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BDSM? What is this all about?
Maybe you've stumbled into
Informed Consent and are wondering what this is really all
about. Or maybe
you've read a bit about BDSM on the web or newsgroups, and want some
explanation of the jargon. This article tries to answer some of these
questions.
First of all, what is BDSM itself? It is an overlapping abbreviation for
Bondage and Discipline (B&D or BD),
Dominance and Submission (D&S, D/s or DS),
Sadism and Masochism (S&M, S/M or SM.)
That might sound like we're the people your mother warned you about!
But we're not really, since everything has to have the freely given,
informed consent of all people involved.
Often this requirement is summarised by slogans like
"Safe, Sane and Consensual" (SSC) or the more modern
"Risk-Aware, Consensual Kink" (RACK.)
(Sure, there are arguments about the details of what meaningful, informed
consent actually is, and what level of risk constitutes "safe",
but there is broad agreement on the important issues. In particular,
pedophilia is not tolerated since children cannot give informed consent.)
Now we need to define those six terms that make up BDSM. In brief:
- Bondage: restraining people
- Discipline: some form of erotic punishment, often involving caning or
spanking
- Dominance: "Being In Charge"
- Submission: letting someone else "Be In Charge" of you
- Sadism: enjoying giving extreme stimulation, perhaps including
pain
- Masochism: enjoying receiving extreme stimulation, perhaps
including pain
Many people interested in BDSM like several of the above activities, but some
like only one and hardly anyone likes all aspects of them all.
People who take the active role in a BDSM "scene" or
session are referred to as "tops", and the person they do BDSM to,
as "bottoms". So we talk about tops that are good at putting
people in bondage or using a flogger, and bottoms that can take a severe
caning or who like to be fisted.
(Some gay men also use "top" and
"bottom" to refer to who penetrates who, but in BDSM the terms
are completely general and not limited to sex.) Many people enjoy being
both and are said to be "switches".
The other dimension is dominance and submission (D/s). The person who is in
charge is the "dominant" or "dom", and the person who
submits to them is the "submissive" or "sub". Most of
the time, dominants are also tops, but this isn't always the case: some
dominants have no interest in doing physical BDSM like bondage or flogging
to submissives; and many tops don't want to be in charge. A useful rule of
thumb is to see who it's being done for and who is making the decisions: if
that's one person, they're the dominant. A good example of this are
"service tops" who inflict bondage or SM for the benefit of bottom
and pretty much to order. Many service tops are submissives when they form
D/s relationships.
If you need to indicate gender in D/s, there
are modified terms: maledom, femdom, domme (which is a
feminine form of gender neutral word dom), malesub and femsub.
Within these groups there are even more subdivisions and shades of meaning,
but let's just cover the master (or mistress or owner) and slave form of
D/s. This usually involves the owner having acquired the right to exercise
authority over the slave without being vetoed, and may extend to a full time,
24 hours a day, 7 days a week ("24/7") relationship. However, these
terms are often
just used to indicate a dom and sub. There is also a special sense in
which "master" is sometimes used to indicate an experienced Dom
(in the sense of a master craftsman.)
Needless to say, all this terminology can be the source of endless
confusion, argument and imagined or intentional offense, if you let it.
Before we go on, I need to expand on the careful way I phrased the
definitions of sadism and masochism as involving "extreme stimulation,
perhaps including pain". Many people (including a lot of old school
psychologists) might be suprised how pleasurable extreme stimulation can be.
Many things which you would expect to be painful, can be quite the reverse
to a bottom who is sufficiently aroused. This is largely due to the way the
body responds to pain, and just as joggers get an endorphin high from
exercise, many bottoms can get the same high from being spanked for example.
This suprising fact turns the conventional assumption about sadists and
masochists on its head: sadists are often people who put a lot of effort
into giving masochists pleasure; masochists are not a group of twisted freaks
who "enjoy" the "unenjoyable" - they are often people who
enjoy their body's ability to produce natural opiates in the form of
endorphins.
More generally, masochism does also include some people who enjoy
humiliation or pain unmasked by endorphins. But again, they are largely
people who enjoy the excitement or dramatic tension of the situation, just
as many people enjoy roller coasters and horror films.
Fetish is included in the diagram above even though it isn't formally
part of BDSM: fetishists find objects to be sexual arousing which are
not normally associated with sex (whatever "normally" is supposed
to mean); whereas BDSM is a group of activities.
However, there is a very large overlap between the two
communities and many BDSM people use fetish objects and clothing.
Furthermore, many clubs allowing SM scenes have a strict dress code
requiring some form of fetish clothes. As well as catering to people who
like both SM and fetish, these dress codes help to deter "tourists"
(ie non-BDSM, non-fetish thrill seekers wanting to watch.)
(Incidently, people who are not into BDSM are often called
"vanillas" - after the most common flavour of ice cream. They can't
really be called "straights" since there are lots of gay and
lesbian vanillas.)
That's most of the terminology out of the way. Now let's turn to the
practicalities of how the community communicates.
As well as the clubs mentioned above which have a fetish orientation, there
are printed fetish magazines such as Skin Two, which include reports on
BDSM events and news, and an increasing number of BDSM
books available through mainstream booksellers.
There are also societies catering to different aspects
of BDSM, which operate by post and advertise largely in the printed magazines.
And below this semi-public surface, are informal networks of play parties,
of varying degrees of secrecy.
Nevertheless, you're reading this online, on a web page, so you're able to
be part of the growing online BDSM community in the UK (and beyond.) This
is based on three main, complementary systems: Web, Email and IRC.
The Web is probably the most familiar part of the Internet to most users.
The Informed Consent website grew from a
list of UK BDSM links and this still aims to be
the most comprehensive free list of UK BDSM websites. The Web is very much
the publishing medium of the Internet, whether for traditional,
magazine style articles like this, or for new ways of
making information public, like our weblogs.
Email is also one of the first things new Internet users want to use. The
global email system allows you to send electronic letters to most people
online, with varying degrees of anonymity. Just as the global postal service
is used for more than just corresponding with other individuals, email can
be used for group discussions or announcements, by sending each mail to a
list of addresses. We maintain a directory of
UK BDSM lists and discussion groups elsewhere.
Originally, Informed Consent ran email discussion lists, but
we've now replaced these with purely web-based discussion
boards. These allow you to talk about BDSM with other people in the UK,
and each board is dedicated to a particular subject or geographical area.
The third system, chat, allows you to talk to other
Internet users in "real time" - that is, you type something and
everyone in the same "room" sees what you said within a few
seconds. IC has it's own chat system which you can
use as a member of the site, both to talk to other individuals and to
groups of people in a chatroom.
As well as these Internet based systems, some of the proprietory networks,
such as AOL and MSN, have similar UK based resources for BDSM.
Many meets, called munches, have sprung up out of all this online activity.
They are usually in a pub or cafe on a weekday evening or weekend afternoon
and provide an easy way to talk to other BDSM people, and are
very welcoming for newcomers. Our UK BDSM
Event Dates lists
include almost all the munches which have been announced.
We hope all this explanation has been useful and that the pointers to other
parts of Informed Consent will help you use our site effectively.
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