Yep! Tune in tonight between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM PST for my appearance on
Tune In TONIGHT! December 11th, 2009!
We’ll be talking about cool fun stuff, like kink, being a Titleholder, performing, perversion, boobs, whatever…so you certainly should tune in! You can click through to the link above, or use an actual radio (gasp!) and tune to 107.3 FM!
Rod Jetton: Flawless Triple Douchebagger.
Ugh. Republicans. AGAIN with the sex scandals!!
OK, to be fair, that is certainly a blanket statement, and I shouldn’t be so flippant. ALL public figures get themselves into sexual loggerheads, right? And hell, my ex, Jack, was a registered Republican and I’ve certainly taken a few tumbles with conservative types. Shit, I even had a torrid affair with a hot blonde Republican from Concord who was the child of missionaries. But she was really hot. Hotness trumps political affiliation.
Usually.
My point is this…people who trumpet in public are the strumpets in private. I’m so over this scandal and that scandal with these people who yammer about morality and then wind up with their pants down in bathroom stalls and their dicks in the orifii of someone not their wife.
Usually I just roll on past these with a sigh but this Jetton douchebaggery has cut a little closer to the bone.
Why?
The Trifecta. (more…)
I love the Folsom Street Fair. I love that there is a day in the year that hundreds of thousands of freaks and gawkers run around being freaky. I love that we are given this leeway, and I love that our local government supports the Leather Community the way that it does.
I am not so sure that I am entirely positive on this recent development.
Every year there are a handful of complaints about the sexual antics at the fair. This is pretty normal. Folsom pushes boundaries, and this is something to be expected. It usually is addressed in a low-key manner, and is forgotten within a few weeks.
Today, I saw an editorial in the SF Weekly, decrying a proposal to set up “public sex tents” at Folsom. This sounded a little extreme, and I thought it was probably some sort of scare-tactic to ruffle the feathers of those who are already not fans of Folsom, and to build momentum in the increasing conservatism in San Francisco.
“Public sex tents? Now there’s an idea that should have been shot down the second it was announced from the mouth of a member of the “leather community” in response to complaints about public sex at Folsom Street Fair and its smaller sibling fair, Up Your Alley.
Instead, it appears that at least one of our local leaders (Supervisor Bevan Dufty) has agreed to take the matter “under advisement.” Since our local leaders are having trouble speaking the obvious, we will: Public sex is not appropriate at Folsom Street Fair or anywhere else. Even in San Francisco.” (more…)
This is being re-posted at the request of Ms. Jill Carter, International Ms. Leather 1996.
Thanks to Q, International Ms. Bootblack 2008, for spreading the word!
Dear Tribe: My heart is heavy with sorrow, but my thoughts are filled with wonderful memories of a friend to most of us Mr. Marcus Hernandez who passed away, October 8, 2009. During his 38 years as a San Francisco Bay Area reporter and columnist Marcus became the eyes, ears and recorder of much this communities history. His passing is a tremendous loss to both the Leather and Gay and Lesbian community.
November 21, 2009, San Francisco, “the city that he loved and that loved him” will be celebrating his life. Many across the country will not be able to attend this event. But there may still be a way to honor his contributions and legacy that he leaves behind. I am asking our community, to honor his memory by declaring Saturday, November 21, 2009, a Day of Leather Celebration. Where we may be wear your finest leathers or Levis, and do something special to celebrate the life of Marcus Hernandez.. Have an “adult beverage” , a “vitamin “V”, (one of Marcus’ favorite pastimes) share memories, swap stories, pictures, your thoughts and feelings. Perhaps host an event where all this can happen. (more…)
Click Here if you can help with a donation to the "Run Basket!"
The stars aligned, the event for which I was supposed to travel to Denver was canceled, I do not have rehearsal for “Drip” that evening, and miraculously I’m insane enough to do it.
*deep Breath*
I am in the running for Ms. SF Leather 2009!
