- moonlight wrote:
Perhaps not permanently, no. ... So it goes with kink. Long term inability to meet the main needs of one's life outside of WIITWD indicates, to me, issues that need to be dealt with and resolved so that we are not "escaping from the pain of reality."
Observer wrote:
Hrmm, I have problems with this. First of all, I believe I can multi-task in life, and others can as well. Ie, I shouldn't stop praying, dating, or playing just because I'm looking for a job at the same time. I agree that someone who has a long term inability to support him or herself perhaps shouldn't be scening, but surely religion (pagan or otherwise) could help them pull through no?
I personally know of three doms in my area that are currently in that situation. IMO, they are behaving in an extremely unethical manner. They are fully capable of working. However, they find it easier to have their subs sign over money, get their names put onto their properties, then hold that power over the subs rather than do the right thing.
They are a disgrace to themselves and to the community for taking advantage of people that they have built a up a dependence in and both we *and* those submissives would be far better of to run them out of our groups on a rail.
Complete with tar and feathers.
- Observer wrote:
I think that for something to be accepted, it has to be in the open.
- Observer wrote:
Now, I admit that it is a lot easier to hide kink than it is to hide homosexuality, but people still get outed from time to time. Some loose their jobs, some can loose their children. This is unacceptable.
- Observer wrote:
It also needs to be in the open for self-acceptance reason.
Government can't make you accept yourself.
Doctors can't make you accept yourself.
The only person who can make you accept yourself is YOU.
- Observer wrote:
When I was younger I thought I was a freak/monster. If the scene had been so well hidden as it was in the past, I would have probably spent a lifetime of self-loathing. It isn't fun, and it isn't safe. I would be very surprised if I was the only one who went through that. Hard statistics are hard to find, but a portion of teen suicides are actually auto-erotic asphyxiations. These deaths, brought upon by lack of education and feelings of self-destructiveness are avoidable.
No amount of public acceptance is going to get people over the self-loathing stage. Or the "I feel alone" stage. Because even if we *are* accepted, parents aren't going to just up and tell their kids one day "oh, by the way... you may want to investigate the ideas of BDSM and see if they're for you. They're a viable sexual expression."
Kids will have to discover it on their own, the same as they always have. There's enough information out there on the net, these days, that it's difficult to believe that they *won't* find it. And in finding it, they come to the people that *CAN* help them.
Society certainly won't.
In all the years that gays and lesbians have been fighting for their rights, they *still* aren't accepted. Tolerated at best. We, who are often reviled by the GLBT groups, will, in the end, achieve even less. Because we're more of a marginal group than *they* are.
So, instead of working to get people who will never accept us to do just that, I think it's better to focus our energies and efforts on *OUR* groups. Why should we spend our energy elsewhere for such little payback?
- Observer wrote:
Finaly, more oppeness and exposure would facilitate family acceptance. I am not gay, but if I was, I could come out to my parents and they would accept it rather easily due to the fact they've been educated about it. I realy don't think the same would apply for bdsm.
