The Biology of BSDM

[Britva415]

It's perfectly legitimate for authors to tickle a BDSM fantasy or a lesbian fantasy in different ways, to appeal to different groups of readers who want different things

Or to indulge one’s own appeal, as the author.

It’s OK to just write, without optimizing for demographics.

 

[TheRedChamber]

There is a distinction between what might be spoken about when speaking about the "BDSM Community" (those who are engaging in BDSM behaviors/activities in real life) versus enjoyers of BDSM fantasy, who may or may not also engage in any non-fantasy BDSM activities.

I think you are right that this is where the argument lies. We probably need a phrase for fantasy BDSM that steps beyond what would be considered safe or moral - "Dark BDSM" I don't write it myself, but it's clearly a genre that is clearly enjoyed on the site.

I don't have a problem with Dark BDSM - although it is in danger of a lot of the same controversies as NonCon. That said I do think it is important that Dark BDSM needs to be obviously an extreme fantasy.

The 'danger' if such there is, is when a story is halfway between Dark BDSM and Community BDSM. That is to say when it could be taken as advice for what a dom/sub relationship looks like. Fifty Shades falls into this trap a bit (although obviously the billionaire becoming obsessed with a 'nobody' college student should tip you off that it's a fantasy) and when all the papers started writing articles about BDSM and asking 'is this what a real BDSM relationship looks like' practitioners obviously said 'no'.

One thing I do think is an onus on writers, even if they are writing Dark BDSM, is to do a modicum of research on safety. One of the current ideas in my notebook is for my nerd couple to experiment with electricity play. One of the early images I had in my mind was of the girl cosplaying as a robot with all-over metallic body paint. I loved this dramatically, but I quickly realised that I have very little 'common sense' about how electricity works in the body, and I was pretty sure, after a bit of reading, that I'd just made things extremely dangerous for the sub. I asked a few people more knowledgeable than myself, but the story remains unwritten for now and until I'm sure that my characters aren't doing anything silly. Now, my characters are purely Community BDSM people - I could have other characters do all kinds of stupid and dangerous shit, as long as the stupidity and danger are reflected somewhere in the text.
(I haven't written the 'Ben and Hannah end up in A&E story' yet, but it's surely coming sometime)

One thing I agree about is that long consent discussions and planning at the beginning of a story, while good real-life practice, are the absolute death of drama. One of the nice things about having a recurring set of characters in an established relationship is that you can handwave a lot of that as the dom already knowing what the sub is into and not tipping their hand. One thing I've played with in recent stories is that, even though the dom does a lot of planning, they don't need to share that with the reader even when the story is written from the dom PoV.

 

[AG31]

"Dark BDSM"

Thanks for this. In my quest to describe "non-caring" BDSM I came up with the attitudes of Rene and Sir Stephen in The Story of O. But this phrase is easier to handle.

 

[nice90sguy]

"Dark BDSM"

My one and only BDSM story was exactly this - suprised it got accepted, as it's pretty close to snuff:

Annihilation

 

[AG31]

My one and only BDSM story was exactly this - suprised it got accepted, as it's pretty close to snuff:

Annihilation

I ran right off to read Annihilation. I did and found that I'd given it 5 stars over a year ago.
A propos of this thread, it does illustrate "dark," but it's a little too psychological compared to physical to be my perfect story. But very well done!

 

[Kumquatqueen]

...there are two major schools of thought on this: SSC ("safe, sane, consensual") vs. RACK ("risk-aware consensual kink"). The general idea of the latter is that safety is a sliding scale, not a binary, and just about everything comes with some level of risk but it's up to individuals to decide how much risk they're willing to accept. But it's not a huge schism or anything; everybody agrees that safety is important, just some nuance in how it's managed.

IME it's not that they're separate schools of thought, just that SSC was coined back in the 90s, caught on, but slowly people realised that not only was BDSM often inherently at least a bit risky, but also the word 'sane' implied that anyone with a mental illness diagnosis shouldn't be doing it.

Which a lot of practitioners objected to. RACK is just a modern refinement of SSC that's more precise and non-exclusionary.


With stories, I don't think BDSM is much different from other topics - there's readers who like realism and detail, and ones who prefer fantasy versions of realism where no-one ever cries 'too much' nor gets cramp, and huge numbers of staff exist in a fantasy club where the economics would never stack up but they don't care. Some people will read both, but could be jerked out of their zone by either a graphic detail they didn't want to know about, or an implausibility that stops them believing the fantasy. Could go either way.

 

[Britva415]

slowly people realised that not only was BDSM often inherently at least a bit risky, but also the word 'sane' implied that anyone with a mental illness diagnosis shouldn't be doing it.

It was also a kink-shame.