Christmas, Commercialism and BDSM

[monster666]

I love the holidays, Christmas especially. The well dressed Santa has a red suit with white trim, and black boots and belt. I am not too keen about how corp america starts selling Christmas each labor day like they have it cornered and it's for sale in a box. And I am not crazy about stupid tv programs trying to decipher it's "true meaning." It's insulting. I really don't like all the crap and trappings that go with it, but I still love the holiday itself, and what it quietly means to me and the time I have with my family.

It seems to me that BDSM is becoming big business too, and a well dressed Domme might wear black leather or PVC, including boots and accessories, with a peculiar similarity to St. Nick's attire. I saw "novelty" handcuffs sold at a auto parts store, with a nearly-nude model pictured on the packaging in a pair of the cuffs. BDSM imagery is the rage on so-called cutting edge prime time TV. There's a BDSM look; a BDSM attitude that all seems to be part of this hollywood image. It's so bad it's supposed to be good. But to me it just isn't.

I think if I were with a Domme in that sterotypical black leather or PVC outfit, it would make me feel like a cheap joke and not in some good way. The word Dominatrix bugs me, and I don't know why. Maybe it sounds too manufactured, and therefore commercial.

To me, BDSM is a more base, more primal need. I want to feel her desire. I want to explore it. I need her attention and I need her to need mine. I need to feel her pointiness. To be her outlet. There is not going to be any real hollywood Kodak moment. It's just not going to be hollywood pretty, and more likely to resemble crime story ugly. It's certainly not about the outfit. I realize that the costume stereotypes are based on real life fetishes, but they just aren't mine.

Does anyone else ever feel this way?

 

[WillowPuss]

Yeeeeeeeeeess - kinda


When we first discovered BDSM, it was through the net. So many of the sites seem to almost paint the Dom/me as you have described them. Almost like having a uniform. A 'wear this or your not truly a Dom' type thing. (I think that is what you are getting at?)

The fetish wear looks good on the models ... but unless your Dom/me has the figure for it, it could end up looking more than a little rediculous. Robuck as not got a standard figure. (His trunk is long and his legs are on the short side ... he joles about hems on his boxers!) Certain pieces of fetish wear just wouldn't look 'right' on him.

I don't need him to dress the part to be my Dom - just as you don't really need a Christmas Tree (with all the decorations etc etc) to truly celebrate Christmas.

 

[activesense]

monster

It seems to me that society is titilated by the fetish scene and likes to dress up in clothes (or look at people dressed up in clothes) that are sexy without really dealing with BDSM per se.


One of the dangers I see as someone who is still an outsider to the whole scene is that people can be attracted to the more superficial parts (sexy clothes or more dangerously, the violence and domination) without really understanding the more "spiritual" basis for the lifestyle.

It seems like I see a lot of references to fetish stuff that is a little bit like Halloween, people wanting to dress up but still make fun because it seems "weird" or threatening to them. I think anything that pushes people iinto a deeper understanding or confrontation with their sexuality is threatening to most folks.

Just my thoughts...

activesense

 

[MzChrista]

I dont usually wear fetish cloths. Excuse me, that shit is expensive and I ought to spend my money to get a sub off? Please, that cant be right!
Now, if a sub asks me to wear something for a particular scene, and I think it sounds like fun they can buy me the outfit. Same thing with toys. I had a sub wanted to be caned with one of those springy riot cop deals. So I had him buy me one.
Its good to be The Queen.

 

[cymbidia]

While i certainly have bits and pieces and dribs and drabs of what could be considered "fetish clothing", i don't usually wear it to scene in because, well, plain ole skin works well for me in that situation, you know? I mean, everything just comes off anyway, most of the time, right?

However, there are definitely occasions when i want to play like it's H'ween (grown-ups version and not always in October, either) and wiggle into something i wouldn't be caught dead in at my local grocery when selecting soup and purchasing peaches.

There are times when it's fun and exciting and way to cool to have fetish kinda stuff to put on. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and we have a fetish flea market coming up next month. That night there's a big ole public party, Fandango, at which such attire will be more than appropriate.

To me, BDSM is a base, primal need that thrums along in veins as i walk through my day, too, monster, but sometimes it's just plain fun to play dress up.
Or is that just me?
Nah.

 

[monster666]

I can understand that some folks like to dress up sometimes and that some people will dress up for anything and that's fine. It's not just my thing. I just don't like BDSM being packaged and peddled the way it is most often. It's like saying that those into vanilla sex need to slap a bumper stickers across their asses that just read "BORING". While some may be bored enough to do it, I'll bet there are tons of vanilla folks who'd take exception to that, and in fact aren't bored at all.

It's like saying "All you people look alike" and it's demeaning.

To me, BDSM is a base, primal need that thrums along in veins as i walk through my day, too, monster, but sometimes it's just plain fun to play dress up.
Or is that just me?
Nah.

 

[cymbidia]

I've had an on-and-off problem for a long time with the trendiness of BDSM, with the way it's portrayed so shallowly in the media (of all kinds), and with the packaging of tidbits of lifestyle stuff for sale. (Whether or not those tidmits are actually parts of "the lifestyle" is irrelevant after they're for sale as such, right?) I've had an at-times GIGANTIC problem with online style BDSM, instant gratification, sleazoid BDSM, too - the kind you find in most chat rooms. (Hence my ongoing war with that despicable W/we crap here.)

However, and this is a big one, we are all a lot safer now then we used to be because BDSM (in some fantasy form or not) has come into the mainstream of our lives.

We used to have to keep to the shadows. We used to have to hide ourselves and who we were and what we did behind closed doors. We used to lose jobs and familes and have to physically leave our towns if we were publicly outed. Everything that used to happen to gays also happened to us.

Except we still cannot be as open about who we were as can gays.

On this board right now are threads about how to hide marks from play, about sneaking some small bit of our kind of sexual pleasure outside perimeters of our legal marriages, whether or not BDSM marriages last as long as nilla marriages with all the extra stresses we have...it just goes on and on.

We still hide who we are, even those of us who are out in our local communities.

But no longer are they coming after us with pitchforks and law books, to hurt us or lock us away for doing what we with each other, consensually, behind closed doors.

Thinking of the recent mess over Beat Me In St. Louis, i have to add: At this time, anyway.

 

[cymbidia]

 

[monster666]

Okay, I have to admit that having SOME image out there making it more palatable to the GP is somewhat beneficial, but I think progress is more due to precedents set by due process involving past BDSM cases. Once set, prosecutors use them as guidelines to decide what and how to prosecute. That in turn affects what police will arrest people for. The stereotype may keep a few pitchforks at bay. Then again, it might just draw a few more. The law works slowly but by and large, it works. The stereotype still irks me.

On a sidenote, I have seen you post about the We/we thing many times, but I don't know (have forgotten most likely) what you are referring to.

If you tell me what you mean, I'll try not to let it slip out of my skull before it has a chance to germinate and prosper.

I've had an on-and-off problem for a long time with the trendiness of BDSM, with the way it's portrayed so shallowly in the media (of all kinds), and with the packaging of tidbits of lifestyle stuff for sale. (Whether or not those tidmits are actually parts of "the lifestyle" is irrelevant after they're for sale as such, right?) I've had an at-times GIGANTIC problem with online style BDSM, instant gratification, sleazoid BDSM, too - the kind you find in most chat rooms. (Hence my ongoing war with that despicable W/we crap here.)

However, and this is a big one, we are all a lot safer now then we used to be because BDSM (in some fantasy form or not) has come into the mainstream of our lives.

We used to have to keep to the shadows. We used to have to hide ourselves and who we were and what we did behind closed doors. We used to lose jobs and familes and have to physically leave our towns if we were publicly outed. Everything that used to happen to gays also happened to us.

Except we still cannot be as open about who we were as can gays.

On this board right now are threads about how to hide marks from play, about sneaking some small bit of our kind of sexual pleasure outside perimeters of our legal marriages, whether or not BDSM marriages last as long as nilla marriages with all the extra stresses we have...it just goes on and on.

We still hide who we are, even those of us who are out in our local communities.

But no longer are they coming after us with pitchforks and law books, to hurt us or lock us away for doing what we with each other, consensually, behind closed doors.

Thinking of the recent mess over Beat Me In St. Louis, i have to add: At this time, anyway.

 

[cymbidia]

On a sidenote, I have seen you post about the We/we thing many times, but I don't know (have forgotten most likely) what you are referring to.

If you tell me what you mean, I'll try not to let it slip out of my skull before it has a chance to germinate and prosper.

It's a convention/custom/habit in most chat rooms all over the net. When BDSM'ers first started coming together out of the chaos of early net times, it wasn't customary like it is now.

I think there were soooooooooooooooo many people, though, who took to BDSM as a sudden way of life, as a way to live out fantasies - and so it became the fantasy game that it is today, by and large, in most chat rooms.

In fantasy games, it's important to be able to tell the players apart, right? So it is for BDSM: The Online Fantasy Game. Everyone who capitalizes thier name is automatically called Sir or Ma'am or Master or Mistress or something like that. Everyone who uses a lowercase letter to begin thier name is automatically assumed to be a submissive. It didn't matter - still doesn't - if that handsome (cuz every single online dominant is devastatingly handsome, of course) MasterOfYou who suddenly appeared in the chat room had any fucking idea at all what they were doing with BDSM stuff, it only really matters that they have a capital letter beginning thier name. They learn a couple handy-dandy bits of jargon, they seduce a few of the room submissives, and suddently they've got Experience, with a captial E, and are dispensing advice and commands willy nilly.

