BDSM Beginners Kit
BDSM Basics, Another View
BDSM = Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, S&M
BDSM is a convenient abbreviation for most of the interesting activities
discussed in alt.sex.bondage. It's so convenient that it packs six
initials into four letters: B&D/D&S/S&M => BDSM. It's generally
understood to include related activities/phenomena that don't fit
strictly into any of those three catagories. An "umbrella term" like
this is useful because so few actual (as opposed to theoretical)
activities fit into _only_ one catagory.
Bondage deals with tying people up (or being tied up). Or chaining them
up, or restraining them with straps, or straightjackets, or ... well,
you get the idea, no? In theory it can be enjoyed simply for its own
sake -- the sensations and images of it. In fact, some people do enjoy
bondage as bondage, without any interest in D&S or S&M, but far more
people find it pushes their D&S buttons at the same time, or use it only
for the D&S aspects, or combine it with D&S and/or S&M.
Dominance and submission deals with exchange of power, trust, obedience,
role-playing, "slavery" ... one person submitting to the commands of
another. Like bondage, it can exist as a separate phenomenon, but it's
likely to incorporate the others. Bondage may be used to enhance the
feeling of submission. Pain-play (i.e. S&M) may be used to emphasize the
position the submissive is in or as punishments for disobedience.
S&M sort of stands for "sadism and masochism", but not quite the same
way the psychiatric establishment uses those terms. So it's less
confusing to keep the phrase tidily together as "S&M". S&M involves
strong sensations. It's associated with pain, in particular, in most
people's minds, but in fact pain is only one class of sensations used.
Furthermore, some stimuli which would ordinarily be perceived as pain
are not perceived as pain by some participants when in an S&M headspace!
(Note that I said "some".) While I don't have statistics on this, it's
my impression that S&M is the one phenomenon of these most likely to
occur without the others. Nonetheless, it is quite common for one's
interest in S&M to be in the context of bondage or D&S (the pain makes
it so very much clearer that one can't get away because one is tied up,
for example) or simply _alongside_ an interest in bondage and/or D&S.
Interestingly, while most "vanilla" (i.e. not-into-BDSM) people do not
consider tickling to be a BDSM activity, many BDSM folks do.
More terminology
Some people like to tie people up, whip people, or give orders. Others
like to be tied up, like to be spanked or whipped, or like to obey.
Because so many of the words one might use to describe these preferences
seem specific to just one aspect of BDSM, push people's buttons, or only
fit the ways some people play, folks in the scene use the generic terms
"top" and "bottom". (Note that these words have a different meaning in
gay male culture, if I'm not mistaken.)
In bondage, a top likes to tie up bottoms. In S/M, a top likes to
provide strong stimulation (pain or otherwise) to a bottom. In D&S, a
top orders or controls a bottom. A "switch" is someone who enjoys being
both a top and a bottom.
Note that it's not always the top who's in control of things -- in fact,
much less often than the other way around! For example, a bottom might
ask to be tied up, and his or her top might decide to honour that
request, asking the bottom if there were any particular things he or she
wanted the top to do to him or her tonight. Also, many people use
"safewords", code phrases that mean, "I'm not just playing, I really
need you to stop." If a couple uses a safeword, the bottom can stop the
current activity by using the safeword.
Some people claim that the bottom is always the one who's really in
control, no matter how things look. They're mostly right, but things can
get more complicated.
Home Page