My KinkForAll NYC presentation: Outreach, media management, privilege, BDSM orientation, more!

Back in March, I attended a sex-positive unconference in New York City called KinkForAll; it was mostly slanted towards BDSM, but there was a lot of generally sex-positive talk as well. (You can read my post-KinkForAll followup thoughts by clicking here!) Part of the deal at KinkForAll was that everyone contributed in some way to the event, many of us by doing 20-minute presentations. I loved the loose, quasi-anarchist conference model. It worked very effectively (and if you’re interested in that kind of thing, I encourage you to read more at the KinkForAll website about how such events are organized).

At KinkForAll New York City (KFANYC), event organizer Maymay felt strongly that he wanted all the available information made further available to the general public, so he recorded all the presentations to be posted on the Internet. I don’t post images of myself, so he just took an audio recording of my quick talk on BDSM outreach strategies. You can download the recording by clicking here.

I had less than 20 minutes, and I didn’t have much time that week to prepare for KFANYC … to my ear, my talk sounds rushed and disorganized. I guess that’s how it goes. Certainly, expect it to be informal when you listen to it!

Now let me give some references and clarify some points:

References

+ Most importantly, check out my sex-positive documentary film series at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum!

+ Here’s the interview I did with Daniel Bergner, who wrote a “New York Times Magazine” article on female sexual desire as well as The Other Side of Desire, a book profiling four sexual fetishists.

+ I describe Pleasure Salon NYC during the recording, and there’s an interchange with Selina Fire. A month after that presentation, I got a committee together to start a Chicago version of Pleasure Salon, and it was awesome! If you’re in Chicago, come out to the next Chicago Pleasure Salon — they’re on first Tuesdays, 6-10, at Villains (649 S. Clark).

+ On the recording I quickly note that I attended a Chicago Bloggers Meetup, but I don’t mention the coolest thing that came out of that meetup: Arvan Reese, who organizes the thing, was inspired to start a new community blog on Sex / Gender / Body! One of my favorite things about doing this sex-positive outreach activism has been seeing my message inspire other people to go out and do similar projects. This movement is gaining some serious traction, people. The Sex / Gender / Body community blog goes live next month, and I’m psyched.

Followup Thoughts and Clarifications

+ I think I was a bit disingenuous about tactics on getting out a diverse audience — because that’s not something at which I am succeeding very well. That is, I think I’ve definitely succeeded at getting people with a huge range of sexual experience out to the Sex+++ Film Series, though the crowd is still a bit slanted towards the BDSM community (of course, that’s the community I’m most personally involved in, so this makes sense). But I have not succeeded at getting out — say — lower-income people. In other words: I’m doing well at some kinds of inclusiveness and outreach, badly at others.

Maymay 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 more efforts to get different kinds of participants in on the mix. The sex-positive movement is overwhelmingly white and middle- to upper-middle-class; how can we make the information we offer accessible to other demographics? After I left my comment on Maymay’s post, there were a bunch of really great comments. My favorite was one from subversivesub:

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.”

… to which I responded:

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 more 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.

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?”

So my answer to this question is: I don’t know, and I’m always open to suggestions and conversations about it. In fact, I’m due to have lunch soon with someone who wants to start a kink group for people of color … hopefully I’ll have time to blog about that when it happens, though the list of topics I want to blog on is already as long as my arm ….

I don’t necessarily want everyone to agree with me about everything regarding sex, although I must admit I think it would be super awesome if everyone agreed there is no “should”. But I do, at the least, want everyone to have access to information that can help form healthy, safe, consensual sexuality. I want everyone to know where they can go for that information, and to feel welcome if they seek it out.

+ Another thing I may have been disingenuous about: my immense privilege. I try to be as aware as I can of the incredible privilege I carry through my life: I’m white, upper-middle-class, well-educated, mostly heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, naturally slender, with live parents … there’s probably others I’m forgetting. The reason I bring this up is that I think privilege was a hugely important factor in my ability to start the Sex+++ Film Series, and I didn’t acknowledge that enough.

For instance, the most obvious factor: I am privileged to have the familial and personal financial support that enables me to work at an extremely flexible part-time job; I would never have been able to do this free series if I didn’t have a huge amount of spare time. The same goes for a lot of my other activism.

