B003B0W1QC EBOK

by Easton, Dossie

  The very language we use to describe ourselves defines the boundary between kink and our everyday lives. We call it “play,” and call ourselves “players.” What we do is a “scene,” who we pretend to be is a “persona” or “role,” where we do it is in a “playroom,” and the implements we use are “toys.”

  Understanding the difference between fantasy and reality is the customary definition of sanity, and it is our criterion for sane play. Good players become experts at negotiating this boundary, and adept at changing roles from “Lord of the Universe” to “It’s my turn to do the dishes, right?” Agility in these matters comes with practice, and a sense of humor is most helpful. What is important, psychologically and emotionally, is that we know when we are playing, and what we are playing, and when we are not.

  In a previous book2, we compared this boundary to making a fireplace before you light the fire, so a force which could be scary and destructive becomes a safe source of heat, warmth, comfort and energy.

  And so the space, mental or physical, in which we play out our kinks become like the play houses or treehouses of our childhoods ― a place set aside for make believe.

  “Others find

  Peace of mind

  In pretending:

  Couldn’t you? Couldn’t I? Couldn’t We?”

  7

  Your Kinky Person’s World - And Welcome To It

  A brief hisory of sex-negativism. This idea that sex is immoral has been part of our culture for a very long time - so long that it can be hard to see the many consequences of these cultural values. To get an idea of how thoroughly such beliefs have pervaded our lives, take a minute to imagine what your life would be like if you had never experienced guilt or embarrassment or shame about your sexuality, your body or your fantasies. What would our lives be like if we were not limited by shame and negativity about sex?

  In the last thirty years or so, there have been tremendous changes in how the world looks at sex. The “Sexual Revolution” of the sixties has engendered a more open discussion of sex, and the free exchange of a great deal more information - we doubt if you would have been able to read this book in the fifties. Our culture has also come to accept a much wider range of sexual behavior: sex outside of marriage is hardly controversial in most parts of the country; gay and lesbian lifestyles are openly accepted, and discrimination outlawed, in many areas. We hope that other alternative sexual behaviors will also someday gain such widespread acceptance.

  Meanwhile, in the world we live in today, where kink is often viewed with almost superstitious horror, how do cultural taboos affect the kinky person you know and love? What is life like in the kinky closet?

  Feeling unseen. When we live in the closet we must keep secret a large part of our lives that is very important to us. We cannot discuss our relationships, our loves, our griefs and our triumphs outside our immediate network of kindred souls. At work, around our families of origin, or chatting with our neighbors or our friends at the PTA, we maintain a certain distance. We begin to feel kind of invisible.

  Dossie remembers a time when she was working in a mental health agency and she realized that she had become so reluctant to talk about anything about sex, lest she betray her difference by saying something too outrageous, that the people around her believed her to be somewhat old-fashioned and conservative, possibly a prude. It was acutely uncomfortable to be treated like someone other than who she is, and yet, if she had openly discussed her lifestyle, it would have been shocking and disturbing to her coworkers.

  So when we, as kinky people, spend significant time in non-kinky space, we may feel depressed, or that we are losing our identity, because we cannot communicate about what is important to us - or even honestly present ourselves to the people we are with.

  Isn’t it understandable that people would want to show pride in themselves by talking, even boasting a little, about their partners, spouses, families and loved ones? Kinky people, and other sexual minorities, don’t get to do that. We become curiously silent when conversation turns to husbands, wives, dating and the like. You might imagine there is no love in our lives. You might even offer to arrange blind dates for us. Many of you have.

  Hiding your truth. And when we have to hide our truth, then how can we feel good about ourselves, how can we outgrow our cultural heritage of shame about our desires? All people in oppressed minorities get stuck having to deal with internalized oppression, which is that nasty voice within that learned a long time ago that we ought to be different from who we are, and keeps telling us that we are not okay. These messages are hard to overcome. And when we suspect that if our parents or kids or friends find out about our love lives they might treat us with disgust, we have an even harder time achieving any form of self-acceptance.

  When we choose to stop hiding, there is no middle ground. A kinky person who comes out of the closet becomes sensationally conspicuous. We are often accused of “flaunting it,” but as long as there is so little public acceptance and understanding, there is actually no low-key way to be open about our lifestyle.

  And why shouldn’t we flaunt it? Aren’t all of us proud of our relationships? Is it flaunting to walk down the aisle in a huge white dress so everybody can celebrate our happiness? Is it flaunting to walk down that same aisle in a leather corset, which might better express our intentions? We look forward to the day when kinky people can walk down the street arm-in-arm like any other turned-on couple in love and people will smile and say “Look, aren’t they sweet.”

  Confidentiality. There are real-world consequences of being out of the closet that go far beyond disapproving glances. We get arrested and convicted of sex crimes, we lose our jobs, our homes, our children and our families. We can lose our financial security defending ourselves from criminal charges or hostile divorces. And all for behavior that harms no one.

