Kink and Romance

 A topic that really fascinates me concerning the BDSM scene in SL is the push for collaring and relationship that so many people are looking for.  This seems to be the overall goal in any SL D/s relationship.

My experience in First Life, and Your Mileage may Vary, is that the majority of people in the BDSM scene are not into a real D/s relationship, but are S/M kinksters that are looking for a scene in a club that ends after the hour they spend doing nasty, kinky things.  In SL, while some of that certainly exists, what I see is mostly people are looking to get a kinky but romantic relationship going.

My opinion is that this is a function of the real, human need to connect in a romantic and sexual way to at least one other person.  Due to the fact that SL has no tactile response, unless one mirrors an S/M scene during one in SL, a topic I'll deal with in the future, the way we do a scene in SL is really "theater of the mind."  

What I think this does is change the dynamic -- rather than kinksters getting together and doing nasty things with hands and toys, the disconnect of the tactile end up having us look for a more socio-emotional kind of connection.  Don't get me wrong, Theater of the Mind is fun and can create real experiences for people, but it's not the same as having a real had smack one's backside or a violet wand zapping one's skin.  

So what I see is that kinky romance, and the desire for that socio-emotional connection, largely displaces the kinky kind of temporary S/M scenes that are so common in the kind of kink stuff I do in First Life.  This is fine, it is after all Second Life and should not be the same as, or mirror on a 1:1 basis the kind of stuff we do in First Life.  

I do think, though, that this tends to change expectations from real BDSM in many cases to a sort of "romance with some spanks and a Master" kind of thing.  While that is perfectly valid for SL I wonder if there is some mental disconnect that occurs for people if they try to go into First Life BDSM.  I now teach a workshop at Xaara on "Moving to First Life BDSM" that explains differences, what to expect when one goes to a club, and how First Life BDSM presents a lot of rather different experiences to people that go into it.  I hope that helps to temper some of the expectation -- going to a club to find one's true Dom/me or Sub is probably not gonna happen, but finding someone to spank or be spanked by, much more likely!

Thoughts? 

-V