How does a submissive new to BDSM enter the lifestyle and find a play partner or owner?

Finding one from the vanilla world is very much a hit or miss thing. There is a lot of interest in it, but it is not hardly everyone. It is best to look for prospects from among those who are already doing it. To find them you must go to the same places they go to.

Brennus and His Share of the Spoils (c. 1893) painting by Paul Jamin

Join a BDSM club in your area. They are easily found using the keywords "bdsm club" or "fetish club" plus the name of your city or county at the search engines. There is a Los Angeles area listing here. Attend the club's educational and social events. You attend the educational events to gain knowledge needed to evaluate for yourself whether a prospective owner Master or Mistress knows what he or she is doing when they play with you. Observe your prospect's play with others. Also, at both educational and social events you can query the reputations of your prospects. It is important to get several opinions because, unfortunately, there is a lot of jealousy, back stabbing, and power struggles in our BDSM communities. It is inevitable you will come across this. Most especially be wary of and be skeptical of the unsolicited warning you might receive about a person. The warning might be legitimate, or one biased by a power struggle.

Multiple day educational and play events are listed here for the USA and here internationally.

There are several BDSM oriented online social networks. They can, and have been, ways for people to find each other. On these networks it is very important for women who are seeking men to have a picture of themselves on their profiles. Men are visually oriented, and so are far more likely to respond to a profile with a picture. Men suspect women who do not have such pictures are hiding unattractive features and will move on to profiles of women who do not hide. This can also true for women who are looking for men. There are women who will not consider any man without a picture. It is not possible to gain the same amount of information about online prospects on these networks as in a real life club.

There are BDSM oriented Usenet groups for purpose of personal advertising posting, such as alt.personals.bondage. Usenet is accessed by means of an email client such as Thunderbird, or Kontact. It used to be that access to Usenet was a common and expected part of any Internet service. This is no longer true. If your's does not offer this the albasani.net is a free Usenet access service. Google Groups is a web form portal to Usenet. Avoid posting personals on Usenet discussion groups other than those that are meant for personals. This is frowned upon and could trigger a complaint to your ISP.

There are online social networking sites such as this one.

Caution is required. You are going to give a lot of power over you to someone as the relationship gets established. There are plenty of honest and worthy people to find. There are also predators. A major issue in the BDSM community of late has been abuse, especially with male Dominants in private play sessions taking advantage of females they have put in bondage or situational dependence to exceed consent limits by rape or what is done at play. Before doing private sessions it is best to play first in the company of many people at a club's dungeon party.

It is advised that your prospective Owners have experience as a slaves themselves. As one is trained to be slave, so is one trained to train a slave. There are perspectives that cannot be gotten any other way. To be trained to be a slave by one who is absent this experience is much like learning to fly an airplane by an instructor who has never flown an airplane before, and knows about flying only what he has learned in books. One who has experienced the slave perspective is less likely to abusively replicate the result of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Giving power over yourself to a dominant who has experience giving such power to someone else is a way to avoid a crash landing with one.

If you are going to play in private a silent alarm is recommended. This is a friend who knows where you are and will call law enforcement if a call is not received from you at an appointed time. For this call there should be code words that indicate you are in trouble and call the police now. The code words should have no hint of their actual meaning, and be choice words that on face value appear to say all is well and you are having a good time.

It is important to know if a prospective owner of you has a history of drug use, most especially marijuana use. Marijuana is toxic to the brain, and is most especially damaging to brains still in development, which is up the age of 25. Among other things, marijuana damages the prefrontal and frontal lobes. This is an area of the brain that is most highly interconnected, has many more Allman Von Economo Neurons than any other species, where the brain's executive functions reside, and where many of the abilities that separate humans from animals reside. This area of the brain is where the ability to watch self resides, and so people who are damaged in this area do not have the capacity to notice the damage's effect on their performance. To be conscious of a mental ability requires the brain module that is the source of that ability to be fully functional. This is because that module is itself where the consciousness of that ability resides. Because dominance and ownership require high competence it is recommended to avoid such abusers as prospects just as this employer had no choice but to move out of Colorado to avoid stoned employee incompetence.

Abuse of alcohol, most especially to the point of frequent drunkeness before the age of 25, will also damage the frontal lobes.

Damage to the frontal lobe means an impaired ability to concentrate, orchestrate thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals, project future consequences resulting from current actions, choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress socially unacceptable responses, and the determination of similarities and differences between things or events.

Your owner will have to make decisions that will affect both your lives. These are financial ones, how you and where both of you will live, and how you will be handled. Your owner must make decisions on training you, disciplining you, and using you for service. When disciplinary action is necessary the owner must decide how and when to punish as appropriate. All these are things to consider once it is known a prospective owner has a history of marijuana or alcohol use.

There are owners that, as standard practice for them, will force alcohol and marijuana use their slaves. This is an example of one. They essentially cause brain damage to improve compliance. Avoid them. The intelligence you have is a precious asset to be preserved.

If you are a female you will be of higher value to your owner if you have Belly Dancing skills. Belly dancing significantly exercises the body and contributes to toning it. The gyrating hips advertise to the male subconscious the ability to have children, and so tends to invoke his mating behavior. There are belly dancing examples here.

There is information about the diet the shapes a woman's body in a manner that is most attractive to men in this Psychology Today article.

These events are weekend long seminars that train slaves. There are similar events for domination skills.

Recommended Reading:

Read the Gor novels. They do not represent what a BDSM lifestyle is but they are well known in the BDSM community, have become part of the culture, and there are Masters that do replicate it is much as practical. There are many of those that don't go that far still use the slave position commands as described in these novels. These slave position commands have become popular enough for several web sites to describe and illustrate them. They are found doing a web search for "gorean slave positions." Web sites about Gor: Gor Chronicles, World of Gor (official site), Wikipedia Article.

The Marketplace series of novels by Laura Antoniou is also well known and is a fairly accurate description of the lifestyle, although no secret society like the one described in it exists. At least as far as I know.

These books contain information about training for slaves. Your owner may or may not have these same protocols, and will train you in his or her own.

For more books about the life style in general visit "The Educational Book List."

See also "Prepare to be Owned" for more information on valued skills.