Walking On Fences Leads To Falls

By RedWarrior (FetLife)

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.”

I’ve had this quote stuck in my head today and couldn’t remember where it came from, but turns out it’s biblical. (My Catholic childhood must have planted it.) It’s too true, though. There is peace when your loyalties are undivided and trying to walk on fences almost always leads to a fall.

For many years, particularly when I was newer to BDSM communities, I agreed with the prevailing wisdom that you should never take sides in any disagreement, that there was a virtue in always being “neutral” and avoiding “drama” and in general trying to be a peacemaker. I’d schedule my activities trying to divide my time between groups, never wanting to show preferences, all with the goal that this would help my community, which I cared about, be “peaceful,” “unified.” I was given a lot of positive reinforcement for behaving this way. Neutrality was rewarded with praise. I went along this path for years, well rewarded for staying “above the drama.” Life was good.

Then, one day, something interesting happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: We LOVE Fetlife. If you aren’t on it, yet, we highly recommend it. However, be aware that it is not a dating site and is not a good place to hook up with partners. Instead, you should use it as a way to find gatherings and classes where you can learn more about kink, how to do it safely, and meet potential partners. 

Fifty Shaders: Welcome to FetLife!

By ScottH (Fetlife)

So you went and saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past weekend, and it made your panties wet. Then you went home and did a google search, and now you’ve discovered FetLife. Congratulations! You’ve definitely found the right place to start learning about what erotic domination and submission are all about in real life. The journey you’re just beginning may very well change your life in ways you can’t yet imagine! This lifestyle has certainly had a profound effect on mine.

But there’s just one little problem. People whose interest in this stuff began with the book or movie Fifty Shades seldom realize at first just how much there is to learn, or how much knowledge and wisdom exists within the community of people who have actually been doing this stuff in real life years before the book and movie came out.

The BDSM community went through this when the book first got popular, so we already have a sense of how newcomers who start with FSOG (Fifty Shades of Grey) tend to at first have misconceptions about real-life BDSM.

The purpose of this post is to help you understand that there’s a whole lot more to this than what you saw in the movie, and to acquaint you with some really excellent resources available to help you learn about real-world BDSM. So far, all you’ve been exposed to was a movie, and frankly, it wasn’t a particularly accurate representation of how we do this stuff in real life. Read the rest of this entry »