Indeed, often a new submissive will stroll into the community, freshly-decked in 'the right clothes' to attract 'like-minded kinksters' and, as surely as a brand new uniform identifies the young and impressionable in any population, 'She' becomes precisely the target 'He' has been waiting for. "She wears leather and studs, and she shows a lot of leg and cleavage. Surely, she must want to be captured, humiliated, and raped," says the unscrupulous predator to himself, and he springs into action.
It is regrettable, actually, that the acronym "BDSM" contributes to this kind of thinking: it is, otherwise, such a handy acronym. Unfortunately, guilt-by-association: the B and the D and the S and M are so close together that people conveniently assume consent-for-one means consent-for-all. In fact, that is not true at all: simply because a person is interested in the B, it does not follow that the person is also interested in the S/m. And, simply because a person might be interested in some light or strict or exploratory or conditional S/m, it does not follow that she is interested also in the idea of humiliation -- something not even represented in the acronym at all but, for some reason, people just inflict at will. (A person can explore masochism without feeling humiliated. It is faulty thinking to assume one equals the other.) And, simply because a person might be interested in humiliation, it does not follow that she is necessarily interested in ROPE bondage as opposed to, say, cages or chains or cupcakes. And ultimately, it is a bad assumption to make about a woman definitely wanting a punishing rape because of what she's wearing that day. Bad, bad assumption. Brain-damaged assumption.
Force-fantasy, slavery, humiliation... these are ideas that a very specific few people cherish appropriately, relegated as they may be to the darker side of sexual exploration. These are ideas that, until one has enthusiastically consented to them (not just an absence of "no" but, rather, an enthusiastic and resounding "Yes, I am positively sure!") there is no consent. And if there is no consent, there is no earthly reason to practice these things. There is no right.
I wondered, when I began my journey over a year ago, why "consent" was such a big deal for the BDSM community -- and thank God, it is a big deal. It was so unlike Gor to require the consent of another person before inflicting dark fantasy upon her. Gor is, after all, a gender-based force-fantasy: women are weaker and submissive because of their gender, goes the argument. There is no reason to seek consent from someone naturally weaker and naturally available to rape, goes the thinking. They do not ask the cow its consent before slaughtering it for food: why ask the woman her consent before violating her?
The reason, I have long since discovered, consent is such a big deal in the BDSM community is because we live in a rape-culture that we take as granted. We naturally assume it will be dangerous for women to walk alone at night, and that women do not enjoy the safety in public as they do in their own home (we hope, anyway, that a woman's home is a safe haven). We also know that there are women in the world for whom violence and force are fantasies, and that there are partners in the world for whom indulging such fantasies is pleasurable. And these people, when they are allowed to come together in safety, sanity, and consent, may live out their fantasies (a permission that all intelligent, free-minded people ought to enjoy) without inflicting trauma as a consequence.
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