Thoughts on Popular Opinion

A handful of my recent posts were heavily rooted in Popular Opinion.  While I was about to start another post on a different subject, I realized that there isn't much discussion about Popular Opinion in kink.  You will find lots of rants about it, but rarely is it just talked about.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about Popular Opinion and its affects on the community at large.  It works best to give it a definition.  If I define Popular Opinion, I would say that it is a generalized summary belief on a topic that has grown widespread enough to generate stereotypes and sweeping generalizations that are believed as truth.

The source of Popular Opinion can be based upon factual evidence or pulled out of someone's ass enough times that people perceive it to be true.  It can be changed, but this change either happens very slowly (e.g. civil and women's rights movements), or very rapidly when instigated in the presence of devastating or catastrophic events (e.g. post-9/11 fear and hate-mongering).  Slow change is often righteous and morally sound.  Rapid change tends to follow knee-jerk reactions mob mentality (even if the change is a good one).  The most important part is that once Popular Opinion has been established, it is hard as hell to change it on a widespread level.

Not all Popular Opinion is bad.  The Popular Opinion that human rights are good is an easy example, especially when you consider that equal human rights didn't become Popular Opinion in first world nations until 1970 or later.  Separate but equal.  The glass ceiling.  The old boys network.  Those were the Popular Opinion that directly preceded it, and even its current form is far from perfect.
Popular Opinion is often perceived to be based upon fact, truth, and evidence, when that has nothing to do with it.  It merely reflects which voices are allowed to be heard and spread.  The Earth is flat.  The Earth is the center of the universe.  Rough seas are because Poseidon is angry.  Thankfully, history provides us evidence that Popular Opinion is never set in stone.  In 1992 the Catholic Church reinstated Galileo's excommunication in 1633 for claiming that the Earth went around the sun.  Go Team!

One of the problems is that the people who are most entrenched and rigid in their agreement with Popular Opinion is that they frequently will not listen to reason, explanation, or evidence to the contrary.  They are fixed in their belief and do not want to change.  A danger of this is that it teaches newcomers Popular Opinion as truth.  While many of these people will eventually change their views, the baseline isn't always a pretty one to use as a starting point.

A few popular opinions in kink-land that you may have heard:

• D/s is all about the sub.  There are cases where this can be true, but to say this is all cases is a pretty narrow view of, you know... dominants that LIKE being dominant.
• All humiliation is abuse.  Again, some humiliation is abuse, some is definitely not.
• All subs are masochists.
• All sadists are uncaring monsters.
• All sissies are homosexual.
• All women are submissive.
• Submissive men aren't "real men."

Being a minority in a minority of a minority has made me readily aware of many Popular Opinions because I constantly have to battle against them.  I find myself almost always viewed by default in the worst possible way and struggle to shake off people's preconceived notions about who I am and what I entail.

If it sometimes seems like I'm going out of my way to prove an aspect of myself... it is because I am in fact going out of my way to prove an aspect of myself... that is being crushed by the weight of Popular Opinion.