Race Play Interview – Part IV (Conclusion)

Well this is the wrap up!

By Ganesha’s prehensile trunk and gorgeous plump belleh, this shit is EPIC.

Thanks for reading along, and thank you Andrea Plaid for her remarkably open mind and thoughtful questions.

If you are just jumping in, STOP.

STOP RIGHT NOW!

I fuckin’ mean it and go back and read the first three parts of this interview.

Race Play Interview – Part I
Race Play Interview – Part II
Race Play Interview – Part III

Race Play Interview Part IV


If you do not read ’em in order, may the fleas of a thousand dromedaries nest in your pubes. For, like a month.


Andrea Plaid: Last of my questions (again, we touched on it, but for the record): How can we move the conversation within our communities so we can talk about BDSM and race play as sexual/erotic possibilities?
Mo: Yeah. there is the rub
Mo: First off: people who do play this way have to come out of the closet.
Mo: Until players stand up, there will be a continued marginalization.
Mo: and that there is the easy part.
Mo: the harder part is having people within the community put down the “Us vs.Them” thing.
Mo: it can’t be all about being apart from our desires because they are scary.
Mo: there has to be room in the dungeon for everyone’s emotional play.
Mo: every person who is ashamed of their desires is anther person we damage indirectly with our scathing commentary and harsh judgments
Andrea Plaid: or the desires may make “those folks” think you’re fulfilling stereotypes.
Mo: Whether or not you are fulfilling stereotypes, this is beside the question. I know this is nuanced, but it is critical. All stereotypes are based on facts and observations that have been bred and fed to damage and wound and kill.
Mo: If you take that snarling dog, that offensive beast, and tame it to your own ends, you win.
Andrea Plaid: dig it.
Mo: the hardest part is taking yourself out of your comfort zone.
Mo: thinking differently.
Andrea Plaid: to talk about kink and BDSM and race play if not do it.
Mo: Yes. and to listen to those who are dumb enough to expose themselves to threats and ostracization and loss of friends and ridicule and psychological dissection. ;-)
Mo: who is more racially sound? the person who melts down and freaks out and blows up because someone calls them a nigger?
Mo: or the person who, on hearing that epithet, knows that they have been given the gift of information?
Mo: Knowing that an ugliness has been revealed, and now you can act accordingly?
Mo: Those words don’t control me anymore.
Mo: I am not immune to racism. But I’ve been inoculated, ad my soul can fight off that spiritual infection
Mo: dig it?
Mo: I think THAT is overcoming.
Andrea Plaid: I think i can get to that.
Mo: roll credits.
Mo: heh
Andrea Plaid: I’m just bummed that my analysis on Ciara as a sub was off.
Andrea Plaid: dang it!
Mo: It isn’t off.
Mo: That is the thing
Mo: it can be so many things
Mo: people paint onto it what they want.
Mo: Listen, seriously.
Mo: I had a woman come up to me after one of my race play classes and tell me a scene I was in years ago was one of the first scenes she ever saw
Andrea Plaid: really?
Mo: and of course, being me and one of my Favourite Soulless Sadists, it was very intense
Mo: she said to me she hadn’t been “prepared to see that.”
Mo: and after so many years s an activist, etc, she was shocked and dismayed to see a white man tying up and beating down a black woman.
Mo: that this is a “difficult thing to see,” yadda. Like she felt she should have been warned or something.
Mo: (mind, I DO talk about alerting bystanders, via the dungeon monitors, if you are planning extreme play.)
Mo: the thing is this
Mo: That dominant DOESN’T DO RACE PLAY.
Andrea Plaid: Really?
Mo: It was a straightforward fuckin’ rope scene with whips and shit
Mo: she SAW a race play scene.
Mo: I have NO control over that.
Andrea Plaid: got it!
Mo: I do race play BY DEFAULT in the eyes of most people
Mo: *shrug*
Mo: this was very illustrative of the level of complexity
Mo: David tying and suspending a black woman became a transgressive act in and of itself.
Mo: bring in the whip and boy howdy, it is over
Mo: which is hilarious, frankly.
Andrea Plaid: much in the same way, I read Ciara as a sub just because she was ostensibly in the leash.
Mo: Dommes can wear collars too.
Mo: Again, choice.
Andrea Plaid: even though she had control of the video and she and JT negotiated the whats–including the kinky scenes–beforehand.
Mo: If you want to get really subtle, watch the video and see if she is ever in a subordinate position and NOT looking in the camera.
Mo: the show isn’t for him. it is for the viewer.
Andrea Plaid: he’s just a prop, as my bro Arturo said.
