As a reaction to my own piece, I wanted to make sure that one very important aspect didn’t get lost amongst all those words and concepts: that of personal responsibility. I think if our focus strays too far from that ideal then we are gonna end up with one heck of a self full filling prophecy where in everyone cries ‘victim’ and no real change is seen. That would be more than a little heartbreaking to me since the the aim here is to make the way it works better, not worse.
Now I see it as personal responsibility on all sides, beginning with the predators. After all if they weren’t behaving how they are we wouldn’t even have to be concerned with reactions as there would be nothing to react to. It reminds me of the old chicken and egg scenario concerning how a woman dresses vs her ‘asking’ to be raped. Yes a woman should totally be able to dress how she likes without fear of anything happening as a consequence. But the reality is that as a woman that IS always in the back of your mind when you are choosing your outfit. My point is, if there weren’t predators out there ready to use the ‘short skirt’ explanation as rationale for their actions then women wouldnt give a second thought to how they dress in regard to anything but personal preference.
Same goes for all this BDSM scene predator business. If they weren’t out there doing what they do noone would need to be concerned for how the preyed upon handled themselves when confronted. Because quite simply there would be no confrontations (in a perfect world that is). But that isnt likely to happen anytime soon, although i do hope change is starting to take hold a little.
So, since we’ve surmised that predatory behavior isn’t gonna go poof overnight, it falls to the preyed upon to take hold of their personal responsibility as well. I’ve written about it before many times, but till it takes hold it bears repeating:
- Know yourself, your boundaries, your expectations and your limits
- Defend those boundaries. Keep them as safe as a mama lion does her cubs, they are that precious.
- Be polite but firm. Nothing will kill your cause faster than being overbearing or overreacting.
- Talk. Say no. Speakout about your experiences, good and bad.
- Do not perpetuate the problem. If you are complaining to your subbie girlfriends that Dom X just wont keep his hands off you, but at every much you are showing him your new bra.. well.. pick one and stay there. You cant have it both ways.
- Be aware of your surroundings and surrounding event goers.
- Be aware of verbal and non verbal communication signals and red flags
- All of this and more is covered in Social Self Defense and I encourage you to check it out.
I can see some of the predators themselves nodding their heads on this one as if to say ‘yeah! see it aint our fault! YOU shoud be doing more!’ Literally I’ve heard this argument dozens of times face to face and it makes me furious. For one thing its more of the ‘blame the victims’ mentality. But mainly because they arent ACTUALLY advocating personal responsibility, if they were they wouldnt be predators. But rather they think that their potential ‘victims’ will simply not follow thru on this and that means they get to keep doing what it is they do unchecked, their playground will remain devoid of referrees. You can almost hear them saying ‘yeah see if we scream loud enough that we are behind this movement then those we wanna prey on will think we are the good guys and flock to us’. These are the ones that would subvert this empowering message of self responsibility to twist it to their own gains. They are out there, believe me.
Recently I was at an event where an incident occurred. I relayed the info to the event organizer for them to handle how they saw fit. One of the responses I got back was ‘oh he’s harmless, he’s a submissives best friend and often comes to their rescue..’ I was floored. This is a guy known for his inappropriate behavior and here is his using his rep as a ‘rescuer’ to keep opinions at such a level so that no one can fault him if ‘this one time there was a misunderstanding’. First off he shouldn’t be doing what he does. Secondly in my opinion the organizer shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to dismiss it all. But since that seems to be the prevailing pattern at the moment.. Third, submissives need to stop putting out signals that we need rescuing. If we didn’t need rescuing then this guy’s whole schtick goes out the window.
So here’s the breakdown: The bad folks are gonna keep doing the bad things. The ones getting the bad things done to them are gonna have to step up and do most of the work, as unfair as that is. And even then some of the bad folks are gonna slip thru as good guys.
Stay vigilant, keep your guard up and don’t be fooled by predators in rescue gear. And if they come to your ‘rescue’ have the tools and the balls to be able to say ‘thanks but no thanks, i can take care of myself’. That empowers you and disarms them, a definite win/win scenario.
~kim
Kink In Motion
