But, all things pass.

I’ve recently started reading Axe’s blog, ever since I got a few chances to chat with him in person. Axe is a sweet, smart submissive guy here in New York, who writes primarily about his search for a relationship with a dominant woman. I get the impression that his search has morphed into something of an epic quest at this point, spanning several years and causing him to move from the midwest to New York City.

As is often the case for those of us with experientially based learning styles, for me recognizing a thing is not the same as knowing a thing. As such, I often come to long foregone conclusions in my own way, and in my own time. Getting to know Axe has really driven some issues home for me, issues that Maymay and others have been writing about for ages.

Where the hell are all the dominant women? Where are the women like me?

The supposed scarcity of dominant women is bemoaned, condemned, dismissed and mistrusted. And yet, my experiential evidence within the New York scene confirms this scarcity.

And, a less-recognized issue but one that I find personally just as relevant: Where are the other couples in relationships like mine?

I think I’ve remained so persistently blind to this imbalance because addressing this issue demands that I acknowledge exactly how rare I am. I have no real sense of personal rarity in my life; it consistently surprises me that other people are not like me.

Obviously there are multiple issues at work here, which play against one another. The scarcity of dominant women in the scene says many (predominantly negative) things about how scene space welcomes women, and how the dominant sexual orientation is portrayed and understood. The scarcity of femdom/malesub couples speaks to the scarcity of desirable, sane, smart male submissives, which in turn illuminates how the scene marginalizes that brand of sexuality.

Honestly, folks, there’s too much at work here for a single entry, or even a single blog. Here’s my suggestion: for more insight on how scene space “welcomes” dominant women, I refer you to the brilliant, bitter Bitchy Jones. For more insight on how submissive men are marginalized, see Maymay’s entire blog.

Just right now, just here, I want to talk about what the scarcity of dominant women means to me, as a dominant woman in the public scene.

Axe writes not once but twice that Maymay and I are the only femdom/malesub couple he knows. This confirms my experience; we are the only femdom/malesub couple I know as well. The rare dominant women I do know in passing are usually dating dominant men.

I intend to keep my data on a meatspace level during this entry. Yes, I know other dominant women online who are like me. We make similar choices about our identities and maintain similar relationships. And I have online friendships. But, for me, they’re not the same.

The part of my brain that thinks the world should make sense finds it strange that Axe has not met an appropriate dominant woman. He’s a polite, sane, well spoken submissive man: an attractive rarity. He’s good looking, has great kinks, and a charismatic ‘nilla personality.

But it is ranging on impossible for him to find a partner.

I’ve had three long-term relationships with submissive men, at the age of 24. I’m picky as hell, but I can find partners. On the other side of the coin, I’m the first dominant woman Maymay has dated. Before me, he dated three submissive women.

Believe me, I understand how much the imbalance created by the scarcity of dominant women works in my favor. I see how unfair it is to him when Maymay and I compare our numbers of potential play partners.

I understand how desirable my age, gender and orientation are.

There’s a part of me that deeply distrusts this desirability. After all, it’s not particularly reassuring to know that one is the best choice because one is the only choice.

I suspect we all feel, at times, as though we are unseen. Being a young, sexy, dominant woman gives me privileges in the scene that I don’t earn. I show up, and people give them to me. At the same time, being desired (or respected, in a culture that consistently confuses sexual attraction with respect) because of a particular flux of timing, genetics, and orientation makes me feel like a cardboard cut out.

Of course, from many perspectives I have nothing to complain about. Inherited privilege trumps any kind of card I might play about feeling insecure, or unseen, or unwanted. In a world where rights are gained through suffering, yet again, I have no right.

I wrote after I came back from Floating World that I was wrestling with the difficulties of supporting a fluid culture from a standpoint of relative stasis. This was true then of gender, and it’s true now of power.

I firmly believe that power balances shift, that people are capable of embracing multiple roles and defining themselves as they choose, in as many ways as they choose. In short, I believe in the existence of switches.

Right now, however, I am not a switch. And perhaps because I love fluid people, the overwhelming majority of my friends are switches. Most of remainder of my friends are men who top and women who bottom. Within my circle of friends here in New York, there is not a single dominant woman besides me who does not switch. I know dominant woman as acquaintances, and almost never in couples.

The simple truth of the matter is, I have no friends like me.

