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.â€
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.
by Emily
23 Mar 2009 at 20:20
This is a fantastically well-written post and articulates what this thing is all about so much better than I could when I came back to campus and was telling friends from outside of the sexuality communities about how I’d spent my Sunday. I hope you don’t mind if, for that reason, I link this post to basically everyone I know. ;)
Another thought: I think there’s this prevailing notion that in order for people with marginalized sexualities to be out, they either need to radically desexualize and normalize their identities (see: emphasis on marriage in LGBT rights), or to hide what they do in semi-secret (often highly sexualized) groups and under pseudonyms. I’m not necessarily passing judgment on either of these modes of operation, but I think it’s worth pointing out that KFA sits between these two ways of doing things, by being matter-of-fact and open and neither hyper- nor desexualized. This is more or less what you said, but I think it’s worth reiterating the way the KFA model enables all of us to meet in the middle on this issue.
by Ranat
23 Mar 2009 at 22:03
“So, evolve or die.”
In general I would agree to the point of ‘change or stagnate [death],’ though I think good ol’ Xavier’s quote was rather disgustingly anthropocentric.
Also, crocodiles, salmon, and hedgehogs have hardly changed at all for the last couple thousand or million years, cuz adaptation-wise, they’ve got it made. :P
Anyhoo, I do agree that the kink community needs to evolve to meet the needs of the people it encompasses, and trying to force it to remain in its stagnant state would be detrimental to everyone.
by maymay
24 Mar 2009 at 01:31
@Emily:
Of course I don’t mind if you spread this post around! Please do!
That is a fantastic and well-made point. It is, indeed, exactly what I’m getting at, and you managed to distill this post into a very succinct couple of sentences. Well done.
@Ranat:
Granted but, physiologically, humans haven’t changed much in that time span either. ;)
I think that the kink community encompasses more than it used to, and that this isn’t actually something that traditional sexuality communities have realized. The fact of the matter is that technologists, politicians, and other non-sexuality advocates do actually have a lot of reason to be “part of” our community, and yet neither traditional sexuality groups nor these technologists, politicians, and other non-sexuality-focused individuals feels as though they can communicate over the wall, if you will, effectively. For a sub-culture that prides itself on how well our “negotiation” and “communication” sustains us, I think we are shaming ourselves by not doing better.
by Clarisse
24 Mar 2009 at 04:09
I think that perhaps part of this is that it’s not just the world of sex ed that’s ready for more unstructured, free, open, anarchistic events. America as a whole is valuing those types of things more and more. As a side note, it makes me wonder if we’re going to see a resurgence in the anarchist movement “proper”; but perhaps that resurgence is here, and happening, and simply wrapped up in other movements including open-source tech and open-source sex.
I am, however, wary of two things:
1) That we’ll start to downplay the actual risks of outness, etc. which are real and serious. And, I don’t want to sound all doomsday or anything, but we’re living in a pretty sexually open and accepting period right now … and there is always time for the pendulum to swing back and hit us in the face. Might consider protective gear … or at least promote risk awareness.
2) That we’ll be so busy congratulating ourselves for how free and open we are, that we blind ourselves to the intangible but very real barriers existing around these events. I know I’ve made this point before — and I do get that you feel that KFANYC drew exactly the people you wanted. I respect that. I’m not pro-diversity in itself (really, I’m not pro-anything in itself; that’s just stupid). But let’s not pretend that KFANYC was totally accessible to everyone. If it had been, then (just as an example) I would have seen more, say, people of color at the event. I don’t mean to harp on this, but I would feel more comfortable with this post if I saw more acknowledgment of it.
by maymay
24 Mar 2009 at 04:25
@Clarisse:
Not just America, but the world. Simon Phipps talks about this very often, and especially eloquently on the FLOSS Weekly podcast, where he says that the Internet has been a catalyst for ushering an era of transparency with privacy into all the realms of social interaction that we know, including business, politics, technology, and, yes, even sex.
Really? I’m no American History major, but that’s not how I see things happening at all.
I’ve never, and I mean never seen people of color prominently represented in sexuality spaces. For what it’s worth, I recall seeing more people of color not only in attendance but actually give presentations at KinkForAll New York City, notably Tilda’s excellent Kink in Culture presentation, than I’ve seen in all other sexuality spaces combined in my whole life.
