I am having some trouble sorting out changes in my perspective upon the world, and myself. And my New York friends, the lot of them, are trouping off to Floating World this weekend, an instance that has produced a welter of nostalgia as I reflect on the truly marvelous experiences of last year.

I am certainly not cut off from the kinky community. Sydney’s scene continues on around me. My internet connection continues unabated. But as I mentioned in my last post, a shared sexuality does not my community make.

So when we get right down to the nitty gritty, the reality is that I am isolated now that I’ve left New York City. I’m isolated from my kinky friends and my favorite spaces and my comfort zones.

My reaction to this is akin to exhaustion. I ask myself how much effort I want to spend on building a life here in Sydney? Aren’t I just going to pick up and move again? I had never envisioned our move here as being long term, and I know how quickly a year or two can pass. But “in an hour, there are many days.” I have great swaths of time I try to fill with work. I’m writing a novel. I could kick myself for being so cliche.

(As a side note, I have been stalwartly resisting the impulse to turn this into a blog about teaching, understanding, and perfecting one’s writing. I don’t think my readers would appreciate the switch. “What is all this nonsense on teaching styles, Eileen? Remember the kinky sex we come here for? Come on, kinky sex!”)

As a result of this general ennui, my kinky identity has been going through something of a hibernation. I can envision the kinky part of myself, curled adorably in a large fluffy blanket somewhere warm, sucking her thumb and cradling a singletail to her chest. I haven’t stopped having sex, I haven’t stopped thinking about sex in masturbatory ways. But I have stopped thinking about sex in community ways, about the connections in, and advantages of, communicating with others like me.

So, seeing this disconnect in my identity coincide with my withdrawal from public spaces, I ask: How much of my kinky identity is based not around what I do in the bedroom, but what I write and say and do in public?

I don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you?

The kinky community consistently picks words to push back against. We’re cranky like that. Among the list that garners resistance is the word “lifestyle.”

But I don’t buy into that particular resistance. I like the word lifestyle, specifically because it implies that being kinky is not just a matter of freaks in their bedrooms. Being kinky crosses those boundaries; I am kinky all the time. My sexuality is a part of my lifestyle, and affects the decisions I make in multiple contexts, not just when I’m flipping through my porn stash looking for something juicy.

In my observations, one of the best ways in which queer communities have gained acceptance is the acknowledgment of queer identities as being connected to lifestyles. Having gay neighborhoods, gay bars, gay-friendly merchants, gay-friendly medical centers. Acceptance trickles down, slowly but surely, as we begin to insist that we can’t just leave our sexualities at the bedroom door.

So how do I maintain that lifestyle in a healthy way now that I’ve moved away from the community that supported it? And more specifically, how do I do that without spending four hours of my life every day surfing blogs?

I miss New York. Tonight I tied May’s hands above his head and ran my finger up and down his body, and then up and down his cock. I did it over and over, for almost two hours, and I watched him twist and pull his arms to his face to bite at the tender skin. As I did, I pressed into him. I swung my leg up along his shoulder and put my foot in his palm, and he wove his fingers in and out of my toes as he gasped. And I thought how glad I am to have him with me.

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.

Everyone has heard the phrase I’m starting with today. It’s a maxim of the kink community; it’s practically gospel. Say it with me now, people:

Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay.

Well I’m here to tell you that as of right about now, I think when it comes to this particular maxim, the community is full of shit.

We’re actually excellent at maintaining this structure within our own groups. I hang out with people who do scat and are wigged by needles. We get along just fine. But the idea isn’t intended as a simple guideline between friends; it’s intended to be something much more powerful.

Communities concerned with sex, especially of an alternative variety, share a common interest: Sex! In some way, somehow, we’re wanking differently than our perceived conception of the norm. As such, would it not make sense for us to draw together? To support one another when brought under fire by things like abstinence-only education in American schools?

That’s not “not our problem,” by the way. I don’t particularly care what your political opinions are concerning issues that aren’t sex related, but surely you must see the trickle-down effects of the idea of abstinence-only education? Any initiative that restricts information harms us. Hell, restricting information harms everyone. It’s called censorship.

But in the meantime, the straight scene doesn’t talk to the gay scene, the gay scene doesn’t talk to the trans scene, the kink people don’t talk to the swingers, the poly people don’t talk to the sex positive people. The list goes on. We are not a cohesive unit. We are ten thousand fractured little shards all so wrapped up in making our own kinks okay that nobody stops to think that maybe, possibly, if every queer person in America spoke up at precisely the same time we’d deafen our way to acceptance.

Saying “your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay” should be an open invitation. It should encourage more people to go cross community jumping, to reach out in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise and trust that it’ll turn out all right. I am a cross community jumper. I’m kinky and poly and bisexual too. And every time I show up at an event that’s not kink specific, I have to remind myself that the people I’m with have common interests with me, do not live under bridges and have intelligent things to say.

Maintaining insular communities is the epitome of the phrase “your kink is not okay.” Isn’t there a word for someone who does the very thing they say they don’t do? One of those long fancy words we don’t like hearing in relation with ourselves?

We, when by “we” I mean apparently everyone on the frickin’ planet, are obsessed with us-versus-them mentalities. Gay versus straight. Kinky versus vanilla. Look, if making our communities and our world better is going to be all about carving out a place for ourselves in a grandiose battle for freedom, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna lose. In case you haven’t noticed, we are currently outgunned.

The political and social issues surrounding sex have been pinned with war language, and that just wigs me the fuck out.

I’m trying very, very hard not to make this a fuzzy-wuzzy “Can’t we all just get along?” post. But seriously? Why is it that when I see what’s going on around me, instead of being content to live my life excellently and let others live their lives as they choose, I feel the need to stand up and just start shouting? We keep saying that other people, vanilla people, politicians, whatever, need to accept alternative sexualities as a community, but we suck at accepting each other. We are a laughable joke of a community.

And because we are such a joke, we damage ourselves. The premise of the community’s movement is currently one of having our differences accepted by the population at large. Although within the guidelines of us versus them this appears logical, even rational, we’re too busy not talking to each other to realize the flaw in our current argument.

If they say “You’re different, we’re not,” and we respond with “We’re different, you’re not” we have screwed ourselves. Remember the bit about how bad arguments remain bad no matter what kind of spin you try to put on it?

The idea isn’t to stand up and fight for our particular right to be different. The idea is to stand up and fight for everyone’s right to be different. The day that any person can say “Hey, I do things a little bit differently” with absolutely no fear or trepidation is the day alternative sex communities will have a secure place in the world. Not because we’ll be able to say such things; we already do that. But because everyone will be able to.

In the end, being vanilla is just another way of having sex. It’s not “normal.” Normal is pretty much a useless word. Everyone does things a little differently. The way we’re all going to live without tearing each others throats out is not just by accepting that, but by simply admitting it.
I can’t up and force people to admit that they’re different. It’s easy for us to say “Everyone is different” but very, very hard for us to say “I’m different.” It’s the us-against-them mentality all over again. I’m different. Me against the world.

Scrap the us-versus-them mentality. Your differences are not my differences, but your differences are okay. Live and let live, and every once and a while, socialize.