I am an engaged mother of two. I live in an urban neighborhood. I am, in essence, a housewife. My hobbies include leatherworking and web-page building. I love my daughters and would die for them. I love my fiancée, as well. To all outside appearances, I am a normal, healthy, slightly-overweight, taller than average, blonde with dyed-red hair, blue eyed, Heinz 57 mutt with breasts larger than average, one cavity, and a quick laugh. I am occasionally shy, though not often, and I laugh a lot. I wear a silver Celtic knot work  ring on my left ring finger, and a simple silver chain. My favorite mode of dress is black shirt, black skirt, and sandals (not because of some thwarted desire to be a goth, but simply because I like black; it’s slimming). I am politically active and register as a radical on the political compass. I listen to a variety of music including opera, classic rock, techno, and alternative. I play with my daughter, I play with my cats, I drink tea and cry watching movies. I cook well, I go out for sushi, and I adore good pizza. I burp, I fart, I sneeze, I scratch in awkward situations, I get morning breath and I yawn when I am tired or bored, though I try not to do it in people’s faces. To outside appearances, I am a somewhat-odd-but-for-the-most-part-normal woman that appears to be in her early twenties. I’m also a sadist.

I don’t go lurking in dark, smoky clubs looking for victims (not anymore, at least – I gave that up when I turned twenty). I don’t dress in restrictive black leather corsets and wear seven-inch heels, though the idea of a restrictive black leather corset is yummy. I don’t dress like a biker; I don’t have a bunch of tattoos or piercings (my one set of body piercings got taken out the moment my eldest daughter started to tug things).  I don’t dress like Dracula (anymore – another thing given up at twenty), I don’t leer or intimidate. I don’t injure people who don’t feel they require it. I don’t drink except socially, I don’t smoke, I am drug free. I do not kidnap people, drag them off to dungeons, and then ritualistically torture them until they believe they should be my unequivocal slaves. (Maybe I should. I hate housework.) I am, in essence, a feminist, though I shave, well, just about everything and I don’t believe in female supremacy, superiority, or even that they’re simply spiffier than males (though they tend to be cuter). I’m not promiscuous, I’m not a prostitute; I’m just a sadist.

What does this mean? It means that I enjoy giving pain to those who enjoy receiving it. I use a variety of devices for this sort of play, but I prefer my hands and fingernails. I ask what a person cannot stand before a scene, discuss their limits, talk about safewords that they can use to slow the scene down or stop it entirely – and I honor their wishes. Generally, my partners know what they are getting into, though I have introduced one or two people to S&M who hadn’t been interested before. I don’t have sex with children, or animals, or corpses. I don’t exchange my services for money, though a great many women are Professional Dominants, and are respected by some kinksters for their skill; contrary to the opinions of the police and conservative politicians, they are not prostitutes. Most of us aren’t. I won’t say that no-one into BDSM is a prostitute, or that there has never been a member of the community who has patronized one.

We are HUMAN. We have our foibles, we have our quirks, we have our fears and dreams and realities and hopes. We can be conservative, or liberal; Democratic or Republican or Libertarian or Green or Reform. We can be Christian (there is in fact a whole section of BDSM that is considered Christian and based on Biblical teachings; see the CADS website for more information) or we can be Wiccan, Agnostic, Buddhist or Hindu. We can be any nationality or race. We can be homophobes and racists, or members of the NAACP and the ACLU. We can be gay, straight, bisexual, transvestite, or transsexual.

We can be the person in the wheelchair you chatted with on the bus the day your car broke down; your friendly local librarian who helped your child research Christopher Columbus; the usher at the play last night who smiled and caught you when you nearly fell; your doctor, your nurse, your dentist. We can be lawyers, computer technician, military personnel, mental health workers, dressmakers, laundresses. We can be blue collar or white collar. We can be your sister, your brother, your daughter, your cousin, your (eek) parents or your (EEK) grandparents. We can be filthy rich, or live in a bad neighborhood and wrestle with the cockroaches for possession of our house. We can be clinically depressed or so happy we make people sick.

We aren’t what we’re portrayed to be in the media, by the police, by politicians, by preachers, by feminist organizations and by pop culture. We aren’t hulking, angry, murderous criminals who enjoy the screams of tortured women who were kidnapped from their homes or workplaces. We aren’t vicious manipulators. We do not abuse children; we do not kick our dogs, yank out our cats’ fur, or fry ants with magnifying glasses – though I do take a certain joy in poisoning fire ant mounds.

We can be members of the so-called BDSM 'community', or we could be disillusioned by it to the point where we have withdrawn (like I did); we can be friendly or standoffish, willing to discuss our kink or private about it. We can be single, married, polyamorous, or celibate.

Many of us grew up with this as a part of us; others stumbled into it through fiction or erotica or porn; others were introduced to it by the Internet (I was); and some were married for years before, one night, our spouse said, “Honey? I have something to tell you…” I don’t know if it’s genetic, or socially motivated, or just fun. It IS fun, though. Its supposed to be. But so is sex. And life in general.

Yes, it can be about sex. It can also be about money. It can also be a way to release mental energy and tension. It can be about just about anything you need it to be about, though I don’t recommend hurting your partner because your kid spat on you this morning. We try to exercise some self-control so we don’t become monsters. We aren’t abusers. Abuse is not consensual – sadomasochistic play is.

We are human. Our essential humanity is inescapable; we are not angels, but we are not demons, either. We are demonized, denounced, divorced, and denied. We are made to cry, sometimes, by the fact that something we need, something that gives us what we crave, is made monstrous by the personal devils of those outside of us. We are told that we are sick, and require therapy; we are told we are criminal, and require jail. We are called mentally ill, incompetent, or deficient. We have children taken away from us. We are misunderstood by police who behave more like sexual vigilantes than officers of the law. Judges do not understand, nor have any wish to. We lose friends. We lose family. We can lose everything.

We don’t want, necessarily, to rule the world, to flaunt what we are, to have S&M Pride Parades and march through the streets.

We wouldn’t mind being allowed to live in peace, though, however tenuous (and punctuated by moans of joy) that peace might be.