possibly be BDSM! Because I'm not a BDSMer! Because BDSM is dirty." But we shouldn't necessarily blame people for this instinct to reject and categorize: the instinct is one that comes from being scared and oppressed... because the social penalties for "getting it wrong” are high. Remember, those New York City dominatrixes thought they were "safe" from the law as long as BDSM didn't count as sex. But as soon as someone decided BDSM "counted as" sex, those dominatrixes were arrested. It's just one more example of how sexual stigma for "different kinds of sex" is constantly intertwined. No type of consensual sexuality can express itself freely until people agree that "among consenting adults, there is no 'should’." The Romans, those ancient imperialists, used to say: "Divide and conquer." When consensual sexualities are scared of each other, we will continue to be conquered. As long as "vanilla" people are afraid of "BDSM"... as long as "BDSMers" are afraid of being seen as "sexual"... as long as the social penalties for being a "slut" or a "whore" are incredibly steep... as long as sex workers are stigmatized and criminalized... everyone will be bound by these oppressive standards. ok oe The Embodied Side of BDSM versus Sex Although Part 1 was all about how the divide between "BDSM" and "sex" is often nonsensical, or purely political, or socially constructed... that doesn't mean that the divide does not exist. I once had a conversation about ignoring social constructs with a wise friend, who noted dryly that: "One-way streets are a social construct. That doesn't mean we should ignore them." Just because the outside world influences our sexuality, does not mean that our sexual preferences are invalid. Some polyamorous BDSMers have very different rules about having sex with outsiders, as opposed to doing BDSM with outsiders. For example, during the time when I was considering a transition to polyamory, I myself had a couple relationships where we were sexually monogamo