Somewhere out there there’s a Ted Talk about how greater
options lead to less diversity. It is
counter-intuitive, but more variety of choices actually leads to less real
variety in terms of actual exposure. The more options
we give people, the less they are exposed to.
Let’s take TV and music.
When I was a much younger pup, back in ye olden days, we had three TV
networks and PBS. You watched the best
of what’s on among those four choices… or you went outside to play. Depending on the size of the city you lived
in you had maybe 6 or 8 radio stations, and if you wanted music, you picked
among those.
Today we have hundreds of TV channels plus Netflix and Hulu
giving you stuff on-demand. We have
Pandora and Spotify with seemingly limitless music options and highly
customizable. So today you can see or
hear what you want, just what you
want, and when you want it. Result? People work themselves into smaller and
smaller niches, exposing themselves to less and less of the potential variety
available.
This principal applies to the kink world.
Now the community has not become much bigger
– but much, more fragmented.
Charlotte,
NC in particular is super-saturated right
now w/ kink groups and events, but it’s not just Charlotte.
Laura Antoniou recently talked about this at
her keynote speech at Leather HEAT in California
(which is really worth listening to, they have the audio at
http://www.leatherati.com/2015/04/laura-antoniou-keynote-address-leather-heat-2015/
): the community has become “a thousand islands of kink.”
There are more clubs, groups, events,
dungeons, contests, titles… everything… and most of the groups are increasingly
specialized towards a particular, little segment of the community.
When I joined
CAPEX in 2001 or 2002, there was basically
just CAPEX.
Now… I can’t even tell you
how many BDSM groups, events, and munch-groups there are within an hour or two
of Charlotte, and some of them have
things going on every week.
Most of
these groups are fly-by-night.
They come
and go in the span of about a year or two… but they keep coming.
In business terms, there is a “glut on the
market.”
Too many choices.
My awesome home club, CAPEX, is 15 years old. When it started, almost by necessity, it was a
“big tent” group. Since there were so
very few other BDSM groups in Charlotte or w/in an hour’s drive of Charlotte,
it had to be the group that accommodated everybody: straight, gay, bi, lesbian, femdom, male-dom,
Leather, fetishist, hedonist… Everybody
came to CAPEX. Littles and Leather daddies. Rope fetishists and pain sluts. Being a big tent group from the start really
shaped the ethos of CAPEX, and to this day I take great pride in how it is one
of the most open, welcoming, non-judgmental groups around. As one of my (male) pack mates put it, “CAPEX
is the only pansexual group where I can play w/ another guy and not have to
look over my shoulder to see who is giving me dirty looks.”
I 100% agree w/ Laura Antoniou that these big tent groups
still serve an important role in our community… that we are stronger when we
can come together over what we have in common and over our differences.
One of the first friends I made in the lifestyle was a fantastic guy who
happened to be a dipper fetishist. Before
I walked through the door at CAPEX, I admit I would have been like, “I don’t
want a fucking thing to do w/ that shit.”
But being around people of different kinks and orientations, in a
non-judgmental environment, not only helps one internalize “Your kink is not my
kink and that’s okay,” but it helps one meet great people and form some good
friendships you’d miss out on otherwise.
Through CAPEX, I attended dozens of demos and classes I didn’t have (or
wouldn’t have thought I had) any interest in… and often I learned something
interesting or gained some insight that I could apply in some way. It’s kind of the equivalent of the mix tape:
you know, when a friend gives you a batch of new-to-you music and says, “Here
give this a try.”
Back when CAPEX was almost he only game in town, you came
out to the demo each month (early on we had demos twice a month) b/c that was just
what the community did and that was where we all gathered. Now… Each
month you have like 20 different choices of what you want to go to. Can that be entirely healthy?
The scene today is made worse (I feel) by the fact that many
of the little, fly-by-night groups are started and run be people who have had little
or no actual contact w/ the kink community.
Of the countless groups that have come-and-gone w/in an hour or two of
Charlotte, at least a few of them I’ve heard about were started by guys (it’s usually
guys) who had never been to a dungeon, nor a leather run, nor a play party, nor
even a munch group. They just hopped on
FetLife and started their own super-specialized little clubhouse.
There is a problem w/ the current scene where (to paraphrase
Laura) everybody has their own kinky tree house w/ a “No ____s allowed” sign
out front. Now, you never have to
interact w/ people who aren’t exactly like you… and that’s a net loss for all
of us.
A related, kind of political aside: This is also why I, personally, don’t generally
support home schooling or private/parochial schools. (I do allow for exceptions.) Most of the time the real purpose behind it
is just so that our kids can grow up w/o having to interact w/ anybody who is
too terribly different from them. This
was graphically demonstrated many years ago when Atlanta held a big conference
for home schoolers and they took a stadium photo of everyone there – a few
thousand kids – and it was pointed out that (in Atlanta, which has a high
African American population) there was only one black face in the whole
crowd. There was also an article I read
recently that explained how in Florida, after years of state government subsidizing
for-profit schools and de-funding public schools (they call it "school choice" - remember, more choices lead to less actual variety), the students in the
for-profit schools are overwhelmingly white and middle class and, in many parts
of Florida, the public schools are almost entirely poor and darker skinned. It’s a back-door way of re-segregating. Just some food for thought…
There’s a principal of sociology (I’m sure there’s also a
Ted Talk about it) that demonstrates that diverse cultures are healthier than
monocultures. Biology, evolution, and anthropology
all prefer diversity… but human psychology and socialization often reject
diversity (sometime overtly, but more often unconsciously) and prefer things
the same and familiar.
In this new phase of the kink “community,” I worry about the
future of groups like CAPEX. We need these groups! We need spaces for us all to get together and
rub elbows (even w/ the friction that causes).
Where we can experience that joy of discovery of something we never thought
we’d like… or even just the pleasure in learning something new even if doesn’t entirely
apply to ourselves.
Okay, here’s my disclaimer:
My other main club is Atlanta Dominion, a tree house w/ a “No girls
allowed” sign out front. Here’s what I’ve
always said: There is a place for both things.
There is a place to have your own, little, everyone-like-us retreat, and
there is an important role for open-to-all, non-judgmental, pansexual, big tent
groups. But I don’t have to worry about
the former; they are proliferating like stink bugs – or Leather titles. It’s the future of the latter that worries me…
Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to find the big tent, all-inclusive group in your area, and support it to the degree that you can.
