Loki on the Law

Long, long ago, CAPEX hosted a class taught by a kinky NC law enforcement officer on BDSM and the law.  It was one of the best classes I can recall ever attending.  There’s a lot of important things anyone seriously involve in BDSM/kink/leather-sex should be aware of in regards to legal risks and protections.  That’s also why CAPEX has always been a sponsor of NCSF, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.  Every year for the last decade CAPEX has donated money to NCSF.  Their website has a lot of good resources on it.  When CAPEX legally incorporated six years ago, NCSF put us in touch with a lawyer to help us.  And a few years later, when She-who-must-not-be-named threatened to out various CAPEX members in the media, send the cops after us, file a lawsuit, burn our houses, steal our women, and rape our cattle, I believe NCSF was one of our first go-to’s.

On the latest episode of the NoSafeWord podcast, they interviewed a kinky lawyer in Atlanta (who also happens to be my favorite Alpha Pup –licks– ) on the legalities (and illegalities) of BDSM.  If you’re kinky, whether you run a dungeon party or whether it’s just you and your partner enjoying rough sex in the bedroom, there are some important things and helpful tips you should hear.  Domestic violence calls, kidnap scenes, dealing with the cops, transporting your toys (and your poppers and your prescriptions)…  Do yourself a favor and take a listen:  Loki on the Law.

Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy

I love this!  This is my whole life philosphy in a four minute rant:
http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/94
Nuff said!

Puppies Breed like Rabbits!

IPC titleholder Slavepup Axel recently posted a very interesting (and thorough) report.  He did a qualitative survey of lots of pup group leaders around the country about challenges they face.  I can tell Axel put a lot of time into this report, and it offers a really great, big-picture overview of the state of the pup community right now… which amazed me w/ how much it has grown and is growing.  He mentions numerous pup organizations, clubs, and contests.  (I’ve decided that we pups should boast about the fact that we are so cool that we require TWO international pup contests.  One isn’t enough to capture our collective awesomeness.  LOL)

Let me first back-up here…  I’ve been active in the BDSM scene for 12 years (preceded by a couple of years of Stand & Model S&M) and I’ve been a pup for almost 9 years (since very early [February?] ’05).  For almost all of that time I was the only pup I knew.  There were no other pups who ever came to CAPEX or TAAG or Lynx or LaFortress or Whippersnappers or any of the places I haunted.  My Owner took me to Frolicon almost every year since it began, and she would always let me pup-out and led me around on-leash at the con in front of hundreds of people.  Loved it!  But there was just me.  (The one exception in all those years was Boy Andy’s puppy persona Needa w/ whom I was able to romp a couple of times.  And also I guess you could count the first time we went to SELF [2007] when I briefly encountered another pup who said there was going to be a mosh that night in the dungeon… but Ma’am and I weren’t able to make it, so that was that…)  Even most of my old friends in my home club (CAPEX, Charlotte) had never even seen me pup-out… and the couple of times at CAPEX I did pup-out it was just me.  For years I did almost all of my pupping out at home w/ only my Owner.

All of that is pretty tough if being a pup is your main kink and an important part of your identity.  I’m still almost the only pup I know of in NC, but now, I’m a member of the coolest puppy pack out of Atlanta, GA.  So my pack is about a 4.5 hour drive away from me.  I make it a goal to get down there to sniff everybody once a month, and sometimes the stars align and I see my pack twice in a month.  But the fact that there is a pack w/in 5 hours of me is something that would not have been the case just a couple of years ago.  I joined Loki’s pack last year and brought the “official” membership up to three.  There are now like five of us in the “core group” of Loki’s pack w/ several (maybe 7 or 8?) other Atlanta puppies who circle in more or less elliptical orbits around Sir. So, I could say, in general, the number of pups I know of in Atlanta looks like it doubled in just the last year.  It’s crazy.

Now let me return to Axel’s survey.  Te read about so many pup groups springing-up around the country (most of the pup groups/clubs/packs surveyed are less than two years old) is very, very cool.  To read of pup/Handler groups w/ 40 or more members makes my jaw drop.  It’s amazing to me how fast this scene is taking off.  And 60 members in SEA-PAH!  Wow!  What are they putting in the water up there?

It’s definitely a really exciting time to be a puppy.  One of my major goals for next year is to make it to one of the big pup gatherings: I’m looking at either IML’s Woof Camp or CLAW.  (CLAW falls right on Ma'am and I's birthdays next year, so that would be a cool birthday trip...)  I’d love to go to all of them, but financially I think I can only really afford one event like that per year.  Maybe I’ll see you there!

