Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Why MaleSubmissionArt.com Doesn’t Have Comments

Category labels: Male sexuality, Politics of sex, Technology, Writing and blogging

Over the past few months, I’ve been regularly updating a site called MaleSubmissionArt.com. It’s a photo blog in which I curate erotic imagery from around the Internet for a singularly directed purpose: to challenge the prevailing stereotypes of what submissive men look like, want, and feel—stereotypes that I believe actively undermine the erotic fulfillment of submissive men and anyone who likes them.

Since I began posting, Male Submission Art has gotten an unexpectedly high response from across the Internet. When I started, running Internet searches for such imagery was a frustrating prospect at best. Now, the URL itself has thousands of mentions on other web sites, as I’ve traveled across the United States I’ve been recognized by name if not by face for that site by people I don’t know, and I’ve gotten numerous private emails from people who have written to me personally expressing gratitude for the existence of the site. (That, by the way, is fucking awesome! Thank you all for your emails, even and perhaps especially those of you who simply write to say thanks.)

Many of those emails begin with an idle wondering: why can’t I write comments on the posts at MaleSubmissionArt.com itself? There are a number of reasons for this, but one reason stands above all others: because MaleSubmissionArt.com’s goal is to obsolete itselfmake itself obsolete (thanks, Orlando). Now, let me explain.

I started the site because the Internet didn’t contain enough collected imagery, writing, and thought about the intersection of masculine gender roles and power exchange, specifically with regard to submissive men. Unable to easily create my own visual media surrounding that topic, I chose instead to scour the Internet’s existing pornographic content (for literally hours a day, by the way) trying to find appropriate images for the site (and if you’re moved to do so, help is appreciated). By bringing in content from elsewhere and shining a spotlight onto it, I hoped to inspire thought and discussion about the topics at hand.

But still, why no comments? With Male Submission Art, I don’t want to provide a place for such discussion, since such places already exist in the form of the noisy blogosphere, the “twitter”-verse, and real-world discussion engines like KinkForAll. I don’t want people to comment on MaleSubmissionArt.com because then that site becomes a bottleneck—a central, single source of content created by only one group of people: people who read this one site.

This seems ridiculous to me. In cyberspace, where copying is cheap, I want people to see the images, take the images and the text, and redistribute them elsewhere. I want to make a virus so contagious and so invasive to the rottenness of “femdom” monotony that the ideas and concepts I bring up on MaleSubmissionArt.com posts spread to the furthest reaches of sexuality discourse. When you start a wildfire, you want the wind to carry the fire into fuel; I want MaleSubmissionArt.com to be the kindling, not the fire. I want a wildfire so wide that it surrounds stereotypical porn producers such that they can’t help but feel the heat.

To do this, I need to spread content, not centralize it. If I make a place for people to create content on MaleSubmissionArt.com, I am mistakenly containing the wildfire. This is why I’m constantly encouraging people to copy what I write, why I’m thrilled every time I see someone quoting the site, or when I see an image that first made it onto the Internet thanks to a reader suggestion. Together, we’re raising the signal.

So again, what can you do instead of comment? Here are some suggestions:

  • If you have a blog—any kind of blog or web site—literally copy-and-paste the content from MaleSubmissionArt.com and paste it on your site: you are not stealing from MaleSubmissionArt.com. Then, in the same post, write your own thoughts about the image and/or the accompanying text and then be sure to include a link to the original post. By adding the link, your blog post will end up on my Internet radar and I’ll see it within a few days or a week. I prefer to comment on your posts than have you comment on mine.
  • If for some reason you can’t copy the content or add links, perhaps for legal restrictions such as Adrian Lang encountered in his (German) blog post (English translation), then merely the mention of the phrase “MaleSubmissionArt.com” without a link will also make it onto my Internet radar eventually. Moreover, it’s less important that you talk to me about your ideas of masculine submission and more important that you talk to others who have not yet been exposed to the notions you’re developing. If you really need my input, ping me via another channel; I’m eminently findable online.
  • Failing any of these options, email me at malesubmissionart@gmail.com. This is a relatively opaque communications channel, so naturally its lack of easy transparency bugs me. That said, even if I don’t reply to them all, I do still read every single email I get.
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Sunday, May 3, 2009

BDSM versus Kink: Nobody but your sex partner cares how you fuck

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM terminology, Community, Politics of sex

Lately I’ve been feeling as though I am a bit of a broken record. One of the things I am saying time and time again is that one of the goals I’d like to accomplish with KinkForAll is broadening the topics that the sexuality communities I’m a part of talk about. Since I happen to come from a BDSM background, the KinkForAll idea is spreading most quickly within the BDSM communities.

However, I am very concerned that the purposes of KinkForAll are not spreading nearly as quickly as the idea is. Specifically, the impetus behind KinkForAll has nothing to do with BDSM. Instead, it was about providing a space to talk about sexuality as it relates to and in the context of the broader themes of life: daily work, politics, legal issues, academic learning, technology, business development, interpersonal relationships, religion, and so on.

At KinkForAll New York City, currently the one and only event of its kind, I was heartened to see just how many presentation slots were filled with topics that were in no way directly related to the mechanics of how humans have physical sex. As I mentioned on the public mailing list,

In fact, one of the motivations behind the whole 20-minute presentations thing is to actively discourage demos, especially the typical “here’s how to hit someone” ones I see all over the place. KinkForAll as a venue can be utilized to much greater effect than most (if not all) demos can dream of doing by engaging participants cerebrally, with discussion or multimedia presentations on a variety of other, broader topics.

I encourage all KinkForAll participants regardless of locale to think outside the very narrow we-like-to-hit-people-with-stuff box.

Of course, the important question remains unanswered: why is talking within the “narrow we-like-to-hit-people-with-stuff box” such a problem? There are a few things all tangled up in this issue, so I’ll try to unravel them one at a time here (and probably in a number of upcoming blog posts). First, though, you must acknowledge that the exhibitionism with which the BDSM community still advocates for its own acceptance is totally out of whack with today’s realities. As the inimitable Gloria Brame writes in her Leather Leadership Conference 2009 keynote address,

In our push to be candid and guilt-free, have we come out a little too far? By emphasizing play at parties, or focusing on skills with toys, are we really providing education about the reality of being a BDSMer? Honestly, I love a good play party, and am not saying we should stop having fun. But beyond the people you play with, how many others need to know that you prefer a whip to a paddle or that humiliation makes you wet? At age 53, I would now much rather be known as a sadomasochist than as a dominatrix, precisely for this reason: I don’t think the straight world DESERVES to know what role I play in the bedroom. No more so, anyway, than I am entitled to know whether my mayor performs cunnilingus or my mail-carrier likes it doggie style.

