One of the things I keep noticing is that people light up when they grok the Kink For All/Bar Camp/unconference concept. It’s like something very remote and intangible has suddenly taken a dramatic leap closer in their minds. I loved explaining it tonight to our new friends, over mango daquiris. And I loved, in particular, how my friend immediately jumped from the event concept to the potential to create and share lasting information. “That’s so cool,” she said excitedly, “Will you tape it? Will you keep that information around for people who can’t attend?” And we laughed, and kept on talking. I wished she could be there when it happens.

I am excited for March already, and for bringing the concept to San Francisco if someone doesn’t beat us to it. It seems almost silly, this mix of activism and organisation and drive, but I like inhabiting it. I like feeling as though we all might do something that makes the world shift, just a little bit. Because how amazing is that? The thought that together, we can shift the world.

Kinky people are everywhere. Tonight I went to a bar to meet a bunch of geeks. I drank cider, ate pad thai, and listened to them chatter away about things I only understand half the time, and never in context. The acronyms thickened and collided in midair. I distracted a couple of them briefly in a chat about the lack of magical realist texts in North America.

Across the table from me, one of these anonymous geeks was wearing a Story-of-O ring. I didn’t get his name, don’t know where he’s from. I know he has ginger hair and a cartilage piercing placed high along the curve of his ear. I spent most of the night glancing from the ring to his face, and wondering why he was wearing it, and who gave it to him, or if he gave it to himself.

They said:

The way you use the word “vanilla” in your blog is bigoted.

At the time I thought, Bigoted? Really? That seems like a harsh choice of vocabulary.

But as you may recall, I did not choose to rise up in righteous indignation after being censored by scallywags. I chose to take on some of the responsibility for what had happened, because I wasn’t defining my language or giving context for my actions.

When I got home that week I searched my entire blog for every time I’d used the word “vanilla.” Not counting the two vanilla gentlemen on my blogroll, it came up about fifteen times. Of those instances, one was a poetic comparison of May’s bum to the silkiness of vanilla ice cream. The majority were times in which I used the word to mean “not-kinky.” One was a bit of an arrogant statement about stupid, male, vanilla movie producers. I figured that the last instance was fair; I was being a bit of a snarky brat in that entry. Which, by the way, is an entry you’ll no longer find here. It’s one of the two that did not survive my great blogging purge and password initiative. The other one was about my mother.

But really, it’s all those tricky “not-kinky” instances that are the sinkholes.

I would argue that saying my use of the word “vanilla” here is bigoted is, frankly, absurd. To be bigoted means essentially to be intolerant of identities which are not my own. I work very hard to be tolerant, because that’s one of the best ways I know to gain tolerance for myself. I have spoken before about sneaky selfish motivations.

Currently the blogosphere has vanilla on the brain. Renegade Evolution has taken on the idea of vanilla privilege, while Trinity over at The Strangest Alchemy has opened up her blog for a discussion on the definition of this very tricky idea.

Also, closer to home and all of a sudden, I have some new readers. (Hello, ladies.) And from their conversations with me, their blogs, and their attitudes, I get the feeling that vanilla just isn’t cool these days, much in the same way Maja once used “het,” hilariously, as a neo-semi-pejorative. That seems a bit unfair to me. Vanilla is unfortunately conflated with sex-negativity in a way that is simply not true.

I was asked several times in my ACON group to define what kinky sex is. I found myself at a bit of a loss. I have spent so long just being kinky that to start defining what kinky means for a broader audience is insanely difficult. Like many other words that must be personally defined before becoming useful, I can only really speak about what kinky means to me.

For me, to be kinky is to enjoy sex or enjoy things I consider to be sexual while maintaining a deliberate power imbalance.

And going from there, to have vanilla sex, as I have had many times in the past, is to enjoy sex or enjoy sexual things without such a deliberate imbalance.

And yes, I know, that is a simply enormous definition. It’s also, you may notice, a definition that relies heavily upon intention and thought, mental perspectives rather than weapons and gear. It’s not what I do, it’s how I do it. That means that a lot of my kinky sex can look very, very vanilla. But it works for me. Maybe it works for you. If it doesn’t, I invite you to redefine.

I think there is such a thing as vanilla privilege, but it’s hard to pin down where my ability to access that privilege begins and ends. Similar to my access to straight privilege, I can pass as vanilla sometimes. Although curiously, it is much easier for me to pass as straight than it is for me to pass as vanilla. May and I still get funny glances when we walk down the street, my hand on his collar and his head bowed, that little-boy grin on his face, that lazy toppish look on mine. People do stare at us in restaurants. They do think we’re strange at parties. But it works, because we are essentially considered eccentric rather than threatening. I think it’s because we look straight.

