Yeah, Bob, We Get It. You Like BDSM. Why You Shouldn't Push Kink on Vanilla Folks.

You’d hope instructors in the kink community would be well versed in the importance of boundaries. However, the BDSM scene has bad apples like any other and I ran into one the other day at a discussion group.

This particular dude-bro was waxing poetic about his penchant for shocking the vanilla coworkers at his day job. He would shove his phone in their faces and encourage them to look at pictures he’d taken during workshops, some of which were bloody and rather graphic. Over time, he told us, he’d alienated his colleagues so badly that they’d relocated him, à la Milton from "Office Space", into a corner of the office and labeled him a creepy weirdo.

He was, evidently, rather proud of all this, beaming with a twinkle in his eye as he shoved his kinky pics in all of our faces.

“Why are you so intent on pestering the vanillas?” I asked.

“Because they’re fucking boring and need to live a little. I like showing them just how boring they are.”

Unlike this guy's poor coworkers, I found nothing about his behavior to be shocking. I used to pull similar shenanigans when I started experimenting with BDSM and had play partners do the same in their own fits of frenzy. When you feel as if you’ve stumbled across the holy grail of sexuality, it’s hard not to want to spread the love and whip out your kink in public. I may as well have hopped door-to-door like the Jehova’s Witness of hedonism. “Good morning! Do you have a moment to talk about BDSM?”

While I understand the temptation to get loud and proud, looking back on those instances makes me cringe. With experience, I’ve come to believe there’s a time and place for kink, and that parading it in the faces of uninterested parties goes against the ethical mores we claim to uphold.

So here are five things I would say to my younger self, dude-bro in the office corner, and any other snobby kinksters who deserve un-fun spankings. (Y'all KNOW who you are.)

You're violating the principles of informed consent, ya jerk.

We're "all about consent in the BDSM community," or so the mantra goes. Naturally, this desire to honor others' comfort should extend to our non-kinky peers as well as the people we fuck, right?

Consent isn't just about asking before touching someone or stopping play when a safeword is called. The whole point is to make sure the people we interact with feel safe in our company so we can build great relationships. Pushing someone to look at graphic pictures they can't un-see or doing BDSM in front of people who haven't agreed to watch flies in the face of everything we stand for.

Non-kinky people are vanilla by choice. Their reasons for this are none of our business. Some may be intrigued by our stories or secretly want to know more about what we do, but they have the right to decide for themselves whether to dig in and discover more.

If we claim to like consent, we need to walk the walk by applying respect for boundaries to everyone in our lives. Being selective about whose feelings you'll respect screams "Hey, I'm full of shit! I only care about limits when it benefits me." It's also a red flag for other kinksters who might have wanted to get to know you better. You think I'd let you tie me up when you obviously get off on pushing limits? Pfft.

Placing superiority on kink is some sex-negative garbage.

The sentiment that vanilla folk are "boring" is common in the fetish community. As far as personal preference goes, I concur. Sex without kink doesn't excite me much.

However, I respect the fact that people like different things and what floats my boat won't work for everyone. Isn't the point of sex positivity to accept the preferences of others, provided they're not harming anyone? Isn't acceptance what we kinksters are always going on about when people pooh-pooh BDSM?

Read: Is It Sex Positive or Inappropriate? 10 Questions to Help You Tell the Difference

If you don't like vanilla sex, groovy! Don't have it. Find play partners who delight in your fetishes and go to town with them. Painting others as inferior for not being sexually aroused by the same things as you is ... what's the best word here ... ridiculous? Petty? Pretentious? Few things could be more boring than all that.

You're being oblivious to the fact that trauma is a thing.

I find bruises to be beautiful on my own body. To me, they're symbols of the memories my play partners and I create together. I gaze at them as they heal and fondly remember how they came to be.

Someone who's suffered physical abuse in the past might not feel the same way. They might see my bruises and associate them with horror, anguish, or shame rather than sexy fun. The same applies to other survivors of sexual assault, which is why I don't offer up my rape fantasies to whoever's sitting next to me on the bus.