Questions! Why think that you need to defend what you are? Would your parents even dream of justifying the fact that (one assumes) your father does NOT keep your mother naked and in chains and whip her to orgasm every weekend? Probably not!

Would you even contemplate persuading your father to start stripping & whipping your mother? I very much doubt it because we both know you’d be wasting your time. How they are is just how they are and that’s that!

The point is, they don’t defend their way of life because they don’t feel they do anything that needs defending. You just need to get your head in the same place about your own lifestyle.

Once you start trying to defend who and what you are, people assume you have doubts and, if they disapprove of what you do, they will go for it in the belief that, if they pile on enough pressure, your doubts will grow and you’ll change and become what they want you to be.

Give them no hope whatsoever, on the other hand and … Well, it may take a while but I have noticed that objectors tend to become acceptors eventually, once they realise they don’t have a hope in hell of winning!

Just be yourself, in other words! I’m not saying go rub their noses in it because then they’ll assume your lifestyle to be some sort of childish rebellion. I am merely suggesting that you simply living your life how you want to live it with quiet confidence is a far more potent weapon against bigotry than arguing.

You just can’t argue people out of beliefs they were never argued into. They just carry on believing the truth to be what they want it to be — or, in this case, more likely what some scandal-sheet newspaper has decided is the ‘sick truth about S&M’ just so that can up their circulation with a little kinky soft-porn without upsetting the puritans. (Trust me on that last part. I’m an ex-journalist!)

An example? Before my alpha got shipped back to the US, I also had a beta and, this being South London, our social life as a family centred around our local pub.

Picture the scene! Grubby, working-class boozer packed with labourers and local villains? Long-haired arty-type enters with two women in tow; both decades younger than me and both with slave-collars padlocked around their pretty necks? Mutterings of “sick bastard” and “probably Satanists here for the churchyard”?

Eventually, somebody asked me to my face. I just laughed and said: “No, we’re not Satanists! They’re my two slaves. We’re just having a few beers on our way back from the supermarket.”

And that was that. I turned from “sick bastard” to “lucky bastard” and we were accepted as just another part of the community. All because I and mine just carried on being Us as if it was the most normal thing in the world — which, of course, for us, it was!

I am also a parent, by the way, so I can see this from their side.