BDSM

BDSM stands for:

BD: bondage and discipline

DS: domination and submission 

SM: sadism and masochism 

It's shorthand for people into kink or powerful emotional stuff in the bedroom.

I suspect a lot of people into bondage have sensory issues. It's not really an emotional or psychological thing. They need firm pressure to not find physical intimacy aggravating and unfortunately kink is the only explanation they've ever gotten.

Metafilter was kink friendly and multiple posts there asks questions about sexual stuff. One woman outright stated "It's not a BDSM thing. I just like the intensity." She was asking for advice for how to pursue that without getting hurt because what she and her partner were doing in bed was hurting her and she didn't want that.

I think she was trying to say "I'm not a psychological weirdo. It's not an emotional thing. I need the physical intensity to feel satisfied."

There are ways to improve sensory issues and there are ways to SAFELY accommodate a desire for firm pressure without hurting people. But sex is something nice  people don't really talk about, so if you feel you have some weird need in bed, you end up talking to the self proclaimed and proud of it perverts and they actively encourage you to see yourself as a pervert and proud of it.

Temple Grandin is a woman with a PhD who has written several books and has designed about half the meat processing plants in the US. She is also diagnosed as autistic.

She created a squeeze machine to help her with her sensory issues and other people immediately decided it's a BDSM thing instead of viewing it like an adult version of swaddling a baby to calm it down. 

We sell clothes and wraps and other products for swaddling infants and then act like it's weird and sexual perversion if those babies grow up to be people who want a similar experience and then we offer them no platonic and socially acceptable outlet and then wonder why they join the weirdos and become self proclaimed perverts and proud of it.

Discipline is probably more like the psychological piece of that first set. From what I have read, it's people who want stuff like to be spanked for being bad and told to stand in the corner.

Someone I was friends with once said to me that someone into BDSM had a parent who was very loving and kind and generous and also the family disciplinarian. In other words the nice and loving parent also spanked the kids.

He was suggesting this combination created an association for the person in question and shaped their weirdo sexual predilections.

I was the nice parent and also the disciplinarian. I have yet to find good ways to talk about that.

I was not big on punishing kids. My goal was to help them understand WHY something was a bad idea and help them decide for themselves it's best to not do that.

I suspect people into the discipline part of BDSM are people who weren't taught self discipline and are looking for someone else to enforce healthy boundaries so they stop screwing up because life was better in their experience when someone older and wiser was telling them when to quit or they hope life will work better if they get something like that.

No, life will work better if you grow the fuck up and take responsibility for your life and read some self help books or go back to school and learn something useful that makes some of your self inflicted problems less of a problem.

Domination and submission seems to largely be rooted in patriarchal culture. The dominant person is usually male. The submissive person is usually female.

Some Christian sects actively teach that women need to submit to their husbands and respect them without condition.

A not crazy version of this is women getting excited about men who are kick ass competent and protective of them and willing to cook and clean and go along with his wishes in hopes of having someone paying their bills and taking care of them in this cold cruel world.

People who are servile in nature and not some variation of psychological dysfunctional due to an abusive childhood generally expect something in return for what they do for other people.

In short: They are nice to people and expect people to be nice back. 

Sadism and masochism is a hypothetical pairing but I don't think there really are any masochists.

Probably this is a pattern similar to domination and submission where the sadist is typically someone with money and power and the so-called masochist is someone hoping that putting up with their shit gets them a MATERIALLY comfortable life and protection from the outside world.

I believe there really are sadists who really enjoy hurting people sexually and otherwise. I don't believe there really are masochists who really enjoy being hurt and need that to reach orgasm.

I spent years wondering if I was a masochist because I kept doing things even though it got me hurt in some sense. I eventually concluded I'm goal oriented and a pragmatist and I don't expect life to be handed to me on a silver platter.

In short: You may hate your job but you need the money to get you reasonable quality of life. So you do it anyway even though you are MISERABLE every minute you are on the job 

That generalizes. Accomplishing things can involve metaphorically crawling naked across broken glass. You don't do that because you enjoy crawling naked across broken glass.

There's research that says abusive people pursue a policy of DARVO:

DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, a manipulation tactic identified by psychologist Jennifer Freyd in 1997, used by abusers to deflect accountability by denying harm, attacking the accuser, and claiming to be the real victim.

People who grew up privileged and learned early that if they turned on the tears, mom and dad would overlook it and expect their teachers and others to overlook it simply persist in pretending they are an emotionally hurt little child who needs you to feel sorry for them.

These are people who routinely get described in online forums as narcissists. My mother called them selfish people.

These are people who only care what they can get out of it and there's no element of enlightened self interest where they do things for other people expecting it to benefit them down the road or something.

Historically, people tended to live in small communities and the human brain is wired to deal effectively with a social group of about 150 people. With 8.3 billion people on the planet, the metrics we use in that kind of setting break and our proxies stop working.

Sadists don't seem to be content to join a BDSM club, find a willing masochist as their sexual partner and limit it to the bedroom. I suspect most would never look for a masochist to have sex with because if you actually get off on being hurt, that's not really SHAFTING you anymore and they wouldn't be satisfied.

They are people who actively work at figuring out how to pull a fast one, do maximum harm to other people and grab up low hanging fruit benefits for themselves as a bonus. But this isn't just greed or desire for easy material gain because helping other people succeed is the way to maximize the opportunity to get more for yourself.

If you grow the pie and only get a small slice, you have more than if you shrink the pie and take an unfairly large share of it. So simply wanting a lavish life doesn't explain this particular pathology.

My firsthand experience suggests the meanest people are:

1. Lazy.

2. Not very competent.

3. Greedy to an unreasonable degree.

4. Actively hostile to competent people because they don't WANT to have to compete on a level playing field on merit because they believe they would CLEARLY lose out.

It still makes no sense to me personally. Because if you intentionally shaft people, the people providing the quality goods and services you covet may stop making them altogether and then you have nothing because you can't DIY it.

And the amount of time and effort they put into setting people up and coming up with excuses could be put into getting more education or otherwise pursuing things by legitimate means.

I believe sadists seek nominal power and money and titles because they know there are no sadists and even if there were, they don't actually WANT a lover who is all "Hurt me some more!" That would be a distinct turn off for them.

They know people put up with them in hopes of a pay off of some kind. And then they seek to screw them over and not pay them, literally or figuratively.

Then they count on the cracks in the system providing benefit of the doubt and on reasonable people habitually giving them the benefit of the doubt and not really believing anyone would intentionally be so destructive.

Rinse and repeat with a NEW school teacher every year, a NEW boss at every job, a NEW judge presiding over every case.

This wouldn't fly in a smaller community where you have to see the same person in authority every single time because they would stop buying your BULLSHIT that "This is the FIRST time!" and "I had NO idea it was illegal!" And so forth.

There are no masochists and sadists don't need a little love and understanding and forgiveness and kindness to make their Grinchlike hearts grow three sizes. Claims to the contrary are just part of the con job.

If they really are the equivalent of an emotionally hurt five year old, offer them current existing remedies for such extreme social dysfunction, like time spent in an insane asylum while a conservator handles their estate and see what they say to that.

It's probably not "Woot! Yes! That's the HELP I need!"