationships where we were sexually monogamous — yet my partners agreed that I could do BDSM with people who weren’t my partner. Those particular partners felt jealous and threatened by the idea of me having sex with another man, but they didn’t mind if I did BDSM with another man. Maybe the feelings of those partners only arose because they categorized “BDSM” and “sex” into weirdly different socially-constructed ways … but those partners’ feelings were nonetheless real, and their feelings deserved respect.

And there are also unmistakable ways that BDSM feels different from sex. There is something, bodily, that is just plain different about BDSM, as opposed to sex. I often find myself thinking of “BDSM feelings” and “sexual feelings” as flowing down two parallel channels in my head … sometimes these channels intersect, but sometimes they’re far apart. The BDSM urge strikes me as deeply different, separate, from the sex urge. It can be fun to combine BDSM and sex, but there are definitely times when I want BDSM that feel very unlike most times when I want sex.

The biggest political reason why it’s difficult to discuss this is the way in which we currently conceptualize sexuality through “orientations”: we have built a cultural “orientation model” focused on the idea that ”acceptable” sexuality is “built-in”, or “innate”. Some BDSMers consider BDSM an “orientation” — and I, myself, once found that thinking of BDSM as an orientation was extremely helpful in coming to terms with my BDSM desires. But one thing I don’t like about the orientation model now is that it makes us sound like we’re apologizing. “Poor little me! It’s not my fault I’m straight! Or a domme! Whatever!” Why would any of these things be faults in the first place? Our bodies are our own, our experiences are our own, and our consent is our own to give.

The orientation model is one of the cultural factors that makes it hard to discuss sensory, sensual experiences without defaulting to sexuality. As commenter saurus pointed out on the Feminist version of part 1 of this post:

Sometimes I think that we have compulsions, needs or “fetishes” that aren’t sexual, but lumping them in with sexuality is sometimes the most convenient or socially manageable way to deal with them or get those needs met. They might even physically arouse us for a variety of reasons, but that might be a side effect instead of the act’s inherent nature. Which is not to say that every act can be cleanly cleaved into “sexual” and “non-sexual” — of course not. But I think we lack a language around these needs that doesn’t use sexuality. I see a lot of groundbreaking work coming out of the asexual and disability justice communities in this regard (which is just to say that I find the folks in these groups are churning out some incredible ways to “queer” conventional dominant ideas about sexuality; not that they never have sex or whatever).

I think one answer to that is to just open up the definition of sexuality to include these things, but as someone who identifies vehemently not as “sex positive” but as “sex non-judgmental”, I know I don’t personally want all my shit to be lumped in with sexuality. It just makes me picture some sex judgmental person insisting that “oh, that’s totally sexual.”

I, Clarisse, can certainly attest that it’s common for people to have BDSM encounters that are “just” BDSM — “no sex involved”. For example — an encounter where one partner whips the other, or gets whipped, and there’s no genital contact or even discussion of genitals. (I’ve written about such encounters several times, like in my post on communication case studies.) And I’d like to stress that when I have encounters like that, they can be very satisfying without involving sex. The release — the high — I get from a heavy BDSM encounter can be its own reward.

I’ve also had BDSM encounters where I got turned on …

… but I didn’t feel turned on until later, or afterwards, or until my partner did something specific to draw out my desire. For example — I remember that in one intense BDSM encounter as a domme, I wound up the encounter and pulled away from my partner. We had both been sitting down; I stood up and took off the metal claws I’d been using to rip him up. (Secretly, the claws were banjo picks. Do-It-Yourself BDSM is awesome.)

Then I leaned over my partner to pick something up. I had thought we were pretty much done, but he seized me as I leaned over, and he pulled me close and kissed my neck, and I literally gasped in shock. My sexual desire spiked so hard … I practically melted into his arms. And yet if you’d asked me, moments before, whether I was turned on … I would have said “no”.

One way to think about it might be that sometimes, BDSM “primes” me so that I’m more receptive to sexual energy. It’s not that BDSM is exactly a sexual turn-on in itself; sometimes it is, but that’s actually surprisingly rare. Yet BDSM often … gets my blood flowing? … and seems to “open the floodgates”, so sexual hormones can storm through my body.

