I feel compelled to write this because of recent events I have witnessed in the BDSM community and vanilla world. This will be a post about my observations and feelings stemming from my lived experience. I want to warn people this is a controversial topic.
A little bit of background of myself I am a demisexual cisgender white male who grew up in a nuclear family with a lower middle class lifestyle. I am 28 and have been in the BDSM world for 3+ years now I mostly participate online as traveling is expensive and hard for me to do. The community has been very welcoming especially the leather side that I have more recently dove into and started my journey.
I have chosen the title The Pendulum. it is how I have described what I have noticed from a young age. It is the best way I've found to describes this scenario. This pendulum is based on society and power and describes the differences between people. It can be used in many scenarios but most commonly race, religion, and politics. The pendulum to me is always swinging from one side to the other the time it takes to swing differs and the speed it swings always changes but it is constant in our history.
The example I want to bring to peoples attention that i felt compelled to talk about is a very political one. In a recent class I attended the volunteer presenter was explaining about an event in history and shared what they have learned about it. Then a participant spoke up and about his lived experience during that event in which he was a witness. This then lead to a very hostile and angry argument between the presenter and the participant. In this example the two parties are on either side of the pendulum and push it towards the other causing it to swing back just as strong.
This is where I feel a lot of politics leads, two sides pushing the blade at each other and it then swinging right back at them. The presenter had researched information about the event. The participant had lived experience from this event. In my analogy of the pendulum I imagine society being stuck between the two people fighting and pushing the blade back and forth getting cut and hurt every time.
I personally do not know what actually happened and part of the problem with all of history is we are never 100% certain what we believed happened is accurate. Eye witness testimony is often incorrect and our brains play tricks on us all the time leading to inaccuracy. This bleeds into our history books and especially online with people having many differing accounts of the events. Plus one person can not see everything going on from one point of view anyways.
Back to the pendulum. I imagine the two sides of the argument being cut and hurt by the other side when in reality they are both correct in their understanding of the events from their perspective. But the divide widens and the hurt that is caused leads to more and more division on the topic or issue at hand. In this example the pendulum was stopped by the host of the meeting but the damage was already done sadly. The hurt of one side feeling marginalized and the other side feeling silenced.
The host tried to mend the situation and move on with the class as best they could but in events like this it is almost impossible to return to normal without addressing it. The issue with addressing it is time as the class is limited and time is limited by the attendees. So it is not a simple problem to deal with for the host. I personally felt bad for both sides and everyone involved as it never should reach that point of hostility. Watching as the class participant was silenced to keep the peace and class moving felt very close to home as I too have been silenced many times in the past for my views.
This event aside I feel as a society when we have these hostile arguments where the pendulum swings cutting deeper into both sides it just divides us even more. One thing I see when it is pictured is we all bleed the same and are humans hurting each other when we should be joining forces and sharing those experiences to better understand each others side. I hope we can mend the divide in society and with time become better as a whole.
Written by my Master Calvin - Granted Consent to Sahre.