Community Protocols

I was birthed into public BDSM/kink/leather and have grown up in Vancouver. Prior to that I was practicing D/s in private in Alberta without context or community or vernacular. I just made the shit up. When I moved to Vancouver and came out publicly into BDSM, I looked around and described it to myself as percussion-focussed.

I remember my first party though (as opposed to club night). Studio Q. There were a group of women sitting in chairs in the middle of the room upstairs. And one of the women was talking and holding a cigar and she had her feet on the back of a woman who was stretched out on the floor writing in a journal. It looked like HOME and evoked what I had been doing while in Edmonton privately. And I remember thinking something like: “Those are my people. I’m not alone. There are others who do this too.” It has haunted me ever since and never been fully realized. There is a longing. Perhaps for a fantasy…. but I know others in other places who do it…

I’ve been having conversations with a LeatherDyke in Alberta about notions of leather and protocol and old guard and have NOT been getting what she is talking about no matter how hard I try. It just doesn’t resonate. Old Guard? Leathermen? What does that have to do with me? I’m a female dominant who considers herself a child of Martin Luther King’s Dream, and has had little intimate access to gay leathermen and their mysterious ways.

But I travel to other communities and the best my language has been able to do when identifying differences between where I visit and where I live is to say that they have more of a M/s culture. A LeatherDyke from New Mexico who is on a forum with me observed that Vancouver doesn’t really do protocols compared to the several communities she had experienced. And so I’ve been mulling since then over this information, and realize more fully now that the place of my public birth and growing is what is impacting my view. DUH. **slaps forehead with hand**

Sometimes it feels like there are only two dozen LeatherDykes here in Vancouver – which ain’t true. But there are a precious few who seem to be publicly trying to work through or within a structure which might support protocols or rituals. I’m interested in moving towards something (as described in anonymous) “romantic”.

And I’m interested in doing more “why” conversations and theory conversations and conversations about psychology and conversations that focus not on the…. “how to tie someone up” but WHY we might. How that supports or detracts from the energetic weave being worked on by those who are interested in D/s or M/s or Owner/property.

And I’ll tell you the practical reason why I’m looking for these things… because as I get older (and I ain’t old!) I recognize that at some point I will have to modify my S/M practices – I’m already doing that thanks to an injury sustained during one of my bottoming experiences a few years ago. And persons with differing abilities… I woudl think it woudl hold true there too.

And to continue to exist within the power dynamic means that I and the people I’m engaging with need to have some literacy around the psychological. I see protocols and rituals as a way to expand the spaces we “play” in, the ways that we consciously recognize each other, and to enable us to continue to be perverts long after our ability to swing a flogger or take a needle is gone.

Does any of that rambling make sense?

The conversation on one of the forums I post on over the past few weeks, combined with the personal commitment I made to myself at the beginning of this year is moving my mojo.

So I’m doing more than thinking about it. I’m putting my time and money where my desire is.

I’ve booked a space in Vancouver late-April-ish and am yacking with a couple of people about donating their personal space for a preliminary conversation (mostly to download the info I’ve collected so far this year at Leather Reign, Lupercalia MMVIII and Midori‘s Mapping Your D/s Archetype worshop) in early-April-ish.

I hope folks will be willing to sit down on a regular basis to stretch their brains, and that those with Herstory will showup and engage in transmitting/sharing that info to a receptive group.