But I still think there’s a lot that everyone can do, even if they don’t have a ton of time or resources! Support local sex-positive events and groups. Write letters to the editor opposing sex-negative press coverage. Try to be frank, open and tolerant about all forms of consensual sexuality in your everyday life — for instance, don’t insult furries at the local BDSM meetup. Outreach and activism aren’t just the domain of dedicated activists: they’re attitudes; they include small habits everyone can get into, small actions anyone can take.

+ Lastly: I stand by my comments on “the orientation model” of sexuality. I still think that our biggest message should not be, “I can’t help my sexuality!” but should rather be, “Whether or not my sexuality is ‘built in’ or a choice, I have the right to do whatever I want with my body and with other consenting adults!”

But we probably shouldn’t entirely abandon the orientation model, because it’s got a lot of legal and cultural power. For instance, check out this recent British Columbia case that could determine whether BDSM becomes a legally protected sexual orientation … i.e., whether it becomes illegal in British Columbia to discriminate against people based on their BDSM choices. My favorite part of that article is the end, which quotes sexologist Charles Moser as he lays out a very clear, eloquent case for BDSM as a sexual orientation.

I’m unwilling to outright reject a powerful potential tool for social acceptance. So on that level, I think it’s cool to talk about BDSM (and all types of alternative sexuality) as an orientation. I just also think that a good priority for the sex-positive movement would be shifting the discourse so that it’s less about whether or not we choose our sexuality, and more about the fact that we have the right to make whatever sexual choices we want.

Various thoughts post-KinkForAll

KinkForAll was great. There were a variety of amazing presenters and discussions, and I wish I could do them all justice. I loved the conference model — highly flexible and very easily implemented — and I hope to see many more conferences along the same lines.

I gave two talks — one on strategies for BDSM outreach, and one on the Leather Archives and Museum. (Support the LA&M, everyone! They’re having a membership drive starting this month! You can also check out my entries about stuff I’ve found at the LA&M by clicking here.) I hope to distill the outreach talk into a blog post one of these days; I’ll tag it KFANYC when I do. [edit] Done — the post is here! [end of edit]

There was a KinkForAll liveblog done over Twitter. If you’re like me and aren’t much for the Twitter format, there’s also an aggregate of KinkForAll blog posts over on Technorati.

I wrote down a lot of thoughts, and I think KinkForAll will influence my blog for some time to come. Here’s some quick ones:

+ There were some discussions about coming out BDSM — and dragging people out of the closet, that is, telling the world about someone else’s BDSM life even if they’re trying to keep it a secret. I’ve written on this before, but I’ve never talked about how I feel about outing other people. Often, people will say that closeted people who work against alternative sexuality causes — for instance, secretly gay politicians who work against gay marriage — should be dragged out of the closet. By working against their own community, they sacrifice the protection of that community. I can understand that, but what bothered me about the discussion at KinkForAll was that I felt there was an uncomfortable emphasis on outing the family members of anti-sex-positive politicians. For instance, one person stated that if she knew for sure that Donald Rumsfeld’s son was gay, she’d have no problem telling the world.

If Donald Rumsfeld’s son is gay, then granted — he’s related to an antigay politician — but what if he’s not doing antigay work himself? Just because he’s related to a sex-negative politician doesn’t mean that he sacrifices his own right to privacy and understanding. In fact, his relationship to a sex-negative politician probably means that he stands to lose an awful lot if he is outed. He could, for example, be entirely disowned. I don’t think it’s remotely okay for us to drag some poor kid out of the closet — to force him to risk his relationship with his father — just because we disagree with the father. I do think it’s okay for us to talk to the kid in private: “Hey Donald-Rumsfeld’s-son, when are you gonna come out to your dad?” But if we force the issue, then we may not only cause serious problems for someone who doesn’t deserve them … we may alienate that person as well. Why should Donald Rumsfeld’s son help our cause in the future if we create serious personal problems for him now?

+ A presenter talked about the biggest pitfalls of play piercing. One of the biggest risks is probably double-sticks — that is, if you pierce someone and then accidentally stick yourself with the needle. Be careful, folks! The presenter also noted that rubbing alcohol is not a great disinfectant, and recommended a product called Technicare. Plus, everyone keep in mind that if iodine is used as a disinfectant, it requires three minutes to work.

For anyone interested in play piercing, I strongly recommend the book Play Piercing by Deborah Addington (Amazon page).

+ Tilda gave a gorgeous BDSM and culture slideshow. Her kink+culture blog is here. People who want to track BDSM in popular culture should definitely also check in on Peter Tupper’s incredible blog Beauty in Darkness: the History of BDSM.

