A come across a TikTok today from one of my favourite mutuals who does great education. I followed the comment thread of their video replies until I found offending users comments on an original video about Topping from the bottom.
Here we had a baby-kinkster (someone just legal in age) arguing about why an experienced and vetted educator was wrong in using the terminology Top/bottom. Their comments went on to explain the following:
D/s is for dynamic relationships and Top/bottom are only for sexual acts.....
❌ we can see why this isn't accurate right off the bat❌
This educator then continued to respond to them - a perfect teaching moment for someone who is new to the community and lifestyle and may still be learning. But no, this baby kinkster continued to say this educator was wrong and their "mentor" had given them this information and they have been in lifestyle for years. Which then begs the question, how well educated is their mentor really?
Top/bottom is really a catch all term - as was pointed out to this baby-kinkster, someone in a sadomasochist scene or even a M/s dynamic can top a bottom without sex being involved. And from an educational perspective, most people do use Top/bottom when referring to scenes where there is no ongoing dynamic, but that does not invalidate a Dominant being a Top and a submissive being the bottom, in a dynamic (see how they can still be interchangeable). But Top/bottom is definitely not exclusive to sexual scenes which this baby-kinkster was adamant about.
Which raised my first redflag about the information they had been given - specifically that dynamics are not sexual and if your not in a dynamic then it can only be sexual play? Which is very concerning, because it sounds like this baby-kinkster is being groomed.
They continued to push that they were right because that's how they had learned it. There was no critical thinking, there was no "adult" discussion about where they genuinely got this information from or whether maybe they had been taught incorrectly - they were blindly following whatever this mentor said to them - again alarm bells that they are being groomed here.
And this is the crux of the problem - education is not a once off. Education is not from one person. It is important to verify information you are given, speak to other people, research yourself. DO NOT blindly follow what one person has told you because they have been in the lifestyle for X number of years.
For baby-kinksters this is extremely important because whether you are 21 or 51 or 78 and new to the lifestyle, make sure you vet your sources, vet the information you are being given, do some of your own research, because there are unfortunately people out there who do provide inaccurate and misinformation. The unfortunate part is, that narcissists and abusers prey on baby-kinksters, because they tend to be easier to manipulate.
So being confident in knowing the basics around: consent, negotiation, limits, research etc is going to be important. We should all still be learning and growing, regardless of how long we have been in the lifestyle. Anyone who says otherwise or purports to "know everything" is a redlfag.
My concern with this baby-kinkster is that they have found themselves in an unhealthy situation where they are being fed inaccurate information, being misinformed by someone which could lead them to having an extremely bad experience in the lifestyle, and because they are being groomed, and probably groomed from a teen, they are believing that whoever is mentoring them is correct. And they are so ingrained in this information they have been given that they are not receptive to hearing other educators correct the misinformation. Which, unless they start critically thinking and researching themselves, will result in them disseminating inaccurate and misinformed information to the next generation of kinksters.
Which is a scary thought.