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.
by Emily
03 May 2009 at 15:56
Very well said, as always.
I think I should mention, though, that I believe there are benefits to a certain degree of “us-versus-them,” though so much in terms of “Oh god, vanilla people are so stupid and limited,” or in terms of any value system that ranks kinky sex as a better type of sex to have. But if we start talking in terms of “kink” as a worldview or a lens, we can start incorporating its concepts into unorthodox ways of analyzing life, the same way we do when we talk about queer identity or queering public space or things like that. Folks coming from the minority sexuality communities have the ability to break down bad paradigms; queer communities have done this by critiquing gender essentialism and heteronormativity and value-driven monogamy. Maybe kink communities can channel the tendency towards exhibitionism that can often (to me, anyway) seem a bit reductionist into a philosophy that questions, for example, the tendency to desexualize what cannot be desexualized. Maybe kink folks can apply their comfort with the concept of power dynamics to analyzing social relationships in a way that doesn’t automatically put a negative connotation on the many power dynamics that exist in vanilla culture in both sexual and non-sexual contexts.
Basically, I agree with you, and these are just a few added thoughts. There’s a lot of unproductive stuff in the scene, from my limited point of view, that only takes a little reimagining to be channeled into incredibly useful paradigm-smashing activism–the concepts of “queerness” that were a particularly big deal in the ’90s show us how to do this. (Okay, rant over.)
by Sophiste
03 May 2009 at 20:45
Well said, and thought provoking. Evidence of this is the succeeding thousand characters of thought you’ve provoked from me. Please excuse my hijacking of your blog. :)
I like deemphasizing actual sex and making it more private. I absolutely agree that the key to acceptance of non-mainstream sexual and near-sexual identities and practices is to say that it doesn’t matter what happens in the bedroom, whether it’s missionary het sex or anal sex or pegging or whips and chains or candlelit rose petals lovemaking or diapers or cartoon character costumes–or all of the above together (although, good grief, that sounds very strange). Your sexuality is simply none of their/my/our business.
So, if my preferences are none of your business, the question for me becomes: why does sex need to leave the bedroom at all? Why should my personal *sexuality* (not social style) need to be public? Maybe it doesn’t. In fact, I tend to think that advocating discretion and privacy, not openness or unorthodoxy, is the key to getting greater acceptance of private expressions of non-mainstream sexuality. The fix, in my view, to unjust restraints on non-mainstream sexual activity is not that any given activity should be actively accepted; it’s that society and government alike should keep their noses out of my bedroom, whatever I’m doing in there. The solution is not greater visibility, but greater invisibility for everybody’s sex; it’s not a tolerationist point of view, but a libertarian one. (My objection, by the way, touches as much on obscenity and battery laws and television police dramas’ disgust for whips and chains as on the fact that I find it objectionable to be at a gathering of heterosexual-ish women friends–imagine the stuff of Sex and the City–and receive inquiries about my sex life and receive information about theirs. My bedroom door has a lock for a reason.)
Yet at least the traditional model of non-mainstream sexuality gathering–whether it’s Pride or Folsom or ShibariCon or TESFest–is fundamentally about people getting together outside the bedroom to socialize others who share their bedroom approaches, thus bringing the bedroom not only into the living room, but right into Main Street. So how do you reconcile public gatherings bound together by sexual preference and practice with the claim that sexuality should be private? (This question is only partly rhetorical.)
Now, one way to think about it is exactly what you indicated, on the model of the gay rights movement: a social movement, where the sex acts are private, but some element of social and legal interaction tied to sexuality IS truly public. For homosexuality, as you pointed out, and as Emily Rutherford suggested quite eloquently (which, by the way, I am now enjoying reading her VERY smart archives–I love blog links!) the movement worked when it became not about private sexual practice and instead about larger issues. And it seems to me that translating that model to BDSM has great potential.