And there is also a low level of bigotry in some corners of the kink community, as there seem to be in all communities. My new blog readers will probably run into that, unfortunately. Hell knows I have. I just wrote that the clothing I think is sexy looks vanilla. I have been called a vanilla tourist a few times. I have even been asked, by a very large man at the door to Paddles, if I was lost. I wanted to laugh at him. No, I responded, I am definitely not lost.

Attitudes like that are why I try to go places with people, when they’re new. They’re why I still appreciate having people to go with. That reaction is why having a group of kinky friends is an infinitely valuable advantage when trying to find one’s place in a kinky community.

And attitudes like that are why I also have vanilla friendships. Screw this secret-exciting-sex-club mentality. Really, my sex looks spicy from an outside perspective, but it’s just a way of having sex. Vanilla’s just another way of having sex. I’m wired one way. Someone else is wired another. It all works out, in the end.

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?

This drives me mad. Mad, I tell you. It makes me want to do silly things, like stab my screen with a pen.

There is a common bad habit of dismissing people’s opinions precisely because they are specified as opinions. Apparently our personal opinions are so much dandelion fluff, as though to express an opinion is to express a weakness, an imaginary concoction lacking rhyme, reason, logic and fact.

And yet, when it comes to how I should live my life, there is nothing more important than my opinion.

It is my opinion that no one’s sexuality should have to die for mine to live, and vice versa.

It is my opinion that I should live my life the way I see fit, have a space to call my own, and fuck the way I want to fuck.

It is my opinion that you should do the same. Heck, I even think it’s your right to do the same. I’ll stand up and fight for your right to fuck any way you want to, and I hope you realize how essential it is for you to fight for mine.

Give me my space, and I’ll give you yours. Do me this courtesy, and the world might miraculously become a well-mannered place.

Don’t put me in generalized superior or inferior groups. Don’t tell how my partner should address me. Don’t tell me what my orientation is. Don’t invade my autonomy. Don’t touch me without my consent.

We’ve drawn trenches in a battlefield of sexuality. We fight bitterly over a hundred different versions of the One True Way. We go around telling each other what’s wrong with the words we use, that we choose the wrong genders, that strap-ons degrade women and paying a girl for sex in Toronto causes earthquakes in Arizona.

I don’t understand this instinct to destroy spaces rather than making spaces. Is this an artist thing? Is it naivety? I’m guessing a big part of it is willful stubbornness.

Sexuality’s spaces are not a zero-sum game, folks. We can always make more, and we always do. We exist in a naturally occurring and (thanks largely to the Internet) virtually unlimited state of cultural pluralism.

The only ideas I choose to genuinely attack are ideas that invade my space. The day I choose to attack someone or something on any other terms, call me out. I’m begging you, call me on it. Do me that courtesy too.

May has been remarking in the past few days that he doesn’t think people really understood his recent post on Halloween. He’s been accused of being judgmental, trying to pass his opinions off on others. I pointed out to him that his tone implied this, although his words did not. His words said, very simply, that it is sad that there’s only one day a year when people are allowed the freedoms they are allowed on Halloween. We’re so used to having our personal spaces encroached, at this point, that we see attacks where there are none. We take it as a given that everyone’s out to tell everyone else how to live.

Okay, Eileen. Take a deep breath, step away from the keyboard.

There is a very fine line between expressing our opinions and dictating the actions of others. Sometimes I suspect that line is irretrievably blurred. I suspect that many of us no longer know where it is. This, to me, is heart-wrenching.

Writing this entry made me cry.

Three months ago I did not know who Kate Bornstein was. Despite what I write here about gender, power, culture, and the like, I have no academic background (or self-educational background) in sociology or gender theory.

So I didn’t know the woman I met at Pleasure Salon all those weeks ago, the woman I bugged for a class description and biography, was famous. But I read her class description when it came, and then people started mentioning her name with that little hitch of awe, and then I started getting excited. And then I realized she was a writer, and that everyone I knew seemed to know her name, and I grew into an awareness of how much I wanted to see her speak. And of how silly I was being, and how awkward I felt, because let’s face it, even if you meet me for the first time and think I’m charming, outgoing, or sweet, the reality is I’m awkward as hell, I dread meeting new people, and I’m simply a very, very good actor.