The W/we part come from the schizoid and total demarkation in rank and worth of subs and doms. (In BDSM: The Online Fantasy Game, it's almost always male dom, female sub - unless the room is specifically for other kinds of sexuality, but these are *far* rarer.) The doms have all the power and the subs have none and are basically worthless unless they're attached to a dominant (velcro collars, here we come!), and then they kinda absorb some of his rank by osmosis. Some subs have some of thier own worth but she has to be there a fuck of a long time to earn it on her own without sponging it off some training wheel, correct-verbage-spouting dom.

The whole thing stinks of artificiality and players and lies and deciet and false proficiency and hurts and harm done to real seekers. I detest online chat rooms.

(There aren't too many bottoms who play BDSM: The Online Fantasy Game for obvious reasons.) (I think they must be obvious reasons, anyway. No? Yes?)

Anyway, if only for this consistently bizarre habit that chat roomers have of offering instantaneous respect and (gag me) blind adoration to anyone with a capitalized nick, i despise the convention. It represents EVERYTHING i hate and fear and have no respect for about online style BDSM - and its just the kind of thing you're addressing in this post, monster.

I cannot stop that chat room W/we and Y/your and U/us **crap** from being all over the net, but until y'all start deleting my posts on the subject, i'm going to keep speaking out against it getting even the slightest toehold here. I can't do otherwise. It's the biggest burr in my online saddle.

 

[monster666]

Thanks, cym. While I don't always feel so up to speed, at least now I feel like I am ambling along okay in the slow lane.

I never did too much chat room stuff.

 

[James Blandings]

cym, I had to just laugh out loud at your post about chat rooms. Every word you wrote it so true.
However, you left out any mention of the "subbie couch". Maybe that was just an aol thing, where the subs came in the room and sat on the subbie couch until summoned to <kneel at Masters feet, gazing at him respectfully>.

 

[cymbidia]

Geezus! How could i forget the infamous "subbie couch"?

I was never a part of the aol empire, probably the only place i haven't spent any online time, to be completely honest, but the "subbie couch" is most definitely not just an aol thing. It's universal.

It's definitely everywhere in the IRC universe of bizarre and weird online chatrooms (excuse me: channels), and was in the early Yahoo BDSM-oriented chats when i was there in the mid-90's, and in Chatropolis...and, i think, all over.

Where did such utter crap come from? Is that like any fucking real time, real life, real people BDSM environment you've EVER been in, James? It's not like anywhere i've ever been, that's for sure.

cym
<returns to the subbie couch to sit silently, decorously, to wait for her Master, no thought in mind but His pleasure and His comfort and His needs>





Yeh.
Uh huh.
That kinda crap worked out really well for me.

Don't you all feel just a tiny bit sorry for anyone who is my dominant? (Hello Wolf. ) I mean, i can't be a picnic as a sub, right? It takes a strong (physically, mentally, emotionally) and secure partner to dom me, i can tell you that. I ride right the fuck over the top of someone not up to the job.

 

[SierraWolf]

Yeh.
Uh huh.


Don't you all feel just a tiny bit sorry for anyone who is my dominant? (Hello Wolf. ) I mean, i can't be a picnic as a sub, right? It takes a strong (physically, mentally, emotionally) and secure partner to dom me, i can tell you that. I ride right the fuck over the top of someone not up to the job.

Well cym, beware of the BIG BAD WOLF

 

[Never]

We have a culture that commercializes and pre-packages religion, race, and gender. Sexuality is just more grist for the grind. Admakers don't care about anyone's primal needs, they just want something flash to sell their cars, toothpaste, and perfume with and if an attractive woman in lingerie doesn't do it then an attractive woman in leather might.

Shallow and exploitive? Yes.
Thoroughly American? You betcha.

 

[mskittykatt]

...To me, BDSM is a base, primal need that thrums along in veins as i walk through my day, too, monster, but sometimes it's just plain fun to play dress up.
Or is that just me?
Nah.

fun - definately, but far to exhausting and expensive to maintain as the baseline norm!!!
all these shiny and spendy accessories came from simple and inexpensive ideas that have already been in use - i look at it as i do most other things, i have suits and dresses for certain occasions and sweats and jeans for others. The good china for company and paper plates for BBQ's

 

[MzChrista]

We have a culture that commercializes and pre-packages religion, race, and gender. Sexuality is just more grist for the grind. Admakers don't care about anyone's primal needs, they just want something flash to sell their cars, toothpaste, and perfume with and if an attractive woman in lingerie doesn't do it then an attractive woman in leather might.

Shallow and exploitive? Yes.
Thoroughly American? You betcha.

Damn skippy. What she said.

 

[MotorCitySam]

I agree that we live in a society that brings everything down to a lowest common denominator level. I believe that that puts the burden on those who are seek quality in any field to maintain hihg standards and awareness as consumers. I don't see that in lifestyles this is any different than in the marketplace.
It's not fair but that's the way it is. We have to be educated consumers, if you will, in matters of sexuality as much as in anything else.