50 Lies Told to New People About BDSM by Tyler Rose

 50 Lies Told to New People About BDSM by Tyler Rose is not a why, but a how or how not book. It is also not a user manual.

The author writes that as a long time participant in these activities, she feels the need to offer a correction to myths and lies that have come from mass media popularizations of this end of sexual fetish. Namely the Fifty Shades of Grey romance novel, it’s sequels, and film adaptations that have stimulated interested novices to explore the scene and flood internet forums that serve it. (I have not read any of the books or seen the movies but I did enjoy Fifty Shades of Black, the comedy parody.)

She attempts to tell it as it is from her long experience with this type of human interaction and explains how in reality it varies from the romanticism of these mass media products which apparently present it all as very business-like, codified, and, well, romantic. What actually goes on varies a great deal based on and selected by individual tastes, intentions, desires, and boundaries. As a corrective it is 50 instances of it not being like that, but rather in reality like this.

It is a personal look, to a degree. In an introductory chapter “Who am I?”, she writes, “I'm just a very mouthy author who has been doing this d/s relationship and BDSM stuff for the last 30+ years. All of those years, I was in d/s relationships with my husbands. They were both the dominant. One lasted 13 years. The other lasted 18, ending in January of 2018. I do long term d/s relationships really well, so I have a lot to say about how to make them work.” She may have a lot to say about how to make them work but doesn’t really go into that with this book that is more about surface and ethical aspects of BDSM rather than what emotionally propels people to participate in this sort of fetish life to begin with. The “why” might have made it a more interesting read to vanilla outsiders, but that’s not what this is about. She also presents herself as switchable, sometimes a top and sometimes a bottom.

BDSM is not my fetish of choice. I don’t really understand what the attraction to it is all about, frankly it is all kind of scary, off-putting, and seems kind of group-silly to me as other communities and human activities like bikers and hyper-fandom, like Star Wars, Comic-Con, even spiritual or political cults. A search for connection with others in a way that separates into a smaller herd than the larger herd that we find ourselves lost in and maybe overwhelmed by.  A means of establishing a type of more individual identity maybe.
Apparently it feels good to those who do it. Sensually and emotionally. That is probably reason enough. Searching for a “why” in many things we have to do, particularly those things sexual, might not lead to revelation but rather repressive inaction, misjudgement of others involved, and a type of confused madness.   

Taken as it is on it’s own terms the short e-book might be helpful and as a corrective for those interested and confused by the romanticisms of mass-media products. With that in mind the book is probably successful in what it sets out to do.

Meanwhile some of us will continue to look on from afar scratching our heads and wondering what it’s all ABOUT as we try not to judge and focus on the pride we take in Our Identity Things which might be just as peculiar and inexplicable to others.