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The BDSM Beginner's Survival Guide
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by clacour49

(Reprinted with permission)

First and foremost, you're neither crazy nor sick. You will find many people in the "vanilla" world who will claim you are, and they are pretty much invariably speaking from a position of ignorance. Vanilla folks who do actually understand things may take the position that you're really weird if you like somebody hitting you with a flogger, or get horny when you spank someone hard/long enough to make them squirm, but it's like flavors of ice cream - to each their own.

Second, there is no "One True Way". Expect to spend years figuring out what's right for YOU. And recognize that that answer is both likely to change as the years go by, and very possibly may be true ONLY for you. Resist anyone's suggestion that you're wrong to want what you want, and try to refrain from judging other people as bad because their desires are different from yours.

Basic terminology:

A common convention is to refer to the Dominant/Top/Sadist with a capitalized name, and a submissive/bottom/masochist in lower-case (as I've done in this sentence). This is a convention and a common custom, not a law. Fair warning - a lot of the One True Way types DO consider it a law, and will give you grief over "violating" it.

D/s and SM are definitely two different spectra, and where you are on one says nothing about where you are on the other.

This can be a trouble point, because a lot of people think that Dominant and Sadist go together, and Submissive and Masochist go together, and those are the only two "right" ways. These people think that you're either one or the other, and (at most) you're supposed to discover which one you "really" are.

The truth of the matter is that we all have some of all of them in us. What you "really" are, is going to be context-dependent (who you're with, what the circumstances are, what's going inside your head at that particular point in time, etc), and will almost certainly change some over time.

Many people find one "identity", such as Dominant Sadist, and are perfectly happy with that, and feel no need to explore other sides. Others change roles, sometimes over a period of months, sometimes as often as several times in one evening. It's even possible to be "opposites" at the same time. (An Alpha slave for example is submissive to one person and dominant to another, simultaneously. Several forms of rough body play involve both people hitting and being hit (and enjoying it).

A person that changes frequently enough for other people to notice, and goes back and forth between the two poles (as opposed to a one-time change) is called a "switch".

Many people like life simple, with easy-to-read packaging. (This is where the One True Way philosophy primarily comes from.) These people tend to not like switches, because they're harder to categorize – they don't know how they're "supposed" to interact with them, which makes them nervous and uneasy. If you're a switch, expect to get more grief than if you more easily fit in a pigeonhole. Just remember it's their problem, not yours, and let it roll off your back.

Also, remember that D/s and SM are different spectra. You can be dom or switch or sub on the D/s spectrum and top/switch/bottom on the SM spectrum. Best place to get clues as to where you fit best is to consult your fantasies.

The main thing that someone new to "the lifestyle" needs to know is not specific techniques or even what kinds of SM play there are - it's how to meet people and learn things safely.

You will find some people who are cautious, to the point of paranoia, and others (mostly new) who will trust anybody for anything. As usual in life, health and sanity are in the middle.

Predators tend to avoid communities, because getting a reputation is the last thing they want. So being involved in the community (and I mean that in the wider sense of the BDSM/Leather community, not just a specific group) is one of the best ways to protect yourself.

Predators aren't common in communities, but they can exist, so use some caution in meeting new people. Large, public meetings are the safest venue to meet someone face-to-face. (Things like munches are technically private, but for safety purposes, they might as well be public. I encourage anyone new to come to as many munches and other large group gatherings as they can manage.)

If you've met someone online, here's my recommended method for progressing things:

Safe calls are more for the bottom's safety than the top's, but tops need to worry about being safe from bottoms, too. Accusations of rape, assault, and less-nasty-but-still-damaging things are definitely potential dangers. Several safe calls through an evening will go a long way to mitigating the damage if a bottom has "buyer's remorse" and starts accusing the top of improper behavior. If someone else spoke to them several times through the encounter with them reporting that they were safe and having fun, that someone else can be an important character witness for the top.

Learning techniques:

Those last two are related, because you have to have some way of finding out who's experienced at a particular form of play and who's not. In the general case, you have to trust somebody to have someone to ask how trustworthy someone else is.

Best bet is generally to start with the group owner, and the moderators, presuming the group has been around for a while. The group owner has a vested interest in treating people right, because their group will rapidly come apart otherwise. They're going to tend to pick assistants that they trust to be the same way for the same reason.

Regardless of what you're interested in, I recommend multiple mentors. No one person has all the answers, or always has perfect judgment. Their biases, prejudices, neuroses and even personal preferences may result in an answer that's right for them, but not for you. If you talk about something you're unsure of with several people, you're much more likely to find an answer you can live with.

When choosing mentors, I'd suggest at least one dom, at least one sub, and if you're even the faintest bit switchy, at least one switch.

As long as the relationship is going to be information and advice only, don't worry about sexual (in)compatibility. If there's going to be play (either D/s or SM), and there is any possibility of a relationship, sit down and negotiate (preferably with the help of someone experienced) exactly what the terms are going to be.

There's nothing wrong with having a mentor-with-play relationship turn into a personal one, if, and ONLY if, you're both ok with that possibility from the get-go. If either side has a problem with it, either certain actions need to be proscribed or an automatic ending of the mentorship under certain circumstances needs to be built in to the agreement.

This stuff involves things very deep in your subconscious and can be very powerful - if you plan for possible problems along these lines, you're a lot less likely to actually have them.

Finally, many people get rather screwy ideas about BDSM, either from their own fantasies, fiction, or from people on the Internet who, are themselves working from faulty information.

Some of the most common and most pernicious myths:

1) All ills are cured by the application of enough pain and/or misery. This is the all-time favorite idea in almost all BDSM-related fiction. It's as bogus as a three-dollar bill.

2) All subs should defer to (or even submit to!) all Doms, because Doms are inherently superior to subs. D/s is about the consensual transfer of the right to make decisions in various areas of life (for almost all people, it's not an immediate transfer of all such rights - if that ever happens, it's after the relationship has gone on quite a while.)

3) Slaves are better than subs (or Masters are better than Dominants) because they're more deeply submissive/dominant. For similar reasons, switches are second-class citizens, because they don't go as deeply to one extreme or the other (or another popular one is "they don't know what they want"). There is no better or worse in how deeply you want to be submissive or dominant, or both. There's what works for you, which applies to you, and there's what works for the other person, which applies to them. This is another that comes from the One True Way stuff.

4) Subs are better than slaves, because slaves have no self-respect and are all doormats. There are quite a few 24x7 slaves in the community, who have been that for several years (or many years, in some cases), who will rip off your head, say VERY nasty things down the hole, drop a golf ball in the hole and tell the golf ball to come back when it grows up. People into BDSM are still people, and come in all flavors. Some slaves (very few, actually) ARE doormats. The vast majority aren't.

5) X is better than Y. (Substitute almost any two nouns for X and Y.) The truth? Kinky humans are still humans. It is VERY rare for you to find someone that is genuinely better than you all the way around, or vice versa.

6) Group XYZ knows the "right" way to do D/s or SM. This is usually the One True Way stuff, with its other shirt on.

A commonly asked question:

I'm a dom/sub, without a counterpart. Can I come to functions?

Yes. Pretty much all the functions are social events, and singles are welcome - as are couple, triples, quadruples, high-school classes...You get the idea.

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by clacour49
(Reprinted with permission)

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