Where are the other dominant women? Women my age? Yes, in friendship and the exchange of ideas on related experiences, age does matter.

Women who don’t switch, and are doing their best to incorporate that choice into their lives? In an avidly fluid, changeable culture, and possessing a chameleon-like personality, that choice is sometimes very hard for me to manage.

Women who’re smart, and wise, and local? Where are you? Could we have coffee sometime?

I would hate to imply that I have everything all figured out. I don’t. A lot of questions have been raised about exactly how we can use language appropriately and apply context to our actions, and honestly, I don’t have any answers. This experience has not been so revelatory. I have ideas, of course. I suppose you should expect nothing less.

But first, I want to talk about being out.

By “out” I mean openly claiming my sexual orientation. (I realize that “out” doesn’t always apply to sexual orientations, but for the moment we’ll operate under a narrower definition.) It’s such a tricky word, and in my opinion misleading.

It’s clear that this isn’t a binary situation. “Out” implies an open or shut door, but from personal experience most of us realize that such simplifications are hardly helpful when dealing with real life.

So we could try placing “in” and “out” at the ends of a 1 to 10 scale, and shuffling ourselves into places along that scale. But then, that becomes quickly bogged down. How out is out? Am I completely in if I deny my interest in kink even to myself? Or am I completely in if I think about being kinky, but never tell anyone? Am I completely out if I write under a fake name? A real name? Am I completely out if I get a video camera and start streaming every minute of my life to the world?

Like power, like gender, being out is far too complicated to shuffle into numbers.

I’ve said before that I’m out. Among my friends here in the city, I am probably more out than most. What does that mean?

It means that if someone asks me where I’m going if I’m headed to a CV meeting, I’ll tell the truth. But depending on who I’m speaking to, I might filter that truth, leaving details unsaid. If someone asks me what I’m sexually interested in, if I think they’re serious and respectful I’ll tell them that I’m kinky. I took a day off work to attend a kinky event. I told my workplace, when asked, that I was attending a conference on sexual education. How out does that make me, such a devious half-truth?

I said in my first post on being attacked that I felt blindsided. In all honesty, one of the reasons I felt blindsided is because I told my family I was kinky three years ago. At least, I thought I had. Maybe they missed the memo.

More likely is that the casual conversation I had three years ago is a level of “out” that doesn’t compare to the revelations this blog contains.

The main reason I’m more out than the majority of my friends is because of this blog, and Maymay’s blog. Now, Eileen and Maymay are not our real names. However, we’ve shared personal details, plans and agendas, our voices and even photos of ourselves. Anyone who knows me personally could connect me with this blog through independent observation.

When I started writing here, similar to when I started playing in the scene, I did think about what being out would mean for me. At the time, I decided that I wanted to be able to write freely and speak my mind; I decided that this was more important to me than the threat of a future bogey-boss-man come to take my job away.

I did not direct my family to this blog, nor did I hide it from them specifically. As I mentioned, I did not assume that if they were reading they would react explosively. But I assumed a certain amount of context and experience in my writing, and the results of that assumption were indeed explosive.

My immediate reaction was to take the blog down and rethink exactly how “out” I wanted to be. Of course, as I began rethinking, I realized a very simple truth.

I’ve written here, with personal details and specifics, for nine months. The things I’ve said will probably be attached to me forever. I’ve marched in two Pride parades here in the city. That means that there are photos of me taken by spectators that I have no control over. I have gone and will continue to go to kinky events. I have no method of controlling the information that I am kinky.

The truth is that once out, there’s no going back in.

If I’m attempting to keep a portion of my life anonymous, I face attacks from two well-established fronts. The first is from employers and authorities. The second is from family and friends. These are the people most likely to take an interest in my writing without sharing my knowledge, interest, or arousal in my topics.

Each of us when writing online faces the two sides of the coin: Could someone, starting with my online identity, discover my real name? And could someone, starting with my real name, discover my online identity?

In my case, the answers were yes and yes. Now, the answers are maybe and maybe, but frankly, maybe is the same as yes.

I had not expected attacks from my family or friends. Now that I’ve been attacked, I’m living through it. I’ll keep on living.

I also do not expect attacks from my employers or other authorities. I realize I may be wrong about this. I realize that someday I may be fired from a job I love because of this blog. But I’ve come to the same conclusion I came to the day I started here: that’s okay.