+ A discussion on youth organizing basically emphasized how important it is that young people get involved in sex-positive activism. Go for it, folks! Actually I should probably say, “Go for it, everyone including me,” since I myself am only 24 … the founder of Polyamorous NYC talked about how he started it when he was only 26. Never underestimate yourself because of your age, my friends.

I’ve been thinking about this question since Trinity posted about it a while back. Those of us whose sexuality is very focused on BDSM will usually practice it if we can, and if we can’t find a safe space to learn how to do that, then we’ll simply do it without enough information … or become vulnerable to predators who offer that information unsafely. Unfortunately, the legal situation in Chicago makes it hard for the clubs to make themselves accessible to people under 21, but there is at least TNGC to provide an environment for 18+-year-olds to learn.

I was hoping that there would be more discussion on how to get BDSM information to people under 18, but there wasn’t really. We’re risking too much legal crap if we attempt to instruct those under the age of consent. I don’t really know how to get around this problem, except for posting as much how-to information to the Internet as possible — I’m really glad KinkForAll posted so much information to the Internet for that reason. And referring younger people to existing awesome kink-positive, pleasure-positive sex education sites like Scarleteen.

+ Maymay gave a talk on gender and technology making the fantastic point that we really need to be communicating with web designers, because they are encoding so much of how we think about gender and sexuality. As a simple example, the people who create social networking sites are influencing our ideas about sex and gender because they are making the drop-down menus we use to express that: for instance, compare your average social networking site — where you can pick “Straight”, “Gay” or if you’re lucky “Bisexual” — to FetLife, which offers many more options — “Straight”, “Heteroflexible”, “Bisexual”, “Gay”, “Lesbian”, “Queer”, “Pansexual”, and “Fluctuating/Evolving”. You can find the slides and links from Maymay’s presentation here.

+ Audacia Ray gave an awesome talk on “How To Be a Public Sex Intellectual Without Getting Hurt”. I think my favorite point that she made was her first: “This might be a really bad idea for you, and you need to consider that before you take the plunge.” Going public is not an act that you can take back and you must, must be sure that it’s what you want — it will affect your entire life. I hope that she recreates that talk as a blog post that I can link to, because I couldn’t possibly sum it up here, and it was awesome. In the meantime, check out her post on when and why to turn down media appearances.

+ Someone who spoke about gender told the story of a transperson he knows who identifies more strongly as BDSM than trans. That person apparently said that if ze had to choose between transitioning genders and being in the BDSM community, ze would rather be in the BDSM community. BDSM is a stronger aspect of hir sexual identity than trans! What an amazing anecdote.

+ Lastly, Boymeat presented on Old Guard leather culture. There was a lot of vilifying of the Old Guard and much of it struck me as, frankly, unfair. Yes, the Old Guard was more closed off to the public … but BDSM was far more stigmatized. The reason our current BDSM communities can afford to be so open is that the stigma against BDSM has been drastically reduced. Boymeat also talked about how rigidly etiquette-driven the Old Guard was as compared to today’s BDSM scene, and while this is true, I think it’s worth considering where that etiquette came from and how it functioned.

The etiquette that surrounded the Old Guard was in place because it helped those people communicate the scene standards. Yes, some of that etiquette was clearly intended to create an “in-group” … for instance, there were rigid ideas of what was acceptable clothing (sweaters were not okay!), and that’s easy to dislike. But having specific maxims and rules helped encode some really important things — as a very basic example, it’s not a bad thing for people to be emphasizing the maxim “discipline, honor, brotherhood, and respect”. Also, let’s keep in mind that the society surrounding Old Guard leather culture emphasized etiquette far more than ours does today: Old Guard leather culture took ideas that were current in America back then and used them to create a safe BDSM scene. Our BDSM scene talks less about etiquette because we young Americans talk less about etiquette.

I’m not saying that those maxims and rules were better than the BDSM scene we have today; I think the BDSM scene we have today is just fine. But let’s not criticize Old Guard ideas so much that we lose track of what was great and important about them.

