Home > No Stupid (Kink) Questions > No Stupid (Kink) Questions: Episode 6 – Ageism in BDSM?

No Stupid (Kink) Questions: Episode 6 – Ageism in BDSM?

December 8th, 2010

NoStupidKinkQuestionsGandhi said that if you want to change the world, you have to be the change you want to see. To that end, Insatiable Desire brings you No Stupid (Kink) Questions, a series of questions asked by novice kinksters around the web. If you have a question for us, leave it in comments, or send it to rayne (at) insatiabledesire (dot) com with “NS(K)Q” in the subject.

Question 6:

So, I’m looking around the FetLife community for my area, and there seems to be very few people in my age group.  Will I be fighting a losing battle? Or is age just a number in the BDSM community?

“The BDSM community” is just a bunch of people, with similar interests, who choose to occasionally make nice in the interest of camaraderie, or information sharing, or finding a date, or… Joe and Josephine Average in many cases.  So of course there will be those outside of your age group who are going to treat you as if you are irrelevant simply because you’re too old, or too young.  While I wouldn’t say the BDSM community corners the market on assholery, I won’t deny the fact that there are assholes lurking within our midst.  That’s life. 

But there are those of us who believe that age is just a number, too.  There are dirty old men who prefer young adult women, and young adult women who prefer dirty old men.  And cougars, and the younger men who love them.  People all over the age spectrum who date other people all over the age spectrum.

Unless you’re me, or M, or one of the people like us, you probably wouldn’t stay home from a really cool party, or the bar because someone might be a dick.  Don’t avoid the kink community just because someone might be a dick.  Someone might be a dick anywhere you go.  And the mythical “they” were saying that holing yourself up in a building all the time isn’t healthy long before there were psychiatrists to agree.  Though why “they” think they’re so smart, I’ll never know.

But really? There aren’t many people you can’t learn something from.  Even if it’s just who you don’t want to be.  So none of us are irrelevant.

  1. Jacob Marley
    May 29th, 2012 at 00:20 | #1

    Yes, I believe you are wasting your effort. No one sees ageism as a problem. Old people should be housed in institutions out of the public’s view. I started complaining about ageism on Fetlife and was told I was being overly sensitive or that I am not a nice person. People don’t like be because… name your reason. When challenged on whether they have a single friend over 60, 70 or 80 years old, the respondents eyes glazed over and they simply ignored my questions. I was young once and know what it is like to hope old people will go away and not put a damper on activities.

  2. Camryn
    May 16th, 2014 at 00:54 | #2

    Now this is something I hadn’t thought about. Ageism is definitely real, but it doesn’t get a lot of attention for some reason. If it exists in the macro, it exists in the micro, so I’m sure people encounter in in BDSM. I wonder how it plays out though? I mean, I can see people assuming the 50-something man is a Dom and the 20-something woman is a sub (though of course gender is a part of those assumptions), but I can’t imagine anyone saying “You’re too old, go home.”

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