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LadyNTrainer -> RE: Attitudes of people in BDSM community about vanilla lifestyles (5/24/2010 12:27:53 PM)
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ORIGINAL: SocratesNot
I am interested in how BDSM community really views entire vanilla lifestyle and vanilla values such as monogamy, democratic decision making, equality, etc.
You will probably find most BDSM people accepting that there is no one right way to do things, and we do tend to get annoyed at people who say there are. Vanillas do that fairly often, and we have a low opinion of that specific behavior. But kinky folks who preach that poly is the one true way, more enlightened than monogamy, etc, and that everyone should be poly, are just as annoying as monogamous people who do the same thing. Substitute gay and straight and you have the same basic idea. The difference is mostly that the "everyone must be monogamous and heterosexual" camp is much larger, and consequently more likely to actually cause problems for folks who don't agree.
Thing is, there's a big difference between us disapproving of vanilla people who want to lock us up for being kinky, and vanilla people who are making their own personal choices about their relationships. The former we dislike a lot. The latter are just people like us, and we support their right and their ability to make the choices that are best for them. How could we do otherwise? In general, the BDSM community is highly tolerant of people who choose their own values, whether those values are traditional and vanilla or not. It is not tolerant of people who try to force their values on others.
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Do you feel that vanilla lacks substance? Is it somewhat outdated? Are vanilla relationships more superficial? Why you can't be satisfied in vanilla relationships?
For me personally, vanilla lacks substance, is superficial, and cannot satisfy me. For my next door neighbor, that probably isn't true at all, so it would be as big a mistake for them to try to be kinky as it would for me to try to be vanilla. I also don't want a lesbian relationship, I'm not wired that way. But it would be remarkably silly of me to tell lesbians that they shouldn't want one either, or that their relationships are in any way inferior to mine. That's not just stupid, it's rude and disrespectful as hell. And that's the kind of "value" that isn't likely to be tolerated in the BDSM community.
Why should I care who is kinky and who is vanilla, who is gay and who is straight, who is mono and who is poly, and why would I want to make those choices for another person? I can't even fathom the concept. Different things are right for different people, because we're not all stamped from the same cookie cutter mold. Duuuh.
Like most people in the community, I have absolutely zero opinion on other people's lifestyle values and bedroom preferences, as long as they are not trying to force me to do it their way and no other. I have a very low opinion of people who loudly shout that their values are "traditional" and imply that everyone who does it differently is wrong or evil. That's about the only generalization you can really make about attitudes in the community towards other people's relationship choices.
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Please, I mean please, don't start again with these "no generalizations" posts.
Thing is, what I stated above is really all you're going to find in the real life BDSM community. Outside of fantasy stereotyped porn characters, you will be fairly hard pressed to find a BDSM person who has much of a busybody opinion about somebody else's lifestyle choices. They're, yaknow, somebody else's lifestyle choices. We're used to socializing with male doms, femdoms, the GLBT contingent, the fetishists, polys, monos, mildly kinky weekend warriors, hardcore 24/7 lifestylers, etc, and everyone respecting everyone else's differences and not really caring who does what and with which and to whom in their own bedrooms. So it's very unlikely you will find anyone here interested in pointing fingers at vanillas and saying, "They're doing it wrong!" Doesn't really happen, because we don't generally think that ANYBODY is doing it wrong unless they're being dramatically unsafe or nonconsensual.
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