The recent media coverage outing RCMP Corporal Jim Brown’s personal life has contained a number of erroneous assumptions equating BDSM with violence against women. Please write a letter to the editor today to influence future media coverage.
Take a polite tone of education and point out how detrimental to the Canadian BDSM community and kinky people around the world such stereotypical coverage is. Please don’t focus on Cpl Brown or Fetlife.
You don’t have to out yourself as being kinky. Just make a few of the points below and let the media know they need to fairly represent this sexual minority. Go to the NCSF blog at www.ncsfreedom.org to read the coverage.
Points you can make:
Canada has a proud history of tolerance and diversity when it comes to personal lifestyles.
The media should familiarize itself with the large and vibrant BDSM communities that follow a creed of “safe, sane and consensual.”
BDSM is not violence toward women. BDSM is about consenting adults engaging in mutually satisfying role-play and power exchange in private. Both men and women take submissive roles, and anyone can stop what is happening at any time.
Private internet membership websites are for kinky people to get education about safer sex and to interact with their peers – it is not pornography.
BDSM has been recognized as a healthy form of sexual expression by the American Psychiatric Association in their latest revision of the DSM-V, to be published in spring of 2013. Canada is a progressive country and should follow the lead of other progressive countries such as Norway and Sweden which depathologized BDSM.
People shouldn’t be discriminated against by their employers because of their legal, adult sexual activities.
Media outlets that have published articles on this situation:
CBC – http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/cus.html
Globe and Mail – letters@globeandmail.com
Vancouver Sun – sunletters@vancouversun.com
The National Post – http://www.nationalpost.com/contact/index.html
CTV News – news@ctv.ca
The Canadian Press – editorial@thecanadianpress.com
Toronto Sun – http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
Times Colonist – letters@timescolonist.com
CKNW News Talk AM – http://www.cknw.com/Contact/NewsTips.aspx
Let NCSF know you sent a letter at susan@ncsfreedom.org This kind of stereotypical media coverage harms the BDSM communities, so stand up and be counted!