PS031 - Lead, Inspire, Connect and Learn

Apr 17

Written By

Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d9941

Having just gotten back from the Kink LINCS conference, Lee dives into leadership in the community, as well as connecting with one another. From issues around oppression and racism in the scene, to looking at our authentic desires, the road winds through moments of tears and laughter alike. Fundraising, event production, the pros and cons of a National Kink Coming Out Day, compassionate communication, leather contests… we open up a door to what LINCS stands for – Lead – Inspire – Network – Connect – Succeed.

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Announcer:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening, an exploration of all things erotic. Every Thursday, your hosts, Dan and dawn, share with you their experience and insights on Kink, power exchange, and erotic life, as well as bring you interviews with exciting people from various lifestyles. Then every Monday, you'll hear from our various guest hosts. These nationally-known educators bring a variety of experience to the mics and share with you an ever-increasing, diverse world of alternative life.
Erotic Awakening is intended for mature audiences. If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.
Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington. In this monthly show, I have had such a delight of reflecting on everything from sexuality to spirituality, having interviews with people all over North America, and diving into different possibilities around alternative sexual practice as well as altered states of consciousness.
Now, I just got back from an event called Kink LINCS, which - if I can remember it - it's Lead, Inspire, Network, Connect and Succeed. So Kink LINCS, which was hosted in Seattle, Washington. It was an intense event.
Actually, to be honest, this entire month has been pretty intense for me. In four weekends back-to-back, I've done Bound in Boston, Portland KinkFest, ASKEW Conference at the University of Minnesota, and Kink LINCS, plus a couple of other classes in the middle as well. It's been quite the roller coaster ride. And I'm really glad that the last weekend of it was Kink LINCS, because it gave me a lot to reflect upon.
At Bound in Boston, it was 300-some-odd perverts, some of whom were brand new, and this was their very first time going to anything kinky. Throwing around rope, tying each other up. I got to do a class on how bondage positions affects our breath and vice versa. To see people also not just explore hands-on rope, but get a chance to also look at why they were doing rope. Which is a very similar class to what I did at the University of Minnesota, in a piece called Authentically Kinky. Where I had students really look at what it is they're into, and what it is that they're doing, and to not give in to this belief that we have to do whatever else the other people in the room are doing. Because there is this story that what we're doing has to be what other people are doing as well.
That theme ended up continuing through, to be honest, through most of this month. And at Kink LINCS, I ended up doing a keynote speech on Saturday night - or Saturday afternoon, I should say - that was on what it is we need out of being leaders. What is our fair energetic exchange? And that was quite the journey to write that piece. And for folks who want to read it, you can read that online, and I'll post a link to that in the notes, and there's gonna be a video and audio available in a couple of weeks as well.
But given all of these events, going to a bondage conference, then going to a large kink conference with over thousand people taking over the Portland Convention Center, and - well, not taking over the entire thing, but taking over a pretty good chunk - to being at the University of Minnesota and having it be an intimate gathering of including all of the staff… 70 people, I want to say? Who were people from the community, and academics, and freshmen in college, and such a wide diversity of population, to Kink LINCS which were all different people who chose to come to a leadership conference for the kink and Leather communities. So it was a pretty self-selecting group.
I think wrapping up with it was a really good journey for me, though, because after being on the road for a month, effectively, with a little bit here and a little bit there at home; a month exploring the kink community and being around kink people of different styles, being around self-proclaimed or self-interested leaders, and looking at why we're doing this stuff was a good way to anchor it in.
So this weekend, I got to go to a couple of different things. The first was that I - right after getting there, I kind of did some classes during the week - but once I got to the conference, my first class I got to go to was by a woman named Bendy Yoga Girl. Now, Bendy is an amazing individual, and she helps out running the Fetish Fair Flea Market, which you might have heard me talking about before, which takes place up in Providence, Rhode Island. And this event is crazy huge, and pretty amazing, as I said, but the class that Bendy was doing had nothing to do with that.
