Authors: Dossie Easton,Catherine A. Liszt
B003B0W1QC EBOK (10 page)
Such bars were for many years the only way for kinky men to meet each other, and are still vitally important in the men’s leather community. Most have a main room for socializing and cruising, and many have a back room set up with some equipment for spur-of-the-moment play. They often host special events in which people with a particular interest (bondage, watersports, a desire for a particular body type such as large or hairy bodies, a fondness for a particular role-play such as cowboys) can meet one another. Most leather bars also host fund-raisers for political causes pertinent to the kin communities, such as supporting gay-positive and kink-positive politicians or making donations to charities such as AIDS support or women’s health services.
The Internet
. In recent years many kinkyfolk have found a safe place to talk about their desires on the Internet. The ’Net is a special boon to people who live in isolated areas where they can’t attend programs or meetings, and to people for whom even the tiny risk of being “outed” (e.g., revealed to the outside world as kinky) is too great a chance to take.
. In recent years many kinkyfolk have found a safe place to talk about their desires on the Internet. The ’Net is a special boon to people who live in isolated areas where they can’t attend programs or meetings, and to people for whom even the tiny risk of being “outed” (e.g., revealed to the outside world as kinky) is too great a chance to take.
People on the Internet can obtain a great deal of information about their kink from the World Wide Web, where many experienced practitioners share their own knowledge and experience and point the reader toward other good sources of information. Netfolk can also share their thoughts “bulletin-board” style in various forums, including Usenet newsgroups and kink areas sponsored by some websites and Internet service providers.
Many people’s first experiments with kink take place in the cyber-forum of a “chat room,” where they type their ideas and communications into the keyboard and someone possibly thousands of miles away can read their message simultaneously, like a telephone conversation. It’s not unusual for people to form very devoted kinky relationships on-line with folks who live across the globe and whom they have never seen face-to-face. In such relationships, one partner may give the other directions about a particular kinky activity to try out at home, then report back on how it felt - many people who have never done S/M in the real world have been “cyber-slaves” or “cyber-masters,” a relatively safe way to experiment with the emotions of intense play for those who are too scared or too new or too committed to an existing relationship for anything more tangible.
The ’Net has brought untold thousands of people into the kink community by giving them a safe way to experiment and to find like-minded people near them. The “munch,” a social get-together of like-minded kinkyfolk from the Internet who meet in a restaurant for no-pressure chatting and flirting, has become one of the commonest kinky events.
A deeply closeted friend of Catherine’s discovered on the ’Net that a woman he’d worked with for over a decade shared his interest in spanking. Their friendship has now attained a level of intimacy that it never had before.
Professional dominants.
Part of our sexual underground is a skilled cadre of women, and a few men, who earn a living helping their clients enact their kinky fantasies. These “pro-dommes” (short for professional dominants, or dominatrixes) are probably the part of our world that is most visible to most outsiders, through (usually inaccurate) representations in movies, television and novels. They are an important link between our world and yours.
Part of our sexual underground is a skilled cadre of women, and a few men, who earn a living helping their clients enact their kinky fantasies. These “pro-dommes” (short for professional dominants, or dominatrixes) are probably the part of our world that is most visible to most outsiders, through (usually inaccurate) representations in movies, television and novels. They are an important link between our world and yours.
The client who would risk the loss of his job, family or status if his kinky desires became known can visit a reputable pro-domme in complete confidentiality, safe in the knowledge that she will respect his personal boundaries and his physical and emotional limits. A client who is already in a happy kinky relationship may ask a pro-domme for help in enacting fantasies that are beyond the limits or skills of his current partner, often with that partner’s enthusiastic support and perhaps even his or her participation.
Many professional dominants run their own businesses, with their own play spaces and equipment. Others group together in establishments that offer the potential client a selection of partners and environments. A few such establishments also offer professional submissives, who play with selected clients under close supervision to ensure their safety.
Although professional dominants earn an hourly rate that is on a par with many highly paid professions, their annual income is rarely anywhere near at the level you might suppose. Most see only a few clients a week, and must spend a great deal of money on obtaining and maintaining equipment, toys and fetish wardrobes.
Pro-dommes occupy a shadow world between legality and illegality. Most do not offer conventional sexual services, partly to help protect them against prostitution laws, and perhaps also because that boundary feels more comfortable. However, the definition of a sexual act varies widely from one state to another, and often includes activities like erotic spanking that most people don’t think of as sex. Professional dominants may also be susceptible to arrest under statutes outlawing things like “lewd and lascivious behavior” or “running a disorderly house.”
Many pro-dommes are among the most respected players in our communities - teachers, writers and educators. They also serve an important purpose in helping their clients overcome shame and guilt about their desires, and enabling them to make contact with support groups and other community resources.
Conferences and events.
Events and conferences, from local to international in scale, are so frequent that nobody can go to all of them.
Events and conferences, from local to international in scale, are so frequent that nobody can go to all of them.
Dossie recently attended a workshop in Nebraska for newcomers to S/M, where she was Mistress of Ceremonies to a talent show, performed poetry, and led two workshops. One workshop was on S/M dynamics in relationships, an in-depth discussion of the different ways people manage to figure out whose turn it is to make the coffee in the morning when the person they live with is sometimes referred to as Master - or more seriously, just how far do you want the roles you like to play in the bedroom to affect the rest of your life?
Dossie’s other workshop was on bondage and ropes. This was a more practical workshop, where several experienced people brought a whole lot of rope and helped everyone figure out how to tie each other up with it. This range of experience is typical of BDSM conferences.
