experience is primarily with dungeons owned by "lifestyle" BDSMers -- "lifestyle" being

experience is primarily with dungeons owned by "lifestyle" BDSMers -- "lifestyle" being a clumsy word that attempts to denote those of us who are motivated to do BDSM for reasons other than money. While there is some overlap between "lifestyle" BDSM and professional BDSM, the overlap can be surprisingly rare, and professional BDSM is often banned at lifestyle BDSM parties. Lifestyle dungeons are often non-profit organizations, and often function more like community centers than moneymaking venues. I understand that some professional dungeons have a "no sex" rule out of a desire to protect the boundaries of dominatrixes who work there, who may not wish to be asked to engage in Sex.) There are also plenty of cultural groups who do things that look suspiciously like BDSM... who insist that they have nothing to do with BDSM. For example, I've heard of spanking clubs whose members get really mad if you dare bring BDSM up in their presence. And then there's groups like Taken In Hand, a quasi-conservative organization. Actual testimonial from the Taken In Hand site: There are lots of websites for people in the BDSM, D/s, DD (domestic discipline) and spanking communities. There are websites for people who belong to religions that advocate male-head-of-household marriage. There are even websites for Christians who are interested in BDSM. But there are very few websites for people who are interested in male-led intimate relationships but who are not interested in all that the above communities associate with this kind of relationship (jargon, clothes, etc.) Some of us don't even like thinking of this as a lifestyle. Well, my friend, you know what... you can refuse to call yourself BDSM all you want, and you can reject our "jargon" all you want, and you can "dislike" thinking of this "lifestyle" until the end of time... and you have every right to insist that we have nothing to do with you. But when your site has posts that include comments like "When my husband behaves in a dominant manner I basically swoon," or have titles like "Don't forget your whip," well... I'm just saying. Also, since you mention rejecting BDSM "clothes"? I'll just say that I can be an astoundingly badass domme in a t-shirt. And I have done so. Multiple times. Personally, I am particularly frustrated by the stigmatizing idea that BDSM has nothing to do with love. Sometimes I encounter this idea that BDSM has to be separated from sex because BDSM has nothing to do with sex, whereas sex supposedly "should" be about love. The truth is that both BDSM and sex are very different for different people, emotions-wise. Although many people experiment with "casual BDSM," the same way many people experiment with "casual sex," a stereotype that BDSMers cannot find love in the act is wrong and absurd. So yeah. Nowadays, many of these "BDSM versus sex" reactions strike me as being born out of pure, irrational stigma. As Dr. Klein noted, these reactions are usually born of the terrible human urge to exclude: to find ways to differentiate ourselves from "those people." Humans apparently love to think things like: "I'm not like those people. It doesn't matter if I, for example, write extensive rape fantasy fiction! That couldn't HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018538