One of the largest problems I see with such exhibitionistic advocacy is the “us versus them” mentality that focusing on activity rather than intentionality (for instance) traps people into. Putting it bluntly, and as Gloria Brame implied more diplomatically than I can ever do, nobody but your sex partner cares how you fuck so why does the BDSM community think that their myopic view of the world is what will garner us “tolerance” in the rest of it?

Ever since KinkForAll New York City, I’ve been doing a bit of research into the history of previous social justice movements, notably the GLBT rights movement. I think the BDSM community is currently doing a piss-poor job of steering the public discourse around what-it-is-that-we-do to our advantage. It may sound cold, but the fact of the matter is that the BDSM community has a gigantic image problem, and it is negatively affecting the way we live our daily lives.

It frustrates me when I look around my community and I don’t see anybody talking about that. And for what? Yet another boring flogging demo from your mile-long “class” list? Are you shitting me?

As she is wont to do, Emily Rutherford’s analysis of this phenomenon seems far less emotionally driven and far more academically thorough than my own:

Much as there was a time when the gay community was criticized for being overly focused simply on sexual practice, and not on larger, more abstract or theoretical questions about identity and community, so too (from what I’ve heard; I can’t speak as an insider) does the BDSM community seem to struggle with this problem. KinkForAll is addressing that, and here I think the word “kink” is actually key: I’ve come to see this word as encompassing any non-mainstream sexuality, maybe a further broadening or development or evolution of “queer.” I think we can use it that way; it’s not as if it’s a word that actually connotes a specific sexual desire or practice in the way that the B, D, S, and M of that acronym do.

Naturally, she is spot on. The B, D, S, and M of BDSM are wonderful (any regular reader of this blog knows just how much they are an intrinsic part of me), but they are a narrow, near-sighted view of sexuality that it behooves the BDSM community itself to break out of. And I mean now.

As KinkForAll New York City showed, the KinkForAll format and method has the power to radically reframe the public discourse around sex, gender, and sexuality away from the notion that people who practice BDSM or any non-mainstream sexuality are not normal, that we are fundamentally different from vanilla people, and towards an ideal of sexual equality regardless of activity. It should not matter that some men like to tie girls up or that I like to be tied up when I get fucked because nobody fucking cares except my sex partners, which is exactly how it should be.

It’s certainly important that there are people, like me, who openly, honestly, and publicly make ourselves and our sex lives visible to other people. I am in no way discounting the work of countless sex-positive advocates in prior generations who worked towards the appropriate representation of the kind of sex we want to have and distinction from the kind of sex other people have. As Sascha wrote recently,

it’s natural to want to feel different or special. I know that I’ve been guilty of using kink as a way to establish my otherness, to create a separation between me and the “vanilla” world.

But as Sascha also notes, creating an opaque separation between us and “the ‘vanilla’ world” is to be trapped in a ridiculous and unhelpful “us versus them” mentality that only serves to distance (consensual) BDSM activities away from the mantle of human rights.

I can’t help but be reminded of one of my favorite Little Britain characters, Daffyd Thomas, the only gay in the village. He goes around declaring his otherness and creating his own persecution, even though it seems that the rest of the village is bi-curious at the very least.

This is why it is not only helpful, but critically vital that KinkForAll does not become a BDSM-centric space, why sexuality-neutral venues (such as universities and local community centers) are far superior for KinkForAll events over dungeons and swinger clubs. This is why the whole thing is called KinkForAll and not BDSMForAll in the first place! Not that there’s anything wrong with adapting the KinkForAll model and creating a smaller, more BDSM-centric additional space. I’d go to that, too, I just don’t want to lose the broader diversity.

As I said on the netcast audio about KinkForAll that I recorded with Axe on his MasoCast, people who are not a part of sexuality communities and who do not have an awareness of the intricacies of our vocabulary use “kink” and “kinky” to apply to any non-mainstream sexual idea. We therefore must broaden the discussion and our use of the word so that we stop training people who’ll listen to respond with reactions like, “It’s all whips and chains and I’m not into any of that!”

The BDSM community is so focused on these, like, extreme sports-style skill sets that we forget, often, that’s not necessarily the most important thing… especially for people who need to know more about the world in which we live in [in order] to come out to our world.

This is why I want to see lawyers present on obscenity law at KinkForAll. This is why I want to see gender studies students debate gender theory at KinkForAll. This is why I want to see artists discuss sexuality in art at KinkForAll. This is why I want to see hackers showcase awesome technologies at KinkForAll. This is why I want to see community leaders leading by example at KinkForAll. This is why I want to see sex workers teaching skills for self-protection at KinkForAll.

Having all of this other stuff, this stuff-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-hitting-people-as-part-of-sex, does not negate the usefulness of having a Spanking 101 presentation (for example), but I can guarantee that not having all this other stuff will make a Spanking 101 presentation totally fucking useless.

So please, not just when you unorganize local KinkForAll events, but also when you go to local group meetings, talk to your friends, family, and peers, please remember to engage with them rather than separate yourself from them. The people in the rest of the world are not our enemies, unless we fail to make them our allies.

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Friday, May 1, 2009

An Extended Recording of KinkForAll on the MasoCast

Category labels: BDSM in the media, Community, Kink events, Technology

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Axe, whose latest project is called the MasoCast. The MasoCast is a podcast in which Axe converses about personal fetishes and sexual interests with his friends and acquaintances. When Axe asked me if I was willing to record a conversation with him, I jumped at the chance, but I also had a very specific agenda I wanted to promote.

Rather than discuss my personal fetishes, I wanted to talk about the two projects I’ve recently put huge amounts of my time and effort into, KinkForAll and MaleSubmissionArt.com. Axe and I talked for nearly two hours, recording the whole time. Afterwards, he sliced up our recording so that he can publish two discrete pieces.

The first piece Axe published of our recording is about KinkForAll, now online as episode number 6 of the MasoCast. However, in order to fit into the MasoCast’s short-form segments, a lot of our conversation had to be cut out. Some of the pieces that were cut from the recording for the MasoCast segment are outlined in the following list.

Thankfully, I have an earlier version of the KinkForAll segment for the Masocast that I want to publish myself for those interested in listening to an extra ten minutes of our conversation. This earlier version of the edit is 27 minutes long. Most of the additional material not included in Episode 6 of the MasoCast is towards the end.

Included in this recording are:

  • I discuss how KinkForAll is a coordinated effort among a group, but is focused on autonomy and individuals.

