Dark BDSM Allegories Never Worked For Me

Kink Apr 19, 2022

A common refrain in the kink community is that BDSM is a dark part of their lives, shadowy and often conflicted. This has never suited me.

Some describe their kink journey as grappling with the darkness within themselves. Then there's others who struggle to reconcile their nature and actions with being a "good person."

There's people who enjoy the role of predator in a primal dynamic. There's also actual predators who use BDSM communities as stalking grounds for vulnerable victims.

For many others, kink and BDSM is a "dark" secret, or a deviancy. One that is scandalous if discovered by kids, family, coworkers, and so on.

In contrast I find my dominance to be illuminating, enlightening, and lovely in multiple regards. For me BDSM is about being empowered, and using that strength to nurture others in ways that suit them.

To me, BDSM is like sunlight: purifying and dazzling.

At times I may flirt with the notion of kinky darkness – it's edgy, and fun to explore!

Yet I do not truly believe it suits me. I'm but a tourist to that space.

I'm not bound by trauma, nor am I burdened with a "traditional upbringing" or a history of criticisms that deny me my rightful place as a dominant. I don't take myself so seriously, nor have I grappled with people's hatred to claim my place.

I like to believe that I have largely a healthy relationship with my kinks. As a result, I find dominance is being true to myself.

Being Outside of Dark Kink and Looking In

It's interesting to be a spectator in the darker spaces of kink.

For instance, my Dom friend is often involved in brutal areas. Sadism is his main game, and many playthings turn up in his life demanding risky sessions.

They want to be kidnapped at knife point, tied up, used like an object, and told that nobody will ever come looking for them...

Or they're masochistic enough to play rough on his level. He often needs to bleach and to mop up his concrete floors when he's finished – after they've crawled back to their car and he's left them sobbing alone in there.

Which is not to say that he doesn't provide aftercare – he's diligent and considerate. Yet few of his partners want to stay at his intensity, after he's opened that floodgate in them. They try to hide it from him, until it comes out later that they're not able to play like that.

Which is why he so rarely plays with newcomers; they're on vastly different levels of experience, and he can't trust them to advocate for their own boundaries.

Worse still, sometimes play partners spiral out of control in ways beyond kink. Like the one who needed to get blackout drunk after playing with him, and didn't tell anyone where she was – not even her husband.

Most of the time his play partners have serious unexamined trauma they need to process. They turn to kink as a way to explore things, but it's hard to find healthy kink spaces in which to do so.

We joke – in the way that's really not a joke – that we can tell they're all "crazy" because they're attracted to him.

There's nobody sane that would want to be near him.

Wonder what that says about me? 😉

Illumination and Enlightenment in Kink

"Know thyself." In embracing my kinks, I can be more true to myself.

Understanding dominance in particular has illuminated my desires and clarified my actions. It's an approximation, but I'm able to say "I do this because I'm a Domme" about a lot of behaviours – and my partners understand what I mean.

Another aspect is that I'm freed from the fate of being confined to roles that do not suit me, all thanks to discovering my dominance.

I'm free to create my own role and choose my own dynamics. Everyone should have the opportunity to, and thankfully I found a framework to do so within BDSM.

Coming from my rural background, you might expect that I had a plethora of gender roles, socialisation, and traditions weighing me down:

An article of mine discussing my rural upbringing

However, my mother was a uniquely progressive woman. She made sure that I did not grow up steeped in the same culture that held her back in life. Which is not to say there were not problems – I had to quash my queerness, but I certainly did not suffer the same way my mother did.

Kink and BDSM were well represented within my family's social circles. When I too discovered my kinks, I already had a healthy understanding that "this is just the way people are."

Which is really what it comes down to. Kinks are natural, and embracing them is enlightening in the same way that understanding any portion of yourself is.

I think it better to live and love in the open, embracing the light of truth.

Struggling with the Darkness vs. Acceptance

Many kinksters in older generations, like my Dom friend, are content to be a predator in the shadows. They lived for years with kinks as secrets in their life. Some even bore the weight of that secret heavily, unvoiced even to vanilla partners.

It's disheartening to see people who suffer distress over their kinky side.

It's also utterly alien to me. Not only have I accepted my kinky side, I wholly embrace it with enthusiasm – at least when I'm not stuck in the fog of work, and have the energy to be enthusiastically kinky...

Life is about processing emotions, so struggling with your identity some is normal. It's when it drags out for years or decades that I worry. Yet it seems altogether too common that kinky folk spend years doing just that.

They skirt the edges of the main kink community, and reside in the shadows of secrecy.

Yet in doing so, they will surely not find acceptance. Self-acceptance is most resilient when it is buoyed up by other people's support.

Acceptance from other people relies on taking the risk of putting yourself out there to be accepted or rejected in the first place. To alienate yourself and isolate yourself is to condemn yourself to never being supported.

I shall call to your attention this article which delves more deeply and clearly into deviancy, othering, and being weird in ways that don't need to be changed: