BDSM
Does anybody besides me get tired of all these labels thrown at them? i feel like i'm swatting off mesquites some days.
i'm a model. i'm not a poser that just likes to wear leather (yum), pvc (yum), latex (yum) because i do play. i'm a masochist, to the right match, you can go deep into the well of S&M with me. i'm a fetishist. i love everything about leather, damsel in distress, feet, boots, shoes, yadda-yadda-yadda.
i have a leather title. i am the current title holder of North American Pony. i so love Pony Play, which is the major form of play i do outside my work (i'm a professional submissive). i have given my time and energy to form a group in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Pony and Critter Club, which is very active, doing animal role play events frequently. i travel to various BDSM events and give workshops in Pony Play.
The ladies and gentlemen i have met in Los Angeles that, like me, are professional players, offering our services for hire, are also people that are involved in the leather community, they model, they have fetishes. Those that aren't in the leather community, are labled BDSM players or kinksters. i have had the pleasure of a leather woman tell me that because i am not gay/lesbian i can never be truly leather, i culturally and spiritually can never belong. Therefore i belong in the fetishist or kinkter or BDSM player category. Other leather people totally disagree with that statement.
What i hate about these labels being tossed around and stuck on people, is i get this dirty taste in my mouth, like it is more altruistic authentic to be in the BDSM community and be leather, a lifestyler, than to be a hobbyist. As if there is brownie points in heaven if you live BDSM 24/7 rather than enjoy some kink with your sex sometimes. There are even sub-groups in the leather community than demand it to be spiritual to the point of an ooooooooo factor with mystic qualifiers or you aren't all that - seriously.
For me, i think people should lighten up. We are a minority of the population, anyways. Fracturing our vote to pull together for the freedom to express ourselves and enjoy our kink with our sex, pointing figures amongst ourselves, won't assist us in the big picture of standing together to keep the freedom to express ourselves alive.
How any of us does our kink, our fetish, our play, our sex isn't important. It is important that we play, explore the journey, take the grand adventure of being open to the sensations, the vast buffet of alternative sex/kink/fetish that is out there. How much, how you do it doesn't make you better than the vanilla guy that decides tonight, he is going to find a babe that wants to be bound to the bed with a blindfold on and he is going to fuck her lights out.
i'll just step off my soapbox now. thank you for allowing me to rant.
~a
Excellent post, as usual. Sometimes, people in the scene forget that it's called "play" for a reason!
The latest metaphor that I use when speaking to newbies about BDSM is that it's kind of like an ice cream parlor. Yes, everything in the store is ice cream (or yogurt), but there are soooooo many different flavors of ice cream, and not every flavor is for you (but someone else might really love it). We all get lumped together, but the reality is that we can be quite different. For example, I'm still trying to wrap my head around "littles" groups (adults who like to pretend to be children or teens).
Short of us walking around with our FetLife profiles, asking about one's kink orientation is turning into the equivalent of "What's Your Sign?" It's kind of a quick compatibility test before (potentially) wasting too much time on a person who might be very physically attractive to you, but not at all into the same kinks as you, so that you can quickly move on if there's no compatibility. It's really a very bad habit to try to narrow a person down into a few labels, because people are generally so much more complex than that . . .
P.S. Feel free to stay on your soapbox -- it's easier to see up your dress that way! 