  • I remark that the KinkForAll model is shamelessly stolen and adapted from the BarCamp model, because that model is a good idea.
  • One of the central focuses of KinkForAll is to bring the value from connecting different communities together in a sexuality-neutral space.
  • There’s nothing about KinkForAll that isn’t public and transparent, which means that anyone—including you—can participate in one. Case in point, the public mailing list as well publicly budgeting the finances transparently.
  • KinkForAll has an agenda: it’s not just an event, it’s also about finding and supporting people who want to promote the freedom of sexuality information and other ideals that KinkForAll has.
  • KinkForAll is an engine that people can use to make other things happen. Case in point, now that we have A/V recordings of presentations, there is interest from some people in creating a free repository of audio and video sexuality presentations that are published online for free. That’s great, but let’s not turn KinkForAll into that, because it doesn’t need to be. Why not have a great sexuality unconference and a video library, and a blog network? There’s no need to play zero-sum games anymore because we have proven that individual, coordinated efforts are more successful than massive, centralized efforts.
  • Some future aspirations for KinkForAll events are more video recordings, a live feed during the event itself streamed over the Internet for anyone to watch and/or listen to remotely to more effectively include people who can’t be physically present.
  • We tried to involve the world in as open a way as possible, and I want everyone—not just the people who are physically present the day of the event—to partake in and contribute to the value that we created as part of the event.

I want to thank Axe once again for helping me to spread the word about KinkForAll through his podcast. Axe also deserves immense thanks for being one of several audio specialists who participated in KinkForAll New York City and helped us audio record nearly half of the presentations that were given during the event! All of those presentations are available online for free.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Now I remember why I love and hate New York City’s BDSM scene

Category labels: Bitter and jealous, Community, Femdom, Male sexuality, Personal experience, Rant, Stupid dominants, Stupid submissives, Vanilla life

So, this is a complete and utter rant, because that’s just the mood I’m in. Also, it’s my blog. In case you didn’t know, I rant hard (and fast).

My first half-week in New York City has been an utter roller coaster. In these few short days after I (mostly) finished regrouping with friends, I remember exactly what I love about New York City, and exactly why I can’t stand it anymore. On Thursday, my first day back, I literally got off a bus, called Sinclair, and spent the evening first at Alphabet Soup (organized by the extremely perky and energetic Mina), and then later at a smaller, somewhat more private gathering of a few particular sex bloggers.

Let me say that again. I literally got off a bus, and went to a kinky social gathering with friends. I spent the majority of my time at Alphabet Soup talking to Sinclair about femme identity as it relates to cisgendered men. Others joined the conversation and things branched from there, but never did the conversation stop, and rarely did I say something that people couldn’t offer their own opinions on. I think I got the “you’re kind of an alien” face twice, maybe.

Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt like any gathering—regardless of whether it was filled with kinky people or not—was even remotely interesting on a sociosexual conversational level? That’s right, a year, because I was in fucking Sydney, where despite not being in a body-phobic culture like America is sadly entrenched in, people are still so massively ignorant about gender and sexuality issues (including people in the BDSM community), that it felt like I had actually travelled back in time. So, that was awesome.

But Alphabet Soup had its less-than-awesome moments, too. One dominant woman (plus one point) started talking to me, but her tone and demeanor was so overly presumptuous that I lost interest pretty quickly. One of the first things she said was, “I can get any man I want.” (Minus ten billion points.) ‘Really?’ I thought, ‘Well, you must not want me, then, because you’ve just ensured you’re not going to get me.’

Since I’m a submissive man, I get similar reactions when I turn down would-be advances from dominant women as I do for being a self-sufficient professional from bosses when I quit jobs: shock and a certain degree of indignation. It’s like they simply can’t parse what just happened, and the conversations would almost be funny if those conversations didn’t betray how totally fucked up these people probably treat the rest of their professional or sexual lives.

On the sexual advances front, I blame a massive swath of other submissive men for this, the ones whom I sometimes feel compelled to apologize to my friends over because they are so stereotypically stupid. No, really, on behalf of my gender, I’m sorry. (On the job front, I blame the education system for lying about life so horribly and for not giving students the actual skills they need to make it on their own.)

I was having a good time at Alphabet Soup, but was glad when Sinclair pulled me out of the bar to grab a slice of pizza and continue our conversation. Afterwards, we met up with Axe and Bad Man, among others at yet-another-bar. I had a blast getting to see Axe again, who also introduced me to Mia, and then had another awesome conversation about pornography and the impetus behind MaleSubmissionArt.com, my photo-blog-ish thing where I try my best to make poignant remarks about “bad” porn by showcasing “good” porn.

My favorite exchange from that conversation had to do with horse sex—which isn’t and probably never will be my thing—where somewhere in there I said that I’d be happy to see pornography depicting men having sex with horses because so much of that same stuff exists depicting women. Seriously, doesn’t it strike anyone else as being somewhat fucked up that it’s 2009 and I had to make a web site so that when you Google “submissive men art” or similar, you actually have a shot in hell of getting what you’ve been searching for? And no, damnit, pictures of women dominating men are not the same as pictures of men being submissive to women.

Also frustrating? The fact that “Femdom Sissy Art” is still ranked higher. Fuck’s sake. This was supposed to be the future. Where’s my goddamn equal sexual opportunity? And while you’re at it, where’s my goddamn flying car?!

Anyway, I left when the gathering whittled down to few enough people that the conversation, thanks to the skew of hegemonically masculine men, I suppose, began to go places I was no longer interested in going. Like, uhm, why girls don’t call you back when you send them text messages that read “come over.” (Should I apologize for this one on behalf of my gender? No, probably not.)

I spent the night in Brooklyn and the next day, mostly, with my family. That was good. The weekend was as relaxing as I could hope for, but I’m still stressed and need a vacation. Badly.

Then on Monday I hopped down to Conversio Virium for some pre-meeting sociability, promptly ditched the meeting itself in favor of food and conversation with Reki, and then returned for some additional post-meeting sociability.

It’s absolutely inspiring to see some of the Conversio kids be as outgoing and proud and happy as they seem to be. Their vice-president in particular is a young man who I remember as someone who was barely able to whisper when he spoke. Now, he hugs me warmly and openly.

I’m at once incredibly satisfied knowing I had a hand in making a space where he could blossom in that way, and also incredibly envious that his experiences were so quickly so positive while mine at that age were so utterly bitter. I sincerely hope he takes all of those positive experiences and works to make sure that others can also benefit so profoundly from CV.

I keep my iPod with me at all times because I’m constantly writing notes in it, ideas for blog posts or other rants, things I can do better for my community-related projects, and so forth. It’s simultaneously inspiring and depressing being back here. I’m thrilled that I’m surrounded by such wonderful stimuli again, but I’m more than a little overwhelmed at the challenge that lies ahead. Cuz, fuck, I’ve still so much work to do to make the kinds of spaces I’ve always wanted to have ahead of me.

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Monday, March 23, 2009

KinkForAll and the Evolution of Sexuality Communities

Category labels: Community, Generation gap, Kink events, Politics of sex, Vanilla life, Writing and blogging

Sexuality communities need to evolve or they’ll die. You probably don’t need me to remind you of how hard a time fetish shops, nightclubs, non-profit activist groups, community centers, sex-ed funds, and other sexuality-based initiatives are having right now. Venues are expensive, a cultural war on sex rages fiercely with targeted attacks against sexual freedom, and sexuality community groups are having increasing difficulty engaging younger generations. And that’s not the half of it.

