The Blind Men and the Elephant (AKA There is No One True Way)

There is an old parable called ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’. The oldest version of it came from a Buddhist text from 500BCE. It’s a story about a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before, and who learn what the elephant is like by touching it.

Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant, but only one part, such as the side or the tail. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are all very different because they only explored a small piece of it.

Read more: The Blind Men and the Elephant (AKA There is No One True Way)

Because they are all examining the same thing, and because all of their descriptions are different… each one decides the others are lying. It turns into a physical fight with all of them brawling on the ground, while they try to insist their ideas are the correct ones.

The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.  (paraphrased from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant)

This is something I see a lot when it comes to the BDSM world, but also the wider world as well. And it isn’t a new behavior by any means, which is why there are so many versions of this parable.

A lot of ideas for this blog come from things I see on social media, in book reviews, or in other articles. There is a huge amount of misinformation out there when it comes to kink. That shouldn’t really be a surprise when you think about how recently the BDSM world has stepped out of the shadows and worked its way into mainstream life.

Twenty years ago blogs like this were almost impossible to find. Non-fiction articles and books were even rarer—as I’ve mentioned before. But now that kink is out of the whip closet, we have an opportunity to learn things the right way.

You have multiple sources to draw on. You can compare information from different places. You can hear from people who have actually lived this life for a long time, instead of cobbling together an idea of how this works from the fiction you read for fun.

That’s so important. I can’t tell you how lucky we are to live in a time where it’s okay to be interested in BDSM. It’s okay to research it, and the information is all out there with a few taps on the keyboard.

That being said… for every good source of information… there are several sources who haven’t really done their own research but are pretending to be experts. They are passing on their own opinions, often based on limited experience, as facts about how “The Lifestyle works” and they will judge anyone who doesn’t follow those rules and beliefs.

One of the first things you’re going to learn if you actually do your research with an open mind, is that there are very few hard rules in the BDSM world, aside from making sure everyone is consenting. Despite what you will see in groups, on social media, or in memes… there is NO one true path through this world.

What can look like abuse from the outside can often be someone’s favorite pleasure. What you would hate to experience… I guarantee people are out there absolutely loving. And just because it’s not your way doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

For instance, I see “If it’s not Safe, Sane, and Consensual it’s an unhealthy relationship.” But that’s not true. Many people dislike the SSC creed. They don’t feel it realistically represents the BDSM world and it’s not the only option out there—it’s just the most vocal one.

I’ve spoken about SSC frequently, so I’m not going to get into that again. It’s just one example I see people pushing as ‘the only way’ that is not actually the only way, but one choice of many.

As someone who has been in the scene for a long time and has been educating people on BDSM for years now, I will often speak up when I see wrong information being spread.

Sometimes people listen, but it’s more likely they’ll just argue about it, because no one likes to be called out in front of an audience, even if you do it gently. It’s not really ideal to point people to the right information that way, though sometimes people do listen, and you can get through to them.

I find it more useful to use these things as a jumping off point to explore here on my blog. First, because if one person believes something that’s untrue, most likely there are tons of other people who do as well, which makes an educational article about it useful.

Second, because I’m always looking for new things to write about here. Not surprisingly, it can be hard to come up with new ideas to keep things flowing after a couple of years.

I don’t call myself an expert on all things kink related, because I learn new stuff every day. But I am an experienced player for all of my adult life. I’ve been a Dom. I’ve been a sub. I’ve been a slave, a brat, a Little.

I’ve had a lot of adventures in the BDSM world, and I’ve experienced a myriad of things with an open mind.

Someone who has had one Dom, and had one kind of dynamic with that Dom, may feel like they are an expert—and maybe they are in that one narrow area. But because that’s all they’ve experienced it’s very easy to think that’s all there is.

It’s also easy for people to pick up the wrong information when their experiences are limited to just one partner, just one club, just one friend group, or just from reading fiction. To open yourself to the world out there, you need to experience more than just a slice of it.

A big issue we have is people thinking they know everything about BDSM, The Scene, or The Lifestyle when they’ve really only experienced a sliver. It’s okay if your only BDSM experiences have been with one person, but if don’t look beyond that to educate yourself, then you are bound to pick up any opinions they have and treat them like facts.

That’s one step away from judging everyone else by what you ‘know’ to be true. And I can’t tell you how many people I see doing this.

It’s one thing to be perfectly content with the BDSM in your life. If you’re happy with one partner, who does things specifically in one way, then that’s great! But it doesn’t mean that everyone who has a different dynamic is wrong and that’s where the problems pop up.

