ACCEPTANCE?? BAH!!!!!!
I’m going to make an admission here that will totally NOT surprise anyone who knows me and my ideas. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether BDSM is accepted by the broader culture or not. It does not bother me one whit how we are portrayed on the Jerry Springer Show or Law and Order. Frankly I would be really unhappy if the trailer trash who watch Jerry Springer were to suddenly decide that we are what they want to be and started showing up at our play spaces, showing off their one tooth and multi-colored armpit hair. And, as far as Law and Order is concerned, it’s fiction and fiction needs conflict so what’s the big fucking deal? Hell, if I’m going write about a serial killer, you’re damned right I’m going to have him into BDSM because that will make him a more interesting character and I don’t give a flying fuck whether it affects the “community image” or not.
I mean, seriously, do we really want everyone to think of us as boring people who sell insurance and spend our nights compassionately working to get the 650 pound subbie unstuck from the store turnstile? Isn’t it better to admit that we are dealing with the darker side of the human psyche and have fun with that, enjoying the absolute discomfort of our neighbors in the process? I just love to see the looks on people’s faces, our fellow pervs’s faces, when I tell them that the first books I used to learn about BDSM were The Boston Strangler and The Collector. You would think I was going to give HIV to their children! It’s priceless!! But it is also true. I studied Albert DeSalvo’s pickup techniques religiously my senior year in high school and by the time I got into college had them down pat. Believe me, they were much more interesting reading than SM 101 (Or how to make BDSM a cure for Insomnia) and Screw the Dumbbells. Oh, from there I graduated to the old House of Milan bondage mags, John Norman (no, I’m not a Gorean but I have all his Gor novels and Kathleen still has my copy of Imaginative Sex which was the FIRST BDSM manual) and meeting people with like interests (like a college professor who was OUT in the 60s) helped a bit but I have never totally abandoned the ideal of the outsider, the bad guy. It’s just plain more fun.
So I say to hell with the idea of being accepted. Enjoy yourself for what you are and enjoy what you do for the hell of doing it. Make no apologies, no explanations, no justifications. And if your relatives don’t like it, tell them go fuck the goat.
We have the right to do anything we damned well please with our partners and it doesn’t matter what society thinks. End of discussion.