When I think about the world around us and the role of marginalized sexualities such as BDSM, polyamory, transsexuality, gender queerness, and others, I’m reminded of Professor Charles Xavier’s opening lines to the original X-Men movie:

Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.

So, evolve or die. But evolve into what? Unconferences like KinkForAll are the next evolutionary leap forward with regards to how people will learn and talk about what-it-is-that-we-do.

Admittedly, that’s a bold statement. “Evolutionary leap forward” sounds like something ripe either for stereotypical hollywood films or esoteric scientific white papers. Thing is, our lives and our sex is filled to the brim with influences from many disparate sources, such as blockbuster motion pictures and scientific white papers. However, despite having a venerable Horn of Plenty for our sexuality palettes, traditional sexuality conferences and community organizations have remained stalwartly segregated from these influences and—worse—even from each other.

There are problems—deep-seated, gigantic, and incredibly frustrating problems—with the way we as a community and a culture present sex and sexuality to one another and to the next generation. These things need to change, because the world around us is changing. Somehow, despite all this upheaval, our sexuality communities are trapped inside aristocratic institutions that more often act with an interest in risk-avoidance instead of value-creation. Perhaps these organizations’ timid, closeted behavior used to exist for a good reason; membership meant association and building social walls kept the predators on the other side, but that system is feudalism and those days are over.

KinkForAll offers a new, much-needed outlet that can not only radically transform sex education for both mainstream and niche communities, but also revitalize many grass-roots community organizations themselves. By making it possible to bring together influences from all corners of life into a melting pot of sexuality discussion, we unlock the as-yet-untapped value that the sex communities have failed to harness.

The current structure of sexuality organizations is institutionalized to the point of ego-centric gridlock. This can be illustrated by examining the principles on which KinkForAll is founded, since they highlight some weaknesses in these other structures:

  • At a KinkForAll, there are no spectators, only participants. Attendees must give a talk or presentation, or help with one. This is called sharing and we like it.

    For far too long, information about sex has been under one kind of stranglehold or another. Even within sexuality subcultures, who can present, where, and why, has focused very strongly on the currency of the day. Most recently, that currency was reputation, and it created an elitist aristocracy who unwittingly monopolized the very thing they claimed to want to make free: having sex, and how we do that. When reputation becomes more valuable than results, egos prevent progress.

  • At a KinkForAll, anyone can present, on any topic related to sexuality. You do not necessarily have to teach a new skill or idea. You might share an experience, review a product, or read a poem. The goal is to start a discussion, make connections, and exchange knowledge.

    All such activities are valuable, yet too long sidelined or actively discouraged in sexuality circles. Our reasons to wall our sex away from the rest of our life are disappearing one after the other, and we should do what we can to live un-closeted lives in every way we can. Moreover, the amazing potential within inter-community spaces is astonishingly under-appreciated. In fact, I argue such potential is way more valuable than any single organization can ever become.

  • KinkForAll is free (as in beer) and free (as in libre). One of the things I’ve been frustrated with for a long time is the utter lack of accessibility to young people when it comes to topics of sexuality. If a young person (or any person of any age) wishes to engage the wider sex-positive community in the places where it has its discussions, this comes with a terribly high price tag.

    Sexuality conferences run by the sex communities are typically large, expensive, and very intimidating. Many people, not just young people, simply don’t have several hundred dollars and a week’s time to dish out going to sexuality events. This extremely high monetary cost creates insurmountable socioeconomic barriers to many people’s pursuit of sexual freedom because it bars them from obtaining the technical information and the social connections they need. Freedom isn’t just about principles, it’s about actions; enabling people to involve themselves (what we know of as “volunteering,” though I strongly prefer participating) isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the entire point.

None of this negates the fact that older, larger, and more rigid organizations and events have their place. When done well, they can provide spaces for in-depth exploration. That said, there are many places where they will continue to fail to do what newer ideas like KinkForAll will succeed in doing. Audacia Ray summarized this as well, saying:

[KinkForAll] is the perfect event to go to if you’ve always wanted to check out a sex/kink related conference but are afraid that you’ll be swarmed by naked people who are not aesthetically to your liking. It’s the perfect event to go to if you’ve always wanted to check out a sex/kink event but think you don’t know anything or won’t be part of the in crowd. It’s the perfect event to go to if you are in [the area] but have no money and are curious about this kind of event. There are lots of reasons I’m going, but the clothes-on, free, open reasons are my main ones.

The evolution of our sexuality communities from walled gardens to freely and safely traversable pathways like this is hard because it threatens the status-quo, perhaps especially if they are struggling just to survive. Sadly, if their heads are indeed placed firmly in the sand and their heels dug into their risk-avoidance behavior, they will continue to struggle. Of course, they’re struggling for a reason: as Boymeat points out, I love that [KinkForAll] is doing something new and unique in NYC, because I have to say, most of the stuff [the scene's] been doing isn’t working. (Sic.)

KinkForAll is new, and very young, but—and there’s no doubt about this—it’s here to stay. The response to the first-ever KinkForAll unconference, KinkForAll New York City wildly surpassed the expectations that my other unorganizers and I had. As Sara Eileen said,

I have to say how gleeful I am over the entire thing, conceived and brought to being as it was, in less than 3 months and with us on the other side of the world.

[…]

[Maymay] and I expected perhaps 40 attendees. There were over 100.

I had worried that we wouldn’t fill the schedule grid. There were 45 different presentations.

We started with no money and figured we would pay for what we needed ourselves. Over $1000 dollars were donated.

I wasn’t sure we’d have everything we needed. In the end, we were overly resourced; extra projectors, kosher and vegetarian and gluten-free food, gallons of drinking water that appeared seemingly from nowhere.

As I said at the end of the day when I stood on the stage, “our cup overflows.”

My analysis of this is simple:

There’s no question that this kind of event is something the sexuality communities at large really need. It’s not just BDSM people, but poly people, transfolk, queers, butches and femmes, and everyone else who takes part in public, social sexuality-related spaces obviously want to see happen. I’ve personally already heard from folks in Washington DC and Toronto who are interested in replicating similar events, and through several other channels multiple people in San Francisco have also expressed interest.

To borrow from Sascha’s analysis, unconferences like KinkForAll create a new, less intimidating platform for new generations:

I think that the unconference trend signifies something greater—an evolution in the sex and kink positive communities in how we come together and how we exchange information. Don’t get me wrong, I think that more structured events such as TESFest and Dark Odyssey still have their place. But these spaces provide a new, less intimidating platform for new generations of sex geeks, kinksters, activists, educators, and aspiring educators.