To put it bluntly, I do see a disparity in the fact that black people are not prominently represented in the sexuality communities, and I don’t claim to understand the intricacies of why that is, but my edging on a decade of experience in sexuality spaces in the greater Tri-State area (around NYC) is that black people are for whatever reason simply not present.
I don’t want to be, nor can I be, a leader in the black community, but you know who can? Tilda can. And so can the other people of color already out and about in our spaces. I think we do ourselves a disservice not giving them a chance to be as autonomous as they can be, and I don’t know of a better place for them to be that way than at KinkForAll. Do you?
by Clarisse
24 Mar 2009 at 04:38
Perhaps it would help if I clarified what I’m criticizing.
I’m not saying that you need to be a leader in the Black community. Nor am I saying that we aren’t giving anyone enough autonomy.
The point that I believe I made to you at KFANYC, and that I’ll restate here, is more along these lines: If our goal is to make these events more accessible to people who don’t normally participate in them, then why weren’t more of those people present at KFANYC? What kind of action can we take to reach out to those people? KFANYC was a spectacularly successful event, and I loved seeing it. But — while I certainly don’t have any statistics or breakdowns of the attendance or anything like that — I got the feeling that even the out-of-the-ordinary participants there were all from what we might call “kink-aware subcultures”. Are there things we can do to draw people in who have barely heard of these ideas? Would it even be possible to run a coherent KFA-type event that appears inviting to people who aren’t remotely kink-aware? We’ve succeeded at making an accessible event; how much more accessible can we get?
I won’t pretend to actually know the answers to this one. I’m not doing incredibly well at getting people of color out to my film series, for instance.
by Emily
24 Mar 2009 at 09:22
As an American history major (=p) I’d say that we are living in a period that is hugely more sexually open than previous periods in our history. Does that mean there isn’t any work to do? Of course not–particularly with regard, as Clarisse says, to engaging people who aren’t from kink-aware subcultures.
by maymay
24 Mar 2009 at 12:41
@Clarisse:
You’re asking really, really great questions and—to clarify—I hope my response didn’t come across as dismissive. (Oh, late night blog commenting!) :)
Plainly, I think KinkForAll is amazing, but not instantly limitless in its capability. It’s just this one thing we’re doing, and we really need to keep doing it and to do it more and keep making it better. In other words, we have to start somewhere, and by definition we start at the start.
KinkForAll New York City did make kink topics accessible to people who are not central pieces of established sexuality communities. I recall Jack’s excellent follow up post, and also Ranat’s comments on her experience, where she said (I feel like I missed an opportunity to include her quote in my post proper, above.)
I think the answer to both questions is yes. As I mentioned in my presentation at KFANYC, this first event had a definite slant towards the BDSM community because, well, that’s where I started. But for what others might have originally assumed would be a “kink event”, it was remarkably wide-reaching. That being said, it still showed a bias—that is, it showed my bias. But it doesn’t have to.
Everything about the framework of a KinkForAll is explicitly geared toward having what you bring to it. This’s why I want to see participants like Tilda take up the task of involving people of color, a task she’s uniquely capable of accomplishing in ways many of us can not. That’s why I want to see Evan and the rest of the participants present in NYC but local to DC take what they saw in NYC and use the framework that exists in their own localities and communities in DC.
And all of this effort to make the participants themselves into the ones who do the outreach they believe is worth doing is why I’m so adamant about protecting the flat, transparent, and autonomous framework we’ve provided. Like I said above, “sexual freedom is for everyone. But you have to take it and run with it yourself.”
Exactly! Let’s try and find out! :D
@Emily:
:) Yeah, granted. I was thinking about the pendulum-like cycles that Clarisse referenced, and on that front—with what little I know about American history—I don’t really feel as though we’re actually swinging into a period of sexual openness, but rather out of one. The good news is that, pendulum or no, people like Clarisse and you and I are always working towards making sexual openness more and more beneficial for everyone.
by queerradical
24 Mar 2009 at 18:55
What a brilliant post! This sounds like such an incredible event. I can’t wait to check it out in greater depth!
by subversivesub
24 Mar 2009 at 19:52
Accessibility is definitely important in the sense that people who want to attend should be able to attend and should feel welcome: that includes striving for physical accessibility for people in wheelchairs, gender-neutral or at least safe bathrooms for trans and genderqueer folks, not allowing sexist or racist behavior to go unchecked, providing childcare, and so forth.
