Are Our Educational Efforts Backfiring?

My exposure to BDSM and Kink education is quite limited, but overall I have to agree with your general position. 1) I couldn’t agree more that my kink needs are actually rather uncomplicated. So I would be put off by overly-complex and overly-orchestrated educational events. 2) I actually know my kink and desire more social events; not educational events. 3) As a learning professional, all of your points are dead-on. Education has become so overly orchestrated because too many without any real understanding of how people learn are in charge. This is true from primary education to special interest education. What we see is a recipe that calls for telling people what to do, and then expecting comprehension. This just isn’t how adults learn; something that we all know about ourselves, but tend not to transfer to others. Additionally, common in this recipe is to have an expert come into teach, as you highlighted. I truly agree that being an expert does not equate to being an effective teacher. A better formula is to match experts with effective teachers for a truly impactful learning experience.

Hi Race

i really enjoyed your article. i felt it well thought out and quite insightful.

Having been in the BDSM community for some time now i have seen and heard and watched many of the scenarios the you so eloquently describe.

My beginnings were in NY where BDSM was taught and demonstrated by GMSMA. They at first created parties where the demos were just happening and if you chose to get you own scene going then you were allowed some spaces. Spaces were usually given to demos first but there was always room for more. This always lead to an interesting and enjoyable atmosphere in with to watch, ask questions (encouraged), and learn interactions between the scenes participants. i personally gained a tot of insight through this form and it was a social outlet as well. You watch a scene and the Hot top next to you says want to try? Yes!!

The sad part of this is that as GMSMA grew and changed they became less and less sexpositive. Now come the lectures and corporate model you speak of. This quickly sapped the air of any sexuality even though the demonstrators were showing and teaching some very important aspects of BDSM safety and technique, there was no sexual or intimate context as part of the lecture demo. Lost was the importance of the power exchange and the intimacy the is truly required by these wonderfully extreme acts of sexual expression.

On the other hand (i’ll take the pun) NY Bondage club catered to men who had an interest in bondage. The club meetings always started with a circle in which you could declare your interests i.e.: Top, bottom, Watching, learning the ropes, etc… This gave the group an opportunity to connect and find a mentor or a possible scene partner, if you hadn’t already made a date. The atmosphere was usually bondage centric but the SM qualities showed up here and there. They have kept this model until recent when they abandoned the circle and let the doors stay open all evening. The atmosphere is very basic and there are more and more heavy players showing. As well there is an awesome influx of new young and highly interested guys, bring in new blood and and excitement that i sometimes find missing in a party where all of the guys are seasoned players. i see this sometimes as a lost opportunity for mentoring and growing the community with knowledgeable players.

All in all i agree with you assessment and i just wanted to share some stories to support. The NY Bondage Club has done a great job bridging the experienced and inexperienced. Something that we need more of here in SF i think. Sometimes there are too many barriers for younger inexperienced players to find there way into a play party where they may learn and still be turned on.

Hugs

Race,
i’ve been around this community for a number of years and i’ve seen alot of things come and go much to the detriment of the community. Yes i feel that classes and such are a good thing, but like you i feel that we are over educated. i do not feel that one needs to go to a class to be a Master or a slave and get a certificate saying they are one. i was once told that a man should not be a Master till they have Mastered themselves and that is true. Also i remember a time when a person was good at one thing it was their passion if you wanted to learn flogging there were always a number of men who were out there who could teach. For me i’d rather play with someone who had passion for a scene than someone who is a “Jack of all trades” even as a boy/slave etc it is good to have a passion for a certain type of session. On to the social aspect we are in a time that our social spaces are leaving us and we as a community need to figure out what our next step is, i sometimes think that what we need is an old fashioned “Run” like the leather clubs used to do and still do. i always had a good time at those things. Just something to think about.

As usual, Race, you are brilliant and right on. I won’t list everything I agree with. I will share one minority opinion: Let’s improve education, not reduce it.

I came into the kink community by coming to classes. Without hearing the dry lectures I could not have assimilated the information I needed. More important, it helped me understand there were other pervs like me who liked what I liked and wanted what I wanted. Demos actually helped me avoid bad scenes and enabled me to stop focusing on technique so I could dive into connection. Perfect? No. But what little vetting that goes on seems better than learning from strangers in bars.

Innovative learning applies to the community as well as individuals. In addition to criticism, we should praise innovation. I love LDG’s interview format and brought up new topics beyond skills. YLDG is holding groups from young men to learn from one another. Leathermen at the movies and other groups are creating alternative venues. Let’s share the success stories as well, and educate people planning programs so they can innovate by example.

