Missokyst
Posts: 6041
Joined: 9/9/2006 Status: offline
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After reading this back to myself I decided it is a rant. But, it has been on my mind lately so I am letting it fly. At what age did you expect to know it all? My area is ripe with bdsm activity, mostly among the younger crowd. It is pretty common around here to see people as young as 18 already dipping their toes into BDSM activity, quite a few belong to some house or another. As far as groups go, my area at least has a lot of experience under their belt. Still, they do make mistakes now and again. Back when I was running things the group dynamic was older, people from late 30's and up made up most of the members and still they sometimes made mistakes. There was even *GASP* disagreements on acceptable terms, because some people embraced what others rejected. Eventually of course, with time people learned what was and was not going to work with the masses. As far as I know, no one was always right. No one knew all the terms, or protocal, nothing was definitive, based at least on the long running "discussions" which peppered my list. Sometimes things got so repetitive I had to shut things down or clean them up. I make no apologies. It was my group. I kept it from disinegrating. There were a number of people who argued their point ad`nausem, and quite a few who just stopped responding and or left. Age, relative maturity, experience and ego brought a level of interest and discussion which I enjoyed for a decade. The one thing I could not expect was for someone new to know everything, regardless of their age. But, I often gave the younger ones more leeway probably because I started out so young myself. And trust me.. "I" didn't know it all. lol I made more mistakes than anyone should and still have things come out well. If there were terms when I was in my 20's, I didnt hear a lot of them. I did however know a few "shemales" who were not transgender, they just enjoyed dressing up. And yes, that term was even listed in the back pages of LA underground mags. 30 yrs ago things were a lot different, less PC than now. Mostly I just went along, keeping in the background and learning what was acceptable among my crowd. Keeping quiet until I know the lay of the land has kept me alive and thriving most of my life. I did it when I was a kid to fit in to my anglo neighborhood and I still do it today. But, that has held me back too. That is probably why I am not hard on people when they don't know things or how to express themselves. We get people all the time who either don't know what they want, or how to express it. We get people new to this stuff or who are not english natives and have trouble getting their point across. I just do not understand why we expect people to know so much when we know nothing about them.
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pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding ~Gibran, Kahlil “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley
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