I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and have many times started and ultimately left the post in the drafts folder.
I often find myself struggling to explain my preferences to people that I meet in a way that is understood. I think the biggest stumbling block is that many people start with the assumption that dominance/submission has a direction correlation with top/bottom and a similar correlation with sadism/masochism. It doesn’t. In many cases that may be the case but there is no reason this needs to always be the case.
I like pain. I like being hit. Upon saying this I will get a comment like “That means you’re submissive” sometimes followed by even more cluelessness like “you just don’t know it”. No. Google helpfully provides us with a definition for submission: the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. I’m not interested in submitting to someone’s will or authority, I just want someone to hit me. Ideally more than once.
Plus there is the whole bondage thing. The easiest way to explain it is that bondage including actual restraint is a hard limit (that’s a no).