For me, I think, the most significant shift in gay rights was the legal shift: from sodomy and cunnilingus to co-parenting and power of attorney. But what would be the analogous situation for BDSM? Is the goal the return of voluntary indenture in this country? I don’t like that idea, and while I might be peculiar in my standards of privacy, above, I doubt I’m alone in my opposition to indenture.
Or, perhaps, the element of gay rights to draw on is not legal, but social/cultural–not about co-parenting and power of attorney, but about the ability for a woman to kiss her female partner goodbye at the airport without danger of harassment or worse, or for a son to bring his boyfriend to meet the family at Thanksgiving dinner without too much discomfort. Then, too, what’s the analogy? Whatever the son and his boyfriend do in the bedroom doesn’t actually change the way they eat turkey and mashed potatoes at the table. The fact that they’re there and acting just like the son’s brother and his girlfriend are is the issue. So, for performative low-grade sexuality (public kissing), as it applies to BDSM, is the goal for kneeling to be okay? Hm. Maybe that’s an option. Or, as the Thanksgiving dinner goes, do we want women to be able to articulate dominance socially, and men to be able to articulate submission socially? (The other way round seems to work reasonably well already as a social default setting.) That’s a good fight, but I’m not sure that fight will be best won if tied up too closely with *erotic* dominance and submission. The progress in that direction that has been made so far certainly hasn’t been made through associations with erotic power imbalance.
But let’s get back to your motor for this change: KinkForAll. I see what you’re saying about making KinkForAll inclusive of all kinds of non-mainstream sexualities, not just BDSM, and how fostering a larger discourse that is different from specialized conversations at “how to” talks is a big part of that. And I know we’ve joked about the potential for misinterpretation of “SexForAll.” But I am concerned that creating a conference for *non-mainstream* sexuality actually enhances the very “us versus them” binary that you seem to be setting out to destroy, by lumping together the “alternative” people by the simple criterion of aberration. Can–and should–aberrant be an identity? [This is, by the way, why I’ve felt uneasy about the usefulness of the word “queer”–but that’s a topic for a different day.] Let me ask yet another question to which I don’t have an answer. Do relatively mainstream sexuality topics fit in at KinkForAll–and should they? Would/should KinkForAll be a space for a conversation on reawakening desire in your long-term partnership, or having sex for the first time as a “late bloomer”, or dealing with erectile dysfunction? These are, after all, very real topics in people’s sexual lives. I can see arguments both for inclusion of “mainstream” topics and against such inclusion. But, if I may, it seems that being inclusive of everybody but the “normals” can make a kind of distancing “us vs. them” statement in its own right.
by Sascha
04 May 2009 at 10:10
Thanks, May for citing my post.
For me, I think, the most significant shift in gay rights was the legal shift: from sodomy and cunnilingus to co-parenting and power of attorney. But what would be the analogous situation for BDSM? Is the goal the return of voluntary indenture in this country? I don’t like that idea, and while I might be peculiar in my standards of privacy, above, I doubt I’m alone in my opposition to indenture.
Exactly! The difference between sex acts and sexuality in the public square is what I was grappling with in my post.
I very specifically did not address the gay rights movement in my post, even though I posted the Little Britain clip. Political and legal questions concerning BDSM feel more nebulous to me than those concerning gays, transfolk, genderqueer, etc for that very reason. For gay, genderqueer, and trans folks, there is a very real and very public face to their sexuality. And they have every right and need to fight for that face and their rights as human beings.
As for kink, I don’t know how to separate BDSM with erotic dominance and submission. For me, they are too closely intertwined. And while I want societal acceptance for the choices I make, I am not a political cause and do not want my sex life to be politicized. So I’m not sure where that leaves me. I have lots of questions and very few answers.
by SJ
04 May 2009 at 12:18
I always feel strange reading how BDSM is all about sex. Because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s only tagentially about sex. For me, it’s more about community, identity, service, skill, craft, and creativity. Also, I find spirituality, transcendence, and connectedness. A sense of belonging. Maybe I’m scoping ‘sex’ too narrowly, but nevertheless, it’s not all, or only sex, to me.
