Interactive Blog
By Harlequinn • Jan 7th, 2008 • Category: BlogOk, so its been a while…
Work. Life. Stuff. You know how that goes.
Which is not to say that I haven’t been pondering what my next musing here was going to be. Only that I haven’t had time to pen it.
This isn’t that musing, by the way – this is a completely different musing. The other one will come later.
If this musing isn’ t that musing then what exactly, you might ask, is this musing? I’m glad you asked that.
Being the self-admitted net junkie that I am, I have had had the odd occasion to meander into a chatroom or two in my day. In a recent foray, I found myself coaxed by friends heavily involved in the BDSM lifestyle to join them in one of the many chatrooms devoted to that particular slice of Alternative Americana. BDSM, in the abstract, has fascinated me for a good number of years. While I have never had the desire to involve myself in “the lifestyle” from a participatory standpoint – my personality doesn’t lend itself well to either the dominant or submissive end of the spectrum – I have, nonetheless been curious as to its general appeal.
I won’t go into great detail about my experiences in the chatroom, but I will say that I was appalled at the rampant intolerance and harsh jugement directed towards those whose views diverged from the “standard practices.”
Now, before someone injects the “online is totally different from R/T” arguement – I have known and spoken to people who are “Real Time Lifestyle”, and I have found the same sort of behaviors among its practitioners.
And anyway, this isn’t about online BDSM vs. R/T Lifestyle. This is about the surprisingly high level of intolerance that I have discovered among those who practice a lifestyle that is often met with intolerance by the mainstream society.
Rather than go into what I think the root of this is, I am more interested in what you fine people think.
As such, I pose the following question:
Why do you think that people who are often discriminated against because of their alternative lifestyle choice seem to be unable to recognize their own intolerance towards people whose alternative lifestyle choice differs from their interpretation of it? Is it human nature? Is it a sort of territoriality? Are there specific criteria that an alternative lifestyle must meet to qualify as an alternative lifestyle?
Thoughts?
Harlequinn >> a blogger here at Good Vibrations.
Being a practitioner of five-dimensional thinking and other assorted weirdness, Harelquinn parlays her observational skills into a variety of interesting musings on stuff and whatnot.
Secretly disguised as the mild-mannered employee of a midwest-based erotic material distribution company and retailer, she unleashes her internal chaos through her various writings in a diabolic attempt to bring insight to the unsuspecting masses.
Viva la Evolucion!
"All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters:
You can be me when I'm gone.
Flowers gathered in the morning,
Afternoon they blossom on;
Still are withered by the evening:
You can be me when I'm gone."
--Neil Gaiman
All posts by Harlequinn
When you talk about intolerance in the community are you talking about intolerant of people’s kinks that are different from their own, or intolerance of “vanilla” loving?
I think it depends where you go as for how accepting people are of other kinks that aren’t their own. Online is notorious for intolerance of kinks that aren’t your own, but some areas are better than others for it offline. I live in Washington DC, and whereas I’ve found this area to be rather straightlaced and stuffshirt and the dyke community to be cliquish and closed off to people who are different, I’ve found that the BDSM community here is more openminded, kink-wise, than other places. Here, we have a sizeable human pony scene and a sizeable Adult Baby/Littles/Diaper Lover scene and our clubs and dungeons welcome them with open arms. Even the people that don’t get it at very least don’t judge them for their kinks. It’s only talking to other people that I find that other places around the country are very suspicious and wary and even intolerant of the human ponies and the ABs. I was quite surprised when I found this out, only having the experience of the DC BDSM scene.
If we’re talking about people being intolerant of other’s kinks, I think it comes from needing someone to hate, someone to blame. To be able to say “Well, at least I don’t do _______. I’m a perfectly normal noodle fetishist, but what they do is sick!”
If we’re talking about people being intolerant of vanilla love, I think it’s because kinksters think that vanilla people are parochial and conservative and if they’d just “loosen up” and “get over themselves”, they’d be kinky. (Not realizing, of course, that just as some people can’t help being kinky, others can’t help being vanilla… they’re just not into it. Some have even tried and it’s just not their thing.)
I would say it’s sociological, opposed to human nature. If your society is pro-discrimination (as ours is), then it will be in every walk of life.
I think to make huge blanket statment like that of what you’re saying, that all those who participate in BDSM are intolerant of difference because of something oblique like ‘human nature,’ makes you out as kind of a naive person.
While no doubt there are those who are indeed discriminated against and yet practice their own brand of intolerance. However, reconizing sites of oppression as part of a wider pattern of those with priveledge and those without is also a practice you can find in almost any group. If ‘human nature’ makes us intolerant, then I guess people who practice antioppression aren’t human.
Maybe you happened to find the intolerant corner of your BDSM community, and online it’s pretty rampant regardless of what the topic. As to a definition, an alternative lifestyle can be anything from a husband who loves to have his back scratched deeply by his wife during sex to that 3 way, one master two slave, complete lifestyle relationship. What qualifies as BDSM is up to the participants. An alternative lifestyle is just that, not the norm. Where it falls after that is up to the people involved in defining it. The only hard and fast definition of BDSM is that it’s safe, sane and consentual. Beyond that, *shrugs*
I agree with Conrad. Add the anonymity of the internet and there you have it. It’s the way people get out their hidden discrimination.