So I’ve been trying to get involved in my local poly community lately, and one thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of people who are into BDSM. It’s come up at in person events, there seems to be a huge overlap between the kink and poly community here, and lots of people (particularly women and the more openly sexual poly people) seem to strongly identify as kinky in poly Facebook groups and on OkCupid.

The thing is, I have very little interest in BDSM, and in fact I’m actively averse to the sadomasochism side of it (no judgment of people who are into it, though). Sometimes I joke that my kink is to have vanilla sex with lots of attractive women, but it’s honestly kinda true.

I’m worried that because of this I won’t fit in, that my sexuality will be seen as boring or unsophisticated, and that poly women won’t want to date me because I won’t what to have BDSM sex. Is this accurate or am I misperceiving the situation?