I think I’ll end this post with two quotations about Old Guard leather culture that I use in my BDSM overview lecture:

It is more useful to understand than to criticize. And perhaps most importantly, what the Old Guard did for the development and expansion of kinky life and butch gay male sexuality can best be appreciated against the backdrop of what had existed earlier — not much of anything!
~ Guy Baldwin, “The Old Guard”

From a larger perspective, it is clear that many of the differences between “Old Guard” and “New Guard” are the differences between life in the US in the 1950s and life in the 1990s. These differences are common to many groups, not just leather/SM.
~ Gayle Rubin, “Old Guard, New Guard”

Coming out BDSM: Outness as a political act, and the perils thereof

There can be serious consequences for identifying publicly as BDSM, and there’s a lot of anxiety in the BDSM community about that. Yet one of the most effective ways to combat the anti-BDSM crowd is for us BDSM people to come out. Being out about our kink can be a very powerful statement: a statement that we aren’t ashamed; that we don’t think there’s anything wrong with what we’re doing; that we are people too … all that good stuff. If you’ve seen “Milk” or “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk” — both movies about the famous gay politician — then you may recall that Milk urged all gay people to come out, as a fundamental part of the gay liberation movement. There are BDSM advocates who take the same position.

Recently, I was in a position observe a great conversation on this subject among a bunch of smart kink advocates, and I’m going to reproduce a bunch of that conversation here. First, though: greetings from New York … I’m back again! I don’t usually spend quite so much time here, but there were a number of events to tempt me. I’ll be giving my BDSM Overview presentation at the Museum of Sex this Friday; if you know anyone in New York who could use a general introduction to BDSM — how the community welcomes and educates people, the way we differentiate between BDSM and abuse, BDSM-related legal issues, and so on — then you should send them down to 233 5th Avenue, Friday, 7PM. Plus, CineKink was this past weekend, and I was privileged to see a number of really excellent sex-positive films there. I highly recommend CineKink — and it tours, so if you’re in another city, you should check the CineKink website to see if it’s coming to your town.

There’s another great event happening this weekend: KinkForAll, on Sunday. I’m really looking forward to KinkForAll … it’s going to be a huge learning opportunity, not to mention a chance to meet some sex-positive advocates that I admire a lot. I encourage anyone — anyone at all, gay or straight, kinky or non, whatever — anyone with an interest in sexuality to attend KinkForAll.

Here’s something worth emphasizing about KinkForAll, though: taking photos and recording video will be allowed. Not just allowed — encouraged! To quote from some of the early KinkForAll emails, “information from the talks will be spread on the web afterwards. It’s to get everyone in on the discussion on sexuality, it’s to get everyone sharing and teaching with everyone else, and it’s to get sexual information available to all people, regardless of age, socioeconomic station, gender, sexuality, etc.” Of course this is a noble goal, but means that people who aren’t currently seeking to come out are taking a serious risk when we attend KinkForAll.

I recognize that (notwithstanding my recent whiny entry on coming out BDSM) I have not suffered any real consequences for my high visibility. And even if I were properly outed — if my birth name were widely associated with BDSM — I would still be in a better position than most. My parents, for instance, already know about my sexuality, and are totally cool with it. And although I would very likely suffer professional damage if I were outed, my economic status is such that I wouldn’t be out on the street. Still, though I don’t have any children yet, I do plan to — and children are hostages to social stigma … as would be anyone I want to get romantically involved with. If I date someone whose parents don’t know he’s into BDSM, and I’m widely known to be into it, what happens then? We keep our relationship a secret? He risks his relationship with his family to date me? What a mess.

When Maymay, event organizer, first announced to the KinkForAll mailing list that recordings would be encouraged at the event, I made the obvious point: that this would arguably discourage attendance. Maymay responded by saying that the event would institute colored nametags that would indicate the wearer’s status — either “willing to be recorded” or “not willing to be recorded”. I said:

I certainly don’t think recording should be disallowed, because I do believe recording is a noble goal. But I think it will encourage attendance if there is a more effective way to demonstrate one’s unwillingness to be recorded — you know, better than wearing an easily-missed nametag. For instance, maybe certain areas of the venue should be specifically designated as recording-free.

Maymay answered:

I tend to agree with you, actually, that encouraging cameras and recording devices will probably discourage *some* people from attending. While that’s unfortunate, it’s also simply the nature of things. Social change is great and wonderful but it simply can not happen if people don’t put their faces behind the message.

… So, to be precise: [it's not impossible to institute recording-free zones]. However, the fact remains that even if you confiscated every cell phone, digital camera, tape recorder, and every other recording device you could find at the door to the event, there is *still* a chance that people will be photographed or otherwise recorded even if they ask not to be. There’s no way to stop it and ultimately you’re always asking people to play by the rules honestly anyway.

Disallowing cameras is just not something KinkForAll as an event has much of a reason to enforce. Moreover, in the spirit of spreading information, creating any policy disallowing cameras is itself a counterproductive idea.

