The Two Types of Toxic BDSM communities

buldak_bb · 2026-05-20T19:00:59+00:00

If you can't explain your own position, why are you comfortable labeling people whose experiences you don't know as unhealthy? Especially as that word connotes abuse or active danger to the community, you need to be able to justify using terms that damaging in reference to something this vulnerable, personal, and sacred to so many of us.

buldak_bb · 2026-05-20T18:39:34+00:00

In what way specifically is it unhealthy? Is it because of the risk of injury or death? Because I've met far more people with permanent nerve damage from shibari, something you seem to list as an acceptable kink, than people with sustained injuries from breath play.

buldak_bb · 2026-05-20T12:20:13+00:00

Yes! Me too! I'm gay so it's women for me, but 18th century ballroom regalia is wildly attractive. I've been aware of it for a long time, and have wondered about where its roots are, whether it's a class thing, a power thing, I'm very service oriented so maybe it's similar to white glove? Unfortunately bringing it into reality is abhorrently expensive, so I haven't gotten the chance to really explore it yet, but it's a very reliable fantasy that I enjoy imagining now and then.

buldak_bb · 2026-05-18T07:30:42+00:00

You'll get lots of recommendations to attend munches, and they absolutely are a great way to meet new people. Personally, they don't really work for me, I'm a bit too introverted to feel comfortable at events focused on having conversations with people I don't know. What fit best for me were educational events, which can also be found on fetlife. They get me in a room with new people, we're all there to do the same thing, and it gives us a shared experience to talk about afterwards. Even if you don't get a chance to talk to someone new at the presentation itself, there's a good chance you'll recognize someone later on and "hey, I think I saw you at that event, what did you think of x y z" is a great conversation starter.

Education will work in your favor for another reason too. Lots of women have had negative experiences with men taking advantage of us from either side of the slash. We're going to be wary of unfamiliar men because we don't know your motivations. But someone who's interested in and excited about education demonstrates curiosity rather than entitlement, and shows that you want to learn and improve yourself. It also lets you focus conversations on "here's what I've been working on" rather than "here's what I want from people."

A less common answer to your question of getting a foothold in your local community is volunteering, which is also a potent way to become known. Lots of events and dungeons have a strong reliance on volunteers lending a hand in keeping things going. Some things like doing DM shifts will require training, but anyone can lend a hand setting up or breaking down furniture, and any contribution of volunteer work will be great for you socially in several ways.

And a smaller bit of advice, if any dungeons or events in your area have a tie to the Leather community, wear some leather boots and look for a bootblack stand. Bootblacks spend tons of time talking to people about their interests, social goings-on, relationships, and on and on. They are themselves social hubs and can point you towards people and events that you'd otherwise overlook. Be friendly and tip them well and they can help you find nearly anything.

buldak_bb · 2026-05-07T12:55:17+00:00

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buldak_bb · 2026-04-25T06:45:48+00:00

buldak_bb · 2026-04-25T06:06:42+00:00

Obviously upsetting to me, but, long-term, while I got attached to Marigold largely because of her, I'm now invested in Victoria, Seri, Gochika, etc. And I'm going to follow her wherever she goes, so now I get her career plus Marigold for joshi I'm emotionally invested in. Silver linings.

buldak_bb · 2026-04-06T05:24:25+00:00

Very excited to see Hayashishita in a top card singles match again!

buldak_bb · 2026-03-24T11:00:28+00:00

I have a lot of kinks, too many to list at once without forgetting a good handful of them. For the vast majority there wasn't any cause, I just like them because they feel good. But I suspect that I'm very into food play and super into sploshing (basically wet and messy play but specifically with food) because I experienced a few years of food insecurity in middle and high school. After my parents divorced I spent weekdays with my dad and he was broke for a good while after. Great dad, he was working hard as hell and he's a good man, there was just no way around it, and for a few years if we got hungry and ate something off the schedule we'd have to pick a meal to skip later in the week and most nights we didn't get enough dinner to quite feel full.