More specifically and perhaps even more powerfully, the platform itself is what is being created. It’s a platform for education, for friendship, and for activism the likes of which has never been available to sexuality outlets before. Emily Rutherford describes it similarly, emphasizing KinkForAll’s ability to bring disperse communities together:

Basically, KFANYC was a conference—a vehicle for members of the various sexuality communities in New York to come together, talk, and learn from each other.

Emily also highlights the fact that KinkForAll is engaging the participation of communities and academics of all stripes, even from outside the walled gardens of sociosexual circles:

I think that a lot of what was exciting about [KinkForAll] is the way that the format combines academic and non-academic modes of talking about sex and sexuality. The “conference” is an academic model in a way that many existing modes of social interaction for sexuality groups aren’t, but this conference didn’t presume any academic background or qualifications and didn’t have the same standards of format and presentation that academic conferences do. I, as a first-year college student, was able to participate, but so were people who didn’t finish high school and people with graduate degrees. KFANYC very nearly, I think it’s safe to say, made academia accessible to everyone, which is an important thing that those of us entrenched in the ivory tower should be doing. Academic modes are a sort of subculture of analyzing and presenting information, but that doesn’t mean they have to be elitist—just different from, say, journalism, or casual conversation. I think that as much as KFANYC bridged gaps between disparate sexuality communities, it bridged gaps between different registers of discussion, taking academese down a peg while applying a theoretical and philosophical level to more casual conversations.

(Emphasis mine.)

Time and again the same themes crop up. As Axe wrote a while ago,
there will be presentations on topics that you may not find at other events. New platforms bring new ideas in new ways, which in turn bring new people, who are needed to keep moving us to where we want to go. StacyCat commented on her experience, saying It got me really excited about the scene and education and life again.

So, an old idea was reborn: make free events for the sexuality communities, and use them to effect a paradigm shift in the way we present marginalized sexuality issues like BDSM, transsexuality, gender queerness, asexuality, and others to the world at large. The rebirth freed us from the constraints of current systems and organizations. With the knowledge that such rebirth is healthy and risk-avoidance is itself inherently risky, to use Boymeat’s words again, the structure has been built entirely to prevent any power plays, and is focused on autonomy and transparency.

We gave the idea a name, KinkForAll, and then we gave it massive amounts of our time and effort. I made a web site for KinkForAll, Sara Eileen started talking about the idea with our friends, who (with our encouragement) started talking about it with their friends, and on and on the cycle went until we had people we didn’t know wanting—and instantly able—to participate.

So where do we go now? We’re continuing to put recordings of the presentations given at the event online so that anyone with an Internet connection can freely get some of that value. Our goal has always been to make an easily-digestible packet that we can give to others to help them recreate the positive energy and value that came from KinkForAll New York City. To that end, I’ve been working on writing a KinkForAll unorganizer’s guide.

Of course, nothing is as supportive as actual participation, and so I’m talking with people who have shown interest and initiative to run KinkForAll events in Washington DC as I hope to also do for Toronto and San Francisco soon after that. Suddenly, there’s grass-roots momentum around making such content available on a global scale, for free, because the infrastructure already exists in the form of the Internet.

But, as Sara said, It’s out in the world now. Anyone can take it on, and up. Many participants at KinkForAll New York City travel frequently to DC and elsewhere, and I encourage those uniquely experienced people to spread the idea with their actions. And that’s the ultimate take-away point: Sexual freedom is for everyone. But you have to take it and run with it yourself.

Interested? Learn more about KinkForAll at http://KinkForAll.org, our Frequently Asked Questions page, or our public mailing list.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

KinkForAll New York City: Rest and Recovery and Then We Do It All Over Again

Category labels: BDSM in the media, Communication, Community, Gender fluidity, Generation gap, Kink events, Personal experience, Technology, Vanilla life

I spent today recovering from KinkForAll New York City, which was an unbelievably smashing success. I’m so incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish and so incredibly optimistic about the future, even if tentatively so. My tweet-stream from the day is now archived, and I’ve spent far too long reading and re-reading it already.

Organizing KinkForAll was a really new experience for me. I’ve never before seen a vision of mine that involved so many people so wonderfully executed. As I said during the discussion in the presentation Evan gave on Youth and Leadership, There’s a fine line between leadership and control.

Now that the first event has been a success, I can feel much more confident that the idea I’ve had for it is one that’s proven. Many people didn’t believe it could work, and I know there are still many others who are dubious—even close friends, like one I spoke to tonight. The biggest sticking points are obvious: 20 minute presentations are “too short,” playspaces “should be part of the event,” and of course, “encouraging cameras is a bad idea.”

To each of these I say that the NYC event, which was even more strict with regard to the timeframe than I thought it would be, had absolutely no playspaces and lacked even an after-party (which is unfortunate, because I think a simple after-party would be loads of fun after something like this), and only 1 day later already has 53 Flickr photos from the event posted online, proves the format and the methods we used are sound. Not only that, but I recall multiple people stopping me in the hallways and saying things like, “You know, I thought I’d show up and hang out for a half an hour, but now it’s 3 hours later and I really wish I didn’t have to go!” Further, and even more encouraging, several people also told me, “I really thought that 20 minutes would be too little time to do what I wanted, but I really love this 20-minute thing!”

There’s no question that this kind of event is something the sexuality communities at large really need. It’s not just BDSM people, but poly people, transfolk, queers, butches and femmes, and everyone else who takes part in public, social sexuality-related spaces obviously want to see happen. I’ve personally already heard from folks in Washington DC and Toronto who are interested in replicating similar events, and through several other channels multiple people in San Francisco have also expressed interest.

So yeah, talk about a smashing, unexpected success…. If you missed KinkForAll New York City, or if you were there but missed my presentation, Audacia Ray—one of the event’s two sponsors—offered to video record it and has put the video up on Vimeo for the world, and you, to see (below).


Maymay on Gender, Technology, and the Idea Behind Kink for All from Audacia Ray on Vimeo. (Watch other KFANYC videos.)

You can also download an audio-only version of the above video, which also includes an extra 10 minutes of Q&A that filled the rest of my presentation.

Of course, with such success I’ve got a whole new set of challenges. I don’t want this idea to be something intricately tied to my person—that’s entirely hypocritical and totally defeating of the point. At the same time, I want Toronto and DC and San Fran to experience the same kind of thing as we did in New York City. There are still some people in those areas that believe presentations need to be allowed to go longer than 20 minutes, that a playspace should be a requirement, and that other issues make holding the event itself too risky.

While a KinkForAll event in these other places cannot be identical to the one in NYC, at what point does such fundamental variation become something that’s not KinkForAll? Not something that’s necessarily bad, just something too different to bear resemblance. As I said earlier, how can I lead, without exerting undue and unnecessary control? It’s a balance I’m going to be challenged to strike accurately; I’ve never done that before.

