Hi fellow Kink Leaders!
As many of you know, Kink often involves exploration into the darker, less acceptable sides of human nature. People seek out the Kink and BDSM communities for different reasons, but there is certainly a place for the politically incorrect in the Kink world that is not made available in the vanilla community.
1. How do you feel about the active exploration of poltically incorrect topics within kink (e.g. race, rape, imbalances of gendered power, feces, and other forms of extreme play)?
Please check out this great blog post on the topic:
http://www.lessonsfromawhore.com/category/bdsm/
2. What is your approach to more intense scenes and desires within the Kink Community?
a. As a participant
b. As an observer
c. As a leader (Dungeon staff, group facilitator, etc)
3. How do you navigate the transition between acceptable scene exploration/play and your leadership role? How do you make sure that you don’t carry over any of the role play into meetings and that your community members don’t either (For example, power exchange play–totally fine and appropriate in a pre-negotiated scene/relationship but NOT okay at community meetings. Being a dom/me does not grant you instant power over others in community meetings, etc)
4. How do you transition between you role in the Kink community, or within a scene to your vanilla life (e.g. the feminist who likes to be spanked. How can she be both without feeling whiplash?)
This is a great set of questions. I’ve thought about them a lot as someone that is feminist, anti-racist, and recognizes my own privilege. I’m also someone that like some pretty fucked up play.
I had a recent experience where my TNG group took a trip to a local dungeon and my husband and I planned a very intense scene. I waffled on going through with it because I was concerned that seeing something quite intense on what was many people’s first dungeon trip would be upsetting or turn them off from kink. Ultimately, we went through with it. I am glad that we did. While some people found it unsettling and had to look away they were all glad they saw it. And MANY people said that it was helpful to them to see a scene like that between us because they already knew us as a couple and were reassured that it was consensual and coming from a place of love. If they had seen it among people that were strangers to them there would have been a lot more unanswered questions.
So, in that case, my role as a leader and my role as a participant intersected and I think that doing that scene in public was not only hot but successful and ultimately educational to members of my group.
Oh, and on the question of taboo topics, if people haven’t read the work of Mollena on race play, they should :)
http://www.mollena.com/race-play/
Thanks for sharing, Ellie! Glad to hear you went through with the scene. I’ve been reading Lee Harrington’s Sacred Kink and he has some interesting things to say about reasons why folks might be into BDSM and what can be gotten out of it. It’s really shifted my perspective. I think Mollena is awesome–she’ll be at the conference I’m attending this weekend, so I can’t wait.
Perhaps what you’re getting at is that intention matters. If you’re in a pre-arranged scene and certain actions have been discussed and planned out beforehand, then it’s okay. I think there is a way in which BDSM is an important counterbalance to everyday life, where we can explore things that are off-limits elsewhere. How we do that is extremely important though.
Hi.
I’m going to answer these questions a little bit out of order.
3. How do you navigate the transition between acceptable scene exploration/play and your leadership role? […] 4. How do you transition between you role in the Kink community, or within a scene to your vanilla life.
I’m inclined to answer these two as one question, as they are pretty twined together for me. The short answer is: I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have a vanilla life. I am never not a domme. This isn’t “play” (by-which I mean roles and interactions bounded by time, among other things) for me, it’s just life.
That being said: I do enter vanilla situations and I’m bright enough to realize that just because I’m a domme doesn’t mean I’m everybody’s domme (too much work, even if that were an option) and, likewise, that just because I’m In Dynamic all the time, doesn’t mean that everybody around me really wants to know about that.
In my case, the difference is in… nuance, I guess? I give my wife permission to use the furniture (or not) no matter where we are but how we do that exchange can be as subtle as raised eyebrows on her part and a nod from me or as formal/obvious as “My Lady, may I sit?” –> “Yes, you may”.
1. How do you feel about the active exploration of poltically incorrect topics within kink (e.g. race, rape, imbalances of gendered power, feces, and other forms of extreme play)?
While I’m not personally comfortable with all of those topics – incest-play combined with non-con is not a nice thing for me to be around (though I’m not an incest survivor, just to be clear), for example – I think that kinky scenes are actually a really good place to do those explorations *because* they are scenes. They allow for significant boundaries and safeguards to be implemented and in-place before, during, and after the exploration itself.