For me, I’m a kinkster in much the same way that I’m a geek – it’s who I am, and it informs both what I do, and how I do it. I would prefer that this would not as adversely impact my life as it currently might.
by subversive_sub
04 May 2009 at 13:56
Wow, this has got me really confused. In my mind, “kink†is interchangeable with “BDSM,†and both describe a very wide array of activities, including bondage, fetishism, and varying degrees of domination and submission in the bedroom. If I get off on being spanked, and I call it “BDSM,†what’s the difference between me and the person who likes the same thing but calls it “kinky� Does the label “BDSM†imply a connection to the BDSM scene, whereas kink is something that a greater number of people do? I suppose “kink†could include things like dress-up and roleplaying that doesn’t necessarily involve power exchange, and some fetishists might not associate what they’re into as being related to BDSM. But I’m not really clear on the association of queerness with kink. Definitely something to chew on for a while.
by Graydancer
04 May 2009 at 15:41
I have to be the voice of dissent here: Kansas City high school queers, Jack McGeorge, and many others have proven that the “mainstream” DO in fact give a fuck about what you do – or what they think you do – in your bedroom. And how you do it. I find it interesting that I actually attended Dr. Braeme’s speech and yet took such a different message away from it and the rest of the conference than what you wrote about here. My own daughter was harassed in her h.s. for coming out as a lesbian; her response was to start a GSA, and as a result her younger sisters (who were bi] had a much easier time.
It is about sexuality, and framing it in larger terms is not going to change that perception. No, it’s not about having a woman kneeling at your feet on the bus – but it’s about being able to not lie about where you’re spending your weekend, or being able to say “it’s from my mistress about the ring on your finger and not be harassed. You don’t have to be advertising, but you should not have to hide things.
I’m glad kinkforall is such a success, but I’ve been to a lot of conventions with gender based and queer based and political discussions, and they weren’t limited to 20 minutes. They also happened to be alongside and often taught by the same demo classes that you find so boring – but which perhaps you shouldn’t quite denigrate so much, as some people’s sexuality does require a hands-on skillset. The two can and do co-exist.
In short, while I agree with some of what you say, I think that pretending that it’s not about sex is not very useful. It’s got to be on a “do you really wanna know?” level of questioning, with honest answers, so that people can see that just because you’re into kissing your mistress’ boots you are still qualified to teach them how to dance.
by Kasey
07 May 2009 at 02:37
Graydancer: Your daughter was out as a lesbian. That doesn’t mean she’d had sex with a woman. There are kids who come out in middle school nowadays. It doesn’t mean they’re having sex. It’s about identity and relationships, not about sex acts. Identity and relationships might involve sex or sexuality, but they are not the same as sex acts. That’s how PFLAG and GLSEN and GLBT youth groups can help found GSAs and talk about keeping kids safe in school, ending homophobic harassment, and giving them role models . . . and all of this does not involve discussing the act of having (any kind of) sex.
So, I don’t really understand what the “kink for all” concept is going for, but as someone who founded my own high school GSA, I know that much is true.
by kaizoku
18 May 2009 at 17:37
Though I’m not in any kind of kink scene, I can understand why you don’t want to have the same old demos on the unconference – I can also see how they might be intimidating for people who haven’t been around BDSM much. But I disagree with the broad statement that “nobody but your sex partner cares how you fuck.” I love talking with people about how we have sex, what turns us on – and yes, sometimes as part of a larger discussion of relationships, society, etc. Not that talking about your sex life should be compulsory – or hearing about other people’s – but I think that it can be a fruitful discussion. I get your point about not wanting to divide people into kinky vs. vanilla. But in my experience, talking about sex and what different people enjoy or don’t enjoy doesn’t have to divide us. First, most “vanilla” people have done/thought about kink at one time or another. And second, we can celebrate and respect our differences – as well as our commonalities. I know that sounds cliche, but really – I love hearing about other people’s experiences. I regularly read Bitchy Jones and I’m about the farthest thing from a straight female dom. And I’ve become much more aware of the kind of shit she has to deal with – and how that intersects with the oppression I face as a queer transguy.
