Heads up: content mentions SA (non-graphic).
Community is a subjective and muddied word that has a different meaning to nearly everyone. For example, when people say “LGBTQ community” I roll my eyes because I certainly don’t share values with most of my fellow LGBTQs. The “kink community” gets an even more violent eye roll from me. Is this “community” in the room with us right now?
So much rupture has unfolded in pockets of the Leather and kink community over the past few months that it brought me out of writing retirement to shout into your ears/inboxes on what I have been spending so much of my waking hours thinking about. These are the things I’ve been talking about almost constantly with anyone who will listen! The various conflicts unfolding all around us may have completely different context, but I really think there is a common thread or two that runs through it all. I’m going to attempt to break it down in hopes that anyone still reading this newsletter (shoutout to a several year hiatus!) can really feel called to step up to the plate to do better.
It’s widely known about me that I love gossip. The word gossip sounds so flippant but it’s really a catch-all for like, WHAT IS THE EXTREMELY LOCAL NEWS? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO PEOPLE AROUND US? WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING OR PARTICIPATING IN? And that, my dear friends, if you pay close enough attention, will help you build your values. Do you see someone doing something you think is fucked up? You can learn to not behave like that person. Do you see your friend treating their partner badly? Now you know how not to behave in a relationship and cough cough hopefully also help your friend be accountable. Observing others is helping us imagine how we’d act in certain situations and to solidify our own values. (If you missed @fantasticat’s rant on instagram about this very subject, you should go check that out on her pinned stories.)
Values! This is the meat of what I’m getting at here. What are values? Your values are your most core principles of behavior, standards, and what is important to you in this one short little life. Have you ever thought about what your values are? Have you ever sat down and written out what your values are? I have done it, and I have also assigned this task to others as a way to connect. You cannot know what your boundaries are, the framework for your entire life, if you haven’t laid out your values first. Do it with your friends, do it with your partners, it’s really important work that should guide every decision you make!
My biggest value is relationships, and my boundaries around relationships seem quite simple — I don’t fuck with people who aren’t on God’s green earth trying to do better every day. I don’t fuck with people who don’t receive and give feedback graciously and then consciously make moves to improve and do better. This is a hard limit to be in my close circle and it’s something that I discuss with my friends and partners regularly. How can I support my loved ones in being a better person, in making sound decisions, and moving with integrity?
from my little workshop on boundaries in 2020 :)
As an adult child of alcoholics, the gift that keeps on giving is hypervigilance. I am constantly collecting information about whether or not people are trustworthy, predictable, and thus safe. This may sound fucked up, but I feel like it’s protected me from a lot of harm in my life and has allowed a level of discernment in who I decide to build relationships with. Here’s a really mundane example. Let’s say that I observe you talking shit about your friends, but you don’t ever give your friends that feedback directly. This provides me with information that you aren’t invested in relationships, might have bad boundaries, and may be conflict avoidant. I likely won’t want to be friends with you! I will probably tell you: “Wow, it sounds like you need to talk to your friend about this!” However, if you go talk to your friend about how you’re feeling, that’s one point on the trust board for having difficult conversations. That gives me information that if you ever have a problem with me, you’ll come talk directly to me about it (in addition to everyone else).
How do we get this information about people? Sometimes it comes from others just sharing the gossip, and often times it comes from being nosy and having direct conversations. Ask people the hard-hitting questions when you want to know something, especially people that you call your friends. What do you have to lose? If someone doesn’t want to answer your question that’s their prerogative, but it also gives you information about whether or not they are trustworthy (what are they hiding?). Do you feel like you need to corroborate someone’s story? Go talk to other people. Information is vital to making decisions about who aligns with your values and who does not. Information lets us know who amongst us has a fucking backbone.
The question I posed above: What do you have to lose? is really nuanced. Let’s pretend I’m not talking about the instances where opening your mouth will pose a safety issue. Instead, let’s focus on the large majority of cases where it is perfectly safe to call someone in or share a story, but the factors in kink circles and educational spaces breed a culture of clout chasing and cowardice that cause folks to shy away from this. So ask yourself, what do you have to lose?
Do you avoid difficult conversations because you fear losing access to kink spaces?
Do you avoid difficult conversations because you fear losing money?
Do you avoid difficult conversations because you enjoy proximity to someone who has more clout or connections than you?
Do you avoid difficult conversations because you don’t want to be disliked?
