We're the Hidden People

My kink is a secret. I spend a great deal of my life hiding. I keep my toys in unidentifiable boxes and don’t open my Fetlife window in polite company. I dodge references to one of the most important facets of my life with much hand waving and many generalisations.

“I can’t come over because I’m going to a party. No, you can’t come because… because... you won’t like the people. No, it’s nobody you know. There’s nothing untoward happening here. Where did I meet the host? Well, through my blog. What? No, I don’t share my blog with friends because… well, I just don’t, and it has nothing to with distrust. I just…”

Sometimes, I feel as though I’m being tied into knots, which is apt, I suppose, since BDSM is doing the tying.

We’re the world’s hidden people. In a society that’s still becoming comfortable with bisexuality and polyamory, we hide our floggers and rope in dark rooms. There’s no getting around it. BDSM loses custody hearings, ends jobs, and destroys families, so we must learn silence without adopting shame. We must leave our stories untold without feeling as though they should be untold. We must stay silent to avoid judgement. We are exiles, and that has consequences.

They say shame dies on exposure. Tell your secrets and the acceptance you receive will kill your shame, but sometimes, the opposite is true: If you hide something in a damp, dark place long enough, will it eventually turn into an infested mess of mould and shame?

The kink scene is my exposure. It gives me a way to bring my secrets out into the sun. Here, I can feel normal, and that’s more therapy than money can buy.

I’ll tell you a secret, though: sometimes, this site is not enough, and I wonder if my love of pain is a sickness; if my submission is a sign that I’m eating too much patriarchal bullshit; if I’m using degradation as self-harm or am just too damned irresponsible to live a vanilla life. Sometimes I wonder if it would be healthier to obliterate every nth of kink in my life.

I always return to this: Kink is healthy. BDSM is not an illness. I have this study and these seven sets of statistics to prove it, so I return to the beginning of the cycle where I accept my sexuality. 

But then I catch myself keeping secrets and asking myself why that’s even necessary.

I cycle through the same pattern constantly. If I didn’t, I probably would have stopped using this site a long time ago because I wouldn’t need the exposure. I would hold off the shame without your help. I depend on you to keep the sickness out of my kink and to keep me from thinking of my kink as sick.

Harvey Milk said that the system that judges and kills is the true perversion, that “rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.” He’s right, of course, but I always return to silence.