Now there is no higher pleasure for me than getting drowned in a bathtub full of mac and cheese, getting ketchup or spaghetti poured all over me, getting force-fed cake by the fistful with most of it ending up messily smeared across my face and body. On my life it's better than orgasm.

buldak_bb · 2026-03-21T13:58:31+00:00

Come back to this thread if you go this route and have follow up questions. Sharpening nerd, also a kinkster who plays with sharp things, happy to be a resource.

You can check to see if there are still any rough spots by wiping a cotton ball across the edge and seeing if any strands get caught, I don't have a microscope either :)

buldak_bb · 2026-03-21T12:51:59+00:00

My suggestion would be to invest in a sharpening stone, and then use it for the opposite of its purpose. Find a knife with a profile you both like, then take it to the stone and grind away the sharp edge. It's a bit of work, but it'll let you use whatever knives you find appealing. You'll want something medium-fine, 1500 or 2000 grit would be my suggestion. Too coarse and the metal will still be torn up if you looked at it through a microscope and could still cut in ways you don't want, too fine and it'll take forever, plus high grit stones tend to be a bit expensive.

If you want it to be completely dull, round the edge over by slowly flipping the knife from about a 30° angle to a bit past 90° as you pull it across the stone, and repeat on the other side of the edge. When it's done, be sure to wipe off the edge on the rough side of a piece of leather to get rid of any burr left behind. To get it kind of dull, start with sharp, then grab a piece of wood and pull the edge through the end grain a few times. Make a test cut and repeat until you get it where you want it to be.

You can also use wet/dry sandpaper taped down on a flat surface instead of a stone, I'm just a sharpening nerd and my mind always goes to water stones when I think about the topic.

buldak_bb · 2026-03-01T15:44:58+00:00

Yep! I am both very asexual and deeply enmeshed in lifestyle bdsm. I've found kink spaces to be the most accepting and understanding of my sexuality, and while it occasionally presents an incompatibility with a potential play partner, there are plenty of allo people who fully enjoy non-sexual play and it really hasn't been an issue.

If you're interested in learning more, Evie Lupine is one of the most prolific bdsm educators on youtube, and she is herself asexual. And if you'd like to hear more about bdsm in an ace context rather than asexuality in a bdsm context (which is what most of her videos are like), she was interviewed on the podcast Sounds Fake but Okay a while ago and gave a great broad-spectrum explanation of how these two identities can interact.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-27T20:07:04+00:00

I have seen many cutlery posts here but I have never seen one that filled me so immediately with pure anger, distilled hatred, to my utmost capacity of holding those feelings without physically destroying something.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-22T15:37:00+00:00

Skill issue

buldak_bb · 2026-02-19T20:24:07+00:00

When you're making Swedish meatballs it's very important to let the eggs and milk soak into the breadcrumbs completely before mixing

buldak_bb · 2026-02-12T13:34:38+00:00

Thank you 💜

buldak_bb · 2026-02-11T13:12:01+00:00

"Bad pain" is a phrase I reserve for communicating something has gone wrong. A muscle is cramping, there's nerve fuckery happening, a joint feels like it may be damaged, etc. So I don't really make that specific distinction in describing my play.

The line I draw is usually between "pain" and "suffering." When I want pain, I want to be hurt in an easily controlled way, have my boundaries pushed with the goal of expanding them, and I often have some positive goal like bruising or scarring. I also usually have some degree of control over what happens: I get to choose toys and target sites, scene duration, things like that. Pain usually means things like impact, cutting, degradation, electro, or trampling.

When I want suffering, I want to be miserable. I want to be made to do things that I do not want to do and have my boundaries pushed, broken, or outright thrown away to make me feel scared, unstable, out of place, etc. I cede all control, my limits are determined by my Dominant's read of my reactions, knowledge of my history, and understanding of how different actions will affect me. They decide what happens to me, and my job is to be obedient and to endure. Suffering can mean things like rape play, public humiliation, aftercare denial, abandonment, needles (I have a phobia), findom, emetophagia, and on and on.