Mo: yes, he is.
Andrea Plaid: you’re right–when Ciara’s in a sub position, she’s looking at the camera.
Mo: My but he is excellent at drawing down controversy on his pointy little head, isn’t he.
Andrea Plaid: LOL
Mo: I ain’t been in the biz 35 years for nothing!!!
Mo: I see that shit!!!!
Andrea Plaid: so, Ciara’s a sub for the camera and a domme for Justin….hmmmm.
Mo: We are the voyeur in their fantasy.
Andrea Plaid: I hear it from several sides: you’re not “Black enough,” you’re not “feminist enough…” blah blah blah.
Mo: yeah.
Andrea Plaid: I mean people assume, by my handle, that i’m soooo domme. but I’m like, no. I’m not. I like getting spanked and tied up, not spanking and tying.
Mo: because doing the toughest fucking thing you can possibly do, which is swim against the tide, isn’t “enough”
Mo: People make assumptions. I try to ask.
Andrea Plaid: exactly.
Mo: I have been skirting posting about race play
Mo: because I was all “Ugh I don’t wanna be the goddamned poster child”
Mo: but hey, look!
Mo: I’m becoming the goddamned poster child!
Mo: It also helps that I have 3 different people I feel comfortable doing these scenes with.
Mo: it had been feeling very much like a vacuum for a few years now
Andrea Plaid: I bet.
Mo: so now a bit better
Andrea Plaid: and I’ve discovered and come to grips with my wee kink for a while now. and I’m slooooowly incorporating it into my life. I had to admit that I was a sub.
Mo: that is a tough one, huh?
Mo: I read “Screw The Roses” and the fact that there was ONE black female sub interviewed in there gave me hope.
Andrea Plaid: I’ll check it out.
Mo: Strangely the most recent addition to my stable went ahead and bent one of my cardinal rules about doing those scenes.
Mo: Slippery fucker.
Andrea Plaid: oh? what happened?
Mo: Oh! *lol* he asked me if I needed a demo top for my class.
Mo: and I was all “Uh. You know this is my race play class, right?”
Mo: and of course he did.
Andrea Plaid: errrrmmm…..
Mo: and inside I was like “OMG hell yeah.” because I wanted to play with this guy.
Mo: and we’d had one of those “Oh, yeah, instant soul family” deep level connections.
Mo: but it took me by surprise because I WASN’T offended upset or shocked.
Mo: It was like “Oh, of course. Thank you.”
Andrea Plaid: and any other time you’d be like, “WTF?”
Mo: EXACTLY
Mo: but he’s tuned in enough to know it was OK for him to ask.
Mo: I hate / love it when they get in your head like that.
Mo: It took balls on his part.
Andrea Plaid: now let me get this right: it’s wrong to ask because….
Andrea Plaid: (I know: totally naive question)
Mo: FOR ME, I feel it is wrong to ask because I now know you want this specific thing, and I have to trust that you don’t have creepy ass motives.
Andrea Plaid: got it.
Mo: and for me, it is important for me to suss the person out without this in their head or my head
Mo: I need to just feel them emotionally.
Mo: straight neutral.
Mo: THEN if the thought occurs to me “Hey…they might be kinda good with that…”
Mo: then I drop the hankie, as it were.
Andrea Plaid: instead of just assuming you’d be down with they’re playing with you.
Mo: I don’t like that assumption.
Mo: ….except when I do.
Mo: *sigh*
Andrea Plaid: so…what happened?
Mo: What happened was it was off the fucking HOOK.
Andrea Plaid: I think I’m getting it…it’s an assumption about you’re not being indiscriminate about how who you’d play with.
Mo: right.
Mo: If you assume that I’ll do THAT with you, I kind of use that as a litmus test
Andrea Plaid: It’s like, “I’d know you’re into it, and I’m into it, so I know you want me (strange person off the streets) to play with you.”
Andrea Plaid: and your reaction is, “Ummmm…do I know you like that?”
Andrea Plaid: “just because I’m into race play doesn’t mean i wanna play with *you*.”
Andrea Plaid: got it.
Mo: EXACTY.
Mo: and I stress that really really hard when I teach.
Andrea Plaid: you need to.
Mo: for the fact is most POC don’t wanna go there.
Andrea Plaid: yep.
Mo: so to my critics I say “Look, this is the alpha and omega when I present.”
Andrea Plaid: you mean the POC that race play?
Mo: No. to POC who do NOT think it is OK. Their position is well diagrammed in my presentations.
Mo: so their position is well represented. Really.
Mo: Now excuse me while this white guy ties me up and slices my clothes off.
Andrea Plaid: no you didn’t!
Mo: Oh yes
Mo: yes, he did.
Mo: rotflmbbao
Andrea Plaid: got it. it’s the same argument folks on the racialicious threads tried to present: “Ciara and JT have declared open season on interracial kink! those bastards!”
Mo: good for them.
Mo: sex is sexy.
Mo: is is sometimes fucked up.
Mo: and that is also sexy.