The Adult Baby Gangsign! photo by lawgeek (Jason Schultz)
There are plenty of fetishes that evince puzzled looks or giggles from people, and I know that some of mine fall into that category. While the average person can grasp the general concept of “Power Exchange” a more finely-tuned fetish such as racially-motivated play or reverse-anthropomorphic play can be more difficult for folks to grasp. And Ganesha knows that furries get it from all sides.
One of the more nichetastic fetishes is AB, or “Adult Baby” play. These folks are fans of a playstyle that rarely includes the harsher aspects of BDSM, but is more abut a regressive type of play. Though it seems silly to some, I very much see the appeal of giving up ALL control, to the point of bodily functions, even, and relinquishing all of that to the hands of a nurturing, caring adult. In this scenario, generally the point is to be cared for and loved, not used or beaten down. Some folks will include an aspect of SM, in the form of castigation, or punishment, depending on the “age” that the bottom is assuming in the scene.
If you are an aficionado of this type of play, sometimes finding partners can be difficult. You have a limited range of folks for whom topping at this level of caretaking is their kink. Sometimes a professional dominant is a good approach, but that can become expensive if one truly craves that type of scene.
One gentleman in Florida connived a rather…ingenious…if deceptive, methodology for fulfilling his kink. Or so it seems to me! (more…)
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.
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.
This story made me cry. Please…my Perverts…my Family…my Tribe. Please be careful.
Know your partners.
We take so many risks just in the dungeon, in our bedrooms.
Please take care of yourselves.
And pray for Mr. Weber’s family.
Updated Wednesday, March 25th 2009, 1:23 PM
An emotionally disturbed 16-year-old (above) confessed to the murder of WABC newsman George Weber (below).
The troubled teenager accused of stabbing WABC newsman George Weber during drug-fueled rough sex is a 16-year-old Satan-loving sadomasochist with a knife fetish.
John Katehis, who is just 16 and lives in East Elmhurst, Queens, posted pictures of himself on MySpace.com with various blades – including one he held against his neck. He also issued a chilling warning.
“If you disrespect me then I will f—–g break your neck,” he wrote.
On his site, Katehis called himself “Extremist, an Anarchist, a Sadomasochist” and said he enjoys “long conversations, drinking, bike riding, hanging out.”
The teen also listed more sinister hobbies like “roof hopping, hanging off trains” and claimed be into extremely violent video games.
“I am a very easy person to talk to,” he wrote. “I like to do crazy and wild things … I’m always looking for a big thrill.
Katehis was on the run in upstate Middletown, when cops picked him up just after midnight. He admitted answering an ad Weber placed on the Internet looking for a partner in rough sex, police and law enforcements sources said.
“He saw the victim’s ad looking for violent sex and said, ‘I can smother somebody for $60,’ but it got out of hand,” a source said.
The teen admitted he stabbed Weber, but couldn’t remember how many times because he “blanked out” during the assault. He was in custody Wednesday at Brooklyn’s 76th Precinct.
Cops found the suspect by combing through Weber’s e-mail and Web browser history and tracking calls he made from his cell phone, sources said.
The two met in Brooklyn early Friday evening and then returned to the newsman’s Carroll Gardens brownstone apartment under the premise of engaging in sadomasochistic acts, sources said.
Weber, 47, whose ankles were bound with duct tape, was stabbed repeatedly in a frenzied attack that sprayed the walls with blood.
The newsman fought back and wounded his assailant, whose blood was found in the bedroom and bathtub drain, the sources said. Cops believe Weber’s killer tried to clean up before fleeing the Henry St. home.
Weber had been writing a neighborhood blog and was freelancing for ABC’s national radio network after he was laid off from his job doing local news on WABC morning radio. His body was found Sunday morning.
“We are devastated by the loss of George – Jordy to us,” the veteran newsman’s family said in a statement Tuesday. “He was truly a caring person who loved and was loved by all he met.
