A Newbie's Guide to BDSM

[SilvertongueLyra]

Hey there! For many newbies, Fifty Shades of Grey was the door that led them to BDSM, and fifty, for all it's promoting BDSM culture and making it widely popular, it does get a lot of things wrong.

First thing - BDSM is an umbrella that encompasses many kinks and fetishes.

B+D= Bondage & Discipline
D+S= Dominance & Submission
S+M= Sadism & Masochism

There are many on this site, who practice all three, there are some who only practice one of these and some who mix things up based on their likes and needs. It's an umbrella term, just because you practice BDSM doesn't mean you practice all of the various types, you might not even know of all the types.

Now for a historic point of view of the little I know about it.

Documentation of BDSM has been around since 3000BC, so it's not something that just came up the last century or whatnot. Its ancient, but with every batch that's practiced it, it's become more refined until Safe, Sane & Consentual has become the catchphrase of BDSM. Modern changes to it came around during the war, where soldiers who went to Japan learnt about their geisha culture. Geisha means a person who does art, and modern geisha engage in art, beautiful light conversation, dancing and singing. The soldiers saw these women immediately obey whatever they were told, with no question and got entranced by it. They returned home expecting the same willful obedience and teaching it to their wives or girlfriends. At around this same moment, many heterosexuals who had identified themselves being so because of the war began the leather movement, they were the beginning of the gay male leather community.

As the internet grew, so did communication and more people began practicing BDSM.

Bondage +Discipline - Something I really liked here was the Japanese art of Kinbaku and Shibari. Some literary context even claims that submissives that totally give up control to their Nawashi (which is a Kinbaku Master) can have an orgasm just by their binds - which sounds totally unbelievable, but maybe I haven't found the right Nawashi yet.

Dominance + Submission - Whether vanilla or not, powerplay plays a great role in sexual position and control. Some Dom's and subs are called sexual Dom's and subs, who only exercise control and the lack of it during sexual encounters. Then we have the TPE - total power exchange relationship where the sub(now a slave) would have no limits or choices, and would surrender them all to their Dom (now a Master). There are way many more flavours and I am hoping that readers can add to them to enlighten everyone and especially little all me. Please?

Sadism + Masochism - You can actually get off on a spanking if delivered in the right intensity, with the right dominant and the right atmosphere. But there are some who crave much harsher sadism, the leave your butt black and blue type - and those are called masochists. There are different types of masochists with some liking pain and some liking humiliation, just as there are different sadists. Now, unlike Christian Grey who just bullied Anastasia and is what we call an abuser, a sadist only gets pleasure when his/her masochist likes the pain, with their consent to turn them black and blue, not just cause they had mommy issues and wanted something to vent their frustrations on. (Oh sorry, spoiler alert).

Thank you for reading this far, I am hoping that all of you, many of you who have been at this for a lot longer than me, could shed more light to guide any Newbie's to what BDSM really is. Thanks

[Devildom1994]

Hello there. I'm impressed with your knowledge in bdsm and I appreciate your efforts to learn about it. But I'd like to correct you in a couple of places and would clarify things a lil better.

I'd state this in the beginning itself that there are no hard and fast rules in bdsm or any bdsm 'textbook' that says how it shall be done. What it has are rather a few principles or norms like safety, consent etc. Everything else is what you make of it. I'd say that bdsm is like water, it takes the shape of what or who contains it. Having said that, I cannot say that what you or someone else thinks and believes is wrong. It completely depends on their perception and I totally respect that.
Now, to the first point. From what I've understood a Master is not someone who is in a tpe relation with another person. For me, it's not the amount of power that determines whether a person is a Master, but rather the experience and knowledge. But, in general, the titles are taken based on the amount of power transferred. A person who is in a relation where there is a major amount of power exchange, is often termed as a Master or Slave according to their roles. Also, it has to be pointed out that these titles can be taken by anyone at anytime. But in my viewpoint, a master is someone who has deep knowledge and vast experience in bdsm. Further there are cults and communities within the bdsm world where the dominants are referred as 'Masters'.
Another important thing I have to mention here is that, never in a TPE relation, will a slave/sub be left with no limits or choices. There'll always be some power and control not transferred. This is a very common misconception that exist in the bdsm world. I'd say a TPE is where around 90% power is transferred. And almost all the rest is PPE (Partial Power Exchange) where the power transferred is partial. So, anything between no to 90% power exchange. It can be sexual or non sexual. This is the most common.
Now, to the final thing I have say, sadists. Sadists are those who inflicts physical and emotional pain to the submissives. It doesn't mean that they simply like to beat the sub black and blue. It's usually something deep and differs person to person.
Again, these all are my views and what I've learnt from books, youtube and other sources. And there can be other ways to look at these things. However, this is just an outline of things. We can go really deep into each as there are a lot more to discuss here.

Devil 😈

[SilvertongueLyra]

Originally Posted by Devildom1994

Hello there. I'm impressed with your knowledge in bdsm and I appreciate your efforts to learn about it. But I'd like to correct you in a couple of places and would clarify things a lil better.

