BDSM

What it is, how it works, and why doing it for the right reasons can be liberating while doing it for the wrong reasons… not so much

Image credit: Kraft Foods Inc.

Thanks to the Internet, there can be very few people who aren’t familiar with the letters BDSM, but just in case, they mean Bondage, Domination, Submission, Masochism. What’s less apparent is that these four characteristics aren’t necessarily inextricably linked. You can be submissive without being a masochist and conversely you can be a masochist without being submissive. Equally, domination and bondage aren’t roped together either. Some couples enjoy dominant/submissive play but never incorporate bondage into their sexual games because one or both partners dislike it while some incorporate bondage but not submission.

Obviously there’s an enormously wide range of behaviors that fall under the generic BDSM label, and obviously everyone will have their own interpretation of what BDSM means. There are no fixed limits and no “correct” forms of BDSM outside of which an activity cannot be regarded as compliant with doctrine. What follows is necessarily my own idiosyncratic view and is not intended as guidance, nor as any sort of normative declaration of what BDSM “should” be. It’s simply the result of the cumulative experience of several decades in which with various partners and in various ways…