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!
Hey! Quick thing – the flickr link isn’t working for me – I can only see the flame icon. Am I a doofus and am missing where to find the other photos, or has something malfunctioned?
I want to put all of my KFA records online too – it’s my goal for my next chunk of free time!
Maja, individual Flickr images can have their own privacy settings within the group. (Individual contributors who upload their own photos to Flickr and add them to the group can set different levels of who can see what for each picture.) Many of the images probably require you to be logged in to Flickr to see them. So, first, try that. If you still can’t see them, join the KinkForAll Flickr group itself. If that still doesn’t work, let me know so I can ping the people who uploaded the pictures and let them know that their pictures are not public, just in case they didn’t set strict privacy settings on their photos on purpose. :)
Hi!!! It was really awesome to finally meet you in the flesh! KFA was an incredible experience (and has inspired me to get my ass into gear for the HTporn I have that’s mostly written but not quite finished). Here’s to many more internet conversations (the internet is good for something :P). Good luck tying up loose work ends!
I think the problem with established kink organizations probably has to do more with how much older their leadership is. They don’t have the same technical expertise that we have gained simply by growing up in the Internet age. They don’t see the opportunities the same way we do. There’s never been anything like our current technical models before …. The quasi-anarchist model of the conference itself is also, in many ways, new. It’s hard for people who have an awful lot of experience in things that work to immediately jump on the bandwagon for new and untested things.
The point I’m trying to make is that (a) scene organizations will therefore change as a new generation starts having a greater impact on their memberships, and (b) a lot of the time, we can jumpstart that by making an serious effort to join the organizations or at least involve them. The KFANYC group was mostly younger. I wonder if this isn’t so much because older non-internet people were uninterested, as that they simply didn’t know about it — or think it was for them — because it wasn’t promoted through the channels they’re used to. Maybe other KFAs could make an effort to promote with fliers, cards, at in-person meetings, etc.
All this having been said, I have no real idea what the scene is like in New York. So forgive me if you really did do your best to get established organizations involved and they ignored you.
Clarisse, the short answer (because I haven’t much time at the moment), is that yes, I did what I knew I could but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t do more next time. I completely agree with you with regards to trying to involve the current community, and I think the awesome participation of people like Boymeat and Lolita and Dov, who each have strong ties to much more “traditional, old guard” communities than I do, shows that their participation is not only valuable, but very critical.
I’m hugely in favor of bringing other organizations involved with spreading KinkForAlls, but I’m also insistent that their participation come not from organizational resources, but from individual resources. In other words, what I loved about Boymeat and Lolita and Dov’s participation, to name just the obvious examples of many more similar stories, is that it was them, as people, who participated. It was not them as representatives of some larger organization.
Again, this is not about institutional support, but rather individual collaboration. For more on this great topic and the mathematics behind why it works today, I urge you to watch Clay Shirky’s amazing 20-minute TEDTalk video, Institution vs. Collaboration.
Oh yeah, also, as a quick followup, Clarisse, let me add that KinkForAll is not my first attempt at engaging the traditional sexuality communities in the way you saw at the unconference. I’ve been trying to do stuff like this for a long time, as have many, many other people (as I discovered when they started to contact me recently as they learned about KinkForAll). However, it’s thanks to the success of this effort that my work on this front is beginning to show significant results of the form that I hoped. Live and learn, I suppose. :)
Man, I really wish I could have been there; sounds truly awesome. I sort of want to help contribute to a San Francisco KFA, but feel almost over my head with the stuff I’m already working on with Anarkink, this anarchist BDSM group we’re starting to get off the ground. (In full-stress mode now trying to plan for our presence at and party after the SF Anarchist Bookfair…)
That said, I’ll bet there are other folks in Anarkink who would be really interested in helping with such a thing; I’ll ask and see if there’s anyone who wants to get involved.
So glad I finally got a chance to see your presentation; thanks to Audacia Ray for vidding it! I’m fascinated about the prospects NYC opens up, and am anxiously looking forward to seeing how the next few chips fall. Thank you for all your hard work, especially long distance and in such otherwise trying times.
subversive sub, I think collaboration between a group like (what you describe) Anarkink (as being) and something like KinkForAll isn’t just logical, it’s perfect. Please do ask around your group and also please join and encourage others to join the KinkForAll mailing list, where most (un)organizational efforts happen.
Also, let me point out that the more people contribute individually and with their own initiative, the less each of us has to do centrally to make things happen. Although this is counter-intuitive to many people who believe oversight is essential, I believe the abundance of resources that KFANYC managed to procure in literally about 3 months time with no prior blueprint in these communities proves those people incorrect.
Many (although not all) times, oversight in groups like these are really just another way of expressing distrust or ego-centricity, and that’s just pointless.
Sigrid, I can’t say thank you to you personally enough times, so I’ll just keep saying it: thank you for the amazing and exemplary support you gave the idea, especially from so far away. You are the perfect figurehead for the good people I’m betting on to step up with their own initiative and resources and make the global vision of all the great, positive things KinkForAll can be a reality. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.