Do you avoid difficult conversations because you are a people pleaser?
Folks who have been around any kink scene for at least a few years have likely seen lots of the above happening. My friend commented how it’s so wild that people want to make each other bleed but can’t have a direct conversation to save their lives. If you ask me, you should not even be engaging in BDSM if you are conflict avoidant! Why can you readily take a class on how to tie someone up but not on how to have hard conversations? Where are the classes on building your values and boundaries? (I should teach this class again!) I know, it’s not sexy so it will likely not be well attended, but the soft skills are arguably even more important than the hard skills when the stakes are this high.
baby rope top daemonum in 2016, still from my first Aorta shoot.
Years ago when I was first getting into rope and self-tying a lot, a very popular rope top from the West Coast who I was mutuals with on IG asked me to tie while he was in NYC. I thought this was strange since I wasn’t a bottom, a very obvious dyke (he is a cis man), and there were lots of other people that he knew in NYC. After I informed him I’d never been tied before, he tied me in a box tie without any explanation of risk or education on nerve checks. I was only in the air for maybe ten minutes and I could not fully use my left hand for a week after that. I thought this was a totally normal result of a high-risk activity. I had no idea what I was doing because I’d never bottomed before, and I don’t remember if I ever even shared my injury with him. (Note to non-rope people: Some responsible tops have no problem tying first-timers in TKs if there is an established relationship, bottom education and lots of check ins. I have done it myself, although extremely infrequently. That is not what happened here!)
We built a friendship as sadists that I was admittedly quite hesitant about (hypervigilance for the win) but wanted desperately to learn rope, a service he was offering for free. I ended up visiting him in California for a weekend. I thought that his proximity to several women via his photos was enough of a voucher for him. A close friend who played with him at a party once did not say anything negative about him when I shared that I was going to visit him.
During the visit, he talked a ton of shit about his exes (the women I assumed would vouch for him because I had seen them in his rope photos). He said they had all ganged up on him and made him out to be a bad guy. The vibe was not great, he couldn’t answer questions directly and deflected a lot. I had a feeling he was not being honest. BUT! I learned a lot about how to tie rope!
Not long after this trip, a popular rope bottom released a tell-all post on FetLife about his history of horrific abuse, specifically in his relationship with the ex that he talked a lot of shit about. I don’t know the poster personally, but I can only assume that she decided that in order to keep more people safe, everyone needed to know the truth, even if it wasn’t necessarily her story to tell.
He had apparently been SA’ing people in the local scene as well as during the traveling he was doing as a rope educator. He had already been ousted from major community spaces in The Bay Area for his actions. The lightbulb went on - suddenly it made sense to me why he took an interest in mentoring a dyke across the country. Proximity to me might help his reputation. Slimy!!!
My text messages delete after a year (I know!) so I can’t tell you what I said to him, but I know that he tried to explain that everyone was out to get him, and I never spoke to him again.
I told my friend who had played with him before what was going on, so angry, disappointed, and honestly feeling lucky that I was relatively unscathed (just wrist drop… right?!). She then shared with me what really happened during the scene she had with him at a play party. He was on a ton of drugs and after getting her in the air he dipped — completely left the party. Other people had to step in and get her down!! I was appalled and honestly hurt that she did not share this with me earlier.
When I asked her why she didn’t tell me, she said that maybe he had changed, and she didn’t want her experience to color my judgement. That’s exactly what vetting is! You get information about people ~ good or bad ~ so you can make your own informed decisions. Now, some people may not have cared if he did that to one of their friends and still would have gone to get the free intensive lessons. I am certainly not one of those people! However, I didn’t even try to vet him, I did not give him feedback about the wrist drop, and I flew to CA for free lessons after getting bad vibes. All of that was super messy and quite honestly a failure to protect myself.
There are so many reasons why all of this happens, people don’t talk because of shame or fear, none of it is cut and dry. This particular person was physically violent and I understand in those instances why people who have been harmed don’t speak out. And let me be clear — the person causing the harm is solely responsible for their actions and to STOP harming people, but we have to do what we can to protect each other when the person causing harm doesn’t want to be accountable. We can share our stories (and stories we have heard) with anyone who will listen, warn others, and make sure what happened to us doesn’t happen to anyone else. We can ask better questions! We can listen, and respond! At the very least, we can not assume anyone is safe based on who they took a photo with!
Read David’s guide to vetting sadists here, and my previous post about gossip here.
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