Interestingly, some of the people who contacted me about wanting to run their own local events have expressed a specific distaste for the same sorts of things in the sexuality communities that I’ve also expressed many, many times before. This is no surprise, of course, but rather it’s an immense point of validation. In Evan’s presentation that I mentioned earlier, for instance, he mentioned trying and failing to bring some of the ideas present in KinkForAll to Black Rose. Later, others expressed similar frustrations at KinkForAll New York City, and still later more from DC expressed the same frustrations.

I’m sadly not surprised that efforts to catalyze established BDSM organizations have failed. In my experience, scene organizations are especially resistant to change and very, very ego-centric. They tend to enjoy power struggles for power struggle’s sake, and they fail to seize obvious opportunities for technical improvement when they do this. Naturally, I despise egotism when it gets in the way of good ideas because it actively creates very negative spaces, hence the free and open and autonomous nature of KinkForAll.

To do what I can for the incredible potential that’s here, I’ve thrown my hat onto helping KinkForAll Washington DC by signing up on the wiki page with “advocate+assist organization” for my participation, but it really isn’t my show, just as KinkForAll New York City wasn’t really my show. KinkForAll is all about doing, not saying, it’s about individual collaborations, not organizations, it’s about newness and innovation, not regurgitation, and —I want to make sure it remains an environment where actions and results speak louder than words.

To that end, I think the role of unorganizers like myself is really to make sure we exemplify that behavior. If we can continue to do that well, then everyone we recruit to help out will not only be much more helpful, but will also protect the goals and the methods of KinkForAll: flat organization, personal responsibility and autonomy, and results-focused behavior with a desire for creativity and positive social change in sexuality communities. I am unspeakably excited to see a KinkForAll Washington DC off the ground, so as my life begins to calm down, you can expect to see my activity in helping make the DC event a reality begin to ramp up very quickly.

I’m looking forward to it!

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Saturday, February 28, 2009

Jane Says We’re Quality and Original, So I Built Her A Plugin

Category labels: Reviews, Technology, Writing and blogging

Recently, my blog was favorably reviewed by the good folks at JanesGuide.com. For those who don’t know, JanesGuide is one of the oldest and most reputable adult website review sites on the Internet, dating all the way back to 1997 (which was interestingly about when I started establishing myself online, too). When you get a nice review from them, it’s customary to let other people know with a little award icon image that links back to Jane’s site.

If you’re not reading solely through my newsfeed, then you may have noticed the JanesGuide icon I’ve (admittedly somewhat haphazardly) put into my sidebar. That icon is the (old school) “quality & original” associated with this kind review of my writing here:

In an age where it seems as though “sex bloggers” have become a dime a dozen, Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed is a breath of fresh, intellectual, well-thought out air. MayMay is the writer of this site, and while it hasn’t been updated as much recently, it is chock full of interesting news about a variety of events/news stories in the field of sexuality, thoughts and pondering about his own sexuality, and questions that have been asked to the internet community at large. Actually, one of my favorite things about this site is the discussion that occurs with all of MayMay’s readers and commenters, turning the site into a forum of sorts at times. I can only hope MayMay gets back into the swing of updating the site, as I really enjoyed reading it. – EssinEm

Well, since I was reviewed so positively, I wanted to give something more than just a link back to Jane’s site. I decided I’d write a plugin that could make it just a little bit easier for blog authors using WordPress to display their JanesGuide icons. That plugin is called WP-JanesGuide and is available for free.

Thanks for the wonderful review, JanesGuide, and I hope you enjoy the plugin!

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Friday, February 27, 2009

8 Things Submissive Men Want From A Dominant Partner

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Beginner BDSM, Communication, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Relationship, Vanilla life

My friend over at Kink In Exile, has recently posted a fantastic list of 8 things dominant women want. The list is so spot-on that I think it is a must-read regardless of whether you are in or are looking for a kinky relationship or not—or even if you’re not even “into all this kink stuff.”

I’ve been struggling to write more in this space lately. I want to, but between having to deal with the stress of moving to New York City from Sydney in less than two weeks and, more recently, the stress of losing my relationship with (Sara) Eileen, most kinds of words seem beyond me right now. Naturally, reading over a list of the things dominant women want during this time triggers a certain amount of introspection.

Kink in Exile’s list is so good, actually, if it were not unspeakably lazy of me I would want to copy it in its entirety for a post of my own. Instead of plagiarism, however, here’s a companion list of the things that submissive men want from a dominant partner that I think might be helpful. Astute readers of both my post and hers will note how similar these two lists actually are in content if not in voice. That, of course, is no coincidence.

For the sake of clarity, I’ll preface this list with an explicit remark about how it’s not intended to reflect anything other than a generic exploration into what I believe submissive men want from dominant partners, and should therefore not be interpreted without salting to your own taste, so to speak. I’d also like to acknowledge the excellent pre-publication input I received on this post by Kink in Exile herself, ironrose, as well as a few more friends. Thank you all for your thoughts.

You act upon details

Everyone’s fantasies—and demons—are in the details. Specific words, intonation, materials used in play (e.g., hemp rope versus metal bondage), and other things all have different meanings to different people. Personally, for instance, I react badly to words I associate with worthlessness (like “pathetic”) but favorably to others (like “whore” or “slut”) that I associate with wanton sexuality. While I am not alone in these particulars, there are others who respond in their own, unique ways.

It’s important to understand what these details are before you access them, but it’s equally important to eventually access them; ignoring such details is tantamount to ignoring me. When I play with a partner, a sense of depth and meaning is literally impossible to achieve if I have not first talked (usually at some length) about the details of my desires and fears, and asked questions of my partner to understand the details of theirs.

You need to be consistently inviting these details into our talks and our play; merely acknowledging their presence—without acting upon them later—is not enough. I do not believe a meaningful relationship can be built without successfully interfacing over these details.

You treat me as an equal person first and a submissive partner second

I am not a doormat—no submissive man is (even the ones that say they are). I see both dominance and submission as requiring equality first and power play second, and you should too. Moreover, you need to not only recognize but articulate the distinction in your actions when you demand something versus assertively request something of me.

My submission is a vital facet of who I am, so you never act in ways that are disingenuous, exploitative, or demeaning of my submissive sexuality, nor do you suggest that innate parts of who we are or the situations in which we exist (such as orientation, race, spiritual beliefs, socioeconomic status, or other external influences in our lives) make us unequal beings in any way. You strive towards fairness in all your dealings and recognize that our different wants and needs means that the goal of such efforts is equivalency, not sameness.

You can distinguish fantasy from reality, and objective reality from subjective interpretation

You understand how to live out a fantasy without living in a fantasy. This doesn’t mean so-called “24/7″ situations are unacceptable, because even in more casual relationships you need to be able to intelligently distinguish between playtimes and other times. Using protocols or any “lifestyle” behaviors as barriers to communication is not okay, so you must be adept at sussing out problems between us as well as vigilant in and receptive to addressing them.