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game, and Contradictions

Today I read a fantastic interview on Salon.com.  In 2000, Donna (“commie lesbian”) Minkowitz interviewed Orson Scott Card.  Here’s an excerpt:

Now, I’m someone who loves contradictions, especially in writers. I think Ezra Pound should have been allowed to remain in the Poets’ Corner of New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine because his fascism and anti-Semitism will never make him a less beautiful poet. I have great fun reading Andrea Dworkin, even though I agree with her about exactly one thing: Rape is bad. And Allan Bloom’s translation of Plato’s “Republic” is fantastic and remains fantastic, even though his politics were gross.  But it’s one thing to admire a bigot on the page, and another to endure a two-hour conversation with one. And my love and admiration for Card only made it worse. Talking to Klansmen was nothing compared to talking to the author of the most ethical book I’ve ever read.

For those of you who don’t know, Card is the author of Ender’s Game, one of my favorite works of sci-fi/fantacy.  It’s about a boy who grew-up in violence, who is then trained in violence by an abusive, manipulative military academy that wants to mold the young super-genius into a literally genocidal military commander.  It’s a book w/ a lot to say about drone technology, preemptive attacks, just wars, post-traumatic stress disorder (in children), and killing-by-joystick… but also about compassion, communication, and overcoming Otherness.

That’s ironic.  Because Card is a ranting homophobic bigot.

This interview is really, really good.  Minkowitz perfectly captures (w/ both mockery and venom) what a disgusting creep Card is… while also managing to convey how really good (quality-good and morally-good) his book is – despite its author.  This interview is definitely worth reading – Oh, but before you read, it’s worth knowing that in terms of Jungian psychology, your “shadow” is made-up of those yucky, nasty, bad qualities in you that you can’t bear to consciously recognize, so you project them onto others, refusing to see them in yourself.  Keep that in mind while you read Card’s idiotic (but strangely revealing) prattle:

http://www.salon.com/2000/02/03/card/

Inclusively… and not being an Asshole

Not long ago, I wrote about the balance we need between inclusively and exclusivity.  http://pupemrys.blogspot.com/2013/08/inclusive-exclusive-balance-and.html

I concluded: “It’s stupid to say that every club/event/party needs to be pansexual and inclusive… and it’s stupid to say that none should be.  Not every group or space needs to be open to everybody at all times and that is okay.  Balance is good.  All of that being said, there is a form of exclusivity that, I believe, has no place in our community.  The we-are-better-than-you bullshit.  I’ve not encountered a lot of this first-hand, but I’m hearing (second hand) about this going on a lot more.  This attitude of our way is the TRUE way.  If you don’t do M/s like this then you’re not a TRUE Master/slave.”

This point has also come up in different ways in many of the recent episodes of No Safe Word.  One of the great things about that podcast is that (in addition to being fun and entertaining) it’s very inclusive and (small-d) democratic.  They bring on guests from all kinds of backgrounds and fetishes and sub-groups: letherati, puppies, furries, switches, ABDL, erotic hypnosis, piss players…  Frequently, I’ll look at the topic of the show and go, “Eh, not interested… but I’ll give it a chance…” and then halfway through the show, I’m totally hooked – not b/c the topic is ABDL or whatever, but b/c the conversation is just lively and interesting and fun.  But back to what I was saying: Several times in recent shows this theme of inclusively has come up.  I’ll point toward two:  The interview w/ Dart (Episode 45) was very good.  For instance: He’s a switch and has been slave to a Master while simultaneously Master to his own slave… and he’d go to leather events wearing both his Master’s cap and his collar at the same time, and this would give the TRUE Leather Path jerks conniption fits.  LOL.  Another great episode was talking furries w/ Nightcat (Ep. 48).  There’s a lot of overlap between the puppy community and the furry community… and if Old-school Leather is at the top of the kink hierarchy – the popular kids and the captain of the football team and shit – and rubber in the mid-zone; puppies, diaper fetishists, and furries are the nerds, geeks, and weirdoes at the bottom of the heap, so there’s some inherent solidarity between pups, furs and littles.  But one of the things Nightcat talked about was that most furries are kinky, and almost all of those kinky furries are into stuff other than just fur suits: bondage, piss play, humiliation, etc.  So if you disregard and discount someone just b/c they are furry, that’s stupid of you b/c (1) they might be a cool person, and (2) you may have other kinky interests in common you could hook-up over.