… In other words, the message I want to send to people who are considering not coming to KinkForAll because they might be photographed is: we will miss you, and we hope you will be comfortable enough next time around to come out and be part of the discussions with the rest of us face-to-face.

There was a bit more talking at the time, and at subsequent times, but I think the most comprehensive and eloquent argument against allowing recording at KinkForAll was put forth by Corey Alexander:

I guard images of myself, and do not publicize them, with good reason, and in ways that cause some difficulty, in all arenas of my life, including professionally. My personal reasons aside, I think it is important (as someone for whom these issues matter very much) to communicate to you what it may mean to hold such an event, and who you may be excluding because of it. I understand that you intend to go forward with the event as planned and I am very aware of why you are invested in a politics of outness, and I do not dispute this as a political strategy. I just want to talk about risk, and potential cost, because I think that folks that are invested in outness need to be aware of these issues.

I personally would be pretty much guaranteed to lose my job if I were out, and I am not alone there, as would pretty much anyone who works with kids, and who works in the social services or government. Additionally, those with kids or those who intend to have kids run the continued risk of losing custody of their children, should they be publically identified/identifiable as a kinky person. I personally have known several people that have lost their kids, and several who are currently involved in custody battles over this very issue. …. These are the risks that come with outness, and they are just some of those risks, but I find them the most compelling in my life, because they illuminate places where some people simply *cannot* choose to attend your event; they do not have the privilege. In this economic climate, where I have friends getting laid off right and left, I would support anyone who would choose their economic survival over attending an event like this (of course those folks that are assured of the economic support of others or the tolerance within their profession may have privilege that allows such risks). As someone who has lost custody of children I have parented, I would also support any parent who would choose not to take such a risk.

Another thing to note is that any event that is invested in publicizing images of attendees widely is unlikely to attract folks that are survivors of violence that have taken steps to hide their whereabouts.

… More than that, I want to draw your attention to the community resources you will lose, presenters, volunteers and attendees, because of this policy. I am not the only one, I am sure. … As you are interested in Kink For *All*, I would urge you to consider that as you welcome some (through your publicity on the internet), you exclude others (who cannot or choose not to take such risks) by this policy.

Maymay responded:

All of these risks you mention are real and valid but they are ones I believe are ultimately transient for society; that is, they will not always be risks. That said, I do not believe it’s possible to get to a place where kink for *all* is really possible without just such “politics of outness,” as you have described them.

… To date, other sexuality community events have excluded the very people *this* event wants to involve. If that means losing parts of the more traditional and valuable sexuality community, such as yourself, this is a price I am willing, if not happy, about paying.

… There are lots of examples I could give of people who are for one reason or another excluded by most other sexuality community events [such as Sex 2.0, Dark Odyssey, traditional BDSM conventions, and others] and who I believe are fantastically valuable additions, but I had two primary thoughts on this:

1. People who are not familiar with the public sexuality communities and who therefore do not go to the same events as many of us on this list do.

2. People, typically younger ones, who are familiar with the public sexuality communities and find them not to their liking for whatever reason.

Sara Eileen added:

We hope that the Kink For All space will feel safe for everyone who participates. But, in keeping with the core concepts of the idea, we hope to make this happen through encouragement, support, and expectations rather than rules.

These concerns are valid and difficult to answer, mostly because I think we really need to see how this community-focused space will shape up *on the day itself.* In the meantime, the risk of finding the space unsafe may be regrettably too high for some.

I’d like to mention again that if you’re presenting, you are by no means expected to present on an explicit, demonstrative or practical subject. The intersection of sex and life has many issues to be explored, and I truly hope we run the gamut of them when the time comes. I’d also like to point out that our venue explicitly forbids nudity, and the 20-minute presentation time frame makes practical demonstrations very difficult. That’s not to say they may not happen, but I expect to see much more talking than anything else.

We will have colored nametags or markers for people who don’t wish to be photographed. These markers, as with all components of safe spaces, function on the basis of trust. This event is bringing together a lot of different groups and new faces. It’s up to each of us individually to determine whether we have enough trust in the respect and consideration of other attendees.

The discussion went a little bit afield in places, but these are all the points that I found most compelling and interesting — both as a kinkster considering the politics of outness, and an organizer of sex-positive events. If you want to look at the KinkForAll mailing list archives and examine the full threads for yourself, you can find the KinkForAll Google group here.