What it had to do with, was compassionate communication. Was the fact that every single one of us is already suffering on some level if we look at things from a Buddhist perspective, and that that person who is frustrated or angry, including you, deserves compassion because they're in pain, just like you're in pain. And when we apply this to a leadership level and acknowledge that most likely, whatever people are sad about, or frustrated about, or angry about, isn't probably about us at the end of the day.
And to hear that, as well as to practice some exercise as well, with compassionate communication was a good reminder for me at the beginning of the event. I'm not always perfect at it, to say the least, but I think every single one of us, as sexual and spiritual beings, can benefit by remembering the fact that we all deserve compassion. We are all people who deserve to be seen. We are complex beings who live our own truth.
And as I addressed in my keynote that Saturday, we need to stop believing that we should do unto others as we want them to do unto us. The law of reciprocity, the golden rule - it's a fallacy. We should not be doing unto others as we want done unto ourselves. We should do unto others as they want done unto them.
I find it fascinating that in a sexuality population where we believe in negotiation, and that each person has their own sexual predilections, I find it fascinating that we think that different people will want similar things to us when it comes to our needs being met, when the reality is that we don't share the same sexual predilections, why should we share the same anything else? We all have different-ness in this stuff.
The second piece that I got to go to on Friday was a piece called “The ABCs of Fundraising” that Joe LeBlanc and Spencer Bergstedt ended up doing. I've known Spencer for probably about fifteen, sixteen years in the scene. Spencer is a lawyer and kink activist who has a brain the size of the planet, absolutely amazing human being. And Joe LeBlanc is an LGBT activist who, again, really fantastic human being who really knows their fundraising stuff. And to see people stepping outside of the assumptions around what a fundraiser needs to look like in our community was so important. And more than that, own up to the fact that the things that we sometimes call “fundraisers” are really awareness raisers. If we're putting 600 hours worth of planning into something and we only raise $50, it's probably not a fundraiser. Every single person there could have chipped in 10 cents per hour and we would have made more money. That's not a fundraiser, it's just not. It's an awareness raiser. And to get people in the room thinking creatively about how we set goals for our fundraisers, how we really consider what our point of the fundraiser is, have us really look at what our resources are, was so fantastic. It really was. And to see the people in the room, again, just looking at what they need to get out of their fundraisers.
But that night, after a delicious dinner with an intimate group of friends at Touré’s, Petite Touré? Nope, not remembering the name of it right now. But amazing food, nonetheless. We came back and we ended up going to Race Bannon’s keynote speech.
Race talked about a lot of different things, but the first thing he talked about was the fact that, as leaders in the kink community, most of the time we're not actually leaders. We are people who are marketing, we are people who are selling, we are people who are making a product that others will want to buy. Whether that's a free play party, or whether that's running a 400,000 person street fair, like the Folsom Street Fair, it's not usually about leading. It's about marketing.
And I encourage every one of you to go and read Race's keynote speech because it led through this labyrinthine twists and turns around what our community needs. And looking at our populations and what they themselves want, as compared to what we, as supposed leaders, keep thinking that they want, or - more honestly - what we're usually wanting for ourselves and projecting upon others.
The last thing that Race brought up that evening was the idea of having a National Coming Out Day for kink, a National Kink Coming Out Day. On Sunday morning, we ended up having a group breakout session on this topic, and it was an intensely heated room.
I personally have challenges with the idea of a National Kink Coming Out Day. Do I think it's a fantastic idea… because we need to deal with not just the social issues? Because yes, it's very hard for linky people, just like it's very hard for LGBT folks a lot of different places. But in both cases, we're also looking at human issues. We're looking at the fact right now that by being kinky, you can be arrested, that you can be thrown in jail, that you can lose your kids, that you can lose your job. This is not just a, “oh, that's kind of weird, you dress up in leather or you have power exchange relationships, I don't know how to deal with that.” They're human issues.