Let’s also consider what “community” we serve. I estimate about 200-300 men are involved in what I consider the SF leathermen’s community. Contrast that with 25,000 men on recon right now, 1500 of whom are looking for kinky sex in San Francisco. We might be improving the kinky lives of many of these buys by providing information and examples. Maybe these guys only go out when the timing, topic, convenience, interest, and motivation align like the stars. There may be some value in frequent and repetitive programs, and the broad and general outreach that is needed to cut through the clutter these days.

Rather than asking for less, I want to support anyone willing to stick their neck out and invest their time and energy in building education and community. If you want quality education, support the people you criticize. If you know about innovative education or social pedagogy, take some initiative. Reach out to those of us who are doing our best, but may not know what the hell we’re doing. As long as people who hold these classes are seeing the difference they make in others and as long as the people who show up are getting value from attending, it’s going to be hard to convince me to advocate doing less.

I worry about the alternative to the “bad” education. Google any topic someone curious about kink might search for, and see what comes up. Should we reduce face-to-face education in favor of detached, isolated, non-vetted internet sites?

But we should shift the focus. Let’s help educate our leaders on “how to” do it better.

Race, I’d like to touch on the third leg of your triad – educating the broader public about kink. It’s become my main focus of late, and principally because it is done so little and (as you pointed out) not very well.

When I’ve done educational outreach, I stay clear of showing how to tie someone up or how to throw a flogger. My major focus is on the following:

1) Motivation – Why do some people do this stuff? Yes, that’s complicated, but giving some basics of the psychology and physiology behind kink helps people to realize that what we do ain’t so “out there” as they might think.

2) Demographics – From percentages of the population, to how kinksters are no more prone to being abused or screwed up as the rest of the world, the growing body of research into who we really are helps to banish many of the misconceptions people have about us.

3) Community – One of those misconceptions is that we’re all just a bunch of lonely sickos who go out seducing/recruiting innocents into our fold. Learning that we have our own global community, lingo, symbols and ethos turns that around. It can also peak people’s interest and prompt them to ask more meaningful questions.

4) Safety – This isn’t just the technical bits, but more importantly the mindset, and one of the values of community (ie, safe-call buddies). And it shows the element of caring and thought that is interwoven in all we do.

5) Discrimination – We’re not just a minority in terms of numbers, but in terms of social power. With that comes all of the paradoxes of prejudice and discrimination, such as constantly being told to keep all this “private” while allowing others to violate our privacy.

The vanilla public is already growing more “kink-aware” with the rise of “50 Shades of Grey” and other sources. The right educational approach – focusing on who we are as people rather than the technical aspects of what we do – can help move an increasing number into being kink-positive.

Race, I agree with much of what you’re saying, but in your first section I think you’re addressing a few separate issues. Or at least, that’s how I would reframe some of your points in order to then offer some ideas and challenges. As you might expect from me, this is a somewhat lengthy response, and I’m cross-posting it to my blog as well with a link back here. 😉

The first, and most important, is event model. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but to make a long story short, the vast majority of events I’ve encountered in 12 years in the scene have been motivated to some degree by a desire to grow and make money. This neoliberal capitalist-minded approach to creating pervy communities is so common that organizers not only adopt it without thinking, they also assume everyone else is adopting it too—to the point where, when I explain that the event I co-organize is not interested in getting bigger or making money, people are downright baffled and sometimes almost offended. Other models exist and/or can be created, and would serve our needs far better in many cases, but frankly if a different basic model or range of models is to gain in popularity, that would require such a drastic rethinking of the fundamental capitalist values people are taught in mainstream (especially American) society—at the very least in order to be able to consciously put them on the shelf when it comes to kink organizing, if not in one’s life as a whole—that I have little faith it will happen in the next 20 years, or even in my lifetime. I’d love to be proven wrong. 🙂

The second is celebrity culture, which of course ties in awfully well with neoliberal capitalism. If the purpose of a class or an event is genuinely educational—as in, aiming to create opportunities for people to learn—then the decisions about how it is run, what topics are covered and who is to cover them would look very different than much of what we see today. The skill sets demanded of presenters would also look very different, when presenters are needed at all, and as you pointed out, not all learning requires presenters. Celebrity passes for topic expertise and stands in for skill in North American culture at large (did Bono ever major in African studies or economics or have a career in HIV policy, for instance?), so of course that happens in the leather world as well.

