Most people don’t like, or are wisely afraid of BDSM, which is generally understood to be a loose acronym for “Bondage, Domination, and Sado-Machoism.” Sadism is about inflicting pain, or in many sexual contexts, pretending to inflict pain on others, and masochism is inflicting pain or having pain inflicted on oneself.
BDSM can range from very mild, such as ceremonially tying a person to a bed with loose bonds and tickling that individual, to very extreme, even unsafe edgeplay.
Edgeplay, which originates from the concept of playing with knives and sharp instruments, has come to mean anything that is on the ‘edge’ of safety.
In most BDSM scenes, the participants are referred to as a “top,” the one who is doing something to someone, and the “bottom,” the person who is having something done. The roles can stay fixed, or change back and forth in a session. Some people also use the concept of “master” and “slave,” and a few will take it to extremes, acting out the roles non-sexually over longer periods of time, and even in public.
For many, costuming, known as cosplay is a big part of BDSM. The most common versions are women dressing as extremely over-the-top ridiculous slutty, or as nurses, nannies, etc, and men dressing in leather, or as policemen and firemen.
One survey indicated that three out of four women would get a kick out of having their men dress as firemen.
