Wednesday, August 14, 2013

No Safe Word: Human puppies 201

I need to share some cool links to the No Safe Word podcast.  I got to (briefly) meet Sparky last month when he came to our Atlanta Dominion party.  We didn’t get much chance to talk b/c soon he was busy tying-up and ball-busting Leo while Sir was busy flogging me on the neighboring cross.  (Well, it was a Dominion party.)  Toward the end of podcast episode 37, Sparky says Atlanta Dominion was “awesome,” and does some namedropping (or attempts to).  Neat to have a shout-out for our little club.

Now, this is going to appear to be only about puppy play, but even if you’re thinking, ‘that’s not my thing,’ bear w/ me because a lot of this just has to do w/ community organization, leadership, and inclusiveness.

Episode 38 (the most recent one) is a really good interview w/ IPC’s International Pup 2014 Slavepup Axel (whose new blog is also worth checking out).  It’s really good – informative and entertaining.  Where No Safe Word episode 02 was a fantastic puppy 101 talk (listen to it if you haven’t), I think this one is like the 201 talk.  It gets more into the organization of the pup community (hey, “organized pup” isn’t always an oxymoron), and kind of expands into this meta-level conversation around pup-ing: handlers, moshes, contests…  They have a great take on the whole international title holders contests “controversy” thing that was a whole tempest in a teapot last year.  *rolls eyes*

There’s a great conversation in there about inclusiveness.  At one point Axel says some of the Leathermen “don’t think of us as part of the leather community, and we’re really not – we’re really kinksters.”  Someone else (I don’t remember who) points out that sometimes when you say “leather” you mean specifically the old guard gay leather community and sometimes you mean all of these things – to which Axel suggests the term “kink-fuckers” as a more inclusive alternative to “leather.”  Not a bad idea.  I like kink-fuckers.  But am I a kink-fucker or a kink-fuckee?

But there is this question of where and how does our community fit in to the leather community.  Obviously we overlap w/ them… but we also overlap heavily w/ the furry community for that matter.  But it does seem that for both the TNG and the pup community there is a sense of judgmental-ism and exclusivity coming from a certain segment of the leather crowed.

I also loved the throw-away line: a puppy mosh “is basically like a gay bar for pups.”  LOL

As someone who started into the pup thing almost ten years ago, it really does amaze me how much the puppy community has started to grow just in the last few years.  It’s crazy!  For like five years I was the only pup I knew – certainly the only person who identified as “pup” (b/c, for instance, boy Andy would pup-out w/ me sometimes but he didn’t really identify as a pup).  I really think I may have been the only pup in North Carolina for a time.  Now there are contests and moshes and pup-nights just springing up all over (well... not in North Carolina, but all over everywhere else).  We must be one of the fastest growing segments of the kink community.  (Does this finally make me an early adopter?)

Anyway – the No Safe Word podcast is always fun and informative; I recommend it in general - but if you are curious about pup play, I really, really recommend you check out 02 (if you’re new and starting w/ the 101 stuff) and 38 (for a more meta-level conversation about the evolving – and really very new but rapidly expanding – puppy community).  Great stuff!


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