Most of you know what SLex or Second Life Sex is.  What a lot of people don’t know much about is the BSDM scene.  BSDM is an abbreviation derived from the terms bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.  A lot of words, but what does it all mean?  I’d like to write a few posting about BSDM from a Second Life perspective.  I’m not an expert on it by any stretch, but it seems that there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding of what is going on.  I want to dispel some myths and maybe help some avies out.

One key to BSDM is Second Life is the understanding that it is basically safe.  While you can allow yourself to come to mental grief, you are safe from physical harm - at least as far as I can figure out.  Another key point is that it allows you to explore some of the more extreme activities in a safe fashion.

Before you get started in SL BSDM, I think there’s a few things you need to have to be a real part of the experience.  First it’s not for a quick bump and grind.  If you want a quick fix, it’s a bad route to go.  It is a lot of mind games and role playing.  Sometimes devoid of physical sex, but not necessarily free of eroticism.  It’s also mature, adult behavior.  Beavis and Butthead need not apply.  It also is an extreme form of trust and love, which on the outside, makes no sense, but you’ll see.

For BSDM to work at it’s best in Second Life, you need to reach a state, which I think most addicts reach, of where your avie is either mentally another person, or almost an extension of yourself.  The OtherLand Group had a good post on how we feel our avatar.  If you think that you can identify with your avatar, you can enjoy BSDM.  If it’s just a portal into SL, then this isn’t for you.

So, you’ve done the SLex thing in SL and after a while and the old bump and grind might have lost it’s charm.  You’re looking for something new and interesting.  BSDM is it.  There’s all kinds of forms of it and all sorts of ranges of it.  I plan on talking about most of it, but before we get there, we need to talk about some terms.

First, there’s the Dominate or Dom.  The dom is the person or avie who is nominally in charge.  Nominally?  Yup, you’ll see.  They usually have some aggressive looking outfit on and maybe some dangerous looking implement to enforce their rules.

Next, there’s the Submissive or Sub.  The sub is the person or avie who takes instructions from the dom.  The sub is usually in charge of the situation, sort of.  Huh?  You’ll see….  They’re the one usually running around with little to nothing on and a collar around their neck usually.

Then you have the Top and the Bottom.  These are hidden sub groups.  The top is the one doing all the work and the bottom is the one enjoying the work of the top.  Most doms are bottoms and look for submissive tops.  Which of course seems to make no sense.

Lastly, there’s the Switch.  The switch is a person or avie who alternates between being a dom and a sub.  Most of us in reality are switches.  Think about it for a while.  You go, “Yes sir.”, to the police officer giving you a traffic ticket, and you chew out an idiot who cut you off driving 5 minutes later.  I like to personally switch when I play because it is a mentally healthy thing to do…  Again, you’ll see.  I also think that switches make the best doms and subs because they know what excites the other.

Switches are also in my mind the safest to play with, as when they are playing each part they know what the other partner is thinking and where things might go.  Some avies are secret switches, using alts.  This is sometimes because a dom’s subs cannot handle seeing their dom as a sub.  It can cause great angst to the sub.  I’ll explain at some point.

Lillie has a pretty good detailed explanation of these definitions.

Right now you’re thinking, this is not what I see.  I see some guy with some girl on a chain ordering her around.  How is she in charge?  This is the amusing part of BSDM, almost nothing is as it seems to an outsider.

Closing this post out, the key to this all is that it is a mental game.  It is not abuse or torture - it might look like it, but it’s not.  Although some SL relationships fall outside of what I’m talking about and may be true torture (or some near facsimile).

-Veyron