You understand the difference between entitlement and advantage; you recognize the advantages you have that I may not share, but do not feel as though you are somehow more deserving of them. In reality, you do not consider yourself entitled to my submission or acts thereof. In fantasy and play, however, you are not afraid of asserting such behavior.

It’s also important that you remain aware of and empathetic to concerns I raise and act with consideration toward them both inside and outside of play. It helps if you also expect the same from me—don’t be surprised at my vehemence in encouraging your comfort and pleasure because doing so is a pursuit of my own happiness. Part of that pursuit is making the effort to build a common understanding of things between us, and I need you to make an effort to refine this understanding with me over time. Doing so will make it possible to interact with me as a dominant partner, a top, and a friend, all of which you need to be able to do.

You know and make your own desires clear

You are knowledgeable about yourself and communicate what you know openly, honestly, and freely. You needn’t be divinely enlightened but you do need to have a solid understanding of something you like and be assertive in asking for it. You must have actively pursued explorations into your own desires, or are at least actively pursuing them with me; your sense of self must be strong enough to weather discoveries of new desires in yourself and in me over time.

Being eager to often try new things (in terms of play specifically and in general) is also important because it tells me that you are interested in learning more about yourself, more about me, and more about how we work together in all of the ways that we do. You delight in novelty and discovery; you “know thyself,” and you share who you are with me—I think it’s sexy. Moreover, you encourage me to do the same because when I share who I am with you, it’s out of a desire for you to reciprocate.

You are confident and independent in your dominance

Your dominance cannot be your dirty little secret; my submission isn’t mine. You may be excited by taboo but you don’t rely on it to provide enjoyment (because very little is taboo with me). This does not mean that our play can’t be respectful of public boundaries; it means that you know wanting to see me in physical pain is not wrong or sick, and you know that my desire for such experiences is similarly not unhealthy. You enjoy challenging both my physical and mental endurance but are not out to inflate your ego by causing mine harm.

You are an independent, whole person and you celebrate your dominance as a piece of that whole. You are not dependent on my submission to validate your dominance. You appreciate the support and encouragement I provide and are self-sufficient enough not to need it at all times, self-empowered enough not to want it at all times. You do not need constant reassurance that basic aspects of our kinky sexuality are acceptable behaviors (e.g., “normal”).

You must be comfortable discussing and acting upon your own sadism, desire to receive service, or other potentially socially unacceptable traits for us to have fulfilling interactions (because I am similarly not always socially acceptable). Moreover, you need to have and be constantly developing a sense of your own skills so that you know what you can and can’t realistically and safely do. Feeling insulted or offended if I point out the realities of your potential shortcomings in these areas should be a warning sign to you—I do so because I want us both to become better at what we are doing.

You value my input and experiences

You reject the notion that my sexual submission negates the validity of my opinions and beliefs. You know that dominance does not equal superiority, and therefore you are willing and able to reexamine aspects of yourself. You solicit and incorporate input and feedback from me in doing this because you know that my perspective and experiences are valuable. You want our relationship—whatever form our relationship takes—to grow, our intimacy to deepen and you don’t expect this to happen without expending your own energy to help make it so.

You make me a priority and will treat me to indulgences

My submission doesn’t make me more willing to abandon my wants or needs than people who aren’t submissive are, just as your dominance doesn’t make you more entitled to have yours met. You know this and therefore make me the same kind of priority that I have made you. You make time to see me, play with me, and occasionally treat me to indulgences you know I like because you enjoy seeing me be happy.

Being dominant does not mean you get to do what you want whenever you want. Your dominance doesn’t free you of the obligation to treat me with consideration or respect, to dismiss my desires or concerns, or to unfairly prioritize your own wants over mine. This doesn’t mean that I feel inappropriately entitled or deserving of the things I want, and you must not resent me for having these needs or for filling them. Additionally, you are emotionally intelligent enough not to feel guilty or personally at fault when you can’t fulfill them for whatever reason, are communicative enough to speak frankly with me when such clashes arise (because they will), and trusting enough to believe me when I say I’m doing my best to resolve the situation.

Your dominance is personally meaningful

Being sexually submissive is just one facet of who I am. You desire to dominate me because my presentation of self—all of it—is personally attractive to you. You recognize my strength and power as well as my vulnerability and are aroused by both aspects of who I am.

You do not treat me as a replaceable object (out of a fantasy scenario) or as though I am a dime-a-dozen, cookie-cutter submissive man. You understand that our D/s relationship is about the relationship and the power dynamic, not the activities or toys or clothing; I am not a random man that will clean your house for free, and you are sensitive to the fact that any expectation of either this or similar depersonalization will feel exploitative and insulting.

You should feel just as eager to dominate me whether or not you are dressed in fetish gear, wearing makeup, are at a club with an audience, or have a particular toy handy. None of these things matter to me in terms of our connection during play because I desire you, not your image. You should not feel the need to conform to stereotypes you see in pornography, and you must not expect me to do that, either (because I won’t).

To submissive men, I want to say that many—if not all—of these things apply to you as well. Knowledge of yourself, self-acceptance, and confidence in your submission is not just healthy, it’s what makes you attractive to dominant partners (especially the intelligent, sexy ones). If you don’t think your own submission is sexy, how can you expect anyone else to?

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Introducing KinkForAll: A no-limits gender and sexuality unconference

Category labels: Communication, Community, Kink events, Politics of sex, Technology

Update: KinkForAllNewYorkCity now has a date (Sunday, March 8th) and a venue (the LGBT Center). Our next challenge is finding sponsorships and continuing promotional efforts.

Update: KinkForAll New York City was a stunning success.

As if I didn’t have enough projects going right now, while here in Sydney, Eileen and I had an idea for a social and educational event that will promote positive ideals of sexuality from and to many communities and organizations. The idea is called KinkForAll, and I need your help to make the first KinkForAll event a reality this March. Below is the 411 on KinkForAll as well as links for where to learn more.

Most of all, I need your help to spread the word that KinkForAll event exists. To that end, please copy the flyer text below and post it on your blog(s), send it to any mailing lists you belong to, talk about it to your friends, and generally help get the word out. For this hugely beneficial movement to succeed, it needs enthusiastic participants on the ground—and that’s you!

I should probably also mention that I would greatly appreciate help in spreading the word even if you are not local to New York City. Simply spreading awareness about the New York City-based efforts and getting more people interested in this idea in general will be beneficial for people regardless of where you or they happen to live right now.

Here’s the flyer text to copy:

PLEASE COPY AND CROSSPOST THIS MESSAGE FREELY.