2. What is your approach to more intense scenes and desires within the Kink Community?
a. As a participant
As a participant in what some folks might consider “more intense scenes and desires” (the play I do tends to be in the carving and branding end of the spectrum which can freak people out because it *looks* really intense… and sometimes actually is; also I’m in a 24/7 Owner/property dynamic and, I gather, that kind of relationship is treated as straight-up abuse outside of my own little leatherdyke bubble)… As a participant in my own intense scenes and desires, I tend to approach those of others with a reasonable open mind and the willingness to take *myself* out of a situation rather than tell someone else how they are or are not allowed to play in a space they’re sharing with me… and I hope that others will show me and mine the same courtesy. If the House Rules ban something that I particularly like to do – or that I think is just a silly thing to ban – I will probably just not attend that party rather than decide to butt heads with someone over it.
b. As an observer
See above. If I am squicked out by something, I will head for the chill-out room, grab a breath of fresh air, or get a drink or a snack from the pot-luck table rather than hang around and get Triggered or track down a Person In Charge to get those players to stop-it-stop-it-stop-it.
c. As a leader (Dungeon staff, group facilitator, etc)
And here’s where things get a little less cut and dried.
In the situations where I’ve run events outside of my own home (which is most of the events I’ve run, and all of those that have involved a dungeon-space on the premises), I defer to the House Rules when it comes to things like where scat/piss/blood play can (or can’t) happen. I may be disinclined to allow certain kinds of fluid-play because… the dungeon space is covered in wall-to-wall and that’s just hepatitus waiting to happen, or becasue the clean-up involved in scat is a mess and ties up the bathroom and-and-and… but I’m unlikely to forbid certain kinds of role-play (parent/little; nazi fetish; goreanism; interogation; etc) even when some of those things actively squick me out or piss me off because… we are all adults. They can choose to engage in those games for a scene and be themselves afterwords, just as I (and anyone else at the event) can choose to visit the buffet or start a scene of my own, while the squick-inducing scene is going on elsewhere on the floor.
And that’s my two cents on that one.
I believe with the exploration of more poltically incorrectness it is very much every person’s own. Just as your kink is not my kink. It is people trying to push their own limits and boundaries. Now that being said, some of it is not appropriate for public. Rape scenes for instance can be greatly misunderstood if seen by the wrong people. So there still is a sense of decorum even when pushing the already pushed boundaries of this scene.
Intense scenes are a part of kink. Intensity all depends on how you look at it. Something might be intense for one, but not others. I tend to play a little more rough and a little more with edge play than many I know. As a participant, I find it great fun, as long as it is with people I trust. As an observer, well this goes back to my first time in a dungeon. The very first scene I ever saw was a lady kick this man in his face. Not a soft tap, but a hard kick. I was a little unnerved by it, and what I had got myself into. But with speaking of things to people I had known, I found out that they were a rough playing couple and that it was not how everyone played. It can be shocking, but you need to either walk away from it, or become knowledgeable about what the situation is. Same as being a dungeon monitor, we do ask if someone is going to have an intense scene, to let the DM know, so that we can prevent other by standers from feeling the need to help, which has happened in the past. The are acceptable, as long as the dungeon rules are maintained.
If there is something that I am trying for the first time, then I do it in the privacy of my home. I like to be well versed in anything edge play privately before I bring it into the public dungeon. I have never been involved officially in any community meeting, but it is very easy for me to be in an role where open discussion will occur, and to listen and respect others opinions. I have had discussions with people who have had very opposing opinions to me, and I love a good healthy debate, but with keeping an open mind to what others are actually saying. Sometimes I even find out I am wrong ( gasp).
I have a switch mentality in the bdsm world, but I overall have a pretty dominant personality. I do not really have much of a vanilla life, beyond work. I am in a leadership position in my work. I am still learning in that role how to deal with things in appropriate measures. I know I cannot just pull out a flogger and punish my staff ( although sometimes I wish I could!) My mentality is completely different when I am in scene, to when I am not though. I know I do not have control over this person or situation, and it does not make me feel the need to take it either.