Stigma and Reporting Challenges for Abuse Survivors in the BDSM Community

been-brewing/ KOK ok The Alt Sex Anti-Abuse Dream Team BDSMers face a lot of stigma around our sexuality, and this can be a major problem when BDSMers are trying to deal with abusive situations. I've written a lot about generally negative conceptions of BDSM -- they can briefly be summarized as: * S&M is wicked, * abnormal, * a sign of mental or emotional instability, * inherently abusive, * or even antifeminist. Given this climate, it's not surprising that two things almost always happen when BDSM and abuse come up: 1) People of all genders who are abused are often unwilling to report. People of all genders who are abused within BDSM relationships tend to be particularly unwilling to report. Victim-blaming is already rampant in mainstream society -- just imagine what happens to, for example, a woman who has admitted that she enjoys being consensually slapped across the face, if she attempts to report being raped. And that's assuming the abuse survivor is willing to report in the first place; ze may prefer not to negotiate the minefield of anti-SM stereotypes ze will be up against, ze may be afraid of being outed, etc. 2) Members of the BDSM community sometimes push back against real or perceived anti-SM stigma by talking about how abuse is rare within the BDSM community. A BDSM blog post and comments over at the awesome blog SM-Feminist claim that not only is abuse within the community rare, but abusive BDSM relationships seem more likely to happen outside the community. In fact, if you look then you can find posts from submissive women who found that getting into the BDSM community, being exposed to its ideals and concepts, helped them escape or understand their past abusive relationships. I tend to think that #2 is a really good point -- particularly the bit about how abusive BDSM relationships are more likely to happen outside the community, due in part to lack of resources and support for survivors. For this reason, I tend to stress the role of the community in positive BDSM experiences, and I encourage newcomers to seek out their local community. But lots of people don't have access to a local community at all, especially if they're not in a big city. Plus, lots of people have trouble enjoying their local community for whatever reason, perhaps because they have nothing in common with local S&Mers aside from sexuality, or because they don't have time to integrate into a whole new subculture. There's also the unfortunate fact that point #2 sometimes reacts with point #1 in a toxic HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018554