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office.

A part of this is the knowledge that I’m planning a career which will probably not involve people snooping around to try and reveal something scandalous about me, or that if they do, I can always pray the scandal will help my book sales.

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I suspect that some of the essential properties of the Internet are misunderstood. The Internet is not an anonymous playground. The Internet, in fact, is a wealth of identifying information, meticulously cataloged and stored. Even with safeguards and careful planning, all it will take to find out your real identity is someone with better technical skills and more resources than you. It is incredibly hard to disconnect your name from your words.

If keeping your sexuality a secret is essential to a portion of your life, using the Internet to express yourself is a deceptively weak method of practicing information security. Even under a false name, even when writing from a false perspective, there is always the possibility that your words will reconnect with you at an inopportune time. It seems to me that if you absolutely cannot handle the consequences of a specific person reading something you’ve written, you should not be posting online.

On the other hand, we must recognize how blogging and content-production is changing our lives. The Internet is creating undeniable links between our personal and public persona. Again, I hesitate to cite generational influences, but it’s a safe estimate to say that nine out of every ten people I know in my age group keep a blog or maintain an online page. Online footprints are becoming crucial elements in our interpersonal relationships.

As these trends develop, the people responsible for hiring new employees in companies will be forced to change their methods. Eventually the people hiring will be keeping blogs themselves. The economy will have to adapt to a generation of people who share their private lives as a matter of course. Our culture will have to adapt to different methods of sharing information and different expectations in communication.

As I thought about this, I started talking to people about being out. In particular, I spoke with Susan Wright, who can take credit for planting many of the seeds of these ideas in my mind. I began formulating my defenses and tapping the resources and good people of my community.

As I did this, I also realized that I don’t want to go back in.

Although I wince at the cloying humanitarianism, I have to admit that I’m not just out because being out protects me. Nor am I writing this only because the writing has a cathartic benefit. I’m out, and I’m writing, because I recognize that being out, and writing, helps people.

This community supported me from the beginning and can claim a huge portion of the credit for beginning to heal me now. What would I have done without it? Where would I be? Where would any of us be? Probably locked in our bedrooms trying to convince ourselves that we’re not mentally ill.

I wrote once that we should talk about our dark desires and fantasies because not talking about them is the more dangerous alternative. Keeping our thoughts hidden allows us no way to critique our ideas or examine ourselves. Nor does it allow a space for us to learn from others. Our community survives and supports itself only through our individual willingness to keep on talking.

As misty-eyed as the declaration is, this community is valuable to me. I will keep on talking.

Does it mean the blog will go back up completely? No. Although I recognize that I am out, and I will continue to be so, I still intend to edit my blog entires for personal details. I see no reason to throw myself off the cliff simply to see if I survive the fall.

I definitely intend to take my family out of my blog entirely, as they never consented to being written about on a kinky blog, even if they did raise a kinky child.

It would be easy to say that’s that and close the matter, but we all know it’s not so simple. This is a complex resolution, and still tinged through with vulnerability.

I gave a lot to this forum, and I ended up very, very hurt. As valuable as I recognize the giving to be, I’m still not ready to be hurt again.

I’m home sick with uterine cramps (which yes, can be excruciating), my computer is on the fritz and has been missing for two weeks whilst I tap my thoughts out on a painfully bad keyboard, and it’s raining.

May is here with me, working from home, fiddling away with code. He made breakfast. We took a walk in the rain. Tonight I will make him dress up in a nice shirt. We’ll go out to dinner, we’ll be cute and fluffy and drink margaritas. We’ll come home and watch a movie. I’ll carve my name into his flesh and leave bruises on his skin like perfect painted fingerprints.

It is really just a good, sweet, ordinary day.

Monday evening May and I presented our sexual teasing and denial class for Conversio Virium. In doing this we have come remarkably full circle, as prettily as though Fate had planned it so.

I like telling stories, if you hadn’t guessed. So all right. Here’s the story of how two kinky people meet each other, the story we don’t tell when we’re asked, “So how did you two meet?” We have a prefabricated version for such situations, a bland dry tale about a party and a movie date, crumbs of the truth scattered through it.

In comparing notes, it seems that the two years before May and I actually met each other are a series of near misses. May went to CV regularly, every Monday night, about five years ago, until the tiny size of the group and his increasing indifference to the social scene made him give it up. Three weeks later I came to my first meeting.

