community impact

[Synfall]

The question I want to ask to anyone here is, how much impact does your community laws and tolerance toward alternative lifestyles impact your own views on bdsm?

[tired.of.vanilla{DJ}]

none. the government should stay out of my house as long as we are all adults and it's concentual

[Synfall]

It's a mater of curiosity for me. You see I live between two different towns, but both are rather close minded.
In fact, one of the towns arrested some chippendales for violating some sort of business sexual ordinance or something, during the middle of one of the shows. The guys were really well behaved, stripping was minimal, but it was raided by the cops.
Also a number of the local boutiques have been harrassed by the local authorities. One of the cashiers was arrested at a local lingerie store for selling sexually inappropriate items, like vibrators, and there's the possibility that she may be charged as a sex offender simply for working there.

Which is sad, because I enjoy talking with people that I have met in sex stores. The cashiers in particular usually have interesting comments to make about the products.
I guess I'm simply feeling as though my current environment is rather restrictive. While I am free to ask people online about their lifestyles, I don't feel free to actively seek out a real life person to discuss these things with a little more in depth.
So even if the people where I live are into BDSM, the odds of anyone offering to reveal that are very slim, and a large part of that is, I believe due to the community view on alternative lifestyles and the strict sexual laws in place.

I want some coffee and a sit down discussion, and possibly some cudddling to go with. Not even as a sexually necessarily- just to have the physical human contact while I learn.

[sisterhoney61 {RW}]

It really doesn't impact me, even though I live in the middle of the Bible Belt. As a result, finding a play party or a BDSM club or a dungeon to go to would be a major expedition. But I really don't worry about it, because Master is a private person and wouldn't go to any of those places and I would not go to them alone or even with friends, if Master wasn't going with me. I wear my collar in public and Master uses my hair as a leash and I'm sure people have seen Him do so. But no one has said anything about it.

There are four sex shops and two strip joints not far from my house and I have no problems going into them (the sex shops, I mean. I have no desire to go into a strip joint. If I want to see a naked woman I'll look in my mirror). W/we don't buy O/our toys in the shops because the quality is better online, but W/we do buy O/our porn in the shops (though I've gotten some online as well). Master and I prefer to play by O/ourselves and really don't feel the need to bring others into O/our lifestyle. That is why this forum is important, because it gives me a safe environment to discuss BDSM with others and I don't have to worry about a police raid or playing with the wrong person.

[TomOfSweden]

I'd say a huge impact.

In Sweden the moral panic Mafia isn't in fundie Christian guise but come in the form of big hearted S-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t-s helping the world in the name of solidarity. They have the exact same arguments. Stuff like we'll have a moral collapse if we don't impose strict regulation on all things related to sexuality. They are also lot more powerful than the surface shows.

They fly under the radar saying things like "but think of the children" killing all critical debate. They work tirelessly in the background to impose their regulations because they have no life. When us people with an actual life find out its generally too late. They've devoted their entire lives to "helping" others who aren't as "enlightened" as they are.

Since we constantly have to make room for all their idiotic laws it does impact us a lot more than what it apparent on the surface. Once the laws are in place and are accepted by people at large, the laws are extremely hard to remove. The original populistic and flimsy argumentation that put it place to begin with is always dragged out whenever its challenged.

We have alcohol laws which basically are designed around preventing people from going out and having fun. It's illegal to take off your shirt in places that sell beer. This is all moral panic laws that we have to put up with. ...and this does impact all of us no matter if you go out partying or not... because it will set the standard for what becomes acceptable/weird in the society at large. Cats who've never been out-doors don't know what they are missing. People are exactly the same. If we don't have the social tools to explore our sexuality, we won't.

...I wouldn't be surprised if Sweden is the worlds most sexually liberal country. I wouldn't know how it could be measured so I won't argue this point, but the fact that we of all nations have these problem I'd say is very telling regarding the planet in general.

Thank God for the Internet.

The most tiring thing about these vulgarly-politically-correct moral-panic-Mafia people need to be fought ever single step of the way. Nobody with any kind of life has the energy. Is there a good word for them as a group? They seem to get the epithet from what every political/social group they attach themselves to and parasite off.

Any suggestions?

[fetishdj]

Suggestions? Launch a mission into space to find a planet we can colonise for ourselves...

