njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011
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The last three posters express what I think, that while there is no witch hunt per se, and I think it is wrong to sit and think everyone non kink will judge you, but I think it also is unwise not to face the facts that being into this stuff can hurt you, depending where you live and so forth. Some female s's on here and IRL I have heard explain their relationship to others as being a 'traditional' relationship, where they do what their husband says..and people will roll their eyes, but think that they are some sort of religious type, like the Promise keepers belief where God said the man is to control the household and so forth....but if they came out and said "I am my husbands slave", I suspect the reaction would be quite different.
It is all about context, it is all about situations, and I think that is important. There was a case quite recently, in NYC, where a woman who worked for one of the city agencies was outed as a domme (she might have been a part time pro, not sure) and she was fired, because she didn't list that job on her application or on outside interests. The thing that was interesting was, that happens a lot, and unless the job is found to be a conflict of interest (like, for example, the woman was a lawyer whose outside clients did business with the city), they get a warning, this woman was fired.....how a pro domme conflicts with a job as a lawyer at city agency, I don't know). You work for a white shoe law firm, and something like this gets out publicly, you can bet they will find a way to get rid of you, arguing about 'the firm's public image'. I mentioned in another post a poor bastard who lost his job of 25 years because he was a closet cross dresser, wasn't caught out in public, but his employers, good Christians all, decided he was deviant and fired him. A couple of years ago the guy that was the head of the Formula 1 racing association lost his job after one of the UK tabloids published pictures of him in a bd/sm romp (and yes, there was luridness to it, some of them featured 'interrogation' scenes with German uniforms and such, and it didn't help the guys parents were UK fascists who loved Hitler during the Nazi era).
The thing is, I am not talking exhibitionism here, I am not talking walking down the street with your s on a leash and chain or whipping someone in public or the like (that to me is nonconsensual stupidity), I am simply talking about being in the open with it, and I think there is a reason to. I guess the best way I would describe BD/SM in the public mind is don't ask, don't tell........Like I said, people talk about sex, women definitely talk about it among themselves, about the guys they have been with, men to a certain extent do, they talk about women they have been with, make jokes...but I have heard few people outside people in the scene talk about that kind of stuff.....someone might mention they once spanked a girl, or I might hear some young guy 'brave' enough to check out a BD/SM club, but while people talk about vanilla stuff to whatever level, no one talks about BD/SM stuff, and there is a reason for that I suspect.
In some ways, there are parallels to this with being LGBT. Even today, even with a lot of gay people coming out, there are more then a few LGBT people who stay in the closet. They will tell you they have had few problems about being gay, that people understand, but the other side of that is they also are still pretty closeted, they don't go to events at work with their partner, they don't talk about him (or her), they don't go to family events. They have told certain people, and they are 'fine' with it, but they also haven't challenged much, either.
That said, I don't think we have to go around thinking like the vanilla people are out to get us, I am not, and I think it is a bad attitude to have, it is no different then LGBT people going around with a chip on their shoulder, it makes it worse. However, I also think it is more then a bit living in the clouds to think like being into BD/SM won't have any consequences, because it can and does, even if most people don't care (and most won't), there are enough idiots out there who do, religious droolers who can't wait to tell others how to live their lives, busy bodies, downright assholes, and worse, people who are well meaning but ignorant, like DYFS and social services, who would automatically assume that a Male d and a female s is abusive.....and the problem there is, you are often guilty until proven innocent. I know that for a fact, not because of BD/SM, we ran into that with DYFS, we had asshole neighbors who used to get into drag out fights, you would hear screaming, things breaking, and several times cops were called. The neighbors decided it must have been us, and one time called DYFS, claiming they had seen our son black and blue with bruises (only thing we could tell was that he had some paint on him,yellowish, that could be an old bruise). The person from DYFS came to the house, saw what it looked like (wanted to know if it was a day care center, all these toys and puzzles and games and artwork), woke my S up from his nap, asked him questions, talked to my wife, then interviewed me separately.....it all came up negative, and the social worker said she could tell in 5 seconds looking around that this was a false report. Still, what if that had happened and, for example, for whatever reasons had reason to suspect we were into BD/SM? What if, as with another poster on another thread, my wife was s (hah!) and was wearing chains or a leather collar with d rings, think it would have gone so clean? As it was, it took months to finally get an all clear back, and until that happened, there was an open report against us......
Like I said, it all depends, but it is equally wrong to think that it is la ti da land out there, we have a country where significiant portions of the country believes evolution is a myth, that science is 'guesses' and that a story written in a book by bronze age nomads is literal truth........and even outside that, there are a lot of people who think anything but the way they live is wrong or weird *shrug*.
On the other hand, there is the fun side to this. The composer David Del Tredici was at an event in Brooklyn, some hipster venue, and was there with some young boy toy on a leash (the guy is in his 70's..).......friend of mine from work was there, was laughing. Well, guy was at Carnegie Hall for some premiere of a piece of his, and sure enough, showed up with the boy toy on leash and collar,the chief music critic of the Times covered the concert, and mentioned that *lol*. I guess when you are an artist or rich, you are 'eccentric', when you aren't, you are 'a deviant'...*lol*.
< Message edited by njlauren -- 3/23/2013 10:54:09 AM >
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RE: Where is this supposed hostility? - 
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