A year after that, May was called back for one meeting, to bottom for a singletail demo. I was busy that night, maybe out of town. I missed CV for the first time in months.

I was invited to several scene parties. May was apparently a regular guest at these gatherings. I went to one party, but knew no one and soon moved on to other social groups. May missed that party; one of the only ones he ever missed.

And throughout this time, all over my conversations with people who knew us both, was the question, “Haven’t you met Maymay yet? You’d like him.”

“So I’m told,” I would answer.

Finally success, practically accidental in nature. I was asked, with another member of CV, to present on teasing and denial. This happened through no expertise of my own, nothing more than my obvious enthusiasm when the topic came up in conversation. I knew literally almost nothing. I knew that when I held my lips a fraction of an inch away from a man’s mouth and kept them there, eventually he would moan, beg, strain desperately to close that gap, to make the kiss connect. I knew it made me melt to do this.

A scheduling mistake. Sunday night, three weeks before the presentation, an email to the group. Apparently, teasing and denial was on the docket for the very next day. In a panic and a flurry of email exchanges late into the night, we get it sorted. However, there is no time to send a new email.

The next night I showed up to CV exhausted, caught in thesis frenzy. I had come straight from my studio, and had paint on my hands, my clothes, my body. We apologized to the group. A few faces fell. Maymay’s was among them.

He had come back to Conversio Virium after seeing an email that the group was presenting on this topic, something that he was passionately interested in and had never seen a presentation on. After the meeting he flagged me down and told me how excited he was to see me present in three weeks time. “Oh, you’re Maymay!” I remember saying.

Apparently, we had a long conversation. I say “apparently” because, I shit you not, I don’t remember a word of it. Apparently it was nice. Apparently we hit it off. Apparently Maymay thought I was dandy.

Sometimes I make him tell me all the nice things he thought about me that night, all over again.

Maymay liked me. He decided we should get to know each other. So what did he do?

He seduced me.

That’s right. He seduced me.

The seduction went down, so to speak, at a play party that weekend. Finally, we were at the same party. I watched as in the corner Maymay was kissed and handled by a boy who looked like Peter Pan. I got involved in a hair pulling scene with two friends of mine. I and another girl sandwiched a proper British boy between us on the couch and pulled his hair until his gasps could be heard even over the music. Maymay and the Peter Pan boy found this fascinating, and came to watch.

“What are they doing?” Peter Pan asked our British Boy.

“It’s hard to explain,” he answered.

Maymay sat down next to me, quietly. He leaned in, said hello.

“Hello,” I said. “You have amazing hair.” He did have amazing hair, long, fiery curls to his shoulders. He leaned in farther.

“Can I pull it?” I asked. He nodded. I ran my fingers through it, tracing the back of his scalp.

In the most forward gesture he had ever made, May leaned over and snuggled his head into my lap. He closed his eyes and let out little cries of pleasure as I pulled his beautiful hair.

I left the party at 5am. Before I climbed into bed that night, I checked my blogs. May already had an entry up, and a little stab of disappointment went through me to see that I was not in it. Oh well, I thought. At least I met him.

Silly me.

The new date for the teasing and denial class came rushing toward us. My presentation partner and I were struggling over how to create a demonstration. I mean, really, how do you demonstrate sexual teasing and denial in a space that prohibits not only sexual contact, but the display of genitalia? Eventually an idea was formed. We emailed Maymay, and asked him if he would consider being a demo bottom for the class. I knew from our previous conversation that he owned a CB-3000. (Why I retained that piece of knowledge and none of the rest of the conversation, I do not know.) Would he be willing, we asked, lock himself in his chastity belt for a week and give me the key?

His email response was long and excited. Its basic contents: “Hell yes!”

We tossed emails back and forth with the rapidity of similar minds. The meeting, Monday April 11th, came and went. I strung the key on a chain around my neck. The next day he emailed me again. A movie? Sin City was playing. Maybe we could . . . ?

Hell yes.

Thursday night we met for dinner and a movie. I remember recognizing the halo of May’s hair in the neon glow of 41st street.