“Jordy loved New York and its people, particularly his Carroll Gardens neighborhood. The outpouring of support by his friends and neighbors is a blessing to us and a testimony to his character.”
A memorial service is in the works, but arrangements have not been finalized, the family said.
Mollena Williams is gregarious, the kind of woman who makes a point of saying, “How are you today?” to the Walgreens cashier. She has a short afro and laughs easily. She works as an administrative assistant and at night, she pens her theater performances. She is also a masochist.
Williams is part of San Francisco’s BDSM community (shorthand for “bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism”). By definition, a masochist receives pleasure from experiencing certain types of pain. By her own account, Williams loves pleasing her partners. That might mean a whipping. It might also mean obeying her partner’s commands or being called a “slut.” Her partners aren’t strangers. Like non-BDSM people, she expects to feel a connection and develop trust—enough to submit to a partner for the hour or the day or the week that they agree to. And she, in turn, expects a lot. Her partners have to be comforting, quick thinking, and treat her like the princess she’s always felt herself to be.
Contrary to popular notions, BDSM is not about abuse. It’s consensual and trusting and people refer to it as “play” (as in “I want to play with you”). The point of BDSM is not sexual intercourse. In fact, when Williams recalls her first experience as a masochist seven years ago, she says she met her partner, a white man, at a bar and “fell in love at first sight.” They made their way back to his hotel. “For the first time I felt someone could see who I really was.” And that was someone who found it erotic to be a submissive to her partner.
In recent years, Williams has added another element to her repertoire as a masochist. She’s begun to engage in what is called “race play” or “racial play”—that is getting aroused by intentionally using racial epithets like the word “nigger” or racist scenarios like a slave auction. Race play is being enjoyed in the privacy of bedrooms and publicly at BDSM parties, and it’s far from just black and white. It also includes “playing out” Nazi interrogations of Jews or Latino-on-black racism, and the players can be of any racial background and paired up in a number of ways (including a black man calling his black girlfriend a “nigger bitch”). White master seeking black slave, however, seems the more popular of the combinations.
Race play is considered on the edge of edgy sex, but workshops on the subject are becoming standard fare at kinky conferences as people like Williams become comfortable with publicly speaking about it. Like any practice making its way into public conversations, the workshops include everything from personal testimonials to theories on why people of color are getting aroused by what some would see as just racism. Like any controversial sexual activity, race play has its critics. In May, the title of a workshop at a BDSM conference had to be changed after protest over the original name, “Nigger Play: Free at Last.” Williams herself has been the subject of several e-mails from people of color who, while enjoying BDSM themselves, accuse her of self-hate and recommend she enter therapy.
But Williams doesn’t seem self-hating. If she is, then she’s pretty darn happy talking about her writing and desire to find a good man. If race play is not about hate, then what is it about? What does it mean for a person of color to be aroused by words like “nigger” or “spic”? For the people that I talked to, it’s made them neither freaks nor Uncle Toms.
There are about as many ways to engage in BDSM as there are theories for why it arouses. For some, BDSM is having your boyfriend yank your hair and mumble a naughty word like “whore” during sex. For others, it is whips, chains and hot wax—all done in public before an audience in a space that ’s been converted to a dungeon.
Psychologists from Freud on down have speculated on BDSM’s appeal. Perhaps the most common perception is that it’s a way of working through childhood trauma. But some say it’s more akin to psychological theater where you abandon your mundane life role (all those responsibilities!) and act like a master or slave, for example. Still, others conjecture that BDSM alters body chemistry or proffers a spiritual connection.
In his coauthored book, Bound to Be Free, Dr. Charles Moser has put out what might be the most sensible theory, calling BDSM just another type of relationship. It’s consensual and erotic, he writes. People find it erotic to act like they have complete control over another person (or pretending that they give up control). It also has its own rules: people agree at the outset what the limits are.