But celebrity and flash do sell event tickets—and if you are invested in selling tickets and getting bigger, then that is valuable. Again, in order to change this, the whole model needs to be taken down, which would involve a direct challenge to a lot of core cultural values imported directly into the leather scene from the mainstream. For starters I think the leather community should completely drop the entire title circuit model, or keep it around for kicks in bars here and there and nothing more. It’s a celebrity-creation machine that only perpetuates the problems you’re pointing out here. (If we want to breed leaders, let’s invest in leadership training and mentorship on a broad scale; and if we want to recognize leaders, let’s find creative ways to thank and support the people who are already leading. But that’s a whole other topic.) While we’re at it, let’s kill celebrity auctions at events, VIP tables and rooms, and so forth. If that sounds like a scary idea, why? Maybe because then you’d have less money coming in? Refer back to my first point.

As for education proper, one major issue is target audience. It is still relevant to teach very basic stuff at events because there are always new folks showing up who don’t know that stuff yet, and when you fail to offer it, you create a much more elitist/exclusive community that can begin to ossify—not so good. But when you’ve been around for decades, the usual class topics can begin to look repetitive. In an effort to keep more experienced players coming back, new topics need to be offered.

The problem lies in that in some cases organizers and presenters take that logic and run it through a mindset of “bigger/louder/scarier is better” (again, typical neoliberal capitalist mainstream thinking), so of course what pops out the other end is “How to Discipline Your Slave with an Axe” or whatever. As you mentioned, one of the most common cravings among more experienced players is opportunities to deepen understanding of relationships and power dynamics—to look at the nuances, not to find the next flashier thing. So it’s not really over-education that’s happening as much as it is a flawed focus in the direction of that education.

Personally I’d recommend a basic three-track model for the average large event: richer focus on essential relationship and communication skills and on basic play skills for 101-level players with lots of hands-on practice time; opportunities to deepen power management/communication/relationship skills for more experienced players, with lots of group discussion time, skill-sharing, and structured time for practice of specific techniques (for instance, applying active listening, non-violent communication and other well-known communication models to D/s relationships); and carefully taught, small classes on riskier forms of play, informed by existing medical research and with way more hands-on practice opportunities for those too. For instance I find it shocking that I’ve taken at least five knife play and cutting classes in the last two or three years and at no point have any of them included anybody putting a razor blade and an eggplant in my hands; and with one or two notable exceptions, no play classes I’ve ever been to have referenced medical literature. We do have enough doctors, nurses, EMTs and academics in our communities whose knowledge and expertise we should be drawing on way more than we actually do!

When it comes to topics that are so specific to leather/BDSM that there’s simply no formal qualification available, presenters should get used to a) saying up front that there is no such thing as expertise here, and no existing research to work from, just personal experience, and b) stating their own biases up front so that everyone knows where their perspectives and insights are coming from. (Example: “I’m a 60-year-old gay white leatherman who came into the scene 15 years ago, so pretty late in life. I’ve had three significant D/s relationships with men in the last 12 years, one as a submissive and two as dominant, all of them 24/7. I learned much of what I know from my late friend Master Bob and I am a practicing Buddhist. I’m basically monogamous and have zero experience with women, and I’ve been a computer programmer for 35 years. That’s where my perspectives come from, and they may or may not resonate with you. I’m just offering what I know from my own experience.”) Rarely do I hear presenters state their biases—which we all have and which limit us in ways that both add and remove value. I suspect many aren’t even able to say what their biases are, and we don’t generally ask them to. I think they should be stated as a preface for pretty much any class on anything, it’s just all the more relevant when there’s no independently verifiable element to what’s being taught.

As well, right now, even in our educator-centric top-down education model, there is no demand for verifiable “official” expertise, so there’s no special reason for anyone to acquire it in order to teach in the BDSM/leather world. There’s also no demand for strong teaching technique or curriculum development skill, because the celebrity culture I’m trashing here leads people to accept a class model that generally aims to showcase the presenter rather than to give participants specific take-aways. So there’s very little encouragement and few community-specific resources for BDSM presenters to acquire ground-level teaching and class design skills (introducing yourself with relevant information, explaining your approach, creating group rapport, structuring a class, explaining your purpose and focus, defining key terms, using visual and tactile aids, accommodating different learning styles and abilities, timing breaks, working in group work and individual reflection time, allotting time for practice and discussion, dealing with hecklers or other troublemakers, etc.). This same celebrity culture also leads participants, in turn, to uncritically accept presenters’ edicts rather than to see them as starting points for developing their own ideas.