We started talking and didn’t stop. After the movie we talked so far into the night I offered him my bed to avoid a 4am subway ride. The next morning we had breakfast. We talked. We took a stroll. We talked. The stroll turned longer; eventually we had walked eight miles in a vast loop around the city. We could not stop talking. Friday night I had an 8pm show to attend. He walked me to the theatre. At 7:55, seeing him go was almost painful. In the past 24 hours we had only stopped talking for the brief time the movie was playing, to sleep a few hours, and for a bright stretch of time in the night, before bed. I thought on those bright moments as I watched him walk away.

That night I had seduced him.

Occasionally I step back and simply have to marvel at how the New York scene affects my personal development.

Lady Lubyanka wrote a complex post about the theory of inclusion within the scene. In a nutshell, it argued that the scene should be all-inclusive. This, I agree with.

Today I want to talk about misplaced inclusivity.

I want no, claim no, and hold no power over defining who’s kinky and who’s not. Personal identities are precisely that: personal. I will not stand for this bullshit about not being a real this or a proper that. (Although I will encourage the conscious use of words and personal vocabularies to avoid miscommunication.) You want to be kinky? Awesome. Go do that.

But there are plenty of people who want to do things a certain way. Who want to mold the scene, shape it. I’ve got news for you; you cannot mold a scene. You cannot teach a culture. You can only teach people. It happens online, it happens in real life. We fight, we expound, and we attempt to educate.

(I’m don’t intend this post to get down and dirty in the battle lines where fantasy and reality wave their heavy leather flags, trenches built from abandoned sex toys, officers scurrying about in tattered chaps as words and ideas are thrown wildly in the air.

Troops, where are the projectile strap-on launchers? Did no one remember the projectile strap-on launchers!?)

It’s very clear from reading this blog that I have some personal standards about the kinds of kinky people I’m interested in attracting and socializing with. If I put forth ideas in this blog that you feel don’t apply to you, you are free to move on. The Internet is a big place; if you don’t have a personal playroom, go make one. There’s plenty of real estate.

Both online, and in the public scene, the community splits. Online we split into camps of thought. In the public scene we split into cliques and organizations. And people consistently rail against these splits: Why can’t we all accept each other? Why can’t everyone be welcome? Why isn’t the scene inclusive?

Kink is naturally inclusive; all personal identities are naturally inclusive. You print your own membership card. This is obvious.

But if your goal is to do more than simply exist and be kinky, eventually you will have to deal with other people. And other people will form social networks based upon ideas and mutual interests. There is nothing wrong with this. I tried to explain to May a few nights ago that I see exclusivity in the idea of organizations with specified cultures. I kept saying that groups of people practice exclusivity by attracting and encouraging only those people with similar wants and ideas, and May kept saying over and over, “You’re using the word ‘exclusive’ wrong.”

He’s right. I was using it wrong. I’m not being exclusive by arguing my ideas of best practice. If you don’t like my arguments, you can go somewhere else. I’m inclusive, in that all are welcome to come and listen to me. But I’m not going to try and convince you that I am the all-inclusive scene. I’m not.

A group or organization, when putting forth its views and ideas, says it’s trying to educate others. Unfortunately, we have the idea of education all mixed and fucked up with the idea of politics. The personal is political. You think education is the goal?

Education is supposed to be unbiased.

Education is almost never the goal for these groups. Recruitment is the goal.

My experience with the scene is not online. It is in New York City. So let’s talk about that. It’s all interrelated, in the end.

(Cue the sucking vortex.)

So let’s leave aside the people who’re kinky only in the privacy of their homes, the kinky people who choose to structure their lives without seeking out a community of other specifically kinky people. Let’s say you’re new to kink, you’re in New York City, and you want to join the community. The public scene. You want to get some education, maybe meet some interesting people.

Well, you’re fucked.

Or maybe you’re not! Maybe, miraculously, the first meeting you find on Google and get up the courage to go to is perfect and the people are brilliant and you float off into a happy cloud of kinky sex and discussion and life has never been better. But I doubt it.

(Right now, I want to talk about the responsibilities of organizations that wish to educate. May often contributes the excellent point that the responsibility for education is not solely in the hands of the educators. Many people forget this; we assume that educational organizations will do the work for us. Well, as I’m about to spell out, these organizations cannot be trusted with your complete education. You must educate yourself. I would like to see the culture of education around BDSM improve; right now I’m talking on only one side of the issue. While I do this, remember the other side.

You must take responsibility for educating yourself.

Got it? Good. Moving on.)

