You can be an open-minded person and still have a right to protection about your own feelings, and to set limits like, perhaps, “Could we please not discuss this over the dinner table?” When Dossie’s daughter was in junior high and high school, they agreed to keep the house in such a way that neither Dossie’s kink nor her lesbian relationship were visible to her daughter’s friends who came to visit. Dossie figured her daughter had a right to a home she could bring her friends to without having to admit how different her family was.
One issue that many people have concerns about personal appearance and dress codes. Kinky people often like to celebrate their sexuality by wearing clothes, tattoos and body jewelry that make their lifestyle preferences all too obvious to the observer; we take a lot of pride in the creative ways we have found to express ourselves and our accomplishments through our appearance. What this means to you, is that to ask a kinky person to wear ordinary clothing can amount to asking us to pretend to be somebody else. Many butch or androgynous women have similar problems: for them, wearing a dress and stockings and heels may feel excruciatingly uncomfortable and embarrassing - just as embarrassing as it would be for a non-crossdressing man to have to dress this way. To be obliged to wear ordinary clothes may constitute a denial of their identity, a stark message that “the way you are is not acceptable.”
Of course, it may also be unacceptable to you to go to the supermarket with your kinky friend cross-dressed, in leather and chains. You both have good reasons to be the way you are, which is different from each other.
Compromise may be the only friendly solution: “How about you wear what you want to when I come over to your house and I’ll try to get used to it: I don’t want to make you feel bad but drag in public is too embarrassing for me right now.”
If you have a hard time finding a way to state your limits, try phrasing what you want in terms of your own feelings. Avoid making the other person wrong. When you state your needs or concerns without blaming, your friend can hear you without defensiveness. Note that the sample statements we have given are entirely about the speaker’s feelings, and include no judgments about your friend’s lifestyle or customs.
Remember, what you’re comfortable with today may change later. Set up your agreements in terms of what you feel or need today, right now, leaving open the possibility of change in the future.
What are your rights? Ask yourself how much right you think you have to control your kinky person’s behavior. Depending on your relationship, that might be none at all, or quite a lot.
First, do your homework. We believe that no one has a right to vote on the physical, emotional or moral safety of lifestyles and sexual behavior they do not fully comprehend. Certainly, you, dear reader, get the moral high ground here, because by taking the trouble to read this book you are educating yourself. (Most commendable. We have too often read scathing condemnations of kink in psychological, philosophical or feminist writings and, when we check the bibliography, we discover that the author has read nothing, no books, no articles, written by people who engage in these sexual expressions. This sort of deliberate ignorance is inexcusable.)
Ask yourself what your goals are. To deepen your relationship with your kinky person? To change your friend? To avoid hearing about stuff that makes your hair stand on end? To become less distressed about that same stuff? To be more open and accepting about diverse sexualities? When you have identified your goals, resist any temptation to blame yourself for not already having achieved them, and think about how you might get from where you are today to where you would like to be tomorrow by taking one step at a time.
If your feelings against your kinky person’s lifestyle are so strong you find you can’t get over them or get comfortable in a neutral stance, it would be worthwhile to invest in a little therapy or counseling before giving up on your valued relationship entirely. Exposure to such forbidden information can have powerful effects, from memories of childhood traumas to realizing that some of your own fantasies would qualify as kinky. Your friend or family member may even know some therapists who are knowledgeable and open-minded about kink, or you can learn how to find such a therapist from the Resource Guide of this book. You could have some support in working through your own emotional response to kinkiness from a neutral person, save your relationship, and maybe even get a chance to heal some of your old wounds.
But suppose this is someone over whose life you really do exert some control, such as your young-adult child. We all know that our children, once they are grown, get to choose their own lives - whatever hopes we, as their parents, may have had for them. But what if you’re putting them through college or graduate school, or supporting them as they launch their lives? What if they’re living at home with you? Will you kick them out, or cut them off, if you disapprove of their lifestyle?
We hope not. And we also think it wouldn’t work. One of the reasons kinky people have developed such an active and rich underground culture is that many of us, like gay and lesbian and transgendered people, have been rejected by our families, and possibly been thrown out of our churches, schools, professions and careers, by those who disapprove of our sex lives. Please do not imagine that you can force your kinky person to change her ways by yanking on the purse strings or threatening to withdraw your love and approval. You will lose that person sooner or later, along with whatever love and intimacy you once shared. If you are so angry that you are willing to take these risks, or would rather disconnect completely from that person than learn to accept him, that is a choice you get to make. From where we sit, that looks like a very sad choice. You would lose your kinky person, and she would lose you.
What if you’re afraid he’s being harmed? It can be very worrisome to know that the apple of your eye is being tied up or spanked or ordered around - even if you know he’s enjoying it tremendously. Our natural protective instincts tend to kick in if we feel that there’s even the slightest chance that someone we care about is being harmed in any way.