I'd state this in the beginning itself that there are no hard and fast rules in bdsm or any bdsm 'textbook' that says how it shall be done. What it has are rather a few principles or norms like safety, consent etc. Everything else is what you make of it. I'd say that bdsm is like water, it takes the shape of what or who contains it. Having said that, I cannot say that what you or someone else thinks and believes is wrong. It completely depends on their perception and I totally respect that.
Now, to the first point. From what I've understood a Master is not someone who is in a tpe relation with another person. For me, it's not the amount of power that determines whether a person is a Master, but rather the experience and knowledge. But, in general, the titles are taken based on the amount of power transferred. A person who is in a relation where there is a major amount of power exchange, is often termed as a Master or Slave according to their roles. Also, it has to be pointed out that these titles can be taken by anyone at anytime. But in my viewpoint, a master is someone who has deep knowledge and vast experience in bdsm. Further there are cults and communities within the bdsm world where the dominants are referred as 'Masters'.
Another important thing I have to mention here is that, never in a TPE relation, will a slave/sub be left with no limits or choices. There'll always be some power and control not transferred. This is a very common misconception that exist in the bdsm world. I'd say a TPE is where around 90% power is transferred. And almost all the rest is PPE (Partial Power Exchange) where the power transferred is partial. So, anything between no to 90% power exchange. It can be sexual or non sexual. This is the most common.
Now, to the final thing I have say, sadists. Sadists are those who inflicts physical and emotional pain to the submissives. It doesn't mean that they simply like to beat the sub black and blue. It's usually something deep and differs person to person.
Again, these all are my views and what I've learnt from books, youtube and other sources. And there can be other ways to look at these things. However, this is just an outline of things. We can go really deep into each as there are a lot more to discuss here.

Devil 😈

Thank you for the clarification sir. This is awesome, and does help me understand M/S, TPE and sado-masochistic relationships better too sir. I like your definition of Master better too, maybe GetDare should have that as a title as well...

[Zeus]

Hi Lyra,

One thing I would like to point out is your combinations of the BDSM. It doesn't necessarily have to be in that order. It could be a mix and could also be a combination of more than two.

Hope that does make sense.

As hard as it's to believe (I have only met one so far as I can remember) there are Dominants who actually enjoy Masochism (Not the humiliation part just the pain)

This is AFAIK.

[Jaro]

This is an excellent post. Thank you for making it!

But like Devildom mentioned: BDSM can really be anything you want it to be. There are no hard and fast rules and everybody does it differently. Also I think titles and labels are tricky, as people will always interpret them differently.

I think if there is ONE hard and fast rule about BDSM that everybody should agree on then that would be CONSENT.
Everything and everything MUST always be done with CONSENT from all parties involved. If there is no consent it itsn't BDSM, but abuse.

And this consent includes TPE and even Consensual Non-Consent relationships. In a TPE relationship a slave can still have limits as these are things he/she did not consent to. And Consensual Non-Consent -while seemingly contradictory- also includes the blanket consent to basically give the consent up front. The latter I am not entirely sure about tho. Can a Consensual Non-Consent slave still have limits? If so, this would not be different from TPE I would think.

Finally I would like to say that I find the term Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) to be better than SSC. The latter implies that things should always be safe but many things in BDSM are -by definition- not safe. There are always risks and some of those risks can be quite big when you get to the more extreme things that are done. But people do many risky things in their lives and that isn't necessarily a problem. As long as you are aware of these risks and do what you can to keep them to a minimum.

As the term "consent" is in this acronym, I think the most important term in BDSM that everyone should have a degree in should be RACK!

[Devildom1994]

I agree to most of the things Jaro said. But I have different opinions regarding some.
First of all, I do agree that CONSENT is one of the most important terms in BDSM. In layman's view, it's the act of allowing the dominant to do the concerned act(s). But when we go deep into it, it's really a complicated term. There are different components which makes a consent effective and valid and there are different types of consent as well. It's a topic worth hours of discussion.

Coming to the second point. TPE and Consensual Non Consent. To clear your doubts first, CNC is also a consented act. I have quite little knowledge about the differences between the two but as far as I know what makes CNC different from TPE is that the former need not be a base for a relationship. TPE usually is a relationship where there is very high level of transfer of power whereas CNC can be the base of a relationship as well as for a single session. In both cases there is consent.
To make things a bit clearer, a CNC relationship is quite like TPE where there is a blanket consent. Even though on the outside, it might seem as a relationship where the whole consent is waived. But it is actually agreed upon by both the parties. When it comes to a CNC scene, it's a play where the parties agrees to act as if the dominant is doing something that doesn't have the consent from the submissive. It'll look like the Dom is forcing the Sub to do or allow the Dom to do what he/she wants to the Sub. This is only temporary whereas the former stays active as long as the relationship is alive. In both cases, it requires an extreme level of trust and understanding.

Coming to my final point. Even though both SSC and RACK have their pros and cons, I feel that it's quite hard to say that one is superior to another. It's completely based on one's perception. There are people who likes to have things on the safe side and consider safety a priority whereas there are also people who likes to be adventurous and do things in a risky way. I consider both SSC and RACK equally important and it's completely upto the people to choose their path. And just a friendly point Jaro. Doesn't mean to offend you. I think people should have a degree in both SSC and RACK. It's never bad to know more




Devil 😈

[Jdjd84]

Great posts, appreciate the information!