We, as a community, are suffering under the illusion that we are a single community. We are not. We are a series of organizations with widely varied, self-selecting memberships. We’re all interested in basically the same thing, i.e. pursuing activities, partners or relationships outside the cultural sexual norm. But the attitudes, orientations, and purposes of the organizations are individualized. We exist in a naturally occurring state of cultural pluralism.

(This is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to educate oneself. You can write it on a little index card to look at when you get depressed or feel confused. “Don’t forget cultural pluralism!”)

Almost every single organization in New York advertises itself as absolutely, consciously inclusive of all comers. All, so it’s said, are welcome. But in practice, the implications of these messages of inclusivity are also followed through to convey that each organization is the all-inclusive community.

These organizations suffer under broader political agendas. Being a part of the New York scene is not about learning new things about kink, or meeting new people. It’s about what organization you belong to. This will shape everything about your experience. Being the leadership of a group means how many members you have. How many new fresh faces you can attract. How many parties you throw, how many famous presenters you have speak.

Like kinky people are a limited resource. As if there aren’t more born every fucking day. Like kinky people are a commodity, and everybody’s out for a market share.

Here are a few ways in which this destructive political struggle plays out:

Point the first: Organizations quickly learn that they cannot rely on other organizations to refer interested members to their meetings. The best (and pretty much only) way to learn about the existence, interests and meetings of organizations is through existing members. Why is it that after four years in the community I only learned that MAsT existed five months ago?

(See the note above about educating oneself. This was partially my own fault.)

Point the second: New people are actively, aggressively, inappropriately recruited to join groups that don’t provide the most ideal atmosphere for exploring their interests. Why did one of the lead members of a predominately M/f group practically fall over himself to offer May and I free memberships?

Point the third: The community accpets the misguided notion that being a member of a single group becomes the whole of one’s public scene identity. You are a TES member. You are a DSF member. You have aligned yourself with this, that or the other political force. Why was May put in the ludicrously awkward position of being “outed” as a TES member when he went to GMSMA?

(As Maymay would comment, it smells a little “One True Way” in here.)

May related to me a brief overview of the “message” he was given at his first novice meeting of TES. “There are a lot of bad kinky people out there,” he was told verbatim, “but we’ll protect you.” Which, in his case, turned out to be a massive, laughable lie. He was attacked, marginalized, and made to feel unwelcome. His ex-girlfriend was welcomed with open arms. (I hate to speak so harshly against one group specifically, but there it is.)

Why was he not given a positive culturally pluralistic message?
Oh, you’re interested in M/s dynamics and like group discussion; have you checked out Masters And slaves Together? Or, hey, your attitude reminds me of this guy I know who’s part of the New York Boys of Leather. Maybe you’d like it there. Seems from your preferences you might enjoy getting to know the folks over at Gay Male SM Activists. Or the Lesbian Sex Mafia. Or maybe Dom/sub Friends is a place you’d feel comfortable in? Or hey, you’re college age; have you ever been to Conversio Virium?

Because each organization is only actively advertised by its own members, because each organization has a political interest vested in keeping new people within its membership, and because each organization views the identity of scene members as essentially singular, there is no one at novice groups saying things like this. There is no avenue to self select out of or into appropriate groups.

The result? A lot of frustrated, stymied, formerly hopeful people who walk away thinking “the community” just isn’t right for them.

The people who never come back after their first meeting are bewailed. Lamented. “How, how can we keep people from leaving so quickly? Why don’t they feel welcome?” Each organization pushes to become more inclusive. More welcoming. The inevitability of self-selection, the reality of differing standards, the essential nature of critical mass in the exchange of ideas, all of these are ignored in the knee-jerk model of misplaced inclusion.

The community is inclusive. A single organization is not the community.

We need to accept that we do not have all the answers. We also need to accpet that not having all the answers is okay, as long as we have an idea of where the answers might be.

Organizations that stress inclusivity do so because they don’t wish to define a certain membership. But a self-selecting group of people is not the same as a group of people who meet predetermined standards. We naturally form social circles and organizations around similar modes. The process is organic. It is also inevitable.

The reality is that not everyone who comes to a CV meeting will be satisfied. If we’re truly an organization that fosters and encourages new members, an organization that educates, we should be able to recognize that. We should be able to encourage people to leave with as much grace as we encouraged them to enter. We should provide routes and resources that lead away from us.