In my mind, it’s a totally different thing to *actively* try to bring in people from certain demographics that organizers see as being underrepresented in their movement, events, etc. It’s a very activist tendency to think “we just need to draw in more people, from everywhere!” And I don’t think that’s necessarily always the case. The absence of certain groups (young people, old people, people of color, women, queer folks, etc. etc.) from any given event or organization is not necessarily due to that event or group being *unaccessible* but could also be due to a wealth of other factors: there could be a stark difference in perception of sexuality as something one should build community and identity around (rather than something that one should just do, in private). Or those groups could already be dealing with sexuality and sex education in other ways. Or it could be a lot of other things.
Saying that “we need to get more of [group X] involved” in *any* project has always seemed really problematic to me. It assumes that folks from group X would *want* to be involved with your project if they only knew about it. The “solution” thus becomes one of education and outreach — which to me has always seemed to smack of proselytism — or one of changing the project to be ostensibly more attractive to group X. (Which in my experience often involves diluting the project’s message or goals.)
To me, the solution is neither outreach nor (necessarily) changing one’s project but identifying what the absent demographic groups are *already* doing, or considering if there’s a good reason why those groups aren’t presently part of your group — and may not want to be. I think the question is not so much “how can we get more people involved” but “how can we act in solidarity with people who may not want to organize/act with us but with whom we share some sort of affinity.” Obviously this has more do to with broader political struggle than with a specific event like KFA, but I think the general idea still applies…
by maymay
24 Mar 2009 at 20:01
Thanks for the kind words, queerradical. :) Glad you found this post valuable.
@subversivesub:
That’s a very well-stated distinction and that sentiment echoes my reasoning for not wanting to be “a leader in the black community,” actually. Formal ethics tells us that treating different people identically is actually unethical, since different people have different wants and needs. Once again, this is why the focus at KinkForAll is not “outreach,” but rather “engagement,” a subtle but related point to what you’re saying, I believe. Unless, of course, someone decides to make outreach their goal for a specific event, which I think is awesome.
by Clarisse
25 Mar 2009 at 02:23
@ subversivesub: Thanks for your comment. You have articulated critiques of the “pro-diversity” community-building position that I have frequently spoken about before, but you did it much more articulately than I ever did! But I think that perhaps you and I want the same thing.
You seem to think that we should work with other subcultures on their own terms. I agree. I’m just more willing to use words/approaches like “education and outreach”, whereas you prefer words/approaches like “acting in solidarity”.
Fundamentally, I am guessing that you do think it’s a good thing for more people to have access to more information about sex. I’m writing this comment under that assumption, so you should correct me if I’m wrong.
Also — correct me if I’m wrong — but you seem to be worried that I’m advocating changing our communities, or diluting our community goals, in an attempt to “draw more people in”. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I think that the way we develop our communities is, or at least can be, separate from the way we choose to spread information. I also think that we can expand the audience to which we make our information accessible, without changing our community. Indeed, for me, it’s not really a question of getting more people into our community (though that does frequently seem to be a collateral effect of my approach). It’s a question of ensuring that more people (a) know our community exists in the first place, (b) are not under false impressions regarding our community, and (c) can easily access the information we have to offer. (ed. note: aww, look at that cute copyright sign that my parenthesis-C-close parenthesis got formatted into! that’s adorable!)
Of course KFA is a community-building event as well as an information-spreading event. But I am under the strong impression that it is designed and intended mostly an an information-spreading event. This is certainly how I would promote it if I had time to organize one in Chicago.
I think that the approach you suggest — “How can we act in solidarity with people who may not want to organize/act with us but with whom we share some sort of affinity?” — is not actually very different from the approach I am suggesting, which might be summarized as: “How can we frame the information we’re offering such that it is accessible to people who may not want to organize/act with us but with whom we share some sort of affinity?”
by Sara
25 Mar 2009 at 14:40
In further conversations with people who attended Kink For All New York City, it struck me that in order for Kink For All to remain a viable and energetic concept, it must continue to fulfill the same kind of function; quick information sessions, exchange of contact information, creating a fertile ground to plan new ideas. I’m wary that because the first KFA was so successful, future rounds may try to pile more upon it than the concept can support.
