Is BDSM a religion?

[damyanti]

As someone who has a bit of a fetish on intellectual and psychological musings, especially in terms of (all) D/s relationships, I quite enjoyed your opening posts, but your later ones do make me wonder what it is you hope to accomplish...since you seem to have already made up your mind.

So let me state here unequivocally - BDSM is in no way, shape or form a religion!

And it most certainly isnt a cult - in cult people have uniform beliefs, if you bother to read through other threads (BDSM And Feminism; Intelligence and Submission; Washing feet; Old School ; Question about romance ; Safe Words and Safety Concerns ; On Being a Dominant; and many, many more) you will see that we cant agree on anything ...except maybe that its ok that we dont agree on anything and that we all have the right to live our lives in a way that feels right to us...but thats hardly a cult-like mind frame.

Whereever there is a gathering of people there are bound to always be bad people, people who always have to be right, people who get off on brainwashing the less experienced ones, those who use just about anything to excuse abuse........but all these things have nothing to do with BDSM and exist in vanilla world too, maybe even more so....(but even if the opposite were true, I have met so many wonderful and wise people here, and learned so much - even from those not so wise, imho - that that makes it more than worth it and makes me grateful that this site exists).

What you mistake for religious fervor is in fact devotion and intimacy that is born out of sharing your life with someone else....in BDSM the intensity of it is more pronounced because in adition to sharing, you are also placing your life into someone elses hands or someone else is placing their life into yours so communication is mandatory...and often reaches levels that I imagine confuse and scare vanilla people.

I'm strong-minded, indepndent adult, reputedly highly intelligent and not easily brainwashed....I am also determined and know what I want...and it does involve "us against the rest of the world" feeling. I wont settle for less.

This isnt right for everybody...we get that...so I can assure you that we have never had a thread where we discussed our evil plan of turning the rest of the world into one giant dungeon (though numbers in Science on BDSM thread make for an interesting reading)....so please extend us the same courtesy of not implying that there is something sinister, sick or abnormal in a way we choose to conduct our personal relationship. Because by your definition of religion what all the vanilla people who stay in bed on Sunday morning and shout "oh, god" are doing is praying, .

[Veronika]

I quite enjoyed your opening posts, but your later ones do make me wonder what it is you hope to accomplish..

Please read my posts 24 and 39.

so please extend us the same courtesy of not implying that there is something sinister, sick or abnormal in a way we choose to conduct our personal relationship.

I have never said those things, why would you interpret it that way? Are those your own thoughts?

[lucy]

This thread once more showed me how lucky i am to not believe in anything. Life's just so much easier when you're an ignostic atheist

To the original question (which i think is a good one): Nope, BDSM is not a religion, because unlike the only religion i know (catholicism) and most i heard of nobody tries to tell me what is right and wrong, good or bad, allowed or forbidden.
I can walk through the world of BDSM, pick things i like, reject ideas i dislike, mix it all together and form something that perfectly suits my needs.
If i'm really lucky, i can do that with someone else, or more than one, and nobody tells me with whom and how many of them.

Now which religion allows you that many choices?

[Veronika]

the original question (which i think is a good one)

I appreciate that, thanks.