The magic word(s)

Some people online seem really fucking confused about how to not be an asshole. If you’re going to be one, at least do it on purpose. It’s just fucking sad when you go out and behave like a dick and then act surprised when people *gasp* think you’re a dick.

If you want to express an opinion or an idea without pissing people off, there are some really handy magic words you can use:

“In my opinion”, “In my experience”, “Personally”, “In my relationship”, “What I’m interested in is”, “What I enjoy is”, “What I’m not interested in is”, “What I like is”, “What I don’t like is”, “What I’m looking for is”, “What personally works for me is”, “What doesn’t work for me is”, etc, etc. You should be seeing a theme here 🙂

And that’s if you have to say anything at all. sometimes you don’t have anything worthwhile to add and should keep quiet. To give an example, some jerk said in a thread on fetlife a while ago that he didn’t think play that wasn’t painful even counted as BDSM. You will not be surprised to hear that he was sharply corrected by a number of people, and then whined and cried about what meaniepants poopyheads we all were.

Here’s a jerk to non-jerk translation of basically the same idea:

jerk: painless play isn’t BDSM

non-jerk: I’m not interested in painless play

even better non jerk option: [silence]

If the thread is about feeling like you’re not a real dom because you don’t want to beat people black and blue, saying that you’re not interested in painless kink really isn’t adding anything. The discussion just isn’t about that, which makes your whining about your lack of interest in non-pain play boring at best and makes you look like a jerk with terrible reading comprehension at worst.

Or for another example:

jerk: female doms don’t exist because I can’t find any!

non-jerk: I’m having trouble finding a dom, am I doing something wrong?

even non-jerk option: reading the goddamn stickies like a fucking grownup

I am so bored of people whining that dominant women don’t exist in a group titled Submissive men and women who love them. I totally fucking love people telling me I don’t exist, that’s definitely going to make me want to play with them. I understand feeling frustrated, but straight up saying you don’t think dominant women exist because you suck at finding us is going to endear you to precisely no one. Plus it makes you look stupid, which, shockingly enough, is not attractive.

If you just swap out absolute statements for statements about yourself, your relationships, and your personal preferences, magically you’ll stop sounding like a dick! Because everyone has a different thoughts, feelings, and theories about BDSM, it’s very very easy to be completely fucking wrong about what BDSM fundamentally is. What BDSM is for you is simply not what it is for other people, how is this a surprise? Everybody has different kinks, only a total jackass would assume their kinks are so special that they’re universal.

On the other hand, it’s very hard to be completely fucking wrong about what you personally enjoy, and it’s pretty fucking hard to argue that you don’t like the stuff you like. Tada! If you just talk about yourself and what works in your relationship, it’s pretty hard to argue with that! People can totally say your personal choices are stupid and likely to make you unhappy in the long run, but they can’t say you like stuff you just said you didn’t. It’s generally pretty hard to argue that you’re an asshole for having preferences, too. There’s certainly some nuance there, but you really can’t tell someone they’re wrong to enjoy pain play (or not enjoy pain play) without looking like a total asshole.

Basically, when you make sweeping judgments about how other people do kink, you’re going to look like a jackass. If you’re talking about yourself, talk about yourself.

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