Thought of the day: singers, pop culture magazines, and books normalizing/mainstreaming BDSM out of desperation to be edgy and one-up everyone else using sex to sell a product has been detrimental to our culture.

(1/?)

BDSM is not for everyone, nor should it be. It isn’t normal and shouldn’t be portrayed as such.

If someone has a propensity for kink, they will seek it out. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

But something that needs to be done as carefully as BDSM should not be made mainstream.

At the end of the day, parents or guardians are responsible for giving their children the tools to handle our hypersexualized culture. But kids will inevitably be influenced to some degree by what they see in movies and hear on the radio.

Pop songs and romance novels don’t go into the importance of negotiation, contracts, and how incredibly important it is to understand your rights and consent.

No, they don’t have any responsibility to, but portraying BDSM as a casual thing is absurd and dangerous.

Kids/minors shouldn’t be made to believe BDSM is something that everyone dabbles in or that it is something that’s expected of them when they become sexually active in the future.

There’s a drastic difference between someone being really intrigued by a reference in a book or a movie and researching it, and a kid being led to believe by music videos and movies that being tied up or whipped is a super fun, sexy thing women are just expected to do.

An issue that is only now becoming recognized is all the creepy adults online grooming preteens by talking to them about kink and portraying themselves as “daddy doms” looking for their “little girl/boy”. That’s the opposite of someone discovering kink authentically and safely.

You don’t have to dabble in or secretly love BDSM to be sexy and desirable. In fact, the fewer who are the better imo, because it’s something that can be very risky and takes a serious amount of research, introspection, and practice. Hell, it’s recommended you take classes first

Something a lot of us need to realize is that “normal” does not mean good or healthy, and not being normal is not inherently bad. Being alternative is something to be embraced. Being unique is wonderful.

Something can be safe and beneficial, if not outright life-changing for people, without it being a good idea for it to be normalized.

I believe we should normalize respecting alternative lifestyles instead of money-hungry celebrities and activists demanding that the lifestyles themselves be normalized, embraced, and made “mainstream”.

I hate that BDSM is sold by the media as the obvious next step in sexuality to be more liberated and enlightened than your parents. It’s absurd, dangerous, and frankly, pretty embarrassing.

If somebody is kinky at heart, they will seek it out. They don’t need it watered down and misrepresented to them by the media, especially as minors.

(13/13)