WIITWD: The Umbrella the BDSM Scene Keeps Open

In Western alternative-sexuality communities, and in BDSM circles, WIITWD is a common acronym and a commonly misread one. It is also written WIIWD. The words are “What It Is That We Do,” or the shorter “What It Is We Do.” Players use it as a deliberately wide umbrella for interests the usual labels do not hold.

Usenet, 9 January 1995

The earliest recorded use is in the Usenet group alt.sex.bondage (ASB), on 9 January 1995. Steven Davis was summarizing and criticizing theorist Jon Jacobs on what counted as “real” kink, and the acronym is in that post. Davis credited another poster, Bill Bohrer, with coining it. The thread was a fight over words. Jacobs argued for D&S, dominance and submission. Davis preferred the plain phrase “our thing.” Most of the group still said BDSM. Bohrer wrote it wiitwd.

Who does not fit inside BDSM

Those letters do not cover the whole room. Bondage (B/D), dominance and submission (D/s), and sadism and masochism (S/M) are what people mean by BDSM, and they miss adults who never touch rope, never pick up a whip, and never run a formal D/s protocol, but who still belong to the same scene. Some of them are into age play or little play. In this community those words mean adults acting, not anything involving minors. Some are into clothing alone: latex, catsuits, cross-dressing. Some are in a power exchange that is mostly emotional and does not look like a standard D/s ritual. They refuse a narrow BDSM label. They still show up at munches, discussion groups, and parties. “Fetish” sounds clinical, as if the interest were a diagnosis. “Kink” can sound thin, or too flippant. WIITWD was the placeholder. Consenting adults doing something non-vanilla can stand under the same umbrella for the moment.

Open it in public, drop it in private

The word is good at inclusion. People who do very different things can still count as one community. It is vague on purpose, and critics call it a catch-all that will stretch over almost anything if you push. Scene practice splits the job. Use the umbrella when you are drawing a line in public: arguing for space, building a community-wide list, deciding who is allowed into an event. In a private scene between two people, and in the negotiation before it, put the acronym away. Name the acts, the toys, the risks, and the safeword.