Why I Write about BDSM
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com  

My friend Jonathan asked me recently why I only wrote about BDSM. He knew that this is a market so small that a fellow writer (a pretty famous one) told me that over a decade he’d earned enough to buy an inexpensive car. I translated this to mean about $15,000. He definitely wasn’t motivated by money, and he suggested that I’d best not be either.

What Jonathan was really saying was that he thought my writing was good enough to be read by a wider audience. What he didn’t know was that before becoming a BDSM writer circa 1996, I did write for the unwashed masses. I wrote spirituality columns as well as a great deal of journalistic material, the sum total of which was about enough to buy an inexpensive car. Writing doesn’t pay a darn regardless of the genre, not to mention the short shelf life of newspapers.

My first fetish columns ran in DeSade, a BDSM ‘zine published by a local eccentric named Vanilla Christ. This was years before the Vermont community was born, and so the photo of his balls covered in clothes pins on the cover quite shocked me. Despite my dazed state, I was thrilled to be published.

It would be a few years before I became as prolific as I am now. My pace picked up significantly in 2000 after what I refer to as the “Moby Debacle,” a love affair gone to hell and back. The writing helped heal my wounded heart, and the timing turned out to be fortuitous as well. The upsurge in internet usage offered up a community ravenous for a different approach, particularly articles that weren’t erotica or practicum.

Despite all this, my writing still only reaches a small percent of the kinky population; those who are literate and mostly online. Relative to the population at large, this is an infinitesimally tiny group, which begs the question “why bother?”

The reason I write for the BDSM audience is because I can make a real difference in our little community; the big fish in a small pond effect. Our community is experiencing unparalleled growth and every voice is needed, not just writers but from group leaders and activists as well. Not everyone can join the real time community, but most everyone reads literature at one time or another. My goal is to help people in the lifestyle feel validated about what they are doing and able to express their orientation with pride. Information is the key to that acceptance; not just information about how to tie someone up, but how to live it in a way that is true to oneself.

This small difference that I make, conveyed to me through e-mails from my readers, is a balm to my writer’s soul. It is this balm, in the absence of being paid, that keeps my fingers from stiffening up. I must also admit that my spirituality columns, while popular, never reached a very sizeable audience. My journalistic scribbles, while competent, translated into just another pile of yesterday’s news. So while I still do these other works, they straggle on only after I’m done expressing my kinky thoughts.
 
It is an honor to be part of a cadre of writers working to improve our lot. It is also an honor to be read by so many hungry for more.

If you enjoyed this article you might like Sadie's vision statement: What I Know For Sure

REFERENCES
Publications that run Sadie’s Stuff
http://www.sensuoussadie.com/sadiespublications.htm

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Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn , Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications