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retrospect, it seems surreal that I reacted so badly to my BDSM orientation.

I remember that I felt vaguely electrified at what I was saying, a little scared... but also comforted. At the time, I hadn't had much contact with other sex theorists, and I thought I was saying something radical. I was scared that my words might appear too radical to be taken seriously. Also, since our culture mostly discusses the idea of "orientation" in regards to gay/ lesbian /bi /transgender /queer, it seemed to me that -- if I dared refer to it as "my BDSM orientation" -- then a comparison with LGBTQ was implied in my statement.

Would the world believe that my BDSM desires could be as "real," as "deep-rooted," as "unavoidable" as the sexual orientation of a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender/queer person? Would I offend GLBTQ people by implying that my sexual needs are as "real," "deep-rooted" and "unavoidable" as theirs?

I later found out that some LGBTQ people do get offended by it, and others don't. Sometime you end up with ridiculous arguments like this one from a comments thread on an incredibly BDSM-phobic blog: one person says, "As a lesbian, I would like to say a sincere fuck you to people comparing BDSM to homosexuality," to which another person replies, "As a queer person myself, I would like to say a sincere fuck you to people who claim that I ought to see my BDSM and my queerness differently." As for me, Clarisse, I'll be frank with you -- I've come to the conclusion that I don't have a dog in that fight, and I'm staying out of it. I'm straight as the day is long, but I've also been invited to speak about BDSM at queer conventions and to write about BDSM on queer blogs. So I'll hang out with the people who are cool with me, and everyone else can kick me out of their LGBTQ circles as much as they want.

But I used to feel a lot more worried about how I'd be perceived for talking about BDSM as an orientation. Still, as weird as the concept of "BDSM as an orientation" felt when I first thought of it, it also felt right. When I looked back at my memories and previous actions, it was quite obvious that I have always had these needs, desires and fantasies. Acknowledging this, and applying the word "orientation" to BDSM, helped me come to terms with my BDSM identity.

The "BDSM orientation" idea cleared a mental path for me to think of BDSM as a inbuilt part of myself, like my bone structure or eye color. BDSM became something that it was desirable to accept, come to terms with... even embrace. It was a hugely liberating way of thinking about it: if I thought of BDSM as an orientation, that meant I didn't have to worry about or fight it anymore.

Since then, I've been so buried in sexuality theory and I've talked to so many BDSM people that -- well, now the idea of a "BDSM orientation" seems kinda boring. I am reminded that it's a radical concept only when I talk to people who don't think about these things all the time. I think that the idea of BDSM as an orientation occurs naturally to people who think a lot about BDSM sexuality, because so many kinksters either know we're BDSM people all along, or instantly recognize BDSM once we find it. Here's a quotation from an article about a BDSM-related legal case that quotes sexologist Charles Moser at the end, as he very eloquently describes how BDSM can be considered a sexual orientation:

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