I have noticed that for most people, the mere mention of the acronym BDSM triggers a level of physical discomfort usually reserved for when you accidentally like a three-year-old bikini photo on the Instagram of your boss’s wife at three in the morning. It is a very specific type of internal collapse. It is the fear that if you even acknowledge the existence of a flogger, a man in a full latex gimp suit will burst through your ceiling like a leather-clad Kool-Aid Man and demand you explain your nineteenth-century poetry preferences while he holds a riding crop. We treat the concept as if it were a highly contagious airborne disease that you can catch just by looking at a piece of nautical rope for slightly too long in a hardware store.
People are terrified of losing control, which is hilarious because we spend our entire adult lives desperately looking for someone to tell us what to do. We pay four hundred pounds a month for personal trainers to scream at us for not doing enough burpees and we follow Google Maps with a religious fervour that would make a seventeenth-century monk blush. If Google Maps told us to drive our mid-range hatchback directly into a canal because it was a two-minute shortcut, half of us would be underwater before we even thought to question the algorithm. Yet, the second someone suggests a pair of fluffy handcuffs, we act like we are being drafted into a dark, shadowy cult that requires us to trade our basic human dignity for a lifetime supply of industrial-grade talcum powder and a heavy dose of shame.
There is a very specific micro-truth in how we handle these spicy topics. It is that tiny, involuntary flinch you do when you are scrolling through a streaming service and a movie thumbnail shows someone in a leather collar, and you quickly swipe past it as if your router might report you to the local vicar or your primary school teacher. It is the same energy as pulling your stomach in for a split second when you walk past a mirror in a department store, as if the mirror has a direct line to your mother and is currently typing out a very disappointed text message about your posture. We are a society that finds salt and vinegar crisps a bit too aggressive for a Tuesday afternoon. We like our intimacy like we like our toast: beige, predictable, and ideally finished before the news starts so we can get a solid eight hours of sleep.
People think this world is all about agony, but for the terrified, it is really just the logistics that are the problem. It looks like a lot of admin. It is like trying to build a massive flat pack wardrobe from IKEA while wearing a blindfold and being tickled by a disgruntled ostrich. There are knots to learn and specific types of leather that require more maintenance and specialised oils than a vintage Italian sports car owned by a man going through a midlife crisis. The fear isn’t actually about the physical sensation for most people. It is the bone deep fear that they will look absolutely ridiculous. Nobody wants to be the person who gets stuck in a complicated rope harness and has to wait for the fire brigade to cut them out while their neighbour, Mrs Higgins, watches from the driveway with a look of profound disappointment and a tray of lemon drizzle cake.
Imagine the sheer audacity of it all. You are there, trying to be seductive and mysterious, but instead you are sweating profusely because you cannot remember if the half-hitch knot goes over or under the loop and now your partner’s left leg is vibrating because you have accidentally cut off the circulation to their calf and they are trying to say the safeword but they have forgotten it because you chose something obscure like pomegranate or existentialism and now you are both just staring at a YouTube tutorial for sailing knots while the mood dies a slow and agonizing death right there on the shag pile carpet and the cat is judging you from the doorway! Deep breath. My point is, it is a lot of work for a Wednesday night when you have a meeting at nine.
Maybe the reason we are so scared is that it forces us to be honest about what we actually want. In a world where we spend every waking second performing a version of ourselves that is professional and together and not currently crying into a bowl of sugary cereal, the idea of being vulnerable enough to say “I want you to tie my hands together” feels like a total system failure. It is easier to stay scared than it is to admit we might actually enjoy the sensation of someone else taking the wheel for twenty minutes. We are not scared of the whips; we are scared of the silence that follows when the masks come off and you are just two naked people trying to remember where you put the key to the padlock.
Ultimately, we are all just trying to navigate the mess of being human without causing a permanent injury. If you want to stay in the vanilla lane, that is perfectly fine. Just do not pretend it is because you are more civilised. It is just because you would rather spend your evening arguing about what to order on Deliveroo than trying to figure out how to get a smudge of red candle wax out of your favourite duvet cover. And honestly, I respect that. There is a certain dignity in a life lived without the constant threat of a structural failure in your bedroom ceiling. We all have our limits, and for some of us, that limit is reached the moment we have to look for a pair of heavy-duty scissors to escape our own bedroom before the postman rings the bell.
About the Author