Needless to say there are countless conferences, websites and parties, all of which loosely make up the “BDSM community.” It was at one such conference in May that Mike Bond was to present “Nigger Play,” a workshop on using the word “nigger” as part of race play. But a small public outcry from fellow kinky people, many of them apparently people of color, on several electronic listservs devoted to BDSM resulted in a change to the more demure, “Dancing with the Devil.” Ironically perhaps, people did not seem to object to the content, just to the word “nigger” being in the title.
Mike Bond, who declined a phone interview and answered questions by e-mail, is a masochist. He is a black man and emphatic that race play “is not a message about all of black kind.” He doesn’t suggest that all black folks enjoy what he does, but he says, “I have been floored when people have criticized me by saying [that] not everyone agrees with my fetish. So what? Not everyone likes cheese. ”
During his workshop, Bond told the audience about his own history. He first considered race play when a partner asked if it was humiliating for him as a black man to bow before her, a white woman. He hadn’t thought about it before. “But if that made it more embarrassing, ” he said, “then I was all for it.”
On the panel with Bond were three white women he has played with. They emphasized that race play isn’t about hate. For one woman calling Bond “nigger” was just another bad name that aroused him. But another woman, who is Jewish, said it took time and encouragement to be able to relax with race play.
After the talk came the demonstration: A woman dressed in a business suit and planted in the audience heckled Bond, then grabbed him by the collar and threw him down, all the while yelling about what gave Bond the right to criticize “her people” (rednecks).
As arousing as that scene might be for some, it is downright repulsive for others. Racism was institutionalized as social, economic and legal practices, in part, through rape and the white domination of black sexuality. Chupoo, who is a black woman and declined to give her last name, says it point blank: “I can’t do race play because I have people in my family who had to submit to that, where they had no choices. It’s too close to home for American black people.” Race play makes her think about her grandmother who had to sleep with her employer, a doctor, so that her children could have healthcare.
Chupoo is not anti-BDSM. In fact, for seven years, she’s been a submissive in a master-slave relationship with a black man. So, she’s delighted, for example, when in an erotic context, he calls her a “bitch.” “I can accept other people are able to rise above their sexism,” she says, adding, “The race thing is really a lot deeper. I guess it’s easier for me to deal—he understands that we have a partnership…I feel like my master respects me. I cannot imagine feeling that with someone around race play. ”
Those who engage in race play are quick to say that they keep politics outside of their bedroom (and dungeon). But their own relationships to race are telling. Chupoo sees race as central to her life; Mollena, not as much or not in the same way. Chupoo refuses to do BDSM with anyone who’s white and she says that when someone at a BDSM party ignores her partner, or pretends to not know his name, it’s disrespectful and has to do with racism. For Mollena, it’s most often the other person’s problem, and she’s had relationships with white men. Whatever trajectory brought the two women to these different conclusions, it may also inform what they do in the dungeon, making race play either titillating or disturbing.
Many presentations on race play, if not all, follow a similar format: personal history, explanation of race play, demonstration and time for questions and answers. The explanations vary.
Vi Johnson, the black matriarch of BDSM, has presented on race play at kinky conferences and she believes the appeal is different for each person. “When you’re being sexually stimulated, you’re not thinking that what’s stimulating you is a racist image, ” she says. “You’re just getting turned on.”
So, for some, she says, race play is about playing with authority and for others, it might be humiliation.
Well-known sexuality and SM educator Midori, who is Japanese and German, often presents her theory that humiliation in BDSM is linked to self-esteem. Take the woman who likes it when her boyfriend calls her a “slut,” Midori says. Perhaps the woman internalized the idea that “good girls don’t,” but she enjoys her sexuality. Because the boyfriend sees her in all her complexity, Midori says, when he calls her a slut, “he is freeing her of the social expectations of having to be modest.” That’s different than having some stranger (and jerk) calling you a slut. The stranger doesn’t see the full woman. It’s similar with race play, Midori says. By focusing, for example, on a black man’s body, while he’s bound as a slave, she’s bolstering his own perception of himself as strong and powerful.