And before National Coming Out Day within the LGBT community, there was a lot of people in the United States - it's been argued up to 60% - who believe they did not know any gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people. And it's been shown that people are more likely to do good for, or pass laws in support of, people that they have some sort of empathetic connection with. So for example, someone who knows someone who's gay is more likely to support gay rights than someone who believes they don't know anyone who's gay. If people believe that they don't know anybody who's kinky and that kinky people are just perverted, and weird, and wrong, they're more likely to support laws that are anti-kink.
So that piece I get. And the idea around having pride, I get. But I have real concerns around a National Kink Coming Out Day. The first concern I have is that there's a chance - and there's a pretty big chance, in fact, because it's happened with LGBT Coming Out Day - that people will out other people. Celebrities especially have been outed on LGBT Coming Out Day because - or been flat out pointed at when they themselves were not bisexual, lesbian, gay or transgender in any way, shape or form, at least that they were discussing in any part of their life.
That people are outed.
Or that there’s shame for some people that, on that given day, that they're not able to or don't want to “come out,” that they want to keep it a private issue that is theirs and theirs alone. And I have concerns about people outing each other, or people shaming each other, or people feeling internal shame, based on a choice that they've made - or making choices that are not healthy for them in this moment.
The other thing that was interesting with that idea of why I don't like the idea of a national - or why I'm concerned about it - is that before National Coming Out Day, there were more legal bodies available for people if when they did coming out, if legal issues arose, they had more groups who could support them. Right now, we have the NCSF, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom and Woodhull Foundation. Woodhull does some advocacy work, but they don't do direct legal support. Thus, NCSF, and the occasional lawyer here and there, are who we got. And they recently suffered a fire at their location and are trying to do fundraising just to rebuild their records and their files, to get new computers. They only have a handful of lawyers and if we have this “go out there and people make bold choices,” good on them…but we don't really have the sponsorship and the support, legally, to have these things come about, to have these things be supported. I'm concerned.
I'm also concerned because in the world of kink, we have some definition challenges. And I am concerned that it will make “us versus them” mentality. When I bring up Fifty Shades of Grey in the kink population, in the public kink community, I am oftentimes met with groans. And a fair amount of the time, I hear people say, “Oh, God, just those dabblers, those people who aren't really in the scene.” Those kinds of statements create an “us” as compared to “them,” create stigma between groups, create this idea of “realness” and “not realness.”
And if we're looking to create allies for a National Kink Coming Out Day? Whether people who are exploring, or enjoying, or maybe this weekend enjoying and never wanting to do it again, a pair of fuzzy handcuffs and a riding crop, good on them. But if we say, oh, you're not really kinky, we're going to be creating separate spaces, separate identities, and people who will not support us. It infers to people that, “oh, that's not really kinky, then you can't self-identify that way.” That's not okay. Again, I'm concerned.
However, after having that conversation, and a lot of other pieces that I will probably be discussing that are pros and cons around this idea - including the fact that when the LGBT Coming Out Day started and all of these pride parades got more and more - especially when the Human Rights Coalition, HRC, pushed its Gay Equal Rights campaign, what their campaign was based off of was “We're Just Like You.”

We're gay, we're lesbian, we're bisexual, but we're just like you. We have little houses like you. We have white picket fences. We want to have kids. We want to be married. We're just like you.
Which told the people who were Leather, the people who were sexual deviants, the people who wanted to fuck at the bath house and not be “just like you,” that they weren't part of community. That they were wrong, that they should be sequestered, that they should be somewhere else, that they don't mar the reputation of all of these nice LGBT folks - or at the time, gay and lesbian folks - who just want to be normal, or be perceived as normal, and therefore, let's push the fringe out into the cold. And if that was done, to “us,” as kinky people, as Leather folk, as all of the other identities and labels that we might have, if we were pushed out in the cold, why must we perpetuate this? Why push it out to others?
Plus, of course, gotta say, the fact that most material on kink information is written for people an age population - is written for people who have a higher degree of educational knowledge, other than, of course, some of the fiction pieces that are out there. And is written for a Caucasian, middle class or upper middle class audience. It infers that to be kinky, you have to be white. Instead of people who, for example, might be coming from an African American background where words and statements like, “it's not kinky, it's just how I fuck,” are pretty common, in some circles.
