Overly personal post #2
I want to delete this blog.
Every time I think about it I burst into tears. I made a backup to protect myself, among other things, against overly enthusiastic future self. It’s not even “I want to delete this blog” it’s I want to walk away – it’s just too cyclical. I want to walk away because when I come back in 5 years – because as one brilliant woman just told me, “burnout doesn’t last forever” – we will still be having the same conversation about sexually submissive men, about rape and naming abusers, about BDSM as consumer culture. Think about it, the mainstream BDSM scene, as it stands today in North America, has had at least 20 years to address sexual abuse in its ranks. Clearly, it’s failed. You want me to believe it’s really gonna change this time? It won’t, they’ll still be arguing over if one should say the acronym SSC or RACK while molesting newbies at knife-point in the back corners of private parties.
It turns out that burnout is incredibly personal. It looks like “I did stuff that was hard and the payoff wasn’t that great and now I’m a little tired.” It feels like “I gave this thing everything I had, changed my life, and my hobbies, and the ways I walk through the world around it, and when I needed something to lean on everyone and everything disappeared.” That’s not true, depression is a lying bitch, we know that now don’t we? I am guessing burnout is too.
At least part of what’s happening is that I don’t see how this is a priority. BDSM just doesn’t matter when the best minds of my generation are dying or in jail. The food we eat is genetically modified and processed in ways that we don’t have any long term research on. Police violence is rampant. What were popular revolutions of the Arab Spring are giving way to Islamist reforms in the tradition of Iran. And you want me to care about anal fisting? Sure, as a personal thing, kinky sex is something I want in the privacy of my own home with someone I love, and I’m willing to go out of my way to find sexually compatible partners in that regard,* but to reform something you have to love it. You have to want to live in the world you build, you have to fight for your future self at least if not for your children’s children as that hippie song goes.
I don’t want to live in a world with a better BDSM community. I mean, yes, I want to live in a world with less rape, I want to live in a world where everyone has access to the sex they want with the people they love, I want to live in a world where who you sleep with and how you do so doesn’t impact your job prospects or your ability to get a spousal visa or custody of your children. But that’s not a better BDSM community, that’s a world that has obsolesced the BDSM community. And it’s a world in which I do not believe the BDSM community would survive because it needs the fear, and the isolationism to thrive. It needs its threats and its ways to enforce fucked up in-group norms.
So I want to delete this blog. What I am going to do instead is keep talking about the fact that the BDSM scene does not have a monopoly on kinky sex, and I’m going to figure out how to get backups of my tumblr blogs, and look into doing that with various other feeds that I follow. And I’m gonna figure out hosting just in case, because I think these things should be out there, and findable, so that I can be the last person who isn’t sure if their kink is out there cause c’mon, it’s the internet, “only one” doesn’t exist. And then I’m gonna go do things I’m scared of doing somewhere else.
*I don’t know if I believe that, I’m just not sure what else to say given, ya’know, my history. We’ll see.
Kink in exile 
I understand the flight, though I would hate to see you vanish for my own selfish reasons. Between myself and Jalan, I’m the extravert, and I’m only a borderline case. The “scene” in our area is in bad, bad shape, except for a seemingly-thriving TNG from which I am excluded and thus can’t speak to the dynamics within.
We have honestly no interest in trying to “join” the scene. I’ve been-there-done-that over the years in different communities, and seen some of the good and a lot of the bad. This includes things along the lines of what you describe. Actual criminal activity gets overlooked in favor of “but they have such a nice playspace that they let us use,” or, more damning, “but we need that person because so few will step up to replace them on the Board.”
What we do plan to do is take advantage of our handful of personal connections and, in turn, theirs to very carefully and slowly build a rota of small dinner parties of people we want to socialize with, including open-minded vanilla friends in the mix. From there, a select few might get invited to stay over and play with our toys. That’s it.
We’re not major participants in the unscreened online community for many reasons, including the exacerbation of these tendencies through anonymity, though I am part of a couple of supportive cliques on Twitter and blogspaces. I do pay for Fet for myself, as I’m highly and unpleasantly reactive to strife, even among strangrs, and benefit greatly from being able to mute people with whom I’m on good enough terms to not unfriend, but who participate in the stressing aspects. (And because that’s where I met Jalan.) I use my vanilla Facebook in much the same way. But I have a threshold of unfriending offenses in both cases. Rape jokes qualify, for example.
That rather long digression was just about the first part of your post. And I completely sympathize with the dismay expressed in the second part, as well as having extensive experience with depression. But the first part is where we/you/one can make intentional decisions that have a decent likelihood of making a difference in our own day-to-day happiness and contentment. Not that the other fights shouldn’t be fought, but not at the cost of our own health, in whatever aspect.
I hope that in some way speaks to your distress. Thank you for the space to vent this in any case.
nagadikandang
May 29, 2013 at 5:19 am
nagadikandang, like most things FetLife charges you money for, there is no reason to pay FetLife to offer you this because it is available for free using the FetLife Block userscript.
You are being ripped off, AND you are supporting rape enablers. You should stop paying for FetLife immediately and clear your conscience.
maymay
May 29, 2013 at 8:18 am
Thank you, Maymay. I was unaware of that option. I’ll look into it when it next comes up.
nagadikandang
May 31, 2013 at 3:23 am
I’m so glad you did not delete this blog, I’m so glad you were able to verbalize your feelings and get it off your chest. I thank you for sharing your personal feelings with me.
astraltravler
May 29, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Doing the right thing can hurt like hell.
EffYouAxe
May 30, 2013 at 11:21 am
You’re doing the right thing by the way, not deleting your blog.
EffYouAxe
May 30, 2013 at 11:25 am
I’ve discovered your blog two days ago. I’m a woman, dating a man, and there are BDSM aspects to our relationship. We are both quite private though, and I do not think I will ever set foot into a dungeon, or share aspects of my sexuality other than anonymously – or that’s how I feel like now. It’s very important for me to read about female dominance (sorry, English is not my first language) because it is probably the only place I will “see” it, in pages like yours. Otherwise it’s hard to discover one’s feelings without anybody giving you something to project them on. It’s hard to know what you want when you’ve never seen it. Internet is often like this big conscience for me, and I think I needed to meet your voice. I’m glad it’s still here. (I also like the way you write.) I’m planning to read most of what you wrote, in my slow way.
And even the way you are depressed is brave. When I find myself depressed, I can’t even write! OK, I’m not going to have a depressions’ size contest with you, it’s not productive. But please hang on?
f
May 30, 2013 at 4:46 pm
[…] to blog or think about kink when it seemed as though I was just going around in circles. Last week, Kink In Exile wrote a great post that focused on how the BDSM community thrives off fear and how wrong and tiring that is. […]
Still Here. | lipstickandligature
May 31, 2013 at 2:55 pm
I”m so happy I randomly came across your blog. I’m still learning about the Dom scene and I love your writing style, frankness and openness. There are so few truly inspiring and strong women out there, and even fewer who are able to talk about their sexuality in any kind of meaningful way. To hell with the naysayers…keep doing this for you. You are influencing more people than you will know.
zechony
June 26, 2014 at 1:59 pm