So when I started plotting my Sunday morning around her class, my thoughts swung between It’ll be crowded and I probably won’t even get to say hello and Christ, woman. You’re going to make a fool of yourself.

And I did make a fool of myself. But of course, it was all right.

I’ve written before about how we, as scene member or simply fellow humans, form tight-knit groups, often around common interests or experience. The groups I frequent are more often than not characterized by being deliberately academic and/or consciously fluid. And such is Kate.

So when I sat down in her class, Survival Tips For Sex and Gender Outlaws, I did not know what to expect. The class was small, ten, maybe twelve of us who’d gotten out of bed early and made it to that space. She got out a big pad of white paper and began drawing Venn diagrams. The intersection of identity, desire, and power.

She talked about oppression and “isms” and politics. She has this remarkable gift of performance; she’s brilliant, and her words resonate. It’s a shock to hear someone say out loud the ideas you haven’t learned to articulate. I won’t regurgitate her research here; go read her books if you’re interested. It’s great stuff.

Then, as the group began to open up, to share experiences and talk, the conversation shifted. She talked about suicide. Her book is subtitled “101 Alternatives To Suicide,” and she talked about compiling that list, throwing in everything she could think of that would encourage people to stay alive. Illegal things, stupid things. The camaraderie in the room built up, threaded through the conversation.

We understand. We went through this. We’re with you, Kate. We struggled too.

And very, very quietly, I started to cry.

I didn’t have that experience. I’m sorry, but if you’re expecting me to eventually, after I’ve been writing here for a while, come out and talk about all the horrible trauma of my childhood years with maybe something touching and dramatic thrown in about kitchen knives or pills, you will be disappointed. Once, in the very young stages of our relationship, May turned to me and said “You’re the only emotionally smart person I know who’s actually healthy.”

I did not have an abusive childhood. I did not overcome a disease. I did not question my gender. I did not have a struggle which forced me to think. I did not attempt to reject my identity. I did not have a difficult time coming out. I had a difficult time growing up, but really, I was, and am, lucky. Overwhelmingly lucky.

And then sometimes, maybe a handful of times, people have seen me hugging May and sneered. God, I hate straight people. Or closed me out with their shoulders when I walk around in makeup and trendy clothes. I can’t stand these vanilla tourists. I can walk down the street and not get a second glance; I can work a corporate job, and get into bars on weekends. I can find partners, and be loved, and have orgasms and sex.

Apparently my luck shines through, and it makes my life look easy.

So this feeling, of having no right in a world where right is gained through suffering, this is a feeling I know very well.

Familiar as I am with being a crazy overthinking crazy person, eventually I calmed myself down. I did some breathing techniques. She continued to speak, drawing on our sense of community and mutual support. Of being allies. And I figured that she, if anyone, could handle this question. So I raised my hand.

“Could you give some ideas on-” and then I started crying again. The minute I open my mouth every time, damnit. Only this time I was really crying. May put his arms around me, Blaise reached back and hugged my knee with his hand. I held up my fingers and took a deep breath while everyone watched me. I laughed and cried at the same time; laughing because I felt so silly and crying because the words were hard.

I got it out eventually. “Could you give some ideas about supporting or being part of a fluid community when you identify with one pole of that community?” And I thought to myself, Well, fuck, that made no sense at all.

Except I watched her process the words, and I watched her understand. “Ohhh,” she said, drawing air in through rounded lips. May hugged me harder.

If you ever meet Kate, you will notice that she has amazing eyes. They are warm; they can make you feel toasty with just a glance. She fixed those amazing eyes on mine. “You have every right to this community, honey. This is your space too.” Other people murmured around me. I gave up on trying not to cry.

After the class was over, my friends started turning around to hug me. “I was getting teary too,” May said in my ear. “So were we!” cried Jen, her arm around Tyler’s waist. Blaise just grinned.

Natasha and Barbara came up and hugged me. Then Kate was kneeling by my chair.

She pulled me in me tight and spoke into my ear. “You are fluid, you know. You tell anyone who gives you shit that Kate Bornstein will come and beat them up. You tell them I said that.” I started laughing helplessly. She gives good hugs.

When the doors to the classroom opened and the rest of the convention started mixing back in, I walked with ragged steps. Tyler, Jen, May and I made a little cluster just outside the door. I had finally stopped sniffling.

Tyler had her big smile on. “I feel like we all just had an emotional orgasm,” she said.

I threw my head back. “Ha! Yes!”

And running through my head, over and over, was the word ally. That’s what I felt like. That’s what I am.