So I have some concerns. But, to be part of it, I'm gonna be an active part of the dialogue. Because I think if it's gonna happen, which I think there's a good chance of, I wanna be part of the dialogue and make it something excellent, instead of standing by the side and bitching about it.
So consider for yourself, if there is a movement or an idea that's affecting your life, whether you want to step up and say something, and be a part of it. Or if you yourself can't do that, just like the idea of a National Coming Out Day, if you can't come out in the way you want to, what seeds can you plant? What links can you pass on in your social media feed? What conversations can you have behind closed doors that get people thinking? Because you can do.
Every single one of us in our own way is a leader, and I think that gets forgotten when we lift people up onto pedestals. When we say, “oh, they are the teachers, they are our leaders, they are our group presidents, those are the high priest and priestess of our coven.”
They. Taking any of the responsibility from us.
But the reality is, every single one of us is an active participant in our own lives and in our own groups. At least if we want our groups to be what will serve us. Personally, I think you deserve to have a group that serves you. I think you deserve to have a social life that serves you. I think - I personally think that you have the right to have a sex life that serves you and a spiritual life that serves you. So you know what? Step up to the plate. Am I the best at that? No. But I'm trying. Day at a time.
So beyond the National Kink Coming Out Day and Race Bannon’s speech, I got to go to a couple of other pieces as well.
Sophia Sky did a fantastic class on learning styles for adult education that I got to about half of, two-thirds of, because - as I was presenting a keynote on Saturday and her class was right before, I, of course, as one does, when you're debuting something that you're really… nervous… about, I ducked out of her class to add an extra paragraph, and remove half of a paragraph, and to futz my keynote a little bit. You know, as you do. But really fantastic.
However, the class, the experience, that really shook me up was done by Lady !Kona from Vancouver, BC. !Kona did a class on racism and disenfranchised populations in kink, BDSM, and in the world at large. And I've gone to other things that are about, you know, racism issues and whatnot, but this was intense. This was really intense.
So, not long ago in February, there was a point that came up in the kink community that in Portland, Oregon, a Leather bar called the Eagle was going to be bringing in a performance artist named Shirley Q. Liquor, I believe, or is it Shirley B. Liquor? Shirley Liquor, who is a Caucasian man, who is a drag queen. Okay. However, what makes this a different drag queen act, is that Shirley is a heterosexual black woman on welfare with 13 children. And not just is she a character, but she is performed in blackface.
Now, for people who don't know about blackface, let's just say it's got a lot of political and historical background around oppression, and racism, and equality, and lynching…and other issues. So I'm just going to put a link to black-face.com, and if you don't know about blackface, go look it up for yourself.
And so this was being brought into a Leather bar, and when people found out about it, this created quite the schism. Quite the drama, with some people saying that it was horrible, racist, culturally abusive, if it was continued, this was the Leather community in Oregon, or at least this bar, supporting this concept, people taking sides, etc. And whether you agree with it, thought that Shirley Q. Liquor was funny, whether you didn't think it, you know, whatever it is, that wasn't !Kona's issue.
That's not what this was about. It was about looking at February, which was - funny enough - Black History Month. Looking at that month of pain in the kink community. And feeling it, and acknowledging it, and talking about racism and culture, and in our community, which was so full of pain. And in other moments, so full of strength and inspiration. And there were tears, and choking up, and people shrugging their shoulders because they weren't part of it, but they knew that they were - on some level - part of it. And I shared some of my own feelings and experiences from February there.
But what shook me was that !Kona did some exercises. So, I love teachers - as a note - that do interactive stuff, where people have to move around, and all of that kind of thing. And I want to figure out how to be more of that person, because it inspires me as a learner.
