The Effects of Outing Yourself on TV

I wrote a post last spring that I would take part in a  national TV show about BDSM. I was filmed in late April by the team from the “Fråga Olle” show and the show was on air about 2 months ago. Before I accepted to participate, I had a long discussion with my kinky friends and my family about the effects that could occur.

That was before half a million people saw me do electro play on TV and talk about safety during a BDSM scene.

I have always stood up for my beliefs and for who I am as a person and I have never tried to hide from those around me who I really am. My sexual orientation is also a part of who I am and personally I see no reason to hide it.

I’ve also read about other people who been blogging about sex or been into BDSM and decided to tell their friends, only to find that they all of a sudden had no friends. One of the most interesting and horrific stories I can relate to is the one that avflox went through when her relatives found out she was blogging about sex.

I was ready for all kinds of risk scenarios. I was ready to receive harsh criticism from the kink scene in Sweden for some statements I chose to do, I was ready for a possible social stigma from an unsympathetic environment and I was even ready for anonymous complaints to social services.

None of this happened.

The harshest criticism from the kink scene was that I wore leather pants and a leather shirt during my appearance in the TV show and according to some critics that just confirmed the stereotype that BDSM people often wear leather gear. My friends and I often wear leather clothes on different occasions and we love our leather shirts, leather skirts and leather pants. So in other words, it is not a stereotype, it is a reality for many of the people I hang out with.

During show I performed electro play, breast play and I discussed various safety paradigms, such as SSC and RACK, with the hostess.

The show is a sex education show and the hostess is subjected to many of the things that are discussed during the show. Therefore, we agreed during the planning that the hostess would try a Violet Wand.

When she was subjected to the violet wand she jumped, screamed and giggled, which is very similar to the reactions that I meet when I show these things to the public.

Because all of this, there was an individual critic who tried to claim that I had committed an abuse on the hostess because it looked as if she didn’t want to do what she was subjected to. The critic could not care less about the fact that I had about 50 people as a witnesses when the whole thing was recorded.

This was probably the most stupid reaction that I got after the show had been on air and it was not particularly difficult to counter it.

I got a different type of reaction from relatives around me.

The reactions from the relatives were surprisingly few, but those who came were, to mildly put it, exaggerated. The strongest reaction came when a relative saw the rerun of the show, then she immediately called another relative – And then gossip mill started. The two relatives did everything that they possibly could to seek out my kinky profiles on the Internet to get more information, instead of asking me directly. Their reading skills did not work very well during the gossip frenzy because they got the idea that I was a severe sadist.

It’s not written anywhere on the web that I am a sadist.

This was enough for them to make general statements about my sexual orientation – It was disgusting and repulsive I was a very bad person in general just because they had the perception that I was a sadist.

I wonder what they would say and think about my close friends who are sadists?

The relative, who saw the rerun decided to hit me with the worst social stigma you could possibly ever imagine – She removed me as a friend on Facebook!

Do I have to mention that didn’t suffer very much from this final act of social banning?

Another type of reaction was whispering that arose in the neighborhood and finally got to the point where one of the gossip ladies sent out her teenage daughter to ask one of my relatives if I’ve been on TV. My relative replied politely and truthfully that this was true, then the daughter ran home to spill the beans.

It is easy to believe that I feel that there are many negative reactions to my involvement in the show on TV, but I actually don’t feel that way. I have received surprisingly few negative reactions and much more positive and curious ones.

Those who react negatively have been cowards, because none of them have made a direct statement to my face and they seem to feel they know to 100% what sexual orientation is all about. That is probably why they do not even bother to ask me what it is all about.

This is also one of the fundamental mechanisms behind gossip, people avoid asking direct questions targeted towards the one the gossip actually concerns and that is why the gossip never gets challenged.

People who gossip has gone to my relatives and others who are close to me because if they would have asked me directly then I would have probably not appeared as bad as they believe I am. Many of those who spread gossip are people who have known me for years and they should really know better, because I am the same person even if I made a choice and talked about my sexual orientation on television.

I’m still who I am and I will continue to stand up for my opinions and the openness that I’ve made a choice to have when it comes to my person and sexual orientation.