I tend to agree with this regarding acquaintances, but just about everyone I'm close to knows I'm kinky. I feel like I'm hiding something if I don't discuss my membership in the community. If I don't, I seriously feel like I did when I exclusively dated women and someone assumed I was straight. I have a hard time putting words to why this activity requires disclosure, while my other activities like wildlife rehabilitation and photography do not. I guess it's sexual activity and part of my core all rolled up in one.
 |
| Slap Me Baby. Hard. |
Worrying about the future is the root of anxiety, and I shouldn't be doing it. However, when I find myself thinking about a future relationship, I might worry that I'll fall for some dude who isn't kinky and has no interest in exploring. That I'll be rejected for it. In reality, I'd have to reject him, but in my worries I'm always the victim.
As much as it is important to me, as much as I want it to be a part of my life until I go to sleep for the last time, I don't see BDSM as my orientation. (I'll give this more thought.) But there are people who do. In the same column, Dan Savage posted an interesting and very long letter from a young man who sees BDSM as his orientation. The letter writer describes it this way:
We live in a culture where those of us who are weird enough to have similar experiences have absolutely nowhere to go, which is why I want it in the public consciousness. Which is why I'm "out," why I intend on staying that way, and why I think being "out" is so important for those interested in BDSM. I belong to the local kink group, go to munches, etc., and we get a lot of people in their 50s who have been having sex for years and are just now getting interested in kink. I've been interested in kink since I was three and am only now—at age 24—getting interested in more vanilla-type sex. I prefer feminine-but-androgynous partners, but I'm bi and have played with members of both genders (if you believe in a binary, and many genders if you don't), and I'd much rather whip someone I was unattracted to than have just plain old sex with someone I was. And there are other people like me, regardless of how rare. My playmate between ages four and seven. My current partner. And there have to be others.
I don't care what you call what I am (although I'd be very curious about what you'd call me if not "BDSM-oriented"), but I'd like it to be known that people like me exist. Eventually I'd love to see it inserted in the public dialog, hopefully so the next generation has it a little easier. It's no fun being trapped in your own head, unable to talk to anyone and convinced that what turns you on, something you totally didn't ask for, is destined to eventually turn you into a predator and a monster.
We are all different, coming to BDSM in our own ways. The when and why of disclosure and the question of orientation will be on my mind for a while.
