In the world of BDSM there are many things that we do as consenting adults that will offend those who don’t understand our world.
Why would you want someone to beat you?
Why do you like to beat people?
Why would you give anyone the authority to make decisions for you?
For those on the outside unfamiliar with our consensual practices the who kit & kaboodle of BDSM is a huge question mark. For those of us on the inside, we also question, WHY.
Why do some people like scat?
Why do some people like needles?
Who on earth would agree to sign a slave contract?
This thing that we do is complex and the why behind all of our actions is often not a simple why.
I am pretty good about not judging those who practice in a different manner than I do. Some things freak me out and make me internally go hell to the no! I mean the odds of you tuning in and reading about my experiences in urethra fucking are none and none. For those who enjoy it I am willing to watch though. I might even rub one off if you look like you are having a good time.
There are things that I judge. There are practices that I judge. One of them is the slave auction.
Full disclosure: I’ve participated in a slave auction.
It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life and I am still scarred to this day about it. My opinion on the slave auction is colored by that experience for sure. It is not about my one horrific experience though that has me writing. It is the process itself that makes me want you to reconsider this practice.
Look I am a Black woman, living in the United States, and I get the stigma attached to that word. I get the history and I understand why my contemporaries in the vanilla world question my choice to embrace that title.
What I don’t get is why we are embracing a practice that is humiliating, degrading and reduces the participants to chattel. It’s one thing to embrace those things as a consenting adult within the confines of your consensual relationship. It is something else to embrace it as a community and to celebrate it at our dungeons and conferences.
So many of us migrate to this alternative lifestyle to find acceptance and freedom. The art of the auction supports neither.
It advocates separation, it divides and corrupts the process of inclusion.
It values the familiar and the traditional, when we on the whole as a community are neither.
A person is herded to be judged and inspected by the masses. Not unlike the auctions of my ancestors, the person on the block is defined by the number they bring in, be it zero or a million.
They are judged by the shape of their body not the content of their minds.
Then when they are done they are handed over to their owner regardless of if they are a good fit or not.
This is in such contrast and contradiction to the principles of this thing we do that I wonder why it is so popular and such a staple at all of our events and locations.
It’s beyond time to rethink this practice.
It’s beyond time to retire this practice.
Aphrodite Brown