Standards, Gossip, And Other Things
Being in possession of a high esteem, buckets of self-confidence and the ego of a moderately sized universe, I was much surprised recently to be accused of having low standards. Not only was I surprised, but as this accusation came from a person I have great respect for, I felt compelled to examine my past and present conduct to ascertain how much truth there was in it and if I should give it any credence.
Standards mean different things to everyone, depending on what you are applying them to and what perspective you are viewing them from. To me standards mean aiming high, not low; they mean following a moral code appropriate to a given situation. They mean anything from how you perceive yourself, how others perceive you, how you interact, how you treat people, and how they treat you. What I have heard a great deal of from a particular source is 'you are who you're seen with'. At first glance this makes sense, fair enough I say, but then you have to ask why? Why should we be deemed as the same as those we are seen with? Inwardly I feel I have nothing to prove. I believe wholeheartedly, as far as BDSM is concerned, my standards are high. Why do I need to prove that to every swinger, dreamer and idiot who stands beside me? At a social gathering recently 2 people who are widely known to be swingers came and stood next to me and we exchanged one or two sentences of small talk; that does not make me a swinger, nor does it make them the same as me. I care what some people think of me, but I care not what the swingers et al think of ANYTHING, least of all what they think of me!!!!
On looking back at the time scale in which my standards apparently slipped I also realised that actually, I'd spent most of that time with my family. The only contact I had with people supposedly in the BDSM community was online. I'm a regular in the euro chat room, where it has to be said that the bulk, maybe all of what is typed in there (yes let's not forget it's only typing and why should we care what people think of us in a chat room when we have real lives going on???) is, at best, absolute nonsense. I hold my hand up to typing nonsense. I have a rather ironic, sometimes odd sense of humour, 90% of what I type is lunacy, but it's intended lunacy, aimed at taking the piss out of net addicts, swingers, scum who stroll in looking for sex or, horror of horrors, looking for cyber sex.
One of the first things somebody typed to me when I joined alt.com was an accusation that I'd stumbled upon BDSM on the internet. This couldn't be further from the truth. I've always been the way I am, I didn't express it until I ended a nilla marriage several years ago and began a 3 year relationship with a sadist; and yes, he was a true sadist, and some of the people he introduced me to back then were already complaining about the standards slipping within S&M… mainly due to it becoming trendy and the infiltration of what we termed 'weekenders'. I consider myself to be a lifestyle S&Mer. No I'm not in a steady relationship, and due to the fact I'm a mother, I don't regularly engage in S&M activities.
My claim to be a lifestyler is based on the fact that I have absolutely no interest in forming an intimate relationship with anybody remotely nilla, this includes swingers, d/sers, dreamers and any of the other so called alternative types who rear their ugly heads. Admittedly, being somewhat naïve when I first branched out on my own (about 2 years ago) it took me a while to be able to spot the bad eggs. I still think in this respect I probably have a lot to learn. However, isn't 'learning' the very ethos of what we are about? When I still lived in America, a sadist I knew there, a wonderful man who'd been an active sadist for 38 years, told me always to be wary of someone who claimed to know everything about BDSM, and to run very fast if someone claimed they were so expert they would never ever make a mistake.
So back to the questions of standards, did my standards slip? I say my standards didn't slip, but I may have been guilty of an error of judgement once or twice. I probably committed the sin of listening to online gossip and therefore giving credence to what was only typing. Inwardly I remained the same, but I've learned a vital lesson. Be very careful of who you trust, watch and listen to people, what they say will eventually expose what they are, be very aware of the politics and hypocrisy that surrounds us, keep your mouth shut, and last but by no means least……'Don't dream it, do it!!! (when I get the bloody time!)'.
© 2002 Laughing Angel