For example, I had a few people ask me if we would consider lengthening the time slots to 30 minutes. My answer was (and is) a resounding No. We’ve talked at length about why 20 minute presentations with no down time are used.
But this request, though KFA can’t fill it, speaks to a greater need. Part of that is a social space, which i hope future KFAs will provide. Part of it is also that while 20 minutes is plenty of time to get people talking, it’s not enough time to delve into every nuance of a topic.
I see a real opportunity here for other groups, with different parameters, to step up and fill the gaps that the Kink For All concept doesn’t cover; everything from continuing social spaces to lengthy discussions to in-depth workshops. These things already exist, of course, but wouldn’t it be amazing to see a real synergy occur, making sure that the enthusiasm of KFA attendees doesn’t fizzle out two months later, but instead keeps growing? I don’t know quite how to manage this. I don’t ever want Kink For All to become simply a promotional space, as that is counter to the very core of the concept. But maybe classes that are well received could get picked up and expanded, like Maja’s talk on status was expanded at CV. Perhaps Kink For All attendees could make informal meetups. Perhaps, perhaps…many things. It depends on what people want.
I want to see Kink For All stay strong, and true to its original goals. It is an incredible spark, but hopefully the ideas that are shared there can also find a place to grow at leisure. I don’t think this is something KFA should necessarily take on; after all, one event cannot (and should not!) do everything. But one event can *start* multitudes of others.
by subversive_sub
25 Mar 2009 at 15:20
@ Clarisse, I think I get what you’re saying now. I just cringe whenever I hear “outreach,” especially when talking about bringing more people of color into events/organizations, because I’ve seen so many well-intentioned white activists make the mistake of thinking that their projects would somehow be more legit if more people of color were showing up. They think that because there aren’t a lot of POC in their project, there must be something wrong, and thus they need to (a) do “outreach” to POC communities to make them aware the project exists and (b) make their project more “welcoming” to POC — which often takes some really offensive forms, like dumbing down the message your group presents or just adding a workshop on “hip hop and ___” at your conference. (Seriously, I’ve seen this!) Granted, I’m not talking about sex education (which I have no experience with) but about leftist activism and some anarchist organizing/projects, so maybe this sort of thing isn’t as prevalent within sex ed activism.
That’s why I prefer words like “solidarity,” which allows for the possibility that the reason that more POC aren’t involved in the BDSM or alt-sex communities has to do with the fact that it’s just not interesting or useful to them. Sex education comes from a *lot* of different sources, not just the ones that we use, and there are plenty of people that we’d maybe call “kinky” that don’t identify themselves in that way — people who don’t feel the need or have the time for BDSM-specific education or community. That said, I definitely think that there *are* most likely some other reasons why we don’t see more POC involved in those scenes — it’s not like racism is absent, and the current state of the BDSM scene (being overwhelmingly white) means POC are often tokenized or primarily identified by their race. So definitely, making events and information as accessible as possible is a good goal to strive for, but I just worry that this can lead to thinking that the end result of accessibility will be something like “more POC will come to our events.”
by dirtylttlescret
26 Mar 2009 at 03:06
From the picture on http://malesubmissionart.com/ – Source for the picture with the duct tape ;)
http://www.leoherrera.com/
by Clarisse
03 Apr 2009 at 16:11
@ subversivesub: I definitely get your point, and I agree that we need to try and avoid tokenizing any groups at all, including POC. But as an event organizer, I wonder how else we are supposed to judge the success of our efforts to reach certain groups. I am not personally in any POC communities, and I don’t know anyone in those communities, really. I have done a little bit of networking, but aside from that, how am I supposed to judge how successful I am being at making my message accessible to POC — other than seeing POC people at my events? In other words, I get why “more POC at our events” is problematic, but I’m struggling to come up with other yardsticks for successful inclusiveness.
