Too much information?

“The way I see it, there's always an element of power exchange in any given relationship. One person is always yielding their power to the other, who accepts this gift.” I am stared at blankly. I don't pursue the issue, and immediately regret having said anything at all.

I describe it as a guilt complex. It's what makes me password-protect blog entries and hide the books I read. It is because a subject that forms a huge part of my identity is still taboo in a world that is nowadays more open to unconventional modes of sexual expression. The most permissive of sex education websites will not discuss it, and I'm lost in a sea of awkwardness, only ever writing “confessions” in an attempt to explain my thoughts, feelings and emotions.

I think of myself as a submissive, which manifests itself both in normal social interactions and in my secret fantasies. I generally do not look people in the eye; I let someone else decide where we will eat or what game we will play. I read scenes of slavery, capture or torture in books over and over again; I fantasize about the opportunity to consent to such slavery. This characteristic is so ingrained that I cannot even date the point at which I first developed a fascination concerning what I later came to recognize as the world of BDSM.

I've read enough to know the basics: “BDSM” stands for “Bondage and discipline, Dominance and submission, sadism and masochism,” describing sexual practices concerning the conscious, consensual exchange of power. I know that the BDSM motto is “safe, sane and consensual.” I know about safewords and “toys” and dominatrices and “dogs.” I know that people who don't have an interest in BDSM are “vanilla,” as are their sex acts. I know that around the world there are many vibrant communities of BDSM-interested adults, many of them online. But there is very little in the way of resources for teenagers, and I've often wondered about this.

The thing is, “sex education” is never really about sex, focusing on protection and prevention rather than sex and sexual acts. However, there is certainly a wide variety of information out there about people with sexual identities that don't explicitly have to do with sex. I am bisexual, and I have had no shortage of advice about what that means and how to deal with it. I have come out to my parents and my friends and have never had a single emotional crisis about liking girls as well as guys. But BDSM is seen as nothing if not overtly sexual, and also dangerous if not gone about properly, and thus it is avoided in educational discussion.

But where does that leave me, then? I'm lucky, actually; I have a good friend who paved the way for me, as it were, talking to me about his sexual preferences, which lie in similar areas, and helping me to understand mine. Yet there is only so much one can talk about without feeling awkward, and I can't shed myself of the feeling that I am living a secret. I am generally a very open person, likely to describe my feelings and thoughts on just about everything, and to be confronted with this boundary that cannot be crossed in polite society – unlike those concerning, say, sexual orientation – is incredibly frustrating.

I don't have a problem with the fact that one does not generally discuss the pornography one views or the fantasies one has. There is perhaps such a thing as “too much information.” But I believe my sexual identity to stretch much further than this, and in this case the analogy between BDSM and non-heterosexuality is very apparent. It seems strange that I can discuss with my mother a novel with a lesbian heroine, but not one whose protagonist chooses to become the slave of her lover. This is fiction, not pornography – and my mother is an English teacher, opposed to the censorship of literature. And yet I buy my books in secret.

If this has been my experience, there must be countless young people who share it – and who, perhaps, have not had the support or information that I have. We deserve to be able to understand ourselves as sexual beings, the same right that “vanilla” folks are granted. We need to be taught maxims such as “safe, sane and consensual,” and that what we imagine and experience is not disgusting or wrong or evil. Most of all, though, we need to realize that we are not alone in the world. I know that I still have a great deal to learn about myself and my identity, and I can only hope that I will be able to learn from real people, not from pornography, and that I will be able to grow beyond this phase of guilt and confession. All I ask is that the forward-thinking people of the world surmount their fear and disgust and help to break down the very non-consensual walls that surround my mind.