But she listed some different things. Okay, be on one side of the room if you have, you or somebody in your family has, less than a grade 12 education. List if you've, in this room, experienced being seen as a race other than what you are, or what you label yourself to be. What about gender? And we went through different things that people are disenfranchised on, or have -isms. And it was… intense. [chuckles] I'm like, even talking about it, I'm… [sighs] Yeah. Yeah, it was really intense. If… If you ever have a chance to just… I mean, to go to any of !Kona's classes, please.
But… But to just talk with other perverts about… About the fact that we're… We're making assumptions about each other, and we're hurting each other, and we're saying to each other that we're not enough and we're not real enough, and that if somebody's in a wheelchair, they can't be a real dominant, and that if you're a switch, you don't really know what you want to be doing, and that… And that choices are having to be made for people about how they play, how they love.
Talking to somebody, later, about how they have a friend that is a Caucasian master, and he has two slave girls, one who is Caucasian and one who is African American. And he's been told at some play parties that it's not okay for him to chain up his African American slave, because that's oppression. Which takes away her right to have her bliss. Which tells them, in their poly-construct, that he has to spend more physical attention on his white slave. How is that right?! How is that okay?
Why is it that when I, as a male-presenting individual, was beating up my Boy, who was a predominantly male-presenting individual, and beating him black and blue, that was okay, at a party that was saying that “anything could go.” And yet when he topped his other partner, who is female-presenting, having exactly what she wanted, moaning, and screaming at the top of her lungs, being battered and bruised, and shaking and quaking in fear, the way she wanted it, that they were told to stop, even though it was almost an identical scene, because that looked like domestic abuse.
Now, am I saying we should do scenes that trigger other people? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because there is not just two people, or three - or twelve, hey, I don't know what you get up to, right? - that are in any given scene. There's not. There's the outsider, too. The people watching can be triggered. We are more than the people in a group, unless we are in our bedrooms, and even then, we are affecting our lover's future lovers. There are times when I can't fuck ways that I might otherwise, because it reminds me of a thing that happened once. Does it mean I shouldn't have done that thing? It's a choice. All these things are choices. But I think it's worth considering where our lines, and comforts, and concepts stop other people from exploring their bliss.
Something to sit with. Something to consider.
And as we're considering things, the last thing I got to be an active part of during the Kink LINCS event was a panel on producing, and being part of, and the logistics around the title competitions, and the title circuit that are out there. It was funny, as we were all introducing and what not, the panel was brought together by Liza and Jody, slave Jody, who are the producers for the Ms. SF Leather Contest.
And what I thought was really interesting about why they brought back the Ms. SF Leather Contest was as a political statement, a feminist statement, because there hadn't been one in eight or nine years. And they refused to have - go and represent the Leather and kink communities, at a large gay and lesbian conference, they refused to have it only be male voices representing the kink and Leather communities. Thus, they want a female ambassador who would speak, who would act, who would do, and who would represent. Because sometimes, standing up and being seen is our politics. Is our truth.
And that is one of the amazing things that could happen around a National Coming Out Day, if we go there, a National Kink Coming Out Day. Or hell, if we just actually band together the kink community, as being something that's actually a community rather than a loose confederation of tribes that tend to war with each other over random plots of land sometimes.
If we built community with that U-N-I-T-Y capitalized, if we built communal unity, which you know what, in some communities we have. In some areas, especially smaller areas where - or smaller population groups that are kinky, because they have to band together for survival.
But either way, for Jody and Liza, it was the chance to bring out feminist ideals and feminist statements into a space that was being represented only by men. And so they put together the panel to talk about these issues. And so on the other sides, it was Race Bannon and myself, so - both of us as the keynote speakers being there as well, because we both have experience with Leather title holding as well as, for him, a lot of judging, for me, some production, some judging, and just seeing a number of them.
And it was really an interesting panel, because one of the things that we talked about is that every single contest is different, and is there for a different reason. And you've got to really consider not just what the contest is about, but why you, as somebody who is going to run for a title, wants to do it. And is it right for you to run for Ms. Leather, or is it more appropriate for you to run for a puppy/handler title, or a Master/slave title that's based on a relationship. Or is it going to be something where you want to do something that's all about objectification, for you to get on stage and be hooted and hollered at, and to be Mr. Sexy White Tighty Whities 2014? Go you. Which one is going to serve you, and which title are you actually competing for?