I swear the most judgmental people I see, are the ones who have barely dipped their toe into the scene. It’s as though the less you experience, the more you want to complain about how other people are doing things. And that’s an issue because these people are usually much more vocal than those who are just happily kinking through life.

Unfortunately this even happens in the book world. With authors or readers who may, or may not, live a kink lifestyle tearing down authors who they think are writing about kink wrong. Aside from the fact that fiction is fiction and shouldn’t be used as a template for a relationship… a lot of the things I see them ripping apart are perfectly valid, and realistic things that do happen in the BDSM world.

It shows just how limited their experiences are to people who have been in this lifestyle for a long time. And if you say anything to contradict what they are telling people, you’ll usually find yourself blocked and your comment deleted because they don’t want their followers to have any doubts that they are a true source of knowledge.

When it’s an author, you’ll often see them doing it as a way to promote their own books. So you’ll see comments like “Ugh! I can’t believe they wrote this! That’s so unrealistic. MY books would NEVER have something so unrealistic in them! I write real BDSM because I live it and know it!” Which is great… unless what they are criticizing is something perfectly normal and they just haven’t experienced enough of the kink world to be aware.

They can sound absolutely self-assured that they are right, because they truly believe they are. They’ve closed their minds to any alternative views and simply refuse to learn beyond what they’ve read or experienced themselves.

It’s even worse when these people are out there making memes or articles based on their way being the only way. You’d probably be shocked at how many people with limited experience do that.

So how do you know who is real? Who to believe? What informational sources are valid?

Here are a few tips.

1. Your first clue is that anyone who is telling you there’s only one way to do something, is probably someone who has only experienced that one way. You should take everything they say with a grain of salt. If what they say resonates with you, then that’s fine. You might like the exact same kind of lifestyle.

But if it doesn’t, then feel free to walk away and find something that resonates better. Or better yet, explore different paths until you find the one that seems to fit.

• If someone gets defensive when you, or other people, ask questions then it’s likely they aren’t as confident about their information as they seem to be. If they block people who are politely asking or disagreeing then it’s a sign that they are more concerned with the watching audience, than with actually learning.

People who are open to discussion are people who haven’t closed their minds. They are people who are willing to be wrong in order to learn new things.

• Look for people who use modifying words like ‘some’ when talking about people in the scene. As in ‘some people do it like this…’ That’s a sign that they are aware of how diverse the scene is, and how many different paths there are.

• Always look at different perspectives and compare information. This is good advice to keep in mind no matter what the topic. Don’t just take the first opinion you see as fact. Even if someone is 100% right about what they are saying, there are still a lot of nuances to that. Remember the blind men and the elephant. Each man was utterly convinced of the facts and yet… still not understanding the whole picture.

What might be right for one person, or right in their experience, may differ greatly from what other people know.

• Street cred is a thing. Do you know people who trust this source? Were they recommended to you by someone who is experienced themselves? Are there other sources out there that agree with them. None of those things mean someone can’t be wrong, but it does speak to the fact that they aren’t just making things up on the spot.
  
  On social media, does the person who is talking have other experienced community and lifestyle members around who agree with them? In my experience, people who talk a lot about how things should be done in the scene, but rarely have any known lifestyle members in their comment section… are usually blocking them so they can’t insert alternative opinions.

• Do they have a steady source of information? They should have a blog, YouTube channel, or podcast where you get more than just random comments, but an entire well-reasoned opinion on a topic, if you’re going to take their advice. Again that doesn’t mean they are right, but it does mean they’ve put thought and energy into explaining why they believe the way they do.

It’s also very easy to get an idea about how much experience they have and how varied it is, when there’s a long record of it available.

• Are they constantly telling people that they are very experienced? That they are experts? That they know what they are talking about better than other people?

People who are confident in what they know, don’t really need to do this. If you’re an expert, then people who are around you a lot will already be aware of it. You won’t have to keep telling them.

You also won’t feel a need to compare other people to you in a negative light. Confident people, in general, just don’t need to put someone or their work down in public, in order to lift themselves.  Aside from being tacky, it’s a sign that underneath they are insecure and maybe don’t feel like they know the topic as well as they are presenting.

We live in a time where learning how to kink in safe and healthy ways is easy. You don’t need to try to figure out how the lifestyle works from reading fiction the way many people used to.

There’s so much information out there. You just need to be careful and vet your sources before deciding to follow them. The best advice I can give you is to just make sure you don’t follow just one source. Collect multiple sources, compare information—that’s how you find real sources you can trust.

I hope that’s how some of you found this blog.