And just in case this wasn’t complex enough for you … on the other hand, I’ve had BDSM encounters where my partner tried to take it sexual, and I wasn’t interested. It’s almost like there’s a BDSM cycle that I often get into, and once the cycle is sufficiently advanced, I can’t easily shift out of it.

Sometimes, when I’m near the “peak” of the BDSM cycle, then being interrupted for any reason — sex, or anything else — is absolutely horrible. I’d rather be left on the edge of orgasm, burning with sexual desire, than be hurt until I almost cry. The emotion becomes a stubborn lump in my throat; becomes balled up in my chest. At times like that, it almost feels hard to breathe.

A while back, a reporter named Mac McClelland who worked in Haiti made a splash by writing an article about how she used “violent sex” to ease her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I briefly reported on the article for Feminist, but at the time, I didn’t share many of my thoughts about what she wrote. One thing I did say was that the reporter didn’t use any BDSM terminology — at least not that I spotted. She didn’t seem to conceptualize her desire for “violent sex” as a BDSM thing at all. Interestingly, a Feminist commenter named Jadey, who has experience with kink, also didn’t conceptualize the reporter’s article that way. Jadey wrote:

I don’t think she’s bad or wrong, and I don’t think her method of coping with her PTSD is bad or wrong. … [Yet] I’ve got a kink/BDSM background, but that’s not what she’s describing here. She’s talking about something far different, and I can’t understand the experience she describes with Isaac. It is … incomprehensible.

I want to stress here that I, Clarisse Thorn, have never been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (And I’ve undergone plenty of analysis, so I’m sure that if I had PTSD, someone would have noticed by now.) And just in case it needs to be said again, I’ll also stress that I have no intention of telling anyone else how to define their own experiences. And just in case it needs to be said again, there is a big difference between consenting BDSM and abuse; here is an article I’ve written about the distinction between consenting BDSM and abuse.

But unlike Jadey, when I read the original “violent sex” article, the reporter’s description of her encounter sounded a lot like some of my preferences … indeed, it sounded like some of the BDSM encounters I’ve had. For example, the reporter writes:

“Okay,” my partner said. “I love you, okay?” I said, I know, okay. And with that he was on me, forcing my arms to my sides, then pinning them over my head, sliding a hand up under my shirt when I couldn't stop him. The control I’d lost made my torso scream with anxiety; I cried out desperately as I kicked myself free. … When I got out from under him and started to scramble away, he simply caught me by a leg or an upper arm or my hair and dragged me back. By the time he pinned me by my neck with one forearm so I was forced to use both hands to free up space between his elbow and my windpipe, I’d largely exhausted myself.

And just like that, I’d lost. It’s what I was looking for, of course. But my body — my hard-fighting, adrenaline-drenched body — reacted by exploding into terrible panic. … I did not enjoy it in the way a person getting screwed normally would. But as it became clear that I could endure it, I started to take deeper breaths. And my mind stayed there, stayed present even when it became painful …. My body felt devastated but relieved; I’d lost, but survived. After he climbed off me, he gathered me up in his arms. I broke into a thousand pieces on his chest, sobbing so hard that my ribs felt like they were coming loose.

… Isaac pulled my hair away from my wet face, repeating over and over and over something that he probably believed but that I had to relearn. “You are so strong,” he said. “You are so strong. You are so strong.”

Sounds extremely familiar to me.

Now, it’s not like I have BDSM encounters like that all the time; indeed, experiences of that type are relatively rare for me. But the reporter’s description doesn't sound “far different” from what I've experienced. Certainly not “incomprehensible”. There’s only one big difference, actually: I've never had such an intense BDSM experience in which my partner also had penis-in-vagina sex with me. (I’m assuming the reporter means “penis-in-vagina” sex when she talks about “getting screwed”, but I could be wrong.)

Honestly, I’m not sure why I would want to combine vaginal sex with an experience like that. Vaginal sex strikes me, personally, as kinda incidental to what I’d get out of it. But maybe I’ll try it sometime and it’ll be the greatest thing in the world; we'll see, I guess.