And so when I brought up the fact that at Dark Odyssey Fusion, which is coming up this summer, I've been producing for the last three years, and will be doing it again this year, the Dirtiest Pig Contest, the Dirty Pig Contest, which takes place at the Dirty Pig Leather Bar one night during the weekend, where we build a mock, as it were, Leather bar with slings, and an actual hosted bar, and we build a stage and have people compete to be the dirtiest pig.
But unlike a lot of the contests, where there are statements like, “judges must be impartial,” “judges must not have intimate relationships with the contestants before,” that there should be some sort of line there. That bribery is not appropriate, and those kinds of things. But for a lot of us in kink, some of the reasons and a lot of the reasons we got into this stuff in the first place, is because it gets our cunts wet and our dicks hard. So why not have titles that are about that, and where the rules reflect that?
And so for fun, I and a couple other people - but a lot of it was me - I built a title where it would be hot and fun, where you get bonus points for seducing a judge ahead of time and having it be really hot sex or play. That if you want to bribe in other ways, fantastic! Negative points if you bribe in the wrong direction and bribe wrong. So for example, if you bring a drink, or a bottle of champagne, to somebody who's in recovery, you are losing a lot of points. If you choose to be sexual in any way, shape or form, on stage, off stage, or around the bar at all, that is not safe sex completely, you're going to lose points. In fact, if you do anything on stage, you will not win. That is one of the contest rules.
But where it's fun, and it's enjoyable, and people in the audience are playing in the middle of the contest, and it was really fun to talk about that because people in the room were like, “wow, that's a different contest.” That's interesting. And to get the question going of why we're doing this stuff.
So Kink LINCS was about leading, inspiring, networking, connecting and succeeding.
You, listening. You can be a leader today. Help be an advocate. Teach one person something they don't know.
Stand up for one person who is being looked down on or pooh-poohed in some way, whether it's for their sexual predilections, whether it's for the fact that they like a cheesy romance novel, whether it's the fact that they're new, whether the fact that they're into something different. I don't care. Stand up for one person.
You can be a leader. Inspire. Do something beautiful. And I'm not necessarily talking about in the kink community. Get seed bombs and throw them out into the drainage ditches around your place, or driving down the highway, so that in a few months, wildflowers will bloom.
Do something inspiring. Go and be part of a rope bomb where you do performance art in the middle of a city.
Do something inspiring. Be nice to someone who you don't know.
Do something inspiring. Network. Go and meet someone. Hop on the internet and say hello! Make an ally. Make connections, and I'm not just talking to be able to have hot pickup play. Network. Get to know other people. Play Yenta. You meet someone who's into something and you know somebody else who knows somebody? Network. Connect. Deep connect.
Go in deep. Don't just say, “oh, I know them,” and what you mean is I met them in passing once in a hallway. Learn about a person. Have an actual ten-minute conversation where you are interested in what they are saying and actually listening to them. As compared to waiting for the next time you get to talk.
And succeed. Because by doing all of this stuff, starting with listening to you, we can succeed. We deserve to succeed. We really do.
And with that, if you have any questions, comments or ideas around sexuality, spirituality, kink, gender, identity, authenticity or really anything else, please send your questions to Lee, L-E-E, at PassionAndSoul.com with the subject line “Ask Lee.” And I'll be looking at them and answering them either on my blog or here, wherever I can.
And you can feel free to find me, Lee Harrington, pretty much anywhere on the internet by typing in Lee Harrington. You'll be able to figure out which one’s me pretty easily. Or type in Passion, And, which is A-N-D, Aoul, all as one word, on fetlife.com, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, DeviantArt, really pretty much anywhere. You can find me.
So thank you again, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit for joining me. This has been Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington. And until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically you, and have a fantastic journey.
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