D/s & BDSM Information

by DurLlwyd - version 1.0

As I was sitting at work much too late one night, I took a moment to look over the various half-written D/s articles I had been neglecting. After scanning through them in an effort to find a bit of inspiration as to which one I should grit my teeth and attempt to complete, something occurred to me: I have never given an outright explanation of why I focus so much on hashing out semantics. Let me assure the reader that it is not because I find joy in convoluting the usage of words, but rather it is a sincere effort to avoid the invalidation of our chosen lifestyle by connotation.

The culture we live in is predominately vanilla (non-D/s), and our language reflects the majority culture. Languages evolve with their environments. Just as the Eskimo (Inuit) language has many descriptive words for snow, our language has evolved words and phrases that reflect the norms of our society. When you consider that language itself reflects the social majority, it becomes easy to see how our perceptions of D/s can unintentionally and unconsciously be affected. Unfortunately, because the D/s Lifestyle deviates so markedly from the cultural norm, often the impact of these weighted perceptions is quite negative. These weighted words are remarkably powerful in their effects, but they are frequently so subtle they aren't noticed.

In that light, I think that it is important to bring attention to those words and phrases that carry the heaviest cultural connotations and to highlight the assumptions and value judgments they contain. Only after we have identified these cultural word biases can we start to separate them from the core meaning of a word or phrase. This process is important-- without a culturally neutral way to communicate we are caught in the trap of having to define ourselves through someone else's perspective.

Another issue is that it is common for the majority (default) perspective to be viewed as the ideal perspective, thus making it difficult for one who does not subscribe to the majority point of view to justify their position. Points of mechanical fact can be debated and determined to be correct or incorrect. For example, it is easy to look at the statement: "One foot is not the same length as one yard." and verify that the statement is true. However, on issues of preference there is no 'universal truth.' One cannot say that a certain flavor of ice cream is 'better' than another. All we can say that we personally prefer one flavor over another; we can't really debate which preference is 'correct.' The danger here is that when confronting issues of culture, more often than not, the dominate (no pun intended) culture is viewed as 'correct' rather than seen as a preference. Refuting and defending one's own views becomes doubly difficult when the language itself is laden with cultural bias. This is another reason why it is important to keep terms as culturally neutral as possible.

I don't really suppose that all by my lonesome I am going to render any given word more culturally neutral or more D/s friendly. But I do hope that by penning articles on some of the most relevant cultural biases, I can increase awareness of how these weighted words affect the D/s culture. Hopefully with that awareness will come an increased ability to explain ourselves to (and defend ourselves from) those outside the Lifestyle. That is why I keep writing about semantics.

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