If the demand were created for the things I’m listing here, perhaps people who want to present would start to acquire and provide them, and even the educator-focused model could bring us a lot more quality. I bet that the more regular employment of detailed feedback opportunities from participants on each class they attend would also be very useful. Who’ll be the first event organizer to set that bar?

The vetting question is a complicated one. Elevating anyone to a “vetter” status creates the chicken-and-egg problem of how they got to be so qualified, and may perpetuate the problem created by celebrity culture where those whose word is more respected don’t necessarily match up with those who are qualified to know anything. I think there might instead be reason to ask more often for independently verifiable qualifications in some cases—medical or communications training, say—and to create more peer-to-peer learning situations where expertise is not the focus anyway. Even those can benefit from skilled facilitators, so no matter what, there’s clearly a need here for those who wish to serve the community to both supply and demand more opportunities to learn how to teach. Yes, that implies some time investment on the part of presenters, but those who are really interested will make the investment, and those who don’t can at least be chosen with the knowledge that they haven’t.

As for your second section, about education, in the form of demonstrations, as outreach to bring people into kinkster networks—what kind of public venues are you talking about? Places like the big commercial sex product trade shows? Places like anyone-can-register conferences in major hotels? Workshops given at feminist sex stores? I agree that in some cases public demos end up being more about voyeurism than education, but context and intention make a huge difference here, so I can’t quite get behind a hard-line dismissal of them. And it’s all the more complex in that context sometimes trumps even the best intentions on the part of a presenter; and the “wrong” intentions can trump the most fully appropriate of contexts.

I know, for instance, that when I did a fisting workshop with a live demo at a university sex week, some people were profoundly moved by it and learned stuff they simply would never have learned any other way—the demo bottom and I both got some incredible feedback about how life-changing that was for some folks who’d never learned about the intricacies of female anatomy and who witnessed the gentleness and care of the demo when they expected it to be scary and violent. But some frat boys walked away from the same demo and spent the rest of the night loudly making fun of the demo bottom’s body shape over too much beer at the university pub. I’m still not sure whether on balance it was a good idea to do that demo or not, but it’s not nearly as simple as yes or no. Perhaps it could have been advertised differently, perhaps the participants should have been vetted some, perhaps… I dunno. Questions well worth pondering.

When it comes to your third section, about educational outreach to the general public, I agree that most don’t need specifics. I don’t even think our non-kinky families of origin need lots of specifics—I cringed about sixty times when reading “When Someone You Love Is Kinky” for instance, thinking “I would NEVER tell my mother that level of detail about what I do! And it’s not what she would want to know anyway, she just wants to know I’m safe!”

But are you seeing outreach that does seem to provide huge amounts of detail? In what context is it taking place? What sort of detail is being provided, and in what way is it harmful to us? What is this “asking for more” you’re referencing, which we shouldn’t be doing? I’m not aiming to challenge your point here per se, as it seems sound to me at base, but I’m curious because I’m not sure I actually know what you’re saying should not happen.

I think some elements of the non-kinky public need way more detail and sound education—such as doctors, therapists, cops, lawmakers, judges and so forth—so they can properly serve kinky people without bias or misunderstanding while nevertheless retaining their critical faculties. Not all kink is done in safe and healthy ways, after all, and for professionals to help those who need it, they need to be fed more than just the party line about how we’re all so RACK and SSC, preferably by people who know enough about the field in question (psychology, law enforcement, whatever) to have some credibility in the eyes of those they’re teaching, along with the ability to speak using terms the learners will understand. And I think general shame- and stigma-busting is useful to the general public, for instance in challenging common perceptions of pervs as being dangerous, deranged and criminal. So it’s mostly about providing a topic focus and level of detail that’s appropriate to specific purposes.

Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking post. Glad to see this discussion is happening. 🙂 I’ve read the other commenters with great interest, and I hope I’ve added some more food for thought.

Race,

thanks for your challenging article. It reflects much if my unconscious discomfort with much of what goes on in the leather/kink scene, but which, since I am not as verbal and intellectual as you, I haven’t sorted out with the clarity you present here.

I had already backed off from doing a demo at Leather Alley because I felt like I was “on stage” and there was no real connection with the gawking public..a carnival as you say. I have almost never gone to workshops because I prefer to “learn” by participating, not looking on. I thought this was just my own eccentricity..its nice to see you feel much of the same. Being a creative person I have taught myself most of what I know, in both my art and my kinky life. I’ll meet someone I’m turned on by, play with them, and absorb what and how they play and then make it mine.