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by My KinkForAll NYC presentation: Outreach, media management, privilege, BDSM orientation, more! « Clarisse Thorn: BDSM Outreach
17 Apr 2009 at 14:16
[…] wrote a great followup KFANYC post, and in the comments I talked about how I think these events are awesome but I really want to see […]
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by The “Kink” in “KinkForAll” « Emily Rutherford
27 Apr 2009 at 17:48
[…] itself, and actually in listening to KFA’s primary unorganizer and evangelist, maymay, talk about this, I’ve been able to develop my understanding of what that word is doing there. When I […]
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by Meitar Moscovitz (maymaym) 's status on Thursday, 08-Oct-09 02:01:08 UTC - Identi.ca
07 Oct 2009 at 22:01
[…] http://maybemaimed.com/2009/03/23/kinkforall-and-the-evolution-of-sexuality-communities/ a few seconds ago from web […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › My latest project: Kink On Tap is reinventing smart sexuality netcasts
15 Oct 2009 at 12:05
[…] the concept of KinkForAll, an ad-hoc sexuality “unconference” with the potential to radically transform sexuality education and community building as we know it today. In 10 months, a driven core of volunteers and I have put on 3 separate […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › On Youth, Sexuality, Education, and Your Fears
01 Nov 2009 at 02:41
[…] in a public venue is a big deal because most sexuality communities are extremely afraid of using public resources for doing their work. Few that I know about in the sex-positive sphere […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › The Internet made me a sexual freedom activist in 2009. Now it’s your turn.
11 Jan 2010 at 00:49
[…] the concept of KinkForAll, an ad-hoc sexuality “unconference” with the potential to greatly empower sex-positive advocacy and drastically improve sex education as we know it today. In a matter of mere months, less than […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › Celebrate Sexual Freedom in Rhode Island! Come to KinkForAll Providence!
03 Feb 2010 at 18:10
[…] began because sexuality communities had a real need to mix and mingle in a non-eroticized environment where the exchange of ideas took precedence over the exchange of bodily fluids. More than that, it […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › Open Thread: When Educators Are Censors
25 Feb 2010 at 00:44
[…] freedom has meant I’ve become a spokesperson for the intersection of tech and sex, founding KinkForAll put me at odds with some of the more traditional sexuality community leaders, and the louder I get and the more I do with media projects like Kink On Tap and SexEdEverywhere, […]
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › The Salvation Army incites personal attacks against me; a blog reply
25 Mar 2010 at 12:05
[…] hard as it might be to believe, my involvement with the KinkForAll unconferences were born out of my desire to see my “end of the spectrum” do a better job of actually educating about se…. I think we have done ourselves a great disservice in trying, and in taking sex from the private […]
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by On Letting The World Burn « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
19 Jul 2011 at 19:55
[…] intents and purposes, I am the illegitimate offspring of The Scene and The State at a time when the literary telepathic non-magic of the Internet threatens them both. And, still borrowing from Haraway, â€illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful […]
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by The Bus Driver and The Gadfly: What my activism looks like at BDSM parties « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
20 Dec 2011 at 05:13
[…] I’ve been to, I found Transmission to be the most accepting of the kinds of conversations I was starting. I think that’s in no small part due to the fact that the hosts are sensitive to these issues and […]
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by Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place: Technomaddery, Cyberbusking, and More « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
02 Jan 2012 at 03:46
[…] tomorrow is also a callback to my past. After the East coast, and after I complete the legal transition out of my apartment in January, […]
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by Toward a new expression of sexual freedom « Kink in exile
20 Jan 2012 at 10:16
[…] from a post about Kink for All, a sexuality conference that started in NY and is going to Denver in February. […]
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by Invisibility versus Illegibility: KinkForAll shows how “kink†is everything you didn’t know it can be « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
23 Feb 2012 at 18:19
[…] intimacy, making many people fearful of openly discussing “taboos.†Sexual stigmas sustain an aristocratic stranglehold on information, privileging credentialed gatekeepers over the only true expert on your own desires: you! One […]
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by Help me check BDSM’s privilege at the next KinkForAll unconference « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
02 Mar 2012 at 19:04
[…] a little less, and to listen to others a little more. Since “BDSM†is not a person, and since KinkForAll is structurally designed to ensure discussions on any topic cannot be unilaterally exclud…, it is up to us, collectively, to check BDSM’s privilege at specific KinkForAll unconferences […]
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by From Triads to Triadic Relationships: Polyamory’s superpower is not what you think – Atlanta Poly Weekend 2012 Opening Keynote « Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed
11 Mar 2012 at 01:35
[…] an open-to-the-public “unconference†whose theme is sex and relationships education. In 2009, I co-founded KinkForAll with a long-term goal of developing “self-empowerment training areas†where people could choose to endure the intense […]