Scarleteen

For a long time, I’ve had an interest in BDSM. This is a very large aspect of my sexuality, and though I have tried somewhat I cannot get rid of it. However, I am very aware of the potential legal consequences if I am found out to be involved in this sort of activity, and how the BDSM community at large strongly discourages minors from doing BDSM. I am 15. Even writing this I feel like I should apologize for being so messed up. I know that the shame I feel is mostly due to the cultural ideal of purity that is put on young female-bodied people, and that that expectation is unrealistic and problematic and the fact that I do not live up to it has no effect on my worth as a person, but I still feel this shame. Recently, I have been grappling with whether I should just try to repress that I am into BDSM and try not to think about it because I dislike the shame attached to it so much and I feel like no one will love me as I am. But any attempt to do that has just made me feel like absolute shit because I feel like I’m giving in to the shame, in a way. So should I repress this part of myself even if I feel like shit for it? Can you even repress something like this? Is the shame I feel justified?
Thank you

Welcome to the boards, twothreefive. I'm sorry that you're struggling with shame around all of this.

I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about legal consequences for engaging in sex that involves BDSM: can you tell me what you're referring to? In terms of your age and the BDSM community, in my experience and to my understanding, that's not so much about being young and engaging in BDSM, it's about the fact that BDSM communities generally need to only involve people over the age of majority because of age of consent laws.

Generally, repression -- in the classical sense -- isn't a conscious choice. On the other hand, if you're asking if you should choose not to engage in any kind of BDSM sexuality in sex with others, or in your own fantasy or masturbation, or choose not to focus on it, I'd say that really depends on what you want and how you're feeling. Shame certainly is something we can often work through and dump about just about anything, but the "work through" there is pretty key: it usually takes work, and often that work includes help from people who are trained and qualified to help people with sexual shame.

But by all means, my vote for you would be what DOESN'T make you feel like shit, not what does. What does that look like for you, the choice that doesn't make you feel shitty? What do you think you need in order to be at a place with this where you can, if not feel okay or even good, at least be on the road to feeling better?

I’m sorry for getting things so wrong. What I was referring to is how if someone found out and reported it to the police or CPS or whatever as abuse, I couldn’t legally defend myself. It’s a point I’ve heard a lot in YouTube videos I’ve watched about how minors shouldn’t do anything related to kink, so I just went with it, I guess. As to people in the community that say that minors shouldn’t be into this sort of thing, that was mostly based on a lot of comments on those videos that made me feel like a horrible person. Whenever I try to talk to my therapist about this she doesn’t really want to put any time at all into talking about the subject. She doesn’t see it as a big deal that I feel this way, so I don’t know what to do about it. I’m sorry, again

Hi twothreefive,

No need to apologize, goodness knows there's still plenty of misinformation floating around about BDSM and how it relates to various other parts of society. And we're happy to talk to about them, and about ways to address some of the shame coming from them. As Heather mentioned, the main legal concern with young people and BDSM is age of consent laws. Although, if those laws end up violated and someone gets in trouble, it's almost always going to be the adult because they engaged in sexual behavior with someone under the age of consent. That's part of why you'll see many BDSM spaces be very strict about not admitting minors; they want and need everything that happens to be consensual.

As to people saying minors shouldn't be into BDSM, statements like that ignore the reality of how diverse and varied human sexuality can be (and, sadly, are common in places like unmoderated Youtube comment sections). People realize their interest in different sexual things throughout their lives; there's no single age where you're "allowed" to be interested in or curious about a given aspect of sex. Too, you're smack in the middle of your teen years, a time when many people start to notice an increased interest in sex. And that increased interest often includes increased curiosity about or exploration of the different types of sex out there (even if the exploration stays solely in your head), and that's absolutely okay. Does that all make sense?

When you say your therapist doesn't want to take time to address these feelings, do you mean that she doesn't see the fact that you're feeling this level of shame as worth discussing? Or that an interest in BDSM doesn't seem worth discussing? Or is it something else?