"One of the biggest for me was realising that D/s is not always about physical punishment & 'forcing' one's sub to do things. "

This was the biggist one for me, certainly before my "awakening" and I had it established by the time I was in high school. I don't know where I heard the term BDSM first... I just know that by around grade 11 I knew the term. But my personal biggest misconception was that ALL people involved are either sadists or masochists, which is obvioulsy not so. I also understood nothing about the dynamic of power exchange, and thinking back yes I probbaly like a lot of other "vanilla" folk thought that subs were being "forced" into doing things.

Now of course much later I know that any Dom who'd force a sub to do something that was genuinely against their will is pretty much no-no #1 of the serious Dom. Mind you, I guarantee you there are a lot of curious folk wandering into chatrooms, running into those f*ckwitted wannabes with names like "God and Master of the Universe" and what have you (the ones who more or less refer to women as "cunts" as a standard greeting, you can't help but run in to them sadly, with plenty of BS'ers in FemDom to match), who are doing a great deal to mislead people into believing that the steryotypes are true. Abusers hiding under any different name remain abusers.

Another misconception I had (and this was due mainly to the only imagergy I'd had on the subject at the time) was that we're all supposed to be wearing leather apparently. I mean, I've got nothing against leather mind you but we hardly wear it all the time I think.