Quote Originally Posted by Sir_Russell View Post
Hopefully we can have some fun with this thread. Put terms in here that have changed meanings due to it being a vanilla term or even a BDSM term that now means something very different from it used to mean.

I will start this off with my personal favorite. When I started in the Life the vanillas weren't referred to as VANILLAS but as STRAIGHTS. Now that term means non-gay or queer. I think though we took it from the carnies that called any one not in the Carny life straights also know as rubes or marks.

I guess over time, as gays and lesbians have become more accepted legally and in the eyes of the hetero world (more or less, but at least in some countries and cities, and of course this is something that's happened over the last thirty years: the laws on gay marriage or legally registered couple status in e.g. Canada and Sweden respectively are a kind of peak so far) the gay crowd's take on the word straight became so pervasive that us kinky folks had to settle for a new word, so "vanilla" became the one.

I really don't quite like the implication that all who are not into some kind of bdsm life just don't understand or can't accept it. I'm an inclusive person who believes in love and understanding and not prone to go for explanations that just draw a razor sharp line between communities: "either you're with us or you're against us, either you're in or you're out". But sure, there are a great deal of persecutive idiots and legal obstacles, and for sure (non-D/s) homo people too are harassed badly or killed even in Europe and in many places ion the US, not to mention countries like Iran or Sudan where it's punishable by death.

I thought the four-letter acronym BDSM was a conflation of
BD - Bondage and Discipline
DS - Dominance and Submission
SM - Sado-Masochism