And I have also felt that much of our educational efforts missed the point, which is that we are doing this so we can have better, more fun and deeply connected SEX. Without the sex part, its like learning how to chop vegetables to make dinner, but never really creating the stew, and certainly not eating it. Wheres the reality here?

In terms of how we validate the teachers in our midst, I think that should come down to a consensus in the community: He/She knows what they’re doing, learn from them. While its true the best players are not necessarily good teachers, one can always learn by playing with them. Teaching is not for everyone. I am probably a lousy teacher, which is why I have never really gone that route, but I am good at showing while playing with people, and I do that a lot. And I feel that play parties like The 15 pass along a lot of skills between members. The Old Guard method had a lot of validity in terms of a community consensus about peoples skills, but while that time is long past, I still think that we as a community, know who to learn from. Its not going to be a mass education thing, but a slower filtering down of knowledge and skills, creating the right stew, not just chopping the vegetables. We’ve become impatient with the pace of this, living in this age of immediate gratification, but you can’t force this stuff, its a slow process. I think that we could benefit from having more play parties, more having kinky sex in ways that others can participate, small group play etc and this would help a lot.

We’re not trying to create a Masters Degree in Kink here..lets relax that whole component. Its so straight and corporate. Lets do it our way, with participation and sharing, creating a more loving community. Educate, yes, occasionally, but lets play more, share more, lets create that stew and lets eat it and feel full of something really nourishing.

It’s exciting to see all this dialogue and read all the important points people are making. I hope this will reach out further in the BDSM/leather communities and get other people talking.

Race, one thought I had about your point that organizers over-schedule classes, both in number and by filling each time-slot with different tracks. I would love to see more education en masse: classes attended by all conferencees. One of the best parts of leather events for me is when we all come together at awards ceremonies and contests. The energy in the room is always incredible. Imagine that energy combined with either one stunning speaker or a panel of diverse speakers. I think there would be a greater spirit of solidarity, and far more motivation for people to attend. It would give educators the opportunity to get their messages across to the whole body of people who attend, rather than the handfuls who show up when you run 30 classes a day. It would also mean that educators had to speak to ALL the BDSMers in the room — not just to the special interest groups. Of course, special interest groups have a place too, as do safety demos, but
I don’t know why we should stick to the kinds of educational models that corporations or academic institutions use. Perhaps if we thought of education as 2 days with 2-3 intensive panels a day, and a handful of less formal classes, organizers would be able to be more selective about presenters.

still blissed from dinner,
love,
Glory

Race,

Once again, you’ve started the right discussion at the right time. Many of the “established” BDSM events and institutions around the U.S. and elsewhere are struggling to adapt to changed circumstances — not *just* the Internet, but that’s a big part of it — and remain relevant. And many others, like my beloved GMSMA, have disappeared, having accomplished much of what they set out to do but unable to come up with a new vision.

There is little, if anything, I disagree with in what you wrote, but as you know, the devil is in the details. Some of the issues, like vetting presenters or designing educational sessions that people can actually learn from, have been around for decades, and what we’ve learned most is what *doesn’t* work.

One big issue you touched on and some commenters have gone further with is the tendency to focus on how to make our events bigger and bigger, and thus more “successful.” Most of us who talk about or practice BDSM education don’t pay enough attention to the structural imperatives of size and how they tend to force us into corporate models that aren’t really appropriate for what we want to accomplish. Even when the event is nonprofit, as the best ones are, we tend to measure success mainly by the number of “paying customers” who come through registration, and less on what they do the rest of the weekend.

Long ago, in the early days of GMSMA, I pointed out that there are different levels of complexity, expense, and work required depending on whether your group can meet comfortably in someone’s apartment, a donated or inexpensive larger room, a rented meeting hall, or a hotel or convention center. And it makes a big difference if you want exclusive use of a larger meeting space. Each bump upwards in size brings with it all kinds of consequences that can undermine the focus of the group itself. Most of our groups have gone through all these stages, and the compromises and adjustments they’ve had to make to remain financially viable aren’t all pretty.

Americans especially are very impressed by quantitative claims and skeptical of qualitative claims. So if you can market an event as having more classes, more presenters, more demos, more attendees, more crosses and tables at the play parties than any other, the response is likely to encourage you to keep going in that direction until you have a mega-event that consumes the lives of everyone who becomes involved in putting it on while becoming less and less relevant to the perv on the street.