The good news is that most kinkyfolk indulge their kinks without causing the slightest bit of harm to themselves or the people around them. Our play involves the pretend thrills of kids’ cops-and-robbers games, and the occasional mild bruise or scrape of kids’ playground sports - nothing more. If your friend or relative seems healthy and happy, he undoubtedly is exactly that.
We have seen our kinky friends become permanently estranged from their families because a well-meaning relative tried to break up a relationship which looked scary, harmful or excessive from the outside, but which was happy, consensual and a source of great joy to the people in it. Please don’t let this happen to you and your kinky friend or relative. As we’ve mentioned before, just because a behavior or a relationship doesn’t look like fun to you doesn’t mean it’s not lots of fun for the participants. They probably wouldn’t want to live the way you do, either; there’s room for all kinds of relationships and activities in this big old world.
It can be tempting, too, to blame everything that goes wrong in your friend or relative’s life - every domestic argument, every problem at work, every rebellion by a child - on her kink. Before you make such a hasty judgment, please stop and consider all the things that go wrong in your life, or in anybody’s life - even in the lives of celibate people or longtime heterosexual vanilla monogamous couples. Kink doesn’t solve all of anybody’s problems, and it doesn’t cause them either.
One difficulty is that from the outside, it can be hard to see a clear-cut line between consensual kink and nonconsensual spousal abuse. Domestic violence certainly happens to the kinky and the nonkinky alike: how, then, can you tell the difference between consensual kinkiness and abuse?
Well, first of all, you can ask your friend how he distinguishes: a lot of kinky players have put some serious thought into this matter, so you might get some enlightening answers. You can ask her how she maintains her safety, and listen for the concepts of safe, sane and consensual. We vote for clean and sober, too. Sometimes yo
u can’t know - lots of nonkinky people are rude or hostile or controlling to their partners, and even the experts aren’t always sure where to draw the line between obnoxious and abusive.
Or you may fear that your friend is so wildly enthusiastic about his newfound sexual utopia that he is going overboard, too far too fast, throwing caution to the winds, reckless. Many of us will recognize this state of mind from when we were new players - we know what it’s like to be so excited that you are “thinking below the waist.” You can help by putting her in touch with some of the resources we have listed in the back of this book - good how-to literature that will help her make informed decisions, or the support groups on the Internet or in real life where she can talk to kindred spirits and get a “reality check.”
If you find yourself wondering about these issues, we counsel caution. Don’t rush to judgment, and avoid forceful intervention - you could wind up alienating your friend, and driving him further away from any support you would like to offer. Let your friend or relative know that you care about him, that you’re there if he wants to talk, and that if he ever finds himself in trouble you will do your best to help. If he’s healthy and happy and playing just the way he wants to, he’ll probably roll his eyes and chuckle - but he’ll also be glad to hear that you care about him. And if he is in trouble, your message tells him that he’s worthwhile, and that help is there if he needs it.
Children of kinkyfolk. Just because Mom or Dad likes to play with handcuffs or high heels doesn’t mean Junior is going to grow up to be the same way (although he may, of course, feel less ashamed of whatever sexual desires he might develop). Your authors’ experience with our own grown children shows us that, if anything, they tend to be a little less interested in kinky sexuality than their peers - after all, what’s the fun in doing something that your parents do? Ick!
If your friend or relative has children, you may find that her ideas about what sexual information to share with them may not correspond to yours. These kids might know a great deal about their parents’ sexuality, or their parents might have chosen to keep such matters private. (Please don’t mention their parents’ sexuality to them unless you’re absolutely sure they’re already aware of it.) If the kids have been given more information than you’re used to seeing kids have, you may feel shocked or even worried.
Please don’t be. There’s no “right” amount of sexual information for children to have, as long as they have enough to help them make their own intelligent sexual decisions later on. You’ll see that kids who are well-informed about sexual matters are no different than you were - they’re still kids, growing up, building their own worlds and developing their own ambitions and opinions.
If your kinky friend or relative is basically a good parent - providing love, nurturance, physical care, a stable environment, structure, and the other things kids need to grow up happy and healthy - please don’t try to “rescue” those kids. They don’t need it; they’re fine just the way they are.
Your own boundaries. Back to you. You get to have respect for your own boundaries. You can get as close to your friend or relative as you want to, and no closer. That will work best in the long run: remember that good fences make good neighbors.
There is a wonderful organization, P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) who offer support groups to the family members of sexual minorities. They do great work, and have recently opened up an arm devoted to understanding transgendered people. We are hoping that by the time you read this book, P-FLAG may include some groups for the friends and families of kinky people.
We hope that the support of this book, organizations like P-FLAG, and the love and affection of your kinky friend and relative will enable you to choose to learn more about your friend’s wonderful adventures.
