I originally had a totally different idea for this entry, but I realized last night there was something I was much more invested in right now. When I started working through that, though, I realized there was really a prequel entry I wanted to do. I thought it through, and whether I could do them the other way around (I wanted to do one on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday), but it started getting complicated... And eventually I decided to just take it by the horns and do both.
I had a conversation with one of my friends... Hmmm. Let's call her Janet. I had a conversation with Janet about one of her friends who was just discovering the entire "BDSM" thing. Long story short, I ended up reading through "Submissive Training" by Elizabeth Cramer.
This book was well-written, easy to read, and - to me - nothing I'd never heard before. Since I've been involved in BDSM for creeping up on 20 years now, its not being new isn't immensely surprising to me. What did surprise me was how narrowly this book was focused. Essentially, this book is an excellent reference for a very narrow class of people - female total power exchange submissives beginning their roles as slaves.
Recently, I have encountered a number of people who are just first really exposing themselves to the wider world of BDSM. Bettina is the obvious example, who'd never actually encountered it before me. We've had a number of conversations around kink, her interests, what scares her, what she thinks about it... I've tried hard not to just teach her my own views - it wouldn't really be too hard to present my own views as gospel, given her relative isolation from the larger Scene - and rather am trying to encourage her to think about her own instincts and beliefs in the area. It's not just my own views I have to try and protect her from - she also has far more preconceptions and prejudices than I would have imagined before we really got into these topics. She finds herself trying to decide if she fits into some preconceived notion of "slave" or "sub" or "pet" or "little" or whatever else.
More than just Bettina, a number of posts have shown up on Fetlife recently as well... Which isn't unusual. There's inevitably a steady stream of people who are just discovering the entire world of kink, and it's not hard to encounter them if you want to do so. Similar to Bettina, though, most people ask the wrong question up front. One of the most frequent things you'll see is "Am I a X?" or "Do I fit in with group Y?" People almost always start off by taking an idea or a term or a phrase or a role and trying to ram themselves into it - frequently a square peg in a round hole... Or at least a rectangular one.
A couple of weeks ago, after To The Ends of Comfort and Beyond, Ash asked me a question - my advice to "know your limits" is great, but how do you figure them out? If you never step past your limits, how do you ever know what they are?
These are all symptoms of the same problem, unfortunately; kink is a huge world, kids. There's a lot out there to know. There are countless kinks, terms, adjectives, verbs, toys, bits of history, norms, bits of etiquette... It'll take anyone a lifetime to figure it all out. Coming into it from ground zero is imposing - and most people lose sight of the real goal in light of that barrier.
So, how do you figure out where you belong? How do you figure out if you're an "X" or a "Y" or a "Z" - a sub or a Dom/me or a little or a daddy/mommy or whatever else? How do you know what your limits are? There are a lot of possible glib answers. "Carefully," in particular, comes to mind. Really, though, the more important question has always been "what are you comfortable with?"
Names are very important to me - I wrote a whole entry on how much so. Names can cut both ways, though; they can describe who you are or they can constrain who you are, depening on how you use them. beginners to kink often take a name, a description, a role, and then try to mold themselves to fit it as carefully as they can. More often than not, though, they miss the crucial understanding that those molds are what they create for themselves, not what they have to make themselves to fit in.
So be brave; try a few things out. Carefully, of course; it's better to be cautious and drag it out than to rush in and panic. Don't do anything you're uncomfortable with; but if you are comfortable with it or aren't sure, try it! Safely, as carefully as you need to... But find out. If possible, find a mentor - someone who knows more of the pitfalls and possibilities than you and can help you fill out your identity.
How do you know your limits? Through conversation; through question and answer; through experimentation; through research; through careful consideration of the vast world now open to you. It seems scary at first, but some day you'll look back and laugh at how much worse it was just because it was all unknown. Never compromise your own self for someone else's definition; figure out your definition and own it. Most of all, be true to yourself and have fun.
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