Unfortunately, I think Sweden is one of the more enlightened countries in this regard. Though I have found it strange that parts of Scandanavia (not sure which parts) have laws which forbid the drinking of alcohol in the presence of minors (in case it corrupts them into thinking drinking is ok) but has very few problems with public nudity (it being the land of running naked into the plunge pool after a sauna). In this country the opposite is true - drinking is restricted but not too much whereas nudity or anything sexual is an abhorrance.

In truth, however, in terms of 'indecency' (however you may define it) the reality is that the law is effectively impotent. It is a sop to the conservative masses because in truth the enforcement of the law is next to impossible. Take the now largely obsolete in many countries sodomy laws. IN theory, under that law, it is illegal to have anal sex with your legal partner in the privacy of your own home. So, how do they investigate this? How do they prove it? Would they even bother to try to prove it unless they had another reason to want to arrest and detain the person involved? The police have neither the time nor the resources to look into these minor crimes that have no immediate and obvious social impact so they tend not to. Prosecution will only occur if you get caught (doing it in public, someone dobs you in, your wife complains to the police) or the police are investigating you for something else (your wife has been murdered, there is forensic evidence that you had anal intercourse with her, they suspect you murdered her but cannot prove it so they use the sodomy law as an excuse to arrest you).

Personally I do not beleive that the government or the law should have any say in personal, consensual activities but increasingly it seems to be the case.

[MissElizabeth87]

Well, I honestly don't know all of my area's laws on this stuff- I didn't know they existed until recently. I plan to spend a saturday in the library reviewing them.

But either way, I am 99 percent certain I live in a fairly liberal area for this kind of stuff. Keep Portland Weird, right? And what's weirder than a bunch of freaks who are into whipping each other/being whipped? (I say this totally in a sarcastic jokey sort of way, it's not mean to offend). And should I find out this is somehow illegal... well, I guess we'll be more discreet about it?

[TomOfSweden]

Though I have found it strange that parts of Scandanavia (not sure which parts) have laws which forbid the drinking of alcohol in the presence of minors (in case it corrupts them into thinking drinking is ok)

If I remember correctly this isn't Scandinavian but a British obscure law which nobody takes seriously. No, Sweden has no law of the kind.

but has very few problems with public nudity (it being the land of running naked into the plunge pool after a sauna).

The idea that the human body is somehow shameful and should be covered has an interesting background and isn't a particularly old idea. The entire concept of "privacy" and personal space wasn't invented until the 19'th century. Hiding your body is an off-shoot of this. Why this never got a hold in Scandinavia has more to do with how poor and culturally backward we were in the 19'th century. ...when these ideas spread through Europe. Rather than us having a different value system or something like it. We got rich/educated in a very short time, and the idea of the shameful body were receding in the west before us Scandinavians joined civilisation.

Civilisation just allows us to learn loads of more things. There's nothing that says that civilised ideas are necessarily good ideas.

[fetishdj]

Its not a British law I have heard of... and the alcohol thing comes from someone who lived in one of the Scandanavian countries but I cannot remember which one. It may not be a law so much as an attitude then.

Oh yes, most of the morals about nudity come from Victorian values (those wonderful hypocrites, the Victorians with thier casual brutality to the working class and a welath of perversion under the covers but an outward prudity that was almost ironclad ). As you said, laws once made are difficult to unmake and many of the public decency and sexual laws were made about that time (though buggery and sodomy were both ruled against during the Tudor period). They can be modified slightly but rarely undone save after a lot of time and effort.

[Voyeur21]

I think community can make a huge difference- for example you probably dont want to do any BDSM in somewhere likeDubai (where a couple are facing 10 years in jail for having sex on a night time beach) but in London this morning, millions of people read all about Spank Daddy and how many women ask him to spank them/punish them in the lifestyle section of the free Metro newspaper as they rode the Tube.

(In fact the Metro tends to be a fairly kink-friendly paper, with usually some sort of BDSM/kinky related informational article every few weeks or so)

V.

[Synfall]

Spank Daddy? In the newspaper? It boggles my mind. Seriously.
The openess of some areas about sexually related subjects is still startling for a small town girl like myself.
Even being on this site is enough for my relatives to be convinced that I'm condemned to hell... Actually they've been condemning me to hell since I was twelve for lesser reasons, so I'm not sure how much sway that argument holds anymore.

[fetishdj]

Meh, thats London. They're a bunch of perverted wierdoes there. I mean, thats the place we store all our politicians and accountants so what do you expect?

Yes, I think upbringing and community both have an impact.