Ever since Paris Hilton's fuck/dick suck tape came out and was mass marketed not to her detriment, but as means to boost her fame, pornography and sex has been shedding that media taboo - which is a good thing, but I've always suspected that there are a few styles of sexual exploration that will still cause a rancor, a nose wrinkle, a raised eyebrow. And one of those is BDSM.
I have a friend who is a Dominatrix, and I wanted her to be able to you tell what the lifestyle means, hopefully she's dispelled a lot of misconceptions about this so-called Alternative Lifestyle. I say “so-called” because everyone has their fetish, and a lot of people would enjoy sex with at least a blindfold on… let your other senses control the experience.
Anyway, here's the slim on the smacdown:
BDSM is an acronym of "B&D" (Bondage & Discipline), "D&S" (Dominance & Submission), and "S&M" (sadomasochism). "BDSM" refers to any or all of these things, and a lot of stuff besides.
Tying up your lover is BDSM; so is flogging that person, or bossing that person around, or any of a thousand other things. BDSM is highly erotic, usually (though not always) involves sex or sexual tension; and is highly psychologically charged. One person (the "submissive") agrees to submit to another person (the "dominant"); or, alternately, one person agrees to receive some sort of sensation, such as spanking, from another.
Some people like to be submissive all the time, some people like to be dominant all the time; some people like to switch, being submissive one day and dominant the next.
For the most part, people who are into this kind of thing are remarkably well-adjusted. People involved in BDSM generally are neither abusive nor come from backgrounds where they were abused, because people with that kind of backgrounds aren't likely to be sexually turned on by giving someone else power over them. That doesn't mean that no BDSM relationship is abusive--since people are what they are, no form of human interaction is immune to abuse. But it does mean that the people you'll find in the BDSM community are, for the most part, very stable. (In fact, if you're going to get involved in this kind of stuff, it helps to have a cast-iron ego and a strong sense of self, particularly if you're a submissive.)
Some people think anyone interested in BDSM is suffering from some kind of past abuse. I think that the "BDSM interest=past abuse" assertion is most frequently made by people who don't understand what BDSM is. They see someone being flogged, they say "Oh! People in a BDSM relationship get hit; people in an abusive relationship get hit; ergo, BDSM is like an abusive relationship. QED."
But the fact is, the psychology of a BDSM power exchange is vastly different from the psychology of abuse; and in a BDSM relationship, the psychology is frequently driven by the limitations of the submissive, not the dominant. Typically, it is the submissive who says "This far and no farther"--which is entirely contradictory to the psychology of abuse.
BDSM is not what it looks like from the outside. It's not just tying people up and having sex, and it's not just arbitrarily whipping people. That's very crude, and kind of boring. What it is is a sort of role-playing, where the people involved are acting out a fantasy that involves taking or giving up power. Sex is often involved, but not always.
The Ideal Person for this lifestyle is…
Uh-huh. Sure. The needs of the submissive. Right. The dominant is the one bossing the other person around; you'd have to be some kind of jerk to want to do that.
While that may seem like it makes sense on the surface, the truth is just the opposite. People who are good at dominating or inflicting pain are, in general, LESS likely than many other people to be jerks or assholes.
Why? Because in order to be good at doing it, you need to be highly in-tune with your submissive. People who are self-centered generally make poor dominants, because they lack the empathy required to be able to read and judge their partner's reactions, and bring their partner where that person wants to go. Assholes quickly find that nobody wants to play with them; and people who are empathetic tend not to be assholes. All of the real top-notch dominants I've ever met, without exception, are incredibly cool people.
In tune with your submissive? The dominant is the one calling the shots. What does the dominant care about the submissive?
Believe it or not, the dynamics of a BDSM relationship are often driven by the submissive, not by the dominant. The submissive sets the limits; the submissive decides what places can and can not be explored; the submissive has the ability to call a halt to the scene. The dominant, in many ways, is simply a facilitator. It's the dominant's job to create a setting where the people involved can explore the submissive's fantasies.
Dominating your partners does not mean that you don't want to please them. It is not always, or even usually, true that a dominant is interested in his own gratification rather than his submissive's. In fact, many dominants are driven as much by their desire to please their partner as by anything else; the psychology of a healthy BDSM relationship is driven by the submissive as well as by the dominant, and a dominant can take pleasure from gratifying the needs of the submissive just as easily as the submissive can take pleasure from gratifying the needs of the dominant. This kind of thing is not one-directional.
It's all for the submissive's benefit? Yeah, right. The submissive is the one being bossed around or spanked or whatever. How can you say that isn't abuse?
Simple. Two reasons:
In a BDSM relationship, the submissive sets the limits. A victim of abuse doesn't get a vote; the victim can't tell the abuser what to do, or how much to do it. A submissive sets all the limits--what kinds of things can be (and can't be!) done, how much, and for how long.
And while we're on the subject of limits, there is more than one kind of limit in a BDSM relationship. Everybody has "hard" limits--things that they absolutely will not do, and will not even consider. Some people, for example, like to be tied up but don't like the idea of being whipped; if they won't allow themselves to be whipped, ever, that's a hard limit.
There are also "soft" limits--things that someone won't do under ordinary circumstances, but will allow to be "forced" on him or her in the context of a particular scenario that's being acted out. Between soft limits and hard limits lies an interesting psychological territory to explore.
A submissive gets a way to opt out. This may be a code word, or a sign of some sort; if the submissive uses it, he or she has had enough and the scene is over. An abuse victim doesn't tell the abuser when to stop.
Okay, so that kind of explains the world, the expectations, and why it isn't really all that crazy.
My understanding in terms of the psychological viewpoint by the so-called general public is that physical punishment and giving sexual control (by men that is) is the antithesis of the American ethos…
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