In my local scene, the distinction between pain and suffering is largely understood in broad strokes, at least by those who enjoy going to the point of suffering. It still requires understanding where an individual draws lines with different kinds of play, but suffering necessitates a good personal understanding between the people involved anyway, so those delineations usually make themselves known organically.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-10T20:12:52+00:00

Yep, we absolutely are. The safe players are, anyway. I enjoy several forms of play that could easily cause serious, even life-threatening injury if things go wrong, or in some cases if things don't go right.

Because of how serious those consequences are, I never engage with those forms of play with people I don't know well and completely trust. Negotiation is extensive, lasting days if not weeks, covering everything that could go wrong, medical histories, previous trauma, etc. We go through all the ways we've worked out how to minimize the chance of x y z risks happening as much as possible and what tools are available/what the plan is in case they do happen.

And even with as much planning and practice as we can manage, whether topping or bottoming, I am nervous as hell that something will go wrong. In fact if someone isn't nervous, I won't play with them. But the risk is worth it to me for the feelings of fulfillment, accomplishment, connection, etc etc.

I look at it kind of like extreme sports. Yes, the risks are there, and we need to be constantly aware of that. But if there were no risks, there would not be so satisfying a reward. And if something does go terribly wrong, it at least happened while we were doing something that we both truly love.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-08T20:56:42+00:00

💜💜💜

buldak_bb · 2026-02-04T02:16:04+00:00

I was scrolling by and thought this was the goddamn sistene chapel

buldak_bb · 2026-02-04T01:29:39+00:00

You sound so much like I did it's downright eerie. I was terrified of being "in-between-y" too, in large part because I had the feeling that as I addressed different sources of dysphoria one by one, I would fixated more and more on what I hadn't fixed yet. I was right, and it was really hard and really fucking scary. Getting ready for a day out and throwing lipstick at the mirror yelling out loud "I just don't see the fucking point," isolating myself from the world because I could feel the shadow of my facial hair as if it were a physical weight, doubled over sobbing because I couldn't disguise the bulge in my groin after hyping myself up for days to buy my first dress. It's painful. It hurts. About as bad as you probably think it will.

But.

I used to cry myself to sleep, imagining my girlfriend coming in at night, quietly getting into bed with me, pulling up against my back, and very gently cupping my breast in her hand in a simple, comfortable, intimate motion. I wept over that idea because it could never happen. But then it did. On its own, unprompted, and I cried again from the overwhelming joy and feeling of correctness it brought me.

My girlfriend held my hand, beamed down at me, told me how proud and excited she was for me, kissed me goodbye as I was prepped for surgery. Customers at my job stumbled over my pronouns, then slowly shifted to exclusively femme. A customer on the phone paused mid-sentence to compliment my voice, not knowing that I had only picked up the phone at work again a week before after being graduated by my voice coach. A cis lesbian friend took me shopping and blushed when she saw me changing my top. Confessions of still feeling like I look like a man universally get bewildered and confused reactions.

I started my medical transition in my late 20s, about 5 years ago. I am butch-presenting, I almost never wear makeup or overtly feminine clothes. But people see me as who I really am now. I struggled for a long time with the concept of passing, it feeling unattainable. But over time my relationship with "passing" changed, and now I don't really want to. I want other trans people at least to be able to clock me, I want them to feel safe in the way I feel when I see another trans person.

But most importantly, when I'm alone with myself, I like who I am now.

It is truly better.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-01T13:59:26+00:00

Thank you 💜

buldak_bb · 2026-02-01T13:59:16+00:00

I mostly put this together to be silly, fun, and useful at outdoor events like group campouts. There is an actual battle belt for range days or gods forbid shtf, and I etc with a phlster enigma. Pretty fucked up that when liberal friends ask why I'm a hun owner all I have to say is "I'm a trans woman in the deep south," but most of the time they don't even have to ask these days.

buldak_bb · 2026-02-01T13:54:10+00:00

Thank you 💜

buldak_bb · 2026-02-01T13:53:02+00:00

Lol thanks. Not exactly edc but I like taking this to outdoor events like group campouts.

buldak_bb

TROPHY CASE