BDSM is for the Petit Bourgeoises

This is not really mine, but it is a valid observation nonetheless.

I found it in an interview with Fulvio Brumatti, once upon a time director of the BDSM side of Edizioni Moderne, the only publisher of sensible BDSM material that Italy had in the '80-90s and, as such, a good observer of the "scene" back in my home country.

Incidentally, I almost ended up drawing stuff for his magazines, back in the days. It didn't work out, mostly, because I was dumb as fuck.  Was? I meant, I am... I have not really improved that much.

BDSM is stuff principally done by the petite bourgeoisie - what in the U.S. is usually called "the middle class".

It doesn't take much to understand why.

Toward the bottom, the limit is given by the fact that BDSM is usually more expensive than purely vanilla sex.

Most "toys" cost a bit, and it also needs some dedicated space (even just a closet, but one where your co-leasers would not look! - that, or a ton and a half of Chutzpah).

Even if one builds its own gears and dungeons, that just changes the type of resources needed.

From purely financial ones, to space and time that can be set apart, and to having a certain degree of craftsmanship.

Essentially, to the resources and abilities required to do artisan work.

And, again - as every plumber worth a phone call can tell you - a good artisan is never a proletarian for long.

(Unless the "art" part of the craft lures it in temptation, in which case it can go from lumpenproletariat to Picasso.)

On the other side of the social spectrum, the BDSM scene is just too risky for most "rich and famous".

Nobody cares if I draw my stuff and I call a BDSM encounter a month in some Coffee house  of my city - because I am a nobody, and there is no prospect of me ever becoming anybody (after this confession, I am going to get drunk, tonight).

And If I ever had to become a household name, being a half-crazy sexual pervert would be an integral part of it (a bit like it was, not a long time ago, for  Madonna Luisa Veronica Ciccone).

Telling the world that I am into this would be no news, nor blackmail material - it would be just the statement of a fact.

But if I was, say, a member if the Kennedy family?

Or someone of a comparable wealth and or fame?

In the café with us kinksters, there would be a journalist and by the end of the day a piece would appear in a newspaper, a magazine or a blog (or wherever) about the fact that "X is a dangerous Sadistic Maniac".

If I was of sub persuasion, it would be a "Ridiculous Masochist Pervert" . 

In both cases, I would face scrutiny and mocking from my social milieu.

If I was someone  a bit lower on the totem pole, instead of a journalist I'd probably still find a wannabe blackmailer.

Which brings me to another reason why BDSM is, really, something for the middle class.

SSC [Safe, Sane and Consensual], a part of being an ideal (if one considers all factors,  literally everything entails some risk, from crawling out of the bed in the morning onward - of course, staying in the bed is going to provoke health issues) and not really enough to shield from legal consequences in case of accidents (this, in almost every country on the planet), it really is based on a "gain matrix" that is influenced by the social stratum one is in. 

Unsurprisingly, said matrix - ignoring the moral aspects, which pertains to individual consciences - is favourable to S.S.C. (and RACK) only in the "middle range" social classes.

For the classic "middle class", the legal troubles of being accused of something like a sexual aggression are deterrents of considerable weight, and avoiding them really helps keeping life relatively stress-free.

For a hooligan that spends much of its time defending himself from work-related assault and battery charges - and sometimes lands in jail because of those - it does not exactly look as if it would be a great problem - same old same old, as they say.

For a member of the top 1/10.000th (by wealth), it is simpler (and, in reality, maybe even cheaper!) to have his - or her - S&M fun in some faraway place, to indulge in more or less mercenary, more or less illegal activities, than to risk exposition even jut by participating to what, BDSM label apart, is simply a normal social gathering.

The first may feel compelled into looking for a consensual partner, willing to play, to avoid long term issues.

The second doesn't necessarily care, one way or the other - in prison food is bad, but it still beats starving at home.

And the third, rationally, should maybe have all the partners killed after "use", rather than indulge in a safe, sane and consensual adventure - in for a penny, in for a pound,  and the dead cannot sell any story to the mass media.