I don’t doubt that there are some couples who live the lifestyle 24/7, but we have never minded the practicalities of life getting in the way. We had a few years of BDSM being a huge part of our lives, and now we’re just what Sir calls Suburban Kinksters, with a box of toys under the bed. A locked box, as we also have a child. We are probably not the only D/s couple to have found it easier to be 24/7 before we lived together. Once you have to put out the dustbins and remember to pick up milk, the power balance shifts. Once you become parents, it is completely upended.
Sometimes I regret what I am missing, but going to clubs and munches is simply not compatible with the rest of my life. I used to worry about how I could be submissive and a good feminist; nowadays I don’t worry about what kind of feminist I am, I’m just the feminist that I am, mostly secure with the choices I’ve made, and protective of other people’s rights to make their own choices, whether they’re the same as mine or not.
Now I worry more about whether our history (or the little bit of dabbling we do now) could ever come back and bite us. Recent government policy announcements concern me, because while they’re trying to prevent the corrosion of childhood, they’re merrily eroding my privacy. We’re a pretty unbuttoned sort of family, and it’s hard to shake the belief that we should bring up our child to be open to all possibilities, and non-judgemental about other people’s lifestyle choices. I’d go so far as to say that I’m glad we know a great cosmopolitan mix of people, so that our child can take all of this for granted and never feel obliged to take a route simply because it is the conventional one.
But at what point are we putting our family or our jobs at risk by being ourselves? Should I be scared that one day my entire web history could be exposed (and anyone with infinite patience could comb through years of recipes and blogs to find the mucky bits)? Will the opt-in to adult content mark us out as potential targets? Am I being excessively paranoid, unimportant as I am in the scheme of things? Surely I’m right under the radar here. Perhaps this latest fad of meddling politics will pass, and in the greater scheme of things, a liberal upbringing has more value. It’s more likely to be an issue on a local level: one day I’ll meet someone through work that I once met at a munch. In fact that has happened, without incident. Chill.
This post was written by a RWL Guest Blogger – Emma writes a blog and some people read it, so you might know her or you might not. Either way, she’s not planning to tell you who she is, but she will tell you that “you don’t know me as well as you think you do”.
Image via Niklas Morberg‘s Flickr photostream.
Leave a Reply