When you live in New York, there is always another place to go. (God, I wish this was the rule and not the exception!)

The reality is that not everyone who reads this blog agrees with me. I did not design this blog with the intention of educating; I designed it with the intention of creating a self-selecting social circle in which to exchange ideas. If within this process I become a resource by which others learn a little something here and there, that’s great.

But if I am the only resource by which you form your ideas, I would like you to stop right the fuck now. Go read some opposing viewpoints. Educate yourself. Consciously self-select your social circle. It might not be mine. I value intelligence above sex appeal. I actively encourage appropriate arrogance. I wear leather pants, hate gender superiority, and like Indian food. Maybe you don’t. Maybe we have bad conversations. I’m fine with that. We’re all still kinky bastards.

There is always an opposing viewpoint. There is always an alternate camp. Don’t forget cultural pluralism.

I apologize in advance for this if your geographic location makes this event inappropriate.

As I mentioned, I’m one of the organizers for The Floating World. What I may not have mentioned is that I am one of the programming organizers, and I have been working my ass off along with my fellow committee member.

What that means is that we’re in charge of the education and a good chunk of the entertainment for the event, and there are some seriously fabulous people coming to speak. People like Susan Wright, Kate Bornstein and Jack McGeorge. Go look at the list that is the result of a lot of fabulous people and a lot of hard work coming together. Like what you see? Look at all the rockin’ organizations who are involved with us.

Not only that, but we will have some wonderful play spaces. And our event has been structured to allow play, kink, sex, fire, mayhem and puppies to coexist. It took some doing, believe me.

Floating World is located in Edison, NJ, and runs the weekend of August 24th to the 26th. Registration closes on August 5th.

Let me say that again. Registration closes on August 5th. No exceptions. We have to close the event registration at that time for issues of legality. Have you registered? No? Go register!

I’m not usually one for shameless plugs, actually. I think this will be a good event. I can feel it in my chest, insistently clamoring. I’m looking forward to presenting with May, and wandering about, and existing for a short time in such a space. I like kink events and kink people. I like spaces where I can be all of myself.

Do you?

When I was exploring BDSM consciously for the first time, it was online. Isn’t it for everyone, it seems? And I visited photo galleries, and poked about in forums a bit, and went to all manner of ridiculous subterfuge to hide the browser history on my family computer. And I met my first kinky friend online, and we chatted via AIM, and eventually I had my first real kinky relationship with him.

And just when I was ready to settle down and get comfortable with myself and the online world . . .

I moved to New York.

As the movies say, location, location, location.

I’m a blogosphere faker.

I’m actually, honest to goodness, in the scene. Not the bedroom scene. Not the online scene. The public scene. I go to monthly play parties. I’m a member of this completely awesome group and I’m one of the organizers for this event and I’ve taught here and I attend these meetings and every once and a while I hang out here and occasionally you can listen to me babble on this thing.

I don’t know the nuances of how the blogosphere is fucked up. And I’m not just musing here. There’s too much opinion going on. So why am I writing? I’m not the right person to fix the internet.

Well, the public scene is fucked up too. And just as scary to newcomers, and just as obsessed with weird rules, and just as full of clueless people. And if you think it’s hard keeping a straight face when someone on a forum demands that you call them Master Overlord of All Things, you try doing it when they’re standing in front of you.

I would like the scene to be better. I would like to expand the intelligent atmosphere that can be found there occasionally, and send good messages to the public and the kink curious, and foster safe spaces, and make the play and the education what it’s all about, instead of politics and power struggles. I seriously doubt I’m going to do that here. This is the wrong tool for that particular agenda. And I don’t think anyone really cares what I write at the moment, anyway.

But I’d also like to get the word out there that normal people do exist in the real life scene. That I’ve met funny, smart and smarmy male doms who don’t obsess over dominance, and subs who act like genuine people with wants and needs, and that we do argue about comic books and eat crappy food at play parties. I do have leather boots, I do occasionally wear high heels, and I do have a collection of corsets. I will also object to people I don’t know calling me Mistress, and show up at Paddles in jeans and a tshirt, and admit to more confidence issues than a preteen with too much body hair, and work a full time job, and have several unrelated hobbies. That the privately kinky and the publicly kinky can have a meeting of minds. We’re not all freaks out here.