Have BDSM website forums made us a nanny BDSM culture. (5)

For instance, If you want to know something about a certain item/scenario/club. We tend to blog/post a question about it and ask for others opinions. These opinions may influence our own choices about whether we continue in our quest for finding out more information, or experimenting ourselves.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing??. I know the safety help and advice is always a bonus and may have helped people to not do something dangerous, but has this made us make the choice of not doing things, even though we may not use it in the same possible dangerous way, as we may not have been told the full circumstances as to the how and why it wasn't for them.

Are we denying ourselves the experience of trying a fantasy/a toy/visiting a club because some people were against the idea, when the said question was posted. Are we then allowing other people to help make decisions for us.

I tend to ask questions about where to buy things from and peoples experiences with them as a way of ideas of using said toy safely/ or in a way I hadn't previously thought of. And accept that people view clubs in lots of different ways, so would rather go and see things for myself and form my own opinion. But that's just me!

But how many of you have taken on board what others have said and not experimented or done things. And therefore allowing the BDSM forum dictate your life choices.

On the other hand, how many people use the answers to posts as a way of living their own BDSM life and experience through other people. Do they allow the answers to form their own BDSM experience, and then profess to be experts on the subject. (but then I doubt people will admit to this one!!).

Just thoughts. Ts1..xx

You do get a great deal of opinion offered on the forums, but from what I've seen the majority of those who offer opinion are sufficiently wary to qualify their views where they need qualifying.

Opinion is just that, opinion, and will vary from one person to another. I believe a forum in which diverse opinion is voiced, as long as it is done with proper respect for those who hold contrary views, is more often a positive effect rather than negative.

Toak

To predict the behaviour of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence - Friedrich Nietzsche

Edited 6 Jul 07, 8:13 PM by ToakReon

Before the internet people used to just do things without advice. Some got hurt, emotionally or physically. Some got their jollies. There was no one to advise, no one to criticize.

These days more advice is available than ever before. Not all of it is good advice. Sometimes it prevents people getting hurt and sometimes it prevents people making their own decisions and taking their own risks.

I'd say that if people are safer then that can only be a good thing.

But I'd also say that the safety police can be ill advised on occasion and can occasionally be found to be repeating and perpetuating disclaimers from various literature rather than doing any first hand research. Because it's safer and because it's easier.

So I'd say that yes there is a BDSM nanny state. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing but I would encourage people to think and act for themselves rather than just accept the "everyone knows that.." advice that is circulated. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly if you have an uncommon physique or medical condition then mainstream advice might not be applicable. Secondly "safe" advice is just that. Someone who has extreme desires and receives safe, conservative advice will occasionally decide that ALL the advice they've been given is wrong because it doesn't fit in with their objectives. There should perhaps be a distinction here between conservative safety advice and life saving "really, don't ever ever do this" advice.

Where's Dean?

i think most people stay true to type regardless until brought up short or coming up trumps somehow. I sometimes wonder if chat rooms and such make people a little less adventurous socially in real life settings, prefering instead to remain in the comfort group of those gathered electronically. Then I suppose it's relative and it's equally fair to question whether the use of such tools has already increased the social fluidity massively in uniting these people in the same space in the first instance. In my more cynical moments I tend to think the former.

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos