I think I've finally reached my limit, and so you're all being treated to a rant. A rant that's escalated from a mere peeve into a full blown hot button for me. For those of you that self-identify as the following, please excuse me. I'm not really directing these comments at you. I'm directing my comments at those idjits that insist on applying their terminologies onto me. This is just something I've got to get off of my chest.
What *IS* it with communities going down the road of fluff? I've seen it within the pagan community with the incessant need to be happy and light and easy to get along with and accepting of nearly everything until their brains fall out their ears. Now it's happening within the BDSM lifestyle. Well, let me correct myself. It's been going on for a long time, but it's finally reached epidemic proportions.
When did we become something cute and cuddly? When did all submissives become "brothers" and "sisters" to each other and referred to as *ugh!* subbies? Please. I am neither cute, nor cuddly. And I do *NOT* resemble a barbie doll in leather. I am a bright, intelligent submissive woman. Not a subbie. I like pain. I like submission. Hell, I even like the *other* side of the flogger.
What I'm *NOT*, is some cute, pathetic, helpless little waif that must be protected so that my innocence *coffcoff* remains intact until the perfect True Dominant Master comes along for me to devote myself to in a cute, simpering, completely helpless way. I am powerful. I am proud. I don't wear skimpy, fluffy clothing in the vain attempt that someone will come along and protect me. I can protect myself, thank you very much.
When I *CHOOSE* to give myself to someone, they are just as powerful as I am. They can control me. My moods don't frighten them, nor does the brain that got stuck in my head that I'm not afraid to use. With impunity. I refuse to hide my intelligence to appear stupid so I might get a partner. If you're afraid of my brain, go somewhere else.
I've got nothing against trendy kink. I don't even have a problem with trying to gain acceptance in the larger society around us. I may think those attempts are doomed to failure. But in the process of trying to gain acceptance, we've decided that we need to "clean up" what we do to be ok for the outside masses. We've downplayed the razor's edge. We've taken away the dangerous mystique that drew many of us down this path in the first place.
We've taken the leather and applied fuzzy, pink gauze to it in order to make ourselves look safe to people looking in at us from the outside. We've pushed the edgeplayers back into the dark corners and told them to sit down and shut up and do what they do behind closed doors so that the *REST* of the group can be seen as normal.
Well, guess what. We're not normal. We've never been normal, nor will we ever be normal. We're radicals. We're outsiders. We exist on the fringes of polite society. No amount of prettying up or dumbing down of who we are will ever bring about acceptance. There will always be those, out there, that want us put into hospitals and jails and taken for "treatment" to help cure our illness.
I am submissive. I am dominant. I am whatever I damn well choose to be.
And what I choose to be is a societal outlaw.
Not a subbie.