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12 Comments

  1. Corey Alexander on April 10, 2009 at 8:57 PM

    Wanted to let you know that I pulled some quotes from this interview and posted em in my blog. Thank you for being so open about this subject. Here is the link, if you want to read; I didn’t comment on the quotes specifically, mostly talked about why I found it personally important to read your thoughts on the subject, and talked about how some of what you had to say felt connected to some of my own experiences with playing with oppression and trauma.

    http://tgstonebutch.livejournal.com/922522.html

    I am glad to have been able to read the interview in it’s entirety, as I know the final article may cut it.



  2. Clarisse on April 10, 2009 at 11:02 PM

    Thanks so much for posting this. I was really disappointed to miss your presentation when you came to Chicago, but I’m psyched to at least have this window into your thoughts.



  3. Samuel on April 26, 2009 at 7:10 AM

    Here I go again: Now that I read the whole thing I wish I wasn’t so quick to post a comment on part 2…the interview was about race play, but you both touched on a lot of other topics that need to be talked about openly. I don’t think I could get into the race play scene (as a dom OR sub-even though I have been spanked and blindfolded before) just because of how I am wired, but I am sure another reason why is because I have been basically brainwashed into thinking that it is an untouchable subject, especially in a sexual sense.

    My best friend (who I used to be in love with) is into BDSM. He gets on Second Life and acts out all these fantasies with whips, dog masks, cages, etc. He is Jewish and I am African-American and I did let him tie me up once but I felt silly. My mother and sister make it like I am a sell out to the race because I dated him and men like him. They don’t even consider the men of color I have dated, or the fact that it’s 2009. So, once again I understand at least the basics of what you go through with people criticizing you about race play. You know what? Fuck em’. Some of us think you are awesome!



  4. kahlana on June 2, 2009 at 10:27 PM

    Wow. I am blown away. I read the whole interview front to back and my head is spinning. I guess I never really thought about the way we have all been “Puritanically” brainwashed about race. I’m Choctaw Indian and my VERY white Master and I giggle about me being the “captive Indian Squaw to his white man captor” a lot but I never really looked too deeply into the WHY of why its so much fun for me. Thank you for being open and honest about that part where you said you learned that you are “submissive to authority.” I am the same way and have known that for a long time but having the guts to say it out loud is so different from acknowledging it in your own head. I plan to re-read this interview several times as you brought out a lot of seriously important things not just about race play or the kink community but about perceptions and understanding the psychology behind why we fear what we fear.



  5. […] the courage required to broach the sensitive subject of “race play” in her recent editorial INTERVIEW BDSM and playing with Race Sr Editor Mollena Williams interviewed by Andrea Plaid Parts 1 and 2. This is a hard subject for me. My own particular brand of “PC” dictates […]



  6. […] April 9, 2009 Cross-posted atThe Perverted Negress […]



  7. dom peiniger on September 19, 2009 at 6:41 AM

    i havent read all of it … and i am new to race play too …
    however yesterday i red a profile asking for a white master playing nazi … so i started chating with that slave and she got aroused from the things i said not only nigga but actually ordering her to say white are better than black … and so on … it was arousing for both sides

    and i wondered the whole day what turned me on about it and what turned her on … and usually subs and doms are turned on by somewhat different ideas … the trust the sub gives the pain it takes the security it feels …. and yes race play is equally arousing …

    but there are some factors that make it that way …
    first the actual abuse the whole ethnic community had to take before
    each sub is abused with the sum of it when their ethnic roots become the subject of humiliation

    second the fact it is a taboo … which will fade as all the people realize that there are no racial boundaries in mankind

    third the emotions within that subject make it difficult to determine how the subject might react … or on the sub side dealing with the emotional pain that is caused by for others harmless words and gestures

    within sexuality the racism can be a big turn on but also a turn off …
    both sides should be aware that even though it is supposed to hurt the subs feelings its still just a play … stinging with words instead of needles

    for the non sexual life always keep in mind that racism is hurting feelings
    and if you think there are different races within mankind you are probably delusional ;)

    your peiniger



  8. […] Race Play Interview Part IV […]



  9. Race play: a few thoughts « Bean on January 21, 2010 at 9:40 AM

    […] Part IV (Contains links to Parts I, II and III.) […]



  10. Dajjal on February 19, 2010 at 9:34 AM

    It feels good to consent to abuse, because it gives you the illusion of control.



  11. Vegan! on July 15, 2010 at 10:28 PM

    Meh, not my cup of tea, but different strokes for different folks. Live and let live, I say. If people are giving you beef for being into this, cook it. Then tell them to fuck off.



  12. Trysta_Ismene on December 16, 2011 at 9:04 PM

    This is a great series; perhaps race play could be one facet to ending racism all over the world…Or maybe I’m just uber optimistic? I wonder what the differences were in play for each of the individuals involved, based on background and predilections (re: race and in general)? I’d love to know…