Oh, I could go on and on in this vein, and get smacked down for being “too negative.” But the truth is that many of us have worked very hard and with immense good will to create the system you rightly criticize as ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. It’s really *hard* to do something different, let alone something better than we’re used to! Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t have any choice, because if things don’t change, public BDSM will fade away except as a self-parody.

Thanks for stirring the pot!

warmly,

David

When I was educational coordinator for Headspace as Indiana University we limited our educational program in two ways.

First we only had one event a month that was educational in any sense of the word. Being on a university campus we couldn’t demonstrate certain things so we tended more toward mini-lectures with discussions. The goal was to get people thinking and let them know that folks out there with interests and experience were available if they chose to pursue that. When we paid for a guest speaker we always vetted them, at least when I was in charge, I can’t speak to after that. Otherwise we relied, as many organizations do, on volunteers.

Second our external education was focused on working with faculty who taught various human sexuality courses. I’d meet with them, listen to what they were teaching about BDSM and if I thought it was worth our time, I’d ask them to include certain information with their class before we arrived. I had no problem crossing a class off our list to help if they treated us disrespectfully or referred to use as people with a mental illness — one psych class did this and looked at my volunteers who had come to speak about their experiences, told the professor that she was mistaken, and I walked us out of there. We never demonstrated anything, we talked about our relationships in terms that we hoped the class could understand and answered questions though we always told our volunteers and the class that anyone could refuse a question they felt was invasive.

I actually learned a lot about college aged sexuality and ideas myself from helping the faculty. The volunteers usually reported that they learned something too and had fun; if they didn’t have a good experience I met with them and tried to help understand what happened and worked to prevent it in the future.

Doing the education, even just organizing it, is a lot of work. I think many just don’t realize that before they volunteer and thus the time and effort needed falls apart.

Hi Race,
Thank you for for that blog posting. I wish I had seen it sooner. You know I teach BDSM, have for a long time. I focus on energy , connection,with lots of hands-on in small groups during my weekend Intensives. Sunday I participated a demo at Leather Alley. Won’t do it again. Indeed Race the general public had no concept of why we do what we do, and our play is perceived as a freakish adult carnival. I will continue providing the Intensives in a small controlled environment for those really interested in taking more conscious steps in their leather journey. As for presenting at large Conferences , the new comers needs to learn the basics of communication and play skills. Entry level classes have a place there. Let us keep the magic of SM alive!

I think you make many valid points, and I agree with you on ALL of them. I am disappointed to see events that were key in a lot of my generation’s start – like Black Rose – becoming just another list of classes I don’t want to attend.

As a seasoned professional trainer, BDSM presenter, and leather titleholder – I set a very high bar for presenters when I am in charge of an event. It’s been 6 years since I’ve hosted Ohio Leather Fest, but sometimes, I miss it. I liked knowing that myself and co-hosts had vetted my presenters and wish more people would do the same.

I attended a GRUE last year, that was based on the idea of people presenting their own topics. While this was OK in theory — I wanted to be the person who sat back and watched and learned from others, and I found myself just annoyed. It’s RARE that I find a class I want to go to, and often times, like you said, it’s because it’s something crazy/new/kinkier-than-thou sort of topic that even I fall prey to. 15 years of experience in the public scene seems to mean nothing anymore, unless you’re out, loud, and playing to an audience… And for me, that sort of mentality makes me just want to stay home.

As a long time member of this tribe we call leather I do agree with what you are saying. Classes are fine up to a point, but again hands-on workshops are better. I think there is too much put on presenters who are title holders or well know personalities (but i have learned a great deal from them dont get me wrong) but there seems to be no persons allowed who might have a great topic to talk/present about but not allowed because they are not as well known. Hands on is best. Also like when its a group just discussing things about the community in general. Midroi did a great one this past year about burn out. Agree what others have said, a little of this plate and little of that plate and less overall to have to try and sample in one weekend.

Bravo!! I certainly agree! Leave the general public alone. We do not need to add them to any outreach. That is inviting trouble. We should be concentrating on our own members. Do we really need to grow our community? I hate inclusivity at this point. Enough already! Shouldn’t we focus on what got us here in the first place? Hot, exciting, play that leads to even hotter sex is why I’m a member if this community. Hell yes! I want to learn more ways to have that hot exciting sex more often!! I do go to events to socialize & rarely attend any classes. It would be interesting to see the data on class participation at events. How many others just go to have fun & see friends or. Set. We ones?

Race I don’t find myself always agreeing with what you right, however on this occasion I couldn’t agree more. What you’ve laid out here is a thoughtful and articulate essay on what myself and quite a few folks I know, have been thinking and discussing among ourselves for a while now.

