Jul 12 2007
bdsm.ameanet.com
AmeaNet members never cease to amaze me. A few years ago a member – I forgot his name – posted a picture showing a picture of a submissive man enjoying punishment by his Mistress. Nobody responded to that post. A few weeks later another picture was posted. This time a woman was being tied up to be flogged by a man. One member complained and that kicked off a discussion about BDSM and Fetishism.
I was intrigued and did not know what to say at first, so I just aired some very abstract ideas about BDSM.
Many discussions followed. It was interesting, because there was a lot of confusion and it took me some time to figure out that definitions differ throughout the world. I will try to keep nationalities out of this – for a change – but to give you an example: the words Fetish and Fetishism. For the largest group of members these words covered any sexual practice from bestiality and pedophilia. A smaller group defined Fetishism as a form of sexuality focused on specific tactile needs like rubber, leather, latex, fur, etc.
Yet another group was convinced that it was just about blood, pain, needles, whippings and other forms of torture — making it impossible for them to read the posts without getting upset. Two or three members even thought it was illegal to download BDSM photographs to their hard drives.
It seemed strange to me that we should have a forum without BDSM, so to please those who got so upset about it, I started another site: bdsm.ameanet.com. I launched it a few months ago with a 2 month free membership to see if anybody was interested. A site with free memberships is always popular, but this particular site had 500 members after the first month, which is quite a lot for what I would call a “special interest” site, receiving traffic from AmeaNet only. At least 20 of these members were the same people who had displayed their disgust on the forum. They were just checking things out, I assumed, but they are still there as regular visitors.
After twelve years of experience with AMEA, I think I have a general idea what is driving people who are looking for erotic art and vintage pornography, but this time I have no clue whatsoever. [To be continued..]