uninformed judgement

Rachel KB wrote this piece about the blanket judgement of bdsm practitioners that happens so regularly. IT reminded me of a train of thought I'd had while loading shopping into the car the other day.

When your friend tells you they're going to take up running, with a view to completing a marathon, chances are you'll be impressed and supportive. Well, you may think they're crazy and that you would never do that, but you would still think they're impressive. As people get obsessive about their running, and talk about how they are addicted to the endorphin high and can't handle their daily stresses as well without it, we continue to think it's great.

We don't think they're crazy for suffering through the lung burn and muscle spasms and knee damage and all the rest, to get to their goals of endorphin highs and fitness and competition.

Chances are a lot of people who like their sex a little rough don't suffer half as much physically as your average runner. But people are appalled at the thought. And feel free to comment derogatorily about people who enjoy denigration. Ironic!

I do think that fetishes are born out of unmet needs. I suspect that it's even possible to unwrite those fetishes, with a lot of work. However, I don't know that the onus is on kinky people to do that at all. Or that it's necessarily the right thing to do. I'm all for being self aware, but bdsm sex seems to award people such a huge amount of fun and satisfaction. If your fetish doesn't do anyone else any harm and you get something good out of it then... well, I wince more at people in knee bandages running on concrete than I might do at a little creative filthiness.