One thing Kate said during the class is still with me clearly, although much of the class itself has sunk in the haze of that emotional orgasm. She gestured at the room, the twelve of us up close in plastic chairs. “In here, this is my family.” She raised her hands to indicate the rest of the convention center, the 700-odd people running through that kinky space. “Out there, that’s my tribe.”

All right. We’re going to take a break from the four words to examine this idea of bisexuality versus pansexuality a little more intently. May and I have just had a very long discussion, and you all know how we like to break apart words and ideas in this space.

I wrote in my previous post that I had made a distinction between bisexuality and pansexuality. In doing so, I was reacting to a growing unease with the implications of the word “bisexual” as well as the increasing evidence that I am attracted to trans and androgynous people, people who readily mix my ideas of men and women both physically and idealistically.

We did not exactly have a discussion. We had what amounted to a fight. Here is our geekiness revealed; we fight about words. In reflection, this doesn’t actually seem so odd, or so geeky. Lots of people fight about words.

In Maymay’s ideal world, every word we use has a precise, specific, singular definition. I do not live in this world. Almost every discussion we have in this relationship in some way breaks down to a contention over the definition or usage of words. Our personalities conflict, similar to our reading tastes. May reads non-fiction, I read fiction. May’s bookshelf is full of technical manuals. Mine is full of 19th century adventure novels.

Briefly and approximately: the prefix “hetero-” means “different.” The prefix “homo-” means “the same.” the prefix “bi-” means “two.” The prefix “pan-” means “all.”

May is bipolar. He drew a comparison between being bipolar and being bisexual. Being bipolar does not mean he is always either depressed or manic. It means he exists on a sliding scale between those two states. Bisexuality, therefore, would be defined as being sexually attracted to people who fall within a range along the sliding scale of gender fluidity.

This is commonly how the word is understood in kink and alternative sexuality communities. It’s how I used the word for years. It works for this idea; in fact, it’s how most of us assume the word is used. We’ve culturally subtexted it to indicate either a sliding scale or a disregard for gender or sex. It works to claim bisexual as an identity in alternative cultures; chances are you’re not so different from me.

Used in this way, “bisexuality” obfuscates “pansexuality” by essentially making the two synonyms. “Pansexual” then becomes confusing: “Wasn’t that what I said the first time around?” we wonder aloud.

But then, I start looking at the definitions that pop up when I go searching for “bisexual.” I start thinking about how my vanilla mother interprets the word when I use it. I think about the fuckuppery that the scene goes through by unconsciously accepting rigid gender binaries.

So when I say the word “bisexual” do the people who hear me think about my tastes as two sides of a coin or as a fluid range? And if they do think of my tastes as two sides of a coin, then clearly I’ve started the conversation at the wrong entry point. So is it better to start a conversation with a word and implication I don’t like, or with a word that’s unfamiliar and relatively undefined?

Clearly, the word “pansexual” (along with words created in similar contexts such as “omnisexual”) is a neologism. In relation to the commonly known “bisexual” it has relatively little meaning or cultural clout. What does that mean? I will not claim that neologisms are valueless through their very unfamiliarity. Neologisms seem an appropriate way of promoting or defining a relatively unfamiliar idea.

And the idea of gender fluidity? For the culture we live in today, I’d say that gets a prime place on the list of unfamiliar, scary ideas.

“Pansexual” is also a political idea with roots in different issues than “bisexual.” It links to a different culture. It has different implications. It resonates with people of different interests and thought processes. And from my experience, I like those people. And I like bisexual people too.

I also recognize that people commonly try to tout pansexuality as “better” than bisexuality. Similarly, people tout polyamoury as “better” than monogamy. Just as a personal favor to me, please don’t do that.

The crux of the matter is why we use the words we do. Why do certain words define our identities; what do we claim, and how do we think? What do the words we chose say about our identity politics? Some women chose the word lesbian, while others prefer dyke. Some men claim the word fag, others choose to describe themselves as queer. May fights for words to be used in their exact sense. I do not. I like that words have ambiguities and cultural connotations. I like that labels are an entry point for learning.

May argues that if we want to get people thinking about the fluidity of gender, the best method lies in talking about gender as a scale. I argued that the best method would be to use different words, understanding that my sexuality relates to the genders and sexes I find attractive. In my experience, words create awareness.

We ended our spat about words with a deal. He’ll promote gender fluidity through conversations about scales, and I’ll promote gender fluidity through the use of different vocabulary. And in the end, we’ll probably meet in the middle.

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.