Sometimes I find that I’ve still got a “BDSM versus sex” distinction to work out, although I seem to have comfortably settled into the frameworks I've created. One of my very first blog entries, back in 2008, was called “Casual Sex? Casual Kink?“, and I spent the whole thing musing about whether I was more or less okay with casual BDSM than I was with casual sex.

These days, I find that I’m kinda okay with both casual sex and casual BDSM, but I much prefer those experiences within intimate relationships. Make no mistake, my friends: BDSM can include a great deal of love and connection … at least as much as sex.

To hammer the point home, let me tell you about what happened after I broke up with a much-beloved ex-boyfriend: Mr. Inferno. It was back when I was very focused on being monogamous with my partners. Mr. Inferno broke up with me, and a month or two later I had the chance to have an overnight BDSM encounter with another man, so I took it. There was no genital contact; the whole encounter was limited to this guy giving me orders, and hurting me until I cried.

But I remember, even as I slipped into the familiar emotional cycle, that I couldn't let go: I couldn't let go because I felt like I was betraying Mr. Inferno. He’d broken my heart, but on some level I felt like I still belonged to him. It was wrong, wrong, wrong for me to cry in someone else’s arms. The wrongness rang through me like a bell. It was so impossible, unbearable — all I could think was how it should have been Mr. Inferno. I choked on the tears. I couldn't lose myself in them.

Later, I mentioned to my partner that one of my ex-boyfriends (not Mr. Inferno) had trouble dealing with my BDSM desires. “Ah,” my partner said. “That explains why you had trouble letting yourself cry.” I decided to nod; to let him think he knew what was blocking me off. It seemed simpler.

In the morning, I had breakfast with my partner. We hugged and split up, and I went for a walk until I found a local creek. I sat next to the creek and I closed my eyes and I let the helpless tears slip down my cheeks.

I’d felt (and I’d known others who felt) this way after the dissolution of a sexual relationship. But I had never imagined that such a reaction of intense bodily loyalty could apply to BDSM as well as sex. I hadn't anticipated that I’d feel such heartbreaking, visceral loss just because I let another man hurt me.

So different, and yet so the same.

~ Clarisse Thorn - 14th  OCT 2011 ~

BDSM versus Sex, Part 1: Divide and Conquer

This beautiful article in taken from Clarisse Thorn's Blog - http://clarissethorn.com 

BDSM versus Sex, Part 1: Divide and Conquer

Every once in a while, someone will ask me a question about something BDSM-related that I feel “done with”; I feel like I did all my thinking about those topics, years ago. But it’s still useful to get those questions today, because it forces me to try and understand where my head was at, three to seven years ago. It forces me to calibrate my inner processes. I often think of these questions as the “simple” ones, or the “101″ questions, because they are so often addressed in typical conversation among BDSMers. Then again, lots of people don’t have access to a BDSM community, or aren’t interested in their local BDSM community for whatever reason. Therefore, it’s useful for me to cover those “simple” questions on my blog anyway.

Plus, just because a question is simple doesn’t mean the question is not interesting.

One such question is the “BDSM versus sex” question. Is BDSM always sex? Is it always sexual? A lot of people see BDSM as something that “always” includes sex, or is “always sexual in some way”. In the documentary “BDSM: It’s Not What You Think!“, one famous BDSM writer is quoted saying something like: “I would say that Eros is always involved in BDSM, even if the participants aren’t doing anything that would look sexual to non-BDSMers.”

But a lot of other people see BDSM, and the BDSM urge, as something that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex — that is separate from sex.

I see two sides to this question: the political side, and the “how does it feel?” side. Both sides are intertwined; when it comes to sex, politics can’t help shaping our experiences (and vice versa). I acknowledge this. And yet even when I try to account for that, there is still something deeply different about the way my body feels my BDSM urges, as opposed to how my body feels sexual urges. I don’t think that those bodily differences could ever quite go away, no matter how my mental angle on those processes changed.

This post is about the political side. Several days after I wrote this post, I followed up with a post about the bodily side. But first ….

The Political Side of BDSM versus Sex

“BDSM versus sex” could be viewed as a facet of that constant and irritating question — “What is sex, anyway?” I’ve always found that the more you look at the line between “what is sex” and “what is not sex”, the more blurred the line becomes.