Having known people on the other side of the equation who believe that the public displays, over abundance of what are often educational events for the sake of socializing, and the deifying of title holders, are a great thing and that the “throw as much crap at the wall and pray it sticks” method is working instead of backfiring. I have to say I’m glad to see someone with a voice that carries weight in the leather community step up and say what you’ve said here. We do need to take a step back and look at who and why and what we are doing in terms of community education and public education. We need to go far far away from this notion that holding a title makes that person instantly someone who can or should be teaching, hell they may not even be someone the average person can stand to be around for more than five minutes at a time. The notion of the interpersonal and basic life skills and the ability to be a thinking caring human being are far more important within the leather community than is the ability to florentine flog while juggling knives with your cock and do an intricate rope tie with your toes, all at the same time.

As someone said it seems like we’ve gone into this “parlor trick” or smarmy “I’ve learned the 80th level super secret whip crack of awesomeness from high master big cock” phase and often with an attitude that places self importance and a need to impress people with how much “education” one has above what kind of person they are.

Will they slash the throat of the next person they play with, do they even really know a damn thing, do they have the ability to act responsibly for the physical emotional and mental safety of the people they are playing with? Do they have actual knowledge, can they be vetted, do they have the ACTUAL ability to teach, do they have the presence of mind to meat out an appropriate level of information to the audience they are teaching? These are the kinds of questions we need to ask of those we associate closely with or choose to be teachers for the community of the general public.

In my opinion we need to get back to smaller or more interment educational gatherings taught by folks who are actually qualified AND have the ability to teach. We need to get back to the idea that broad workshops are only good up to a point. We need to get back to a place where folks know it’s ok if they don’t try to cram every intricacy of every toy or technique into their heads at the expense of their core relationships, that it’s ok if they just concentrate on honing the skills they have for a while before trying to move on to mastering another.

Unfortunately some more vocal folks here in my local community have taken up the notion that if you are not attending three workshops a week, two demos on the weekend and playing at at least four different dungeons, that you are some how less than or not really serious. Lets remember what the core of this is about folks, it’s about human interaction that is supposed to be on one level or another pleasurable and day I say it… Fun. I know I know it’s a wacky notion but if we take a few steps back and look at the why we got into all this to begin with, then I think we will see how far afield we’ve gotten.

Jim

Interesting. I like learning new things, and agree the way things are done can be improved. I wish the Pain Guild in San Diego was still around, but it has disbanded. I am working to create SLAP, an imersive experience where the same (small- dozen or less) group of men go through a sequence of classes together. It will include social time to begin and end each class.

The idea is to expose people to types of play they might not ordinarially try in a sober enviornment. By keeping the same group of students together as a single class, people should bond with their group. I haven’t got all the dynamics in place yet to make SLAP (San Diego Leather Academy of Perversion) function yet. Mentoring is a big part of this, as people bond, my hope is they will find mentors that speak effectively to them.

Race made a brillant point that we can improve how we learn and what we teach. So I pose a question: If you were designing a BDSM educational program, what would you include to get around the problems Race mentions? How would it be structured?

-Daddy Dan

I completely agree with you point about public education. I’m not “out” as kinky in part because my house mates think BDSMers are weird, and they got some of their information from presentations that the local kink community did for a university class.

It’s a joke to them, because instead of simply illustrating that certain people enjoy an broader array of sensations and experiences in their sex life, or talking about endorphins and explaining good pain and bad pain in vanilla terms the presenter decided it would be helpful to introduce a bunch of frat boys to fireplay.

I am a noob (only in the community a yr & a half now), so perhaps my opinion doesn’t count for much, but I disagree with you a bit. Maybe its relative to area, but we get a class once a month or two, if that sometimes, so I don’t think its too much. Also, it was a class that got me to finally step into the community. I saw it posted & it was something I had always been curious about so I went. I never would have gone to a social gathering first. The class setting is more comfortable to step in to. You can sit & look around without feeling the pressure to hold conversations or play with a room full of strangers. With the class, there is usually a bit of Q&A at the end where you can hear different ppl discuss things & get a feel for them. Then there is generally a social party after, which now that you’re a bit more comfortable, you can socialize a bit but still feel like you can leave easily if you want since the class is done. The class set up just makes it more comfortable for new ppl to get their feet wet comfortably w/o feeling any pressure to do more than they are ready for. That said, your classes don’t have to be on extreme kinks that make ppl feel like they need to add all these things to their skill set.
As far as how the classes go, I like the lecture/demo thing (perhaps more for the getting your feet wet reasons above than the actual learning), but would LOVE if there was some hands on portion after. Where you can try it out while some more experienced ppl are their to guide you thru. Just hearing about something & seeing it doesn’t really tell you if you could really get into that or not.
Just my 2 cents as a new person to the scene.

