Vanilla Violation

Like so many bloggers, we track statistics. We've done it for years. Doing that gives us a picture of our readership. In the beginning, we obsessed over our numbers -- up days; down days; monthly totals... Now, though, it has come to be a matter of interest without driving what we do.

Sometimes, the information that comes to us through that medium is amazing or amusing or sometimes simply odd. Keyword searches bring people to us through a rather remarkable array of creative and fanciful word strings.

As of this morning, there is a not atypical group of oddball searches on the list...

gay spanking blogs
robin whittle spanking
the herpon clan
bdsm nettles stories
random punishment tips bdsm
domestic discipline is degenerate

I am often tempted to take a page from Bonnie's book and comment on that sort of thing, but I'd be hard pressed to do it with near the wit she musters. I will admit, though, that there are all kinds of smart alec responses that fly into my head when I look at our keywords and find some of that ... Mostly I wonder how people come up with that stuff.

Beyond all of that, though, every now and then, one of these things pops up and it causes me pause, because clearly, the person on the other end of the search wasn't looking for what they got. Like this one...

what is appropriate dessert for a recuperating teenager?

That particular search brought some poor, unsuspecting, (probably vanilla) parent to this post. Talk about an internet search gone wrong! I can get the clear picture in my mind the person on the other end of that search -- clearly a victim of Google, and I really feel for the consternation that I imagine they might have experienced. It sets me up for a bit of cognitive dissonance. I feel bad for them, and then I get just a little grumpy that I feel bad...

This sort of misadventure in the cyber neighborhood falls almost over the line into a sort of BDSM play that I've always felt was perhaps questionable. There are those people in the lifestyle who get a thrill out of what is sometimes labeled "vanilla violation." It is a practice of taking BDSM behavior out into public spaces and putting it in the face of some vanilla person who never saw it coming. The thrill derives, at least in part, from the shock and dismay that is experienced by the witness to whatever it is. It is a sort of BDSM play that is, by definition, non-consensual, and I have some trouble with that.

Taking what it is that we do out into public places, and "letting the chips fall where they may," so to speak, seems unkind. I don't feel at all ashamed about my lifestyle or my sexuality, but I am sensitive to those who share the streets with me. I wanted the right to choose what my children were exposed to when they were small, and I'd imagine that today's parents feel the same way. I have the same sort of scruples about public profanity (although I am capable of swearing with the best of them), and with gratuitous public nudity (although I am a happy naturist when the opportunity presents itself). It offends me to hear some scruffy adolescent say, "FUCK" in the toy department at Wal-Mart, and I have a sort of "no boobs, butts or belly buttons" internal limit when I'm walking along downtown.

However, (and this is a LARGE "however") it isn't illegal to swear while out at a nice restaurant, and it isn't going to get you arrested if you wear some ludicrously immodest wisp of a thing to the local fair. Those kinds of behavior may expose you as boorish and impolite and crass, but they won't get you thrown in the slammer or discharged from your place of employment. The same cannot be said for "vanilla violation" with regard to BDSM. For those of us who practice forms of power exchange, there is the defacto reality that "being who we are" out in public is risky behavior which might subject us to all manner of social sanctions. It is a double standard that I find annoying and troubling. I don't get to consent to the assault on my senses when some young gang banger struts his stuff with his pants sagged below the "polite" level. I don't get to veto the public display of love and affection that any heterosexual couple is entitled to engage in "out in public." Why then is there an assumption on the part of society that it is appropriate to draw lines around our kind of self-expression and declare it completely and totally "off limits" except in the seediest and most out of the way locales? Why must we all sequester ourselves behind closed doors or out in the far depths of the wilderness to be fully who we are?

So, I feel bad for the poor person who simply wanted to know what sort of treat to give their sick adolescent. I don't actively look to put my lifestyle in anyone's face. Still, I wonder if it is more a matter of perspective and practice -- perhaps if we simply were more publicly visible, it wouldn't feel so shocking when people do stumble upon "what it is that we do."

swan