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The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden is what - 5/9/2014 5:32:08 PM

HEADASSASSIN

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My question is why do we have to keep our life style choice hidden from the real world when so many other lifestyles can be so open

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 5:35:19 PM

StrongSpirit

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We don't.

But just as open homosexuals continue to suffer from discrimination, so do open bdsm'ers

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 5:39:29 PM

tsatske

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I've known people who were fired from their jobs. I've heard of people who lost custody of their kids, and people whose families ran interventions and tried to have them put in the hospital. Each person must determine for themselves what their acceptable level of being 'out' is.

Then there are unintended consequences. When my children were young, I was very 'out' to my family - not my children, my parents, sisters, etc. - about everything - being poly, being Bi, being active in this lifestyle. As a result, it is harder for my now adult son to maintain his un-out status with the family about all of those things, because they notice things they wouldn't otherwise notice.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 6:36:07 PM

dink22

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Good question.

I think to start, it's a relatively new thing as far as being a sane lifestyle. Back in the 1950s, many people didn't even know about BDSM or that people actually did this stuff. If they did, they would have thought those people were sick and probably needed to be charged with some moral crime and put in a mental hospital.

It wasn't much better in the 60s, though we started to see subtle hints in movies and TV shows like "The Avengers."

It started coming out of the closet in the 1970s. I remember Tom Snyder on the Tomorrow show had a whole show on it and interviewed a couple of pro dommes. This was prompted by several seemingly minor but highly publicized incidents that begged the question was S&M coming out of the closet. It got a huge audience. People were fascinated. We started seeing it pop up in movies, such as HARDCORE with George C. Scott in 1979. It was portrayed as perverted, but a regular part of the commercial sex world.

In the 1980s, it made more progress. When it was in movies, it was more often seen as funny. Weird, but harmless. In music videos, women were often dressed in catsuits and other dominatrix attire and presented as sexy, though there was rarely any overt BDSM activity.

In the 1990s it really surged forward because on the World Wide Web. People could suddenly access lots of D/s web sites anonymously and so many who would have never gone to an adult book store or an adult movie theater or order magazines by mail would go to these sites. This is where more women started getting into it. Previously, many people had thought only men were interested in BDSM.

The problem is that in the last sic or seven years in has kind of stagnated. I believe this is because there is still a legacy stigma attached to it. It's nothing like it was in the 1950s, but that stigma has slowed down the progress.

Finally, I think the reason there is a stigma is because BDSM and D/s relationships cover such a broad spectrum that some of the stuff included really is sick. Eating shit, for example. Extreme sadism or masochism. And then there are things like blood, which is an understandable fetish for people into a sort of vampire fetish, but that might not be totally clear to vanilla people.

So I think that's a problem. Most BDSM scenes are just common fetishes, but many are bizarre (though harmless) and a few are downright psychotic.

I think it will continue to get better as far as being out of the closet, just much more slowly than the progress from 1980-2005.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 7:18:11 PM

DesFIP

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It depends how you define lifestyle.

If you're pushing your sexuality into other people's faces, then that's sexual harassment and causing a hostile work environment. And if it isn't germane to your job, then it's inappropriate and you deserve to get fired by causing problems in the workspace.

If you define lifestyle as telling your friends that you have to check with your spouse to see if it's okay for you to go out with them, then that's being a good spouse, making sure that what you do won't cause unintended problems for them.

When people have hassled me about needing to check in with him I don't state that I'm his slave. I just ask them how they can define being selfish as being loving.

My gay friends come to dinner hand in hand but they don't go around having sex on the dinner table. My straight friends, the same.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 7:25:23 PM

shiftyw

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I just don't tend to kiss and tell regardless of the nature of it. Anyone who heard about my sex life, is someone I trust to know im into BDSM, but probably because they've lived with me or slept with me.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 8:19:58 PM

BecomingV

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Many live openly in a BDSM lifestyle. However, NCSF - the national coalition for sexual freedom is very, very busy, dealing with discrimination and legal rights, for us. It's a national entity and they have a group over on Fet. Or, just google, NCSF. Your answers are there.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 8:37:22 PM

chloryformME

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I think this depends on how you look at it.....if this is bf/gf....no biggies, kiss and tell all you like.....I think where the danger is.....is those who want to go to and over the line.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 10:06:24 PM

stef

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HEADASSASSIN

My question is why do we have to keep our life style choice hidden from the real world when so many other lifestyles can be so open

I don't. Why do you?

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/9/2014 11:49:48 PM

Greta75

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So that you don't get discrimination at work and have people shun you.
You can't control other people's thoughts and actions.
It's just reality that not everybody in this world is ready to accept people with deviant leanings.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 1:44:54 AM

kinkyyorky

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We don't. We just have to show the same respect for others that everyone else does. Which means confining discussion of your private life to friends who are comfortable talking about it.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 4:46:09 AM

lilcracker

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HEADASSASSIN

My question is why do we have to keep our life style choice hidden from the real world when so many other lifestyles can be so open

I don't keep it hidden that my partner is the Dominant one in our relationship....at my job they know I need to contact him and let him know I am working over time before I agree to it. They know he handles the money and that I have a weekly spending allowance....I do get a great deal of flack over...I need to ask before I buy any of the plethora of 'my kids school is selling' because many say..."You work you should be able to buy whatever you want". But of course those are the same peers who complain that they argue with their mates over spending habits.

However....I don't share what goes on in the bedroom....I never say....yeah we had a fantastic spanking session last night. Just like none of my peers tell me what great ass sex they had the night before. I have many gay friends male and female and never once has one told me that they gave their partner a great blow job the night before....I know they are gay but they don't flaunt the sex part.
They know my partner wears the pants and I am the 'submissive' part of the relationship...I just don't flaunt it.