For example, no one can agree about what words like “slut” or “whore” actually mean. As another example, recall that ridiculous national debate that happened across America when Bill Clinton told us that he hadn’t had sex with Monica — and then admitted to getting a blowjob from her. Is oral sex sex? Maybe oral sex isn’t sex! Flutter, flutter, argue, argue.

It is my experience that (cisgendered, heterosexual) women are often more likely to claim that oral sex is not sex, while (cis, het) men are more likely to claim that oral sex is sex. I suspect this is because women face steeper social penalties for having sex (no one wants to be labelled a “slut”), so we are typically more motivated to claim that sex acts “don’t count” as sex … whereas men are usually congratulated for having sex (more notches on the bedpost!), so men are typically more motivated to claim that sex acts “count” as sex. (Unless they’re Bill Clinton.)

So we already have this weird ongoing debate, about what “qualifies” as sex. And you throw in fetishes such as BDSM, and everyone gets confused all over again. A cultural example of this confusion came up in 2009, when a bunch of professional dominatrixes got arrested in New York City … for being dominatrixes … which everyone previously believed was legal. Flutter, flutter, argue, argue, and it turns out that “prostitution” (which is illegal in New York) is defined as “sexual conduct for money”.

But what does “sexual conduct” mean? At least one previous court had set the precedent that BDSM-for-pay is not the same as “sexual conduct for money” … and yet, in 2009, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office decided that “sexual conduct” means “anything that is arousing to the participants” … and then decided that this suddenly meant they ought to go arrest dominatrixes. It’s not clear why the Manhattan DA did not, then, also begin arresting strippers. And what about random vanilla couples on a standard date-type thing, where the woman makes eyes at the man over dinner, and the man pays for the meal? Sounds like “sexual conduct for money” to me. Which could totally be prostitution, folks, so watch your backs.

In his piece “Is There Such A Thing As Kinky Sex?“, Dr. Marty Klein says that:

If practicing kinky sex makes you “other”, not one of “us”, if it has non-sexual implications, if it means you’re defective or dangerous — who wants that? And so as “kinky sex” and its practitioners are demonized, everyone is concerned — am I one of “those people”? It makes people fear their fantasies or curiosity, which then acquire too much power. It leads to secrecy between partners, as people withhold information about their preferences or experiences.

… I’d like to destroy the idea of binary contrast — that kinky and non-kinky sex are clearly different. Instead, I suggest that kinky and vanilla sex are parts of a continuum, the wide range of human eroticism. We all slide side to side along that continuum during our lives, sometimes in a single week. We don’t need to fear our fantasies, curiosity, or (consensual) sexual preferences. They don’t make us bad or different, just human. Some people like being emotional outlaws. They’ll always find a way to get the frisson of otherness. But most people don’t want to live that way. So ending kink’s status as dangerous and wrong, and its practitioners as “other,” is the most liberating thing we can do — for everyone.

That’s certainly reasonable from a political standpoint. I’ve made similar arguments. (Some folks, such as the brilliant male submissive writer may, also argue against the common idea that “kink” is limited to “BDSM”; they prefer an expansive definition of “kink” that denotes a vaster cornucopia of sexuality.)

Plus, I even suspect that a lot of the distinctions made by BDSMers ourselves are based far more on stigma than sense. For example, when I was younger, I went through a period where I couldn’t stand to have the word “submissive” applied to myself. I insisted that I was into BDSM solely for the physical sensation, and swore I would never ever do something solely submission-oriented (such as wearing a collar). It was like I could only handle BDSM as long as I distanced myself from the power elements; the power elements carried too much stigma in my head for me to acknowledge them … yet.

I also used to carefully separate “BDSM” from “sex” in my head. Part of me felt like, “If my desire for pain and power is sexual, then it’s weird. If it’s not sexual, then it’s less weird.” (It looks strange when I type it, now, but I guess that’s how sexual stigma works: it rarely holds up against the clear light of day.) It took me a while to integrate sexuality into my BDSM practice. In contrast, I once met a couple who told me that it took them a long time to do BDSM that wasn’t part of sex. In their heads, the thought was more like: “If the desire for pain and power is sexual, then it’s not weird. But if it’s not sexual, then it’s really weird.”