9
A Special Chapter for Helping Professionals
This chapter is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, therapists and other helping professionals who have taken care of us when we were sick, and been gracious and supportive about our bruises, welts, tattoos, piercings and so on. Hearts of gold, nerves of steel.
In this chapter, we will review the issues that come up for health professionals in treating kinky patients. We think we can offer you some useful ideas about how to care for kinky people, and at the same time make going to the doctor, or looking for a therapist, a safer occupation for practitioners of S/M and other kink.
For the medical professional. If you are a doctor, nurse practitioner, physician’s assistant, chiropractor or other medical professional, you are certainly used to seeing naked bodies, and have probably long since lost any sense of modesty or embarrassment that nudity may once have caused you. But when kinky people take their clothes off, their private life ceases to be private, and you, the health professional, may be shocked, embarrassed or confused by evidence, in the form of bruises, welts, piercings, etc., of a very different lifestyle.
From where we sit, this is a dilemma. We do not want to embarrass you, frighten you or cause you any discomfort. We would never dream of requiring you to understand our most arcane sexual practices if we had, for instance, met you at a cocktail party.
But, when we are sick, we have to get examined, and then we are telling you about our sex lives without either your consent or our choosing. We are telling you about floggings, fistings, spankings, canings, cuttings, tattoos, piercings temporary and permanent. You might see little rows of bruises from clothespins, or other marks on the body that you might never figure out. We know this can be awkward for you, and we also know, from personal experience, that it is terrifically awkward for us.
Please remember that your kinky patients are probably both embarrassed and fearful. To show our marks to outsiders could be dangerous. Some of us have been hospitalized without our consent or separated from our children by well-meaning folk who think we are not safe when we are. More often we get treated as inferior, or perhaps a little crazy, or with that subtle prejudice that means that doctors and nurses will doubt us when we describe our symptoms, or assume that we are substance abusers or otherwise screwed up. Diagnosticians who think we’re crazy may assume that the medical symptoms for which we are seeking treatment exist only in our (obviously confused) heads. The consequences for us can be unfriendly and potentially negligent medical care: we might have trouble getting a prescription for pain medication that another person would receive routinely. (Obviously, we don’t feel pain like everybody else, right?)
What can you do? Treat the kinky person who comes into your office exactly the way you treat anyone else. Do your best to let your patient know you see her as a person, an individual, not a categorical pervert.
Know that surface-level bruising and welts is normal to S/M play: many people who enjoy the sensation of whips can’t get the level of stimulation they like without some bruising or welts. Painful or intense stimuli that kinky people enjoy on purpose differ from the pain of injury by much more than just a state of mind. S/M players explore a specific set of sensations to get a specific pattern of intense sensation, carefully timed so the body can respond in a pleasurable way. It feels - and, we believe, is - very different from the frightening and uncontrolled pain that accompanies illness or injury.
If you are looking at bruised or cut skin, take a deep breath and disengage any initial emotional reaction you might be feeling. You may not understand your patient’s pleasure, but you do have the medical knowledge to determine if this person’s practice was safe. S/M “marks” should be surface level and designed to heal easily without complications. So ask yourself: are bruises and welts on well-padded body parts, where they will easily heal? Are there underlying organs that could be endangered? It is commonly accepted among players that buttocks and thighs, shoulder and chest muscles, are safe parts of the body, well-padded with muscle and fat, with skeletal protection for the organs underneath.
Dossie gets her annual pap smear around the time of her birthday, which helps her remember, but if she can’t get an appoint
ment until after her happy birthday spanking... (One doctor inquired if she had been riding horses. She answered, “No.”) Another asked directly about the bruises, and seemed accepting when she told him it was her birthday. This was all much easier in the good old days of medicine when you could choose your doctor and go back to the same one every year. Modern medicine requires that we expose ourselves to so many people!
A friend of ours tells about the time she forgot to remove her labia ring. A nurse-practitioner dealt with her surprise very nicely by exclaiming, “Oh, what a cute little ring!” Our friend apologized for not forewarning her, and reassured her that the piercing was healed and that nothing about the exam would hurt it.
Most of the injuries involved in S/M play are comparable to those that may happen during sports like touch football or hobbies like woodworking - shallow cuts and bruises, sore or strained muscles. Again, your knowledge of anatomy can inform you about what is safe, what will heal readily, and what might be ill-advised.
If you have a question about the safety of any marks you see on a person or any practices your patient may describe, ask the patient what safety precautions they have taken. Unless you, the medical professional, have made an in-depth study of this subject, your patient may know more about it than you do, and might be able to explain how it is safe. If you still don’t think it’s safe, than you can discuss it with your patient like two responsible adults.
What you can do to be supportive.
- Let your patient know that you accept and respect her.
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