Of course, race and gender have a different history. So does that make it easier to play with the word “slut”? Midori tells me to not take it the wrong way but it’s a question of my youth. She’s known women of other generations, for whom the word slut is painful to hear.
Her workshop demonstrations have included full auction scenes mimicking those of the Old South. In them, she is the plantation mistress inspecting a black man for “purchase.” He’s in shackles and “I slap him on his face and push him down on the ground, make him lick my shoes,” she says, emphasizing that she only does the demonstration after the “psychological” talk.
The audience’s reaction? “Everything from horror to sighs of relief to uncomfortable arousal to validation to hooting and hollering, including people walking out.” Midori stresses again that race play is “advanced play.”
Advanced players have had their reservations. Master Hines, a black man, joined the BDSM community in the early 90s. He’s a sadist who’s more than comfortable flogging his white submissive. But with race play, “I thought I’d feel like I was being racist. I thought it was very extreme.” He changed his mind when someone likened it to people playing out a rape fantasy. In that case, he wouldn’t consider that person a rapist because reality and fantasy are different.
While most workshops focus on black and white, every color line is up for grabs. Williams facilitated a workshop in Washington, D.C., three years ago where a Mexican friend helped her. When it came time, she mentioned “wetbacks” and her friend who was sitting in the audience burst out, “What’d you say bitch?” The scene that followed was an erotic struggle, verbal and physical, between him and Williams. When he had her down on the floor, he barked, “Now what? Now what bitch? ”
“Now we stop,” she replied, and they both started laughing and hugging. Williams adds that even for kinky people, the race play is still so new that it’s important for them to know that she and her partners are real friends.
Williams stresses the emotional care in race play. Because it is psychological, “no one knows that you’re hurt,” she says. So, she advises seeing it before trying it and having a go-to person for comfort after engaging in race play. She reminds the audience to think carefully before doing it in public. “You’re putting your reputation on the line —are you prepared for that?”
A curious thing about race play is that it is pursued by people of color but often consumed by whites. The BDSM community is largely white, so those watching a public scene are more often white people. The community itself is not free of racism. Chupoo sees this evidenced in the men who approach her. “I get more white sub[missive] men hitting on me than anything else,” she says. They’re hoping she’ll be a big, black dominant woman. “It’s their thing. It ’s their racist fantasies of what black people are.”
Bond has had similar experiences but he and others note that the white people they do race play with are not racists. “Truth be told, you have to get a white woman to like you before you can get her to beat you or call you racial names, ” he says.
However, discomfort in saying the word “nigger” during race play doesn’t make someone racism-free. A related concern is the relationship between the sex industry, much of which operates on race as fetish, and those who do race play. But white men flying into Havana for morena prostitutes reduce those women to racial and gender stereotypes. It’s not a consensual relationship (or any kind of relationship). They don’t have to consider that woman’s needs. By contrast, Williams only does race play with about four people she’s come to trust.
Still it is tricky matter, race play. Williams says that in considering a partner for it, you have to ask yourself, “Do you know in your guts of guts that [racism] is not their point of view?” Even knowing the answer to that, she says, you have to be ready for that moment, that quick second perhaps in which you might find yourself doubting the person’s motives. It’s like wondering if a boyfriend would cheat, Williams says. The moment should ideally pass quickly but if it doesn’t, she says, “Are you ready for that moment?”
Fireplay can be a dramatic and sexy aspect of BDSM play. Whether you are doing a quick swipe of someone’s skin with flash-paper or using some high falutin’ fire floggers, it is certainly an eye-catching and showy scene.
Unless you set everything on fire.
I was recently reminded of a scene I saw many years ago [...]
I am not a wheel re-inventer. SO, when someone else has taken the time and energy to thoughtfully and thoroughly answer a question I’m often asked, I’ll pass the motherfucking buck!
My buddy@SaschaK posted a great blog entry on her home on the range, How my other half lives that I think everyone should read. Even [...]
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