If you have already heard about KinkForAll through the grapevine, then please consider this email a reminder. If you haven’t, then please take a minute to scan this message. You’re receiving this message because someone trusts you to read it with an open mind. Smile! :)

Vitals
======

What: A no-limits sex-positive gender and sexuality unconference.
Why: To inspire a creative, interactive and open environment where everyone feels comfortable talking, learning, and being inspired by all kinds of sexuality.
When: March, 2009 (exact date yet to be determined)
Where: NYC (We’re still looking for a venue! Can you help? See ‘Get Involved,’ below!)
Who: Everyone
How much: Free (as in beer as well as freedom)

Details
=======

KinkForAll is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people of the kink, queer, sex-positive and related communities to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, presentations, and interaction from all participants.  (It is inspired by the BarCamp community.)

ANYONE WITH SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE OR WITH THE DESIRE TO LEARN IS WELCOME AND INVITED TO JOIN. When you attend, be prepared to share with others. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

A KinkForAll is a special kind of gathering because there are no spectators, only participants. Attendees must give a talk or a presentation, help with one, or otherwise volunteer/contribute in some way to support the event. This is called sharing and we like it. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen—there are no pre-scheduled presentations or keynote addresses. The people present at the event will select the presentations they want to see.

Anyone can present, on any topic related to sexuality. You do not necessarily have to teach a new skill or idea. You might share an experience, review a product, or read a poem. The goal is to start a discussion, make connections, and exchange knowledge. Presentations promoting specific commercial products or companies are discouraged.

Learn more about what to expect at
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/WhatToExpect

Learn more about the event guidelines at
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/TheRulesOfKinkForAll

Get Involved
============

We need your help in spreading the word. Please help by participating. Here’s how:

1. Get excited by reading the ideas on http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/KinkForAllNewYorkCity
2. Add your name or handle to the list of participants
3. Join the mailing list and introduce yourself by emailing kinkforall@googlegroups.com

If you have access to a venue, or know someone who has access to a venue, please email the kinkforall@googlegroups.com mailing list with that information.

Still have questions? Read the Frequently Asked Questions at
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

or email kinkforall@googlegroups.com for more details.

KinkForAll Online
=================

Participate online before the event at your favorite social networking web site.

Homepage: http://KinkForAll.org
Google: http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KinkForAll
Identica: http://identi.ca/kinkforall
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/KinkForAll/40066342762

All primary organizational efforts are being coordinated via the mailing list. Join for free and help turn ideas into realities!
http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall

The flyer text to copy is above this line.

I’ve already been thrilled at some of the inertia that is beginning to build behind this idea. The implications of such a thing happening are remarkable!

One of the things I’ve been frustrated with for a long time is the utter lack of accessibility to young people when it comes to these topics. Sure, we have gender studies courses (if you’re in school—which I am thankfully not), but these are academic circles that have little to no interaction with the wider community. That is terribly sad.

Further, if a young person (or frankly, ANY person of any age) wishes to engage the wider sex-positive community in the places where it has its discussions, this comes with a terribly high price tag. Sexuality conferences run by the sex communities are typically large, expensive, and very intimidating. Many people, not just young people, just don’t have several hundred dollars and a week’s time to dish out going to sexuality events where the primary attraction is…well, having some kind of sex. (We can fuck for free, thank you.)

In response to this, I’d like to bring the ideals and philosophies of transparency with privacy that exist today in the open source/technology communities to the sex-positive communities. I feel this is a natural fit because the power of the people is never so strongly heard as when it is showcasing the power of human sexuality and love. It is a real tragedy that sexuality communities do such a horrendously poor job of taking advantage of available social technology to further their cause. In addition to everything else, starting KinkForAll is also an attempt to help rectify that situation.

This kind of an unconference is not a new idea. If you examine the BarCamp.org pages, you’ll see a massive similarity between them and the pages at KinkForAll.org. This is intentional. I’ve been at BarCamps of various kinds before and the results are always outstanding. I am convinced that replicating the same positive energy is possible for sexuality communities, albeit slightly more difficult because of the novelty of the idea for this group of people.

Such unconference-style gatherings are purposely loosely structured in order to let regional and communal influences permeate the event. That is a good thing. It means that KinkForAll as a concept will evolve in parallel to the notions created by BarCamp. At the same time, it’s important that people who care about the idea and the potential for positive social change that it has are able to guide the concept as an idea in that positive direction. This is why the “rules” of KinkForAll are written so meticulously, and are so carefully generalized. You’ll find several references to the fact that this is not a play event, for example, and that this differs from other events run by the BDSM and related communities in particular, well-defined ways. Again, this is intentional.

If any of this strikes a chord with you, you can read more at the introduction on the mailing list. I also strongly encourage you to participate—the only cost is your time and effort, and you get to decide how much of that you want to spend. The benefits, however, can be immeasurable.

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

MaleSubmissionArt.com or Why I Am Crowdsourcing My Own Pornography

Category labels: Community, Erotica and pornography, Male sexuality, Masculinity, Myths and misconceptions, Politics of sex, Technology, Writing and blogging

So, here’s the problem: There is not enough porn wherein submissive men are the erotic subject matter.

If you’ve read even a little bit of this blog, you’re probably already well-versed in many of my rants about how paltry the available porn is for submissive men like me (and, by extension, dominant women like Eileen). But the problem is actually two fold. One problem is, of course, that there’s simply an insanely disturbing general lack of the stuff. In fact, it’s so bad that if you Google for the three words “male submission art,” you actually get female submission links littering the first page of results.

This is actually even worse if you go actively hunting for porn with the hopes of finding erotica depicting men who are submissive. Instead, you’re much, much more likely to find erotica depicting women who are dominant. This is actually a major nuisance for a lot of people—including many submissive men, I might add.

Arguably even more frustrating that that, however, is that what male submissive porn is out there is total shit relative to the porn available for other sorts of orientations. In such erotica (unless it’s gay imagery, of course) men are portrayed as impotent, ugly creatures. That is not sexy. It’s also insulting.

Announcing MaleSubmissionArt.com: Art and visual erotica that depicts masculine submission

My proposed solution? I launch MaleSubmissionArt.com and have people send me hot pics of men being submissive. I figure there just has to be enough people out there as fed up with this situation as I am, and if I can get some of them to send me contributions from their personal stashes of erotica or while they are browsing the Internet hunting for more, I’ll be able to crowd-source the content for a shared porn collection full of the kind of stuff we actually like.

Best of all, even though this project is based around me wanting to have one easy place to go get beautiful pictures of sexy tortured men, it has the potential to really change the way people think about creating erotica around the notions of male submission. Specifically, as the site description states:

We showcase beautiful imagery where men and other male-identified people are submissive subjects. We aim to challenge stereotypes of the “pathetic” submissive man.

I’d be thrilled to be able to get a steady stream of hot male submission action into everyone’s RSS feeds daily, but to do that I need your help in scouting out sources for this kind of porn. I’m very much hoping that those of us in the sex blogging community will spread the word about the site. I’m also hoping that those of you able to contribute will do so in any of the ways I’ve outlined on the MaleSubmissionArt.com project page.

So, do you think we’ll be able to stem the tide of portraying submissive men in horribly unattractive ways?

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