And I don't post a picture here....one I am not seeking so there is no need for anyone to know what I look like and secondly this is a sexual website...again I am not going to flaunt what I do.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 8:22:57 AM

SeekingTrinity

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~FRing it~

My guy and I really aren't interested in advertising the entire nature of our personal relationship to people whom we feel it's none of their business anyway. I think it honestly comes down to personal choice as far as whether or not someone elects to keep their private life private or not.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 8:25:37 AM

FriendlyMuppet

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The problem I perceive is that there are a lot of people out there who feel they have to be morally superior to others, and as a result will do everything they can to come down on people who are different than they are. We all know this is wrong and shouldn't be that way, but I can't tell you how many times I've had a job where some higher up has shown some tendency to discriminate against anyone who doesn't fit into some moral or Biblical paradigm of some sorts. I had a recent supervisor who was given the position after a previous supervisor was let go, and she was massively Bible-belt, to the point that she expected it from her other employees, even to the point of where she'd give choice assignments to those who complied, and bad ones to those she suspected of not complying. You couldn't ever call her on it, nor could you even prove it. Finally, I just left as the atmosphere was becoming very uncomfortable.

The point is: These people are all over the place, and even if they're not very "good" people themselves, they hold others to a standard that they will never live up to themselves.

Years back, I used to be extremely out in the world about my submissive lifestyle. At the time, I was a college professor. One semester, two female students found out about my lifestyle (back in the early days of the Internet when they started to discover all of my previous writings) and decided to make it an issue at the university. In the end, my administration stood behind me, but things were never the same after that. I've done everything since then to separate my lifestyle from my persona that people observe in my vanilla career. I've even had to split my writing career into a vanilla side and a bdsm side, which, knowing my history, bothers me more than anything, as I used to be one of the advocates of being proud of being a lifestyle submissive. And now I have to hide it.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 8:46:54 AM

altoonamaster

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i presume those 2 females students were jealous

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 8:54:38 AM

kinkyyorky

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quote:

ORIGINAL: FriendlyMuppet

The problem I perceive is that there are a lot of people out there who feel they have to be morally superior to others, and as a result will do everything they can to come down on people who are different than they are. We all know this is wrong and shouldn't be that way, but I can't tell you how many times I've had a job where some higher up has shown some tendency to discriminate against anyone who doesn't fit into some moral or Biblical paradigm of some sorts. I had a recent supervisor who was given the position after a previous supervisor was let go, and she was massively Bible-belt, to the point that she expected it from her other employees, even to the point of where she'd give choice assignments to those who complied, and bad ones to those she suspected of not complying. You couldn't ever call her on it, nor could you even prove it. Finally, I just left as the atmosphere was becoming very uncomfortable.

The point is: These people are all over the place, and even if they're not very "good" people themselves, they hold others to a standard that they will never live up to themselves.

Years back, I used to be extremely out in the world about my submissive lifestyle. At the time, I was a college professor. One semester, two female students found out about my lifestyle (back in the early days of the Internet when they started to discover all of my previous writings) and decided to make it an issue at the university. In the end, my administration stood behind me, but things were never the same after that. I've done everything since then to separate my lifestyle from my persona that people observe in my vanilla career. I've even had to split my writing career into a vanilla side and a bdsm side, which, knowing my history, bothers me more than anything, as I used to be one of the advocates of being proud of being a lifestyle submissive. And now I have to hide it.

I feel for you being 'outed' and glad your employers stood by you.

For me the important ability is to keep the private in the private sphere whether its kink of religion or whatever and let everyone get on with their job. Our private lives should be that and religion/kink/whatever should be left at the door.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 8:56:33 AM

FriendlyMuppet

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quote:

ORIGINAL: altoonamaster

i presume those 2 females students were jealous

If it was a porn video, I would have played it completely wrong because it started out with one of them emailing me stating she had found out this submissive lifestyle of mine and wanting to know more. My response was that for me to discuss it with her would be highly inappropriate. So, she escalated it from there and then brought in her friends to make it worse. In a porn movie, she would have sexually blackmailed me, I would have become their live-in slave, and then the credits would have rolled. Unfortunately, life isn't always a porn movie.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 9:08:52 AM

FelineRanger

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While it says in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," too many forget or never knew that this country was founded in part by the Puritans, who were religious extremists. Those Puritan principles, which partially state that sex is a gift from an absentee landlord god figure instead of a biological function that feels damn good, still are in play at the very bedrock of American culture. Those principles further state that any physical pleasure is giving in to temptation and consorting with invisible demons. Because of that foundation, any relationship outside of a man and woman bound by a piece of paper and joined in an overly expensive religious ceremony will never be regarded as truly equal in this country. That's why BDSM will never even have the legal backing that homosexual couples are just beginning to get now.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 11:17:12 AM

Killerangel

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HEADASSASSIN

My question is why do we have to keep our life style choice hidden from the real world when so many other lifestyles can be so open

Any lifestyle has the potential for backlash depending on the lifestyle and the environment it is disclosed in. BDSM isn't special. Any subset of humans is ripe for prejudice, finger pointing, rumor mongering, and inaccurate speculation. It's up to the individual what they're willing to risk in how much they advertise about their personal life.

Being as we all live in a group, I think it's important to keep certain personal information to ourselves. I really don't care to know what strangers (or even some people that I know) do in their bedrooms or what gets them off.

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RE: The reason the life style needs to be keep hidden i... - 5/10/2014 11:55:09 AM

MercTech

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HEADASSASSIN

My question is why do we have to keep our life style choice hidden from the real world when so many other lifestyles can be so open

Because in many jurisdictions something as simple as an over the knee spanking that leaves a bruise can be prosecuted as assault and possible get one put on the sexual predators listing.

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