  Some years back a married couple, very wonderful kinky friends of ours, lived in the closet in a small city where they sincerely enjoyed their work as high school teachers. The police found out about their personal lives, searched their home, confiscated their toys, their costumes and their play furniture, and splashed their names all over the front pages of newspapers statewide. They were professionally ruined, even though the kids they taught knew nothing about their private life until the police and the headlines told them. Newspaper articles featured quotes from school parents: “But they seemed like such nice people!” Well, that’s true, we know them - they are genuinely very nice people.

  Why did these nice people have to give up their professional lives? Why were they not allowed to be good teachers, to make a contribution to those high school kids? Even being in the closet wasn’t enough to protect them from prosecution.

  This means something very important for you, our reader. When your friend with the unusual sexual lifestyle confides in you, he is demonstrating great trust in you. If you betray his confidentiality, if you gossip about him, if you complain about him, you might be endangering him in very concrete ways. If this is a person you care about, please be careful about his safety.

  A culture in the closet. Inside the S/M closet, the sexual minority’s “ghetto,” you may be surprised to learn that there is a large and very active community. Most major cities in the U.S. have a variety of support groups for people of alternative sexualities. The Resource Guide in the back of this book lists some of them.

  These groups function as clubs, usually screening their members and requiring a membership fee and attendance at an orientation before an individual can become a full member. Some of these support groups restrict their membership to a particular population by gender and/or orientation, like some lesbian and gay male groups. Still others specialize in particular behaviors like spanking, particular forms of drag like cross-dressing or baby clothes, or particular fetishes like cigar-smoking or high-heeled shoes.

  The larger and more active clubs typically offer meetings once or twice a month, discussion groups, a newsletter and/or a web page, and access t
o a lot of volunteer work, which is a great way to make new friends and keep that newsletter coming out. These clubs protect their membership lists and have a very high regard for confidentiality.

  Support group program meetings often feature a guest speaker, who might offer information and a demonstration of a particular kinky activity, such as how to do rope bondage or use an English cane. The speakers are usually experienced players who are willing to hand down what they have learned to those with less experience, and so club meetings offer the member an opportunity to listen to and meet veteran players who already do whatever it might be that a newer member would like to try.

  The S/M “lecture/demo” in certain circles has become an art form in itself, offering technical information about safety, materials and technique in a theatrical atmosphere, culminating in a brief demonstration /performance.

  Another meeting might feature a speaker leading a discussion: communication in S/M scenes, incorporating play personae into real-world relationships, or even how to come out to your family and friends. Some groups alternate between discussion and demos so all the important stuff gets covered.

  The first purpose of a support group meeting is to offer a safe and supportive space in which its members can talk about and learn about kinkiness. People do meet potential partners at support group meetings, but intrusive cruising is considered rude. A support group is not usually designed to be a meat market.

  This brings us back to what we mentioned before: one of the first difficulties all of us run into when we decide to expand our sexual lifestyles is that we have little or no language that feels safe and is explicit enough to be accurate, in which to describe to another person what it is that we would like to share with them. One of the tremendous benefits of joining a support group and attending meetings is that the members get together and talk about their sexuality, and so everyone gets to practice finding language that works to express themselves.

  Support groups may also put on parties, social events, potlucks: Halloween is a favorite time. Social events are often held as fundraisers for a member who has had an accident or is dealing with serious illness or needs financial support for legal defense: the community works to take care of its own.

  In some major cities, informational workshops are put on by small business specializing in sex and kink education, usually advertised in the gay papers or whichever local papers carry the “wild side” personal ads. Such workshops do not require membership, but just a fee to attend, and are a great way for people to check out some information about kink without taking the larger step of joining a group or community. The workshop leaders, again, routinely demonstrate their skills while providing information about how things work, safety and technique.

  People who attend workshops and support group meetings are not required to participate in any kinky activities unless they choose to; in these environments it is okay to watch.

  Play parties. Some kinkyfolk like to gather together for play parties, which means that a group of people, usually from a carefully controlled guest list, get together at someone’s house or studio to do kinky play as a group. The places where we play are often set up with special furniture or equipment that you wouldn’t find in most homes - bondage tables, slings, cages and the like. Play parties usually have set rules about safer sex and the etiquette that works to respect each other’s personal space in an environment that Miss Manners doesn’t cover. Many people arrive at play parties with a plan to play a particular scene with one or more partners - others come solo to meet people and perhaps have a new adventure. Because the same group of people tend to come back to the same parties, a protective community can be formed, and play with new people is very safe with your friends all around you.

  What do we get out of this? Along with indulging any taste we may have to show off, we also get to see what other people do. Deprivatizing sex changes a lot of things: people, relationships, even cultures. When you can see how other people enjoy their sex life, how gorgeous they look when they have an orgasm, you get powerful permission to explore and enjoy your own sexuality. And sometimes, other people see you and they may tell you afterward how wonderful you were. Positive support for sexuality doesn’t have to be a rare thing.

  Leather bars. The gay male kink scene, and to some degree the lesbian scene as well, does a great deal of its socializing, support and cruising in bars set up and advertised (in newspapers in big cities, by word-of-mouth in small ones) for this purpose.

  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.

  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.

  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.