themerrygentleman:

notquiteluke:

dudhead15:

rosaluxmemeburg:

asgardreid:

bootrear:

king-of-roses:

A handy guide for anyone not familiar

Oh sorry. I made another, more accurate graphic. In case anyone was still confused. 

Are you gonna draw another Venn diagram showing the overlap of abusers in BDSM?

made a better one

But abusive BDSM isn’t legit BDSM…?

yall gotta understand that abuse is a huge problem in the bdsm community
it happens, and the abusers use the defense of ‘it was bdsm’ and it’s unacceptable
theres an overlap there that needs to be acknowledged within the community before we can move on and work on helping victims

Arguments like the one above are examples of the No True Scotsman fallacy—the idea that a member of a certain group or movement who does something reprehensible obviously wasn’t a real member of that group or movement. 

It’s a common argument on tumblr—“racist/transphobic/ableist/etc feminists aren’t real feminists,” “Bigoted Christians aren’t real Christians,” etc, as well as in this context.

It’s an understandable move to want to dissociate the ideals of a group from those who do the opposite of what the group is supposed to stand for, but in the end, this argument deflects the responsibility of acknowledging and dealing with this kind of problem.

Recognizing that there can be bigoted, judgmental Christians, narrow-minded exclusionary feminists, abusive practitioners of BDSM—even if these people don’t live up to what those groups are supposed to represent—is pretty crucial in dealing with these kinds of situations.