Just like No Safe Word has brought in a wide range of guests, that’s also very much what we’ve traditionally done w/ the education line-up at CAPEX.  I’ve frequently said that, for my money, CAPEX, my home club, is the top education group in the Southeast.  Part of that is b/c we cater to a wide spectrum and we deliberately bring in presenters from all aspects of the greater fetish/BDSM community.  CAPEX isn’t a leather club (like the Tradesmen).  It’s not an M/s group (like Charlotte’s MAST).  It’s not a bondage group (like Cable), or a fem dom group (like Charlotte Fem Dom Society).  CAPEX is there for everybody, and I love that.  (1) That’s a great way to learn.  Just about every CAPEXian who has been around for a couple of years will have at least one story about a “That’s not my thing” class they reluctantly went to – and were surprised to get something out of it.  (2)  You might meet someone who is into something you’re not but still make a good connection, maybe become friends, maybe find that they are into something you are into as well.

That’s what I love about CAPEX.  That’s what I love about the No Safe Word podcast.  And that’s also (I’ll insert another plug here… no, that wasn’t a euphemism) what I love about Frolicon.  Frolicon is by far my favorite con in part b/c it is by far the most inclusive con I’ve been to.  I love that there are leather folks and boot-blacks mingling w/ puppies and furriers and rubber fetishists and diaper fetishists and swingers and drunken hedonists.  It’s fucking fantastic!  And (virtually) everybody at Frolicon is so open and cool and non-judgmental.  And the breadth of classes offered at Frolicon (from self-publishing erotica to furry fan art to boot-blacking to a whiskey and cigar tasting) is far greater than any other kink convention I’ve been to.  (And it typically falls w/in a week or two of me and Shdwkitten’s birthdays.)

Earlier I compared CAPEX to the Tradesmen, Cable, Charlotte Fem Dom, etc.  Is CAPEX right and those groups wrong?  Hell, no.  As I said: It’s stupid to say that every club/event/party needs to be pansexual and inclusive… and it’s stupid to say that none should be.  The bottom line is: Don’t be a snob.  Don’t be a jerk.  Don’t be that idiot that Race Bannon rather un-wisely re-posted on his blog.  Don’t be an asshole.  We are all in a sub-group in a sub-group of a minority.  The least we can do is be cool to our fellow sub-sub-sub-groupies.

This is why we March

The following was recently posted on a social networking site I'm on:

"My family found out awhile back that I was bi. So naturally a christian family said I was messed up in the head and took me to see a conceler and he said "Nothing is wrong with him". So my family let me go to college, I was lucky to go to [private Baptist] University. Now my family wants to pull me out of college because they found out I'm still Bi and that I want to be a pup. And the worst part is my own father is kicking me out of my family on Monday I may not have a home anymore. Can anyone give me advice on what to do I'm sad, heartbroken and just plain confused with what I should do next. Please help."

Two days later, the same person (who is 20 years-old - and adverse to punctuation) posted this:

"I found a solution paying for [private Baptist U] is too much over $25,000 is too much it's a pirvate college I'm moving away ill get a job earn money for a year pay for a community college and be happy with my life as to how my family found out about my life they had spiwere on my computer about 2 or 3 years ago they found out. I've been to over 12 theopists all trying to get me to no longer be Bi or into any fetish they sent me to camps that taught kids that gays were sin and the army of satin for about 2-3 years I've lived in hell I hacked my computer so my family can't put spiwere on my computer anymore and well it's sad I have to leave my family to be happy but it's something I have to do I have to step up and be a man not some wimp that everyone can push around I hope I see everyone in the future it's going to be a Long bus ride"

Today, I responded:

I hope you are doing well. I was glad to read that you were leaving [private Baptist U] (almost certainly the wrong place for you to be). Community college is a great option.

I can only echo what others have said – but nonetheless I feel compelled to do so.

Know that there is nothing wrong w/ you; there is something wrong w/ them and you almost certainly won’t be able to fix them.

Know that you have every right to distance yourself from them as much as you feel you need to. I’m guessing that’s not easy, but you have every right to do what is best and healthy for you. My best friend, who is gay, broke virtually all contact w/ his biological family when he was in his early twenties (about 20 years ago now). He is fond of saying, “The family you’re born w/ is like the cards you get dealt in a game of poker: you can’t choose the cards, but you can choose not to keep them.”

Most importantly, know that you aren’t alone. Certainly one of the best things to come from the internet is that it allows those like us to connect w/ others like us. Stay connected. Keep us posted. We’re pulling for you.

And if you ever feel like you want to talk to a complete stranger (but a completely sympathetic stranger) don’t hesitate to message me.

Take care.
Pup Emrys

I thought of the Pride Parade a couple of weeks back. I thought of being on all fours in pup-gear, marching (and trotting) on-leash in front of literally thousands of people.  And I thought: This is why we march.

Atlanta Pride Weekend

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