>>>>Dave,

Are we talking about the overall het world or only about the kink / fetish part of the het world? The kinky het folk are in an extreme minority when compared to the rest of the het world. At least the ones who are more active than the married het couples who get all turned on by a "slap and a tickle" session once a year or so.

For those kinky het folk, they've as much difficulty and as much warm reception in trying to explain their kink to vanilla het folk as gays do trying to explain the limits of their sexuality to "normal" het folk.

While tolerance has greatly increased for a lot of things, and while at least awareness of the kink world has also increased in the mainstream het / vanilla world (thank you Madonna!) there's still a pretty vast gulf therein. And it's neither ignorant nor heterophobic to point this out.

Madoc<<<<

I meant among heterosexual people in general since we all live in the same world and we're all human.

I don't see there being a heterosexual "world" just like I don't see there being a real gay "world" or even a true gay "culture" or gay "community" at all. What gets mistaken as being a gay/GLBT "culture" or "community" is really just mass consumerism and conformity by gay/GLBT/queer people. I also wouldn't consider gay ghettos like the castro or other gay neighborhoods/areas in cities to be a gay "community" either because they're such a mixed crowd nowadays and all types of people of all orientations work/live/hang out there.

Back on topic though, BDSM is REALLY mainstream nowadays among hets to the point that it's almost a cliche though.

I have het friends who aren't even into BDSM at all talk about Master/slave references or bondage or things like that and it's certainly not a taboo subject among young people who are say 35 or younger.

Then there are hets who are into BDSM but don't call it that and just enjoy spanking or bondage.

Madonna may have done something but not much and I think overall there are tons of references to BDSM in mainstream pop culture.

Even family guy made fun of it in the heh "the safeword is Banana" episode, there was a male character in the Sopranos who liked to top from the bottom and sniffed poppers while Tony Sopranos' sister fucked him with a vibrator and called him a whore and said how she was going to pimp him out, there was the crazy fucked up rape/BDSM scene in Pulp Fiction, and in the show Desperate Housewives one guy cheats on his wife by going to a Dominatrix and paying for sex from her.

Maybe it's just different to me because I've always grown up knowing about it?

Even as a kid I remember watching TV movies where someone would get tied up in bed or there was one where this guy had a sex dream about a woman whipping him and then he woke up.