Other events are title contests, where individuals compete for titles like Mr. San Antonio Leather or Ms. Oklahoma Drag King. Local contests may be held in bars or clubs, and feature entertainment and lots of costumes and silliness - most are held as fundraisers for a local charity. This structure provides an nice milieu for kinky people to gather, get to know each other, be creative and outrageous on a stage, and generate a positive presence in the larger community by making a sizable donation to a charitable organization.
Local titleholders may go on to compete in larger national or international events. The granddaddy of leather events is International Mr. Leather, which annually fills up a large number of hotels in its host city, and generates parties that go on for ten days. The winners of these contests are expected to justify their fame by producing and hosting lots more events and fundraisers.
Kinky conferences usually include entertainment, play parties and how-to workshops, and many opportunities to make friends and meet experienced players. Major events usually have a vendor area, where participants can buy books and magazines, fashion and toys, and meet the craftspeople who serve their community.
What about young people?
For legal and ethical reasons, virtually all these wonderful supportive kinky environments are open only to adults. Where, then, does that leave the young person whose fantasies about kinky behavior are strong, but who is too young to enact these fantasies? Kids are encountering images of alternative sexuality at a much earlier age these days. Unlike your authors, they don’t have to struggle with nameless desires for years or decades - they know the names of those desires, and they’re speaking freely about them. (Good!)
For legal and ethical reasons, virtually all these wonderful supportive kinky environments are open only to adults. Where, then, does that leave the young person whose fantasies about kinky behavior are strong, but who is too young to enact these fantasies? Kids are encountering images of alternative sexuality at a much earlier age these days. Unlike your authors, they don’t have to struggle with nameless desires for years or decades - they know the names of those desires, and they’re speaking freely about them. (Good!)
Remember - talking about something, or fantasizing about it, is not the same as doing it. Catherine remembers fantasizing about spanking and bondage from an age as early as four, but did not enact those fantasies until her late twenties. We hope that the teenager with kinky desires will find a group of like-minded, or at least sympathetic, people with whom he can talk freely about his evolving sexuality. Many cities offer support groups for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered teens, and we would hope that such groups would also offer support for teen members of other sexual minorities. Support groups for BDSM and other alternative sexualities now exist on a handful of college campuses; more, we presume, will evolve in the future. There are also a couple of good websites, notably Scarleteen (
www.scarleteen.com
), which provide support and information for young people’s sexuality.
www.scarleteen.com
), which provide support and information for young people’s sexuality.
We have developed our own culture
. If you attended some of these conferences and events, you would discover that in the ghettos of the extreme sexual minorities there has developed a fascinating culture, with its own literature, publications, stores, businesses, craftspeople and artists.
. If you attended some of these conferences and events, you would discover that in the ghettos of the extreme sexual minorities there has developed a fascinating culture, with its own literature, publications, stores, businesses, craftspeople and artists.
Craftspeople are very important to the kinky community, as the costumes and toys that we use to live out our fantasies are usually not available at regular department stores. Craftspeople and artisans in leather, rubber and chain create clothing, costumes, corsets and fetishwear, all of it designed for use in a sexual context, and for the wearer to express how each sees him- or herself as a sexual person. Toys - restraints, bondage cuffs, blindfolds, dildos and whips in an enormous variety of materials, colors, textures and styles - facilitate infinite possibilities for sexual exploration.
The making of sex toys is a high art in this community; sleazy stuff is not welcome, as most people value their sex lives, and do not want their costumes and toys to be poorly made junk such as is found in many porn stores.
From our love of well-crafted leathers and toys, stores have opened to sell the works of craftspeople - leather stores have become so common that there is a well-known boutique in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. (A strange sight to see if you have been traveling, like one of our authors, without your leathers and toys for fear of being hassled crossing borders on a European trip.)
In the visual arts, well-known artists like Robert Mapplethorpe have taken S/M and kinky imagery into the mainstream. Other artists are well-known within the kinky community: we recently attended a show of S/M art at San Francisco’s Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. S/M themes show up in the work of mainstream artists like Leonor Fini and Masami Teraoka, and out-of-the-closet artists like Tom of Finland and Fish explore explicit imagery of fantasy and roleplaying, offering in their art a profound understanding of sexual communication within the sexual minority ghetto.
Fashion designers Gianni Versace and Jean-Paul Gaultier openly display S/M clothing, while fashion photographer Helmut Newton has created an entire kinky style of presenting clothes.
Kinky people have a particular affinity for the performing arts, given our love of psychodrama in our private lives, and we have seen theater, dance and spoken word performance in cities as different as New York and Omaha, in theaters both within and expanding out of the sexual underground.
French philosopher Michel Foucault took the theory of sexuality, informed by S/M, to the heights of logical abstraction, and was one of the major voices of twentieth century philosophy.
In literature, Anne Rice (under her pseudonyms A. N. Roquelaure and Anne Rampling) writes intense S/M fantasy, and Pauline Reage’s Story of 0 has been a classic since it was first presented to the French Academy in 1958. Within the present kink community, there is an enormous amount of writing being published, both erotic and philosophical /political/psychological, about and from the point of view of sexual variation. Several publishing houses have evolved to serve the needs of a community hungry for fact and fiction about its own lifestyles. Certain distributors specialize in delivering these books to bookstores all over the country, either gay/lesbian bookstores or erotic boutiques, so that information is available wherever you may be looking for it. (Information about good books to read and how to find them will be found in the Resource Guide at the back of this book.) What a contrast to your authors’ childhoods, when we couldn’t find any books about sex at all!
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