I really don’t find what you say controversial, and I doubt this is specifically YOUR intent, but I always look at consolidation of any information in the leather community as an attempt to marshall the channels of communication to promote for profit, for ego building or even greater attempts to become the self-ordained “top-tier” of a given community.

I feel badly sometimes that I have become that cynical, but I also am in a community where someone charges to teach bondage. I am experienced and acknowledged in the SM community as experienced, but when offering to do it for free, I was basically shut out because these folks have abscounded with the agenda in the community.

Should I fight or should I just enjoy my private one on one time. When I was younger I would have answered “fight”, now I just acknowledge that there is very little leather community with a small “l” and just Leather Community, Inc.

Race, you’ve got a couple points here I agree with, but I think you’ve created a false dichotomy of lecture&demo workshops versus and displacing other forms of learning. I just haven’t seen that happening. My experience is that people are actually pretty good at finding the right mix of learning opportunities for themselves.

If you’re looking for a new model of socializing and educational event, check out a GRUE (http://www.grue.me/whats-a-grue/). I think Gray’s breaking some incredibly valuable new ground, and I’m looking forward to the second one here in Seattle. That said, I think *I* do a better job of teaching when I’ve spent time on a lesson plan. I’ve taught and learned good stuff in other ways, but I know people come away with demonstrably better applicable skill from one of my flogging workshops than when I work with them one on one.

I’ve personally been to plenty of classes that were excellent socializing opportunities. There’s preselection for interest, spoon-fed-easy conversation topics, social safety to choose your own level of interaction, plus often some kind of structured practice or discussion. I’ve seen *tons* of people come into the scene in this way. Some just come to a few classes and take what they learned home to a partner, some get really involved in the community and start learning in a whole variety of ways, and I think the whole range is great. Most of us were ‘dabblers’ once.

I do think you’re right that we focus too much on teaching technical skill, though. Soft skills are harder to convey, and harder to vet an instructor for, and still even harder to convince someone they should spend time and energy developing. But, I’d rather play with someone who can shape a scene around punching my arm, than someone who can land a flogger just where they want every time but has no idea how to build connection with it. Tougher to to teach, but vital.

I’m always grateful to have an astute philosopher opening conversations in our little world, and I find it at least as refreshing to have such a wealth of thoughtful talent contributing comments as I find above. The participants in this thread remind me of the leather scene when I arrived: a sturdy core of thoughtful, intelligent people willing and able to communicate clearly, and to question pretty much anything.

I have not been around the community as long as Race and some others here, but when I arrived leather was still mostly an outlaw outpost in the gayles communities, augmented by some queer het and bi fellow travellers like me. There was no internet, and no real outreach to the vanilla world, and except for *The Leatherman’s Handbook*, *Coming to Power*, and maybe *SM: The Last Taboo*, all the books on the subject were written by people outside the walls. Whether in small local clubs or, a little later, at the first LIL conferences, the classes and other teachings I remember mostly clearly were about sharing more than educating — this is who I am, this is what I do, how about you? — and learning occurred pretty organically. I did not learn to use a whip in a class, though I took the classes, but by watching whipmasters of several genders, being whipped by some of them, and then whipping some of them. With Sybil Holiday I taught a lot of 101s and 201s for people who, in the phrase of Race’s book title, were “learning the ropes,” but among the other classes we taught the one that gave me a catch in my throat was our first workshop on alternate personas, when I looked out into the small venue and saw a dozen of the best players I’d ever watched, sitting or standing in the back of the room as if we had something to say that mattered to them.

The democratization of leather, largely through the web, has had wonderful effects such as making knowledge more broadly available, letting people know they are not alone, and bringing together forums like this to all our attentions. The trade-off has been the self-appointed masters and mistresses who hang out their cyber-shingles without ever having played, people who confuse their opinions for knowledge, and abuse masquerading as power play.

We can no longer debate whether this democratization was a good thing or a bad: it’s a *fait accompli*. We can seek to bring our best to the game whether we learn new skills or find satisfaction in what we do, and we can mentor those who follow. That, I think, is what Skip described Jorge doing, it’s what Patrick talks about with that absolutely terrific panel. I think Seth is right: the cat’s out of the bag, so we’d better teach — and well.