This past year of blogging has brought many changes to not only my own self, but to our online community as well.
Through contact with literally thousands of people, I have guided, counseled, laughed, cried and helped in many different situations. I have seen some good changes, some bad changes, and a huge movement around the world by moralistic people to get our community confined to sites that either specialize in BDSM or porn.
The Readers
I think I have some of the most supportive readers out there. I have had many chats, discussions, and even debates about different views and ways to practice the Lifestyle. I have learned new techniques, new buzz words in the community, broadened my own view on some of the harsher sides of BDSM that I rarely talk about or practice, and many other things too numerous to get into further.
My fan base has become a mixture of men and women from all walks of life that have many different levels of experience. I love the new people that trust in my writings enough to email me a private question they are to scared to ask out in the open.
Some of the best feelings that I have gotten are from the wonderful feedback and updates from you guys after I have helped or advised you on a problem. I have had some that are so touching and grateful for my help that I literally could not hold back the tears of happiness.
The Separatists
This past year, I have seen some really bad changes within our online communities. It seems that there are groups of people that think it's better to divide the community into what they think of as the "true pages" and the "fakes". I have seen this on many different social sites, but FB is the worst. These types of groups are hunting down pages that either refuse to join in their separatist philosophy or that they just do not like.
I myself have been a victim of these groups and have refused to get involved and even acknowledge their existence for the most part as it just adds fuel to their fire, so to speak. They have tried many different attack approaches such as spreading rumors about me that are untrue and telling all of their new readers that I am a fake. If being in and around the lifestyle for over 21 years, being trained as a Gorean kajira for two years, and living in a 24/7 M/s relationship since August of 2011 makes me a fake, well I guess I need to revamp my kinkionary.
I have always said and will continue to say that we are better off together than separate, especially now that the moralists are after the large online companies to extremely restrict our activities and presence on the internet.
I hope that one day these separatist cliques will decide to rejoin the mainstream BDSM community so that we can show the world that we are united.
The Moralistic Movement
In May of this year, an online Twitter movement was started by right wing activists to get adult content removed from most social media sites like Facebook and Google. They first only said they wanted derogatory and rape images removed and banned from being posted on the sites. But soon, they moved into pictures that are a normal site to those of us that practice a BDSM lifestyle such as a woman getting spanked or in bondage.
In late May, the first wave of page removals started hitting FB. Along with many that were hit in that first round, one of my original pages was taken down. Since then, FB, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Pinterest and many others have bowed to the pressure these moralistic people have put on them and changed their policies. They are getting so ridiculous in their pursuit that people's accounts are being shut down because someone reported them and stated that they were offended or didn't like something that the person said or posted.
While I agree that images portraying abused women and children should be very much policed and not allowed to be shown, I think there needs to be exceptions for women portrayed in bondage and other BDSM settings since these activities are consensual within our community.
In the Future
I have hope that we will unite together as a community and try to make our presence in the online communities more concrete. There will always be those that condemn us for our beliefs and practice, but at least we can try to present the real and beautiful picture that makes up our lifestyle.
I also hope that those groups that are dividing the online community will stop attacking others that do not subscribe to their way of thinking, being, or doing and try to either mend fences or just let everything coexist in harmony. It's sad when someone that supposedly practices an alternative lifestyle that teaches tolerance can be so intolerant.
Lastly, I hope to continue to bring all of you great info, a different perspective, and hopefully more knowledge about various subjects that is BDSM.
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The recent attack of adult content on social media sites and the internet reminded me of certain periods in human history where society attacks things that scare them, they don't agree with, or simply don't understand.
If we take a look back through out recorded history, you can see a pattern where the majority in society, condemned, hunted, imprisoned and/or slaughtered groups of minorities whose beliefs called into question the moralistic ideals of the time.
With the recent attacks on the BDSM and Adult content pages on Facebook, Google and now Tumblr, it seems like a new Moralistic movement is taking shape. Is it the religious groups that deem Adult Content and BDSM as immoral? Is it the feminist groups that do not like pictures or descriptions of women in submission? Or is it society that does't understand the real deep meaning of a BDSM relationship and is therefore scared of it because it is so different from the way the majority of Western society was raised?
Since 2009, Google has been celebrated for publishing transparency reports on government requests to take information offline. Each time a government official asks for a search result to be blocked or a YouTube video to be removed, Google marks down the request and discloses the number of such take downs each nation has asked for every six months or so. In many majority-Muslim countries requests for censorship remained relatively rare until the latter half of 2012, when YouTube take down requests citing "religious offenses" spiked.
If we take a look back through out recorded history, you can see a pattern where the majority in society, condemned, hunted, imprisoned and/or slaughtered groups of minorities whose beliefs called into question the moralistic ideals of the time.
With the recent attacks on the BDSM and Adult content pages on Facebook, Google and now Tumblr, it seems like a new Moralistic movement is taking shape. Is it the religious groups that deem Adult Content and BDSM as immoral? Is it the feminist groups that do not like pictures or descriptions of women in submission? Or is it society that does't understand the real deep meaning of a BDSM relationship and is therefore scared of it because it is so different from the way the majority of Western society was raised?
Since 2009, Google has been celebrated for publishing transparency reports on government requests to take information offline. Each time a government official asks for a search result to be blocked or a YouTube video to be removed, Google marks down the request and discloses the number of such take downs each nation has asked for every six months or so. In many majority-Muslim countries requests for censorship remained relatively rare until the latter half of 2012, when YouTube take down requests citing "religious offenses" spiked.
I and most people that I know, can agree that pictures of abused women and children should definitely be banned if they are posted. But, when governments start talking about banning all Adult Content sites, that is where they cross the line on Freedom of Speech.
I get many comments and messages on various sites I administer accross the internet from people that say things such as "you are a sick person" or "only perverts look at this". I get others that say "you are going to hell" and so forth. You get the picture.
One of the foundations of being a Christian is to "judge not lest ye be judged" meaning Don't judge others unless you are prepared to be judged also. So, I throw this out to all of you that call yourselves "good Christians"; how can you sit in judgment of a lifestyle that adults consent to live or practice while hurting no one and still say you are a Christian when you are going against one of the vary principals you are supposed to follow? It's hypocritical.
In the UK, authorities are introducing pornography filters switched on by default to home broadband subscribers by the end of the year. This new legislation is being headed up by none other than Prime Minister David Cameron. No other EU countries are currently introducing any such laws.
Under current law, Internet Service Providers are obliged to freely provide access to all content unless it is illegal. Most EU countries state it is misdirected and ultimately ineffective to try to tackle this issue through the internet infrastructure providers. Parents should be the ones censoring what their children are allowed to view.
The latest victim to fall to the new moralistic movement is Twitter. After pressure from the UK government and their Anti-Porn campaign, they will now be adding a "report abuse" button. Twitter UK said it was adding staff to help handle abuse reports. It also said an in-tweet "report abuse" button currently available on the Twitter app for iPhones would be added to the Twitter website and to platforms used on other mobile devices.
If any of you admin pages or groups on FB or Google+, you already know this button is going to be abused because every moralistic vanilla person is going to be using it against anything they don't like.
So, are you going to stand by and take whatever the Moralists decide and allow your freedom to view whatever you want be taken away or are you going to do something about it? It's up to you people! Let your voices be heard just as loud as those that would censor our lifestyle and our freedoms!
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