Guest Post: “Fifty Shaders: Welcome to FetLife!”
By ScottH (Fetlife)
Editor’s Note: We LOVE Fetlife. If you aren’t on it, yet, we highly recommend it. However, be aware that it is not a dating site and is not a good place to hook up with partners. Instead, you should use it as a way to find gatherings and classes where you can learn more about kink, how to do it safely, and meet potential partners.
So you went and saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past weekend, and it made your panties wet. Then you went home and did a google search, and now you’ve discovered FetLife. Congratulations! You’ve definitely found the right place to start learning about what erotic domination and submission are all about in real life. The journey you’re just beginning may very well change your life in ways you can’t yet imagine! This lifestyle has certainly had a profound effect on mine.
But there’s just one little problem. People whose interest in this stuff began with the book or movie Fifty Shades seldom realize at first just how much there is to learn, or how much knowledge and wisdom exists within the community of people who have actually been doing this stuff in real life years before the book and movie came out.
The BDSM community went through this when the book first got popular, so we already have a sense of how newcomers who start with FSOG (Fifty Shades of Grey) tend to at first have misconceptions about real-life BDSM.
The purpose of this post is to help you understand that there’s a whole lot more to this than what you saw in the movie, and to acquaint you with some really excellent resources available to help you learn about real-world BDSM. So far, all you’ve been exposed to was a movie, and frankly, it wasn’t a particularly accurate representation of how we do this stuff in real life.
Why am I writing you this Welcome Note?
When I first got involved in “the scene” 14 years ago, I had absolutely no clue how much I didn’t know, or how much there was to learn. At first I dismissed the so-called “public scene”, because I had no desire to have sex in front of an audience, so therefore “play parties” didn’t appeal to me.
I had no idea that there were organized classes and weekend conferences entirely focused on teaching people what kinky sex is all about and how to do it safely. I read just one book (called SM 101) and figured “Hey, I read it cover-to-cover, so I must know everything now, right?” As it would turn out, it took several years just to gain a full appreciation of how much there is to learn about this, how much it would change my life, and how little I knew in the beginning.
In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not here to sell you anything. Although I do teach classes at BDSM conferences, that’s something I do on a volunteer basis, as an act of community service. You see, this lifestyle has had such a profound effect on some of us that we feel obliged to give something back by paying forward the gift of the knowledge we’ve gained from the kink community over the years. It’s an amazing community, and I’m honored to welcome you to it.
No, I’m not some big-wig in the world of kink or anything like that. I’m just a guy whose entire life changed completely when I learned about this lifestyle. And I’m passionate about inspiring others to embrace kink and learn what I’ve learned about it. There’s a whole lot more to this than what you saw in the movie, and it will take a while to get your head around all of it.
For the first five years I was in the scene, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I tied girls up and fucked them and that was fun, but I didn’t have any concept of how deep an emotional connection I could discover with a woman through Dominant/submissive (and later, Master/slave) relationship dynamics. It literally change my life.
But nobody ever reached out to me in the beginning to say “Scott, let me show you the way. There’s a lot to learn here, and I want to help you find your way to it”. As a result, I wasted five years of my life before I finally figured out who I truly am as a human being and how I truly identify with kink. I hope to save you from wasting those five years by pointing you in the right direction straight away, so you can start learning from sources that were there when I started, but sadly nobody told me about...
Like I said, it's got great information in it and is wonderfully written. Please check out the full article HERE. It's well worth the read.
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