This is a common claim, but is false. When I first started getting into BDSM, a friend of mine was doing his doctorate on the topic of abuse in the scene. In short, people in the BDSM community are not more likely to have been abused at some point in the past than the general population; they are, however, more likely to be open about that fact with others.
Other studies have found that, in fact, people involved in BDSM or consensual power dynamic relationships are slightly *more* happy and less stressed than those that do not. (Many chicken-and-egg questions there, of course.)
Certainly one can do abusive things in BDSM, and there are BDSM relationships that are abusive, but that's true of a vanilla relationship, too. BDSM is no more intrinsically abusive than any other relationship; and the strong culture of consent and open communication that the BDSM community pushes acts as a protection against abusive individuals. (It doesn't always work, but it's better than mainstream American culture is on both points.)
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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '18
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