I definitely agree that there’s more to our identities and lives than sex, but I don’t think ignoring it is healthy either – because (for a lot of us anyway) kink IS about sex. And I would disagree with you that the GLBT community made more progress once it stopped talking about sex. The first issues that queers dealt with were ALL ABOUT SEX – “sodomy” was literally illegal, people were arrested for going to gay bars (hooking up) and for wearing clothes of the “wrong” sex, etc. There is an argument to be made that the current round of “GLBT issues” – adoption rights, marriage, etc. – is mainly what’s on the agenda of white, upper class gays, while the more marginalized parts of the queer community are still dealing with harassment, disenfranchisement and violence. And if you want to talk about public vs. private… well, I’d suggest you read “Public Sex” by Pat Califia. Suffice it to say, queers (especially gay men) have a long history of embracing public sex and it was and still is (see the recent arrests of older gay men in NYC bookstores for examples) a big deal.
by maymay
18 May 2009 at 19:21
@-everyone: Let me apologize for being absent from the followup discussion this blog post spawned for two weeks now and for a little longer yet. I’m sorry that I haven’t gotten involved in the comments here yet because I really, really want to. I get the distinct impression that very few people who have commented actually took the salient point of what I wanted to get across away from this post, which is perhaps my own failure. The only point I’m trying to make in this post is: the perception of non-sexuality advocates about sex-positive communities is incredibly poor. Of course we should be talking about sex, and we should be doing it publicly. What do you think I’m doing all the time? But it’s not as straight forward as that and, frankly, the way in which most people I know who discuss the sex they have online is really harmful to their own stated goals. As I mentioned in this blog post, I’ll elaborate further in the near future—hopefully in future blog posts and/or on this comment thread itself. Again, I’m sorry I’ve been remiss in addressing all the excellent points you’ve been making. Thanks again for all your commentary so far. Please keep it coming—I really enjoy reading what you have to say about this, and I think it’s an important discussion to have.
by Amber Rhea
06 Jul 2009 at 07:15
There were people at Sex 2.0 who continually referred to the sessions as “classes,” and that REALLY grated on me. That was as annoying to me as when other people continually referred to the sessions as “presentations” or “lectures.”
by maymay
06 Jul 2009 at 13:59
Amber, can you elaborate on what you feel is the distinction between a “class,” a “presentation,” a “lecture”, and a “session”? You seem to have some extremely specific ideas about what each of these are, along with some strong preferences about the terminology people should use.
In my mind, my “sessions” were very much “presentations.” To be pedantic, I was preparing “a demonstration or display of a product or idea”, which is the definition of the word. I like the word presentation over session for events of this sort because while a session is technically accurate (defined by my dictionary as “a period devoted to a particular activity”), this doesn’t provide much in the way of direction for the particular activity to progress. I disliked the very few sessions I attended at Sex 2.0 that seemed to trail off into nothingness. I specifically tried to avoid that with my presentations because I had a pre-formulated idea—however vague—of exactly what I wanted to talk about. Thus, I deliberately turned my sessions into presentations, and I tend to encourage the use of that word to inspire the same sort of directed thinking and acting in others.
But really, fuck it, sessions and presentations are close enough in my view that they are mostly interchangeable. Sessions or presentations and classes or lectures, however, are not.
by maymay
06 Jul 2009 at 14:02
Huh. I should perhaps also mention that I don’t at all see how this particular question of semantics has anything to do with the thrust of my post, above, and I feel more than a little annoyed at myself for engaging in a semantic debate in this post when the real issue is about the perception of BDSM in the wider world. A slap on the wrist for me, and I’ll try to do better next time.
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Your blog is so fantastic. I really, really love reading it, and am wrapped up in it for so so long. Gosh.
That’s it. You’re fabulous. Thank you.
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