The Vogons would have wanted it that way.

Looking back, objectively, I may well have been even more thoroughly excluded than you were, but because I never expect any better from people anyway, I don’t think I really noticed.

I was certainly never included in anything.

I can’t resist sharing yet another example of the “beloved, special, wonderful Irish BDSM community” with you.

This is from a response to my leaving the community (I won’t identify the sender, who it was doesn’t really matter)

***

I am saddened that you feel this way.

Some lines from the late John O’Donoghue:

“May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant or cold in you.
May you be brought into the real passion, kinship and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated; but may you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam cara.”
My heart remains open to you, and I sincerely hope we’ll share laughs and giggles again,

***

Seems so truly “beloved, special and wonderful” doesn’t it?

Until you realise the sender detested me to the extent that I was the only person not invited to their engagement party, though they even invited near strangers.

Don’t get me wrong, nobody HAS to like me, or invite me to their parties…chances are, I would probably rather be left at home, reading my library book anyway. A lot of people don’t like me, and, last I heard, it wasn’t even a social faux pas, let alone a crime, but it was the beginning of the end for me when I found that out. If people can’t stand having me around I find it unbearably humiliating to stay around…end of.

…but there is something deeply sick about sending that kind of sentimental waffle to someone you don’t even really want around.

It’s like a “cat and mouse” game at the expense of my autistic limitations (of which the sender was fully informed), intended to suck me back in just to be able to exclude me some more…as though “being excluded” had become my role in the community, and the community liked it. I guess that, sometimes, no matter how much people don’t want you around, they don’t want you to be the one to do the rejecting?

I was disgusted.

Something else that horrified me was when one of the list mods (who should be old enough to know better) introduced me to a guy who had just thrown his girlfriend through a plate glass window once too often, and presented him as a “dear friend and a great guy”. Fortunately for me, I didn’t find him remotely attractive, and not just because he was drunk.

It still really upsets me that this woman I barely know, and have never harmed in any way, was content to place me at that kind of risk, for what reason I cannot imagine, maybe I did something that offended her without realising, but I can’t see how, I hardly knew her?

The horrible part is that, because of the existing monopoly, unless you accept that kind of toxic behaviour and whatever role the community assigns you, you will, effectively be excluded from the entire Irish fetish community.

Doesn’t bother me…I am an autistic recluse…associating with the BDSM community was the first, and last, attempt I will ever make to interact within a group.

It wasn’t worth the effort and distress to me and the experiment will never be repeated.

But for most people, who have a kink in their nature and a perfectly normal need for the validation of a community, that degree of exclusion would be devastating.

It seems to me that there is no point in “appealing to better nature”, or expecting change…the only answer is to break out of the monopoly and create an alternative community.