I’ve heard of plenty of dungeons where sex is not allowed — sometimes for legal reasons, but sometimes because there is actually a social standard against it: people are like, “Dude, let’s not get our nice pure BDSM all dirty by including sex.” (Note: My experience is primarily with dungeons owned by “lifestyle” BDSMers — “lifestyle” being a clumsy word that attempts to denote those of us who are motivated to do BDSM for reasons other than money. While there is some overlap between “lifestyle” BDSM and professional BDSM, the overlap can be surprisingly rare, and professional BDSM is often banned at lifestyle BDSM parties. Lifestyle dungeons are often non-profit organizations, and often function more like community centres than moneymaking venues. I understand that some professional dungeons have a “no sex” rule out of a desire to protect the boundaries of dominatrixes who work there, who may not wish to be asked to engage in sex.)

There are also plenty of cultural groups who do things that look suspiciously like BDSM … who insist that they have nothing to do with BDSM. For example, I’ve heard of spanking clubs whose members get really mad if you dare bring BDSM up in their presence.

And then there’s groups like Taken In Hand, a quasi-conservative organization. Actual testimonial from the Taken In Hand site:

There are lots of websites for people in the BDSM, D/s, DD (domestic discipline) and spanking communities. There are websites for people who belong to religions that advocate male-head-of-household marriage. There are even websites for Christians who are interested in BDSM. But there are very few websites for people who are interested in male-led intimate relationships but who are not interested in all that the above communities associate with this kind of relationship (jargon, clothes, etc.) Some of us don’t even like thinking of this as a lifestyle.

Well, my friend, you know what … you can refuse to call yourself BDSM all you want, and you can reject our “jargon” all you want, and you can “dislike” thinking of this “lifestyle” until the end of time … and you have every right to insist that we have nothing to do with you. But when your site has posts that include comments like “When my husband behaves in a dominant manner I basically swoon,” or have titles like “Don’t forget your whip,” well … I’m just saying.

Also, since you mention rejecting BDSM “clothes”? I’ll just say that I can be an astoundingly badass domme in a t-shirt. And I have done so. Multiple times.

Personally, I am particularly frustrated by the stigmatizing idea that BDSM has nothing to do with love. Sometimes I encounter this idea that BDSM has to be separated from sex because BDSM has nothing to do with sex, whereas sex supposedly “should” be about love. The truth is that both BDSM and sex are very different for different people, emotions-wise. Although many people experiment with “casual BDSM”, the same way many people experiment with “casual sex”, a stereotype that BDSMers cannot find love in the act is wrong and absurd. (There’s even an actual study that found that positive, consensual BDSM increases intimacy.)

So yeah. Nowadays, many of these “BDSM versus sex” reactions strike me as being born out of pure, irrational stigma. As Dr. Klein noted, these reactions are usually born of the terrible human urge to exclude: to find ways to differentiate ourselves from “those people”. Humans apparently love to think things like: “I’m not like those people. It doesn’t matter if I, for example, write extensive rape fantasy fiction! That couldn’t possibly be BDSM! Because I’m not a BDSMer! Because BDSM is dirty.”

But we shouldn’t necessarily blame people for this instinct to reject and categorize: the instinct is one that comes from being scared and oppressed … because the social penalties for “getting it wrong” are high. Remember, those New York City dominatrixes thought they were “safe” from the law as long as BDSM didn’t count as sex. But as soon as someone decided BDSM “counted as” sex, those dominatrixes were arrested.

It’s just one more example of how sexual stigma for “different kinds of sex” is constantly intertwined. No type of consensual sexuality can express itself freely until people agree that “among consenting adults, there is no ‘should’.” The Romans, those ancient imperialists, used to say: “Divide and conquer.” When consensual sexualities are scared of each other, we will continue to be conquered. As long as “vanilla” people are afraid of “BDSM” … as long as “BDSMers” are afraid of being seen as “sexual” … as long as the social penalties for being a “slut” or a “whore” are incredibly steep … as long as sex workers are stigmatized and criminalized … everyone will be bound by these oppressive standards.

~ Clarisse Thorn - 9th  OCT 2011 ~