Community of Choice

A few weeks ago, I finally made a choice that I'd been trying not to make for the last year or so at least - I made a choice to join a community.

You'd think that community would be something that everyone would gravitate towards. Doesn't everyone want to belong somewhere? But of course, dear reader, you know of my history. To be part of a community is not just belonging somewhere. To be really part of a community, you need to give up a little piece of yourself to the group. You need to be willing to make sacrifices to the group, to be invested in it's fortunes. In short, you need to take an active role.

And while I've been attending the Melbourne Leather Alliance meetings, and I'm now going to a High Protocol Dinner, I have to admit that I haven't really been part of the community. I've deliberately held back, chosen to stay as an outsider. In a way, it was the best of both worlds, in that I could stay around the community, but never had to make any attempt at engaging.

Daddy had actually pointed this out to me quite some time ago, and had told me that at some point I had to make my choices as to what communities I would engage with, because my current state of not engaging with any community was simply not acceptable. But I was delaying that decision, because the idea of engaging with a community again, after everything, was a terrifying thought.

But the more I thought about it, the more that fear began to lose it's hold. Because it's silly, right? At so many points in my life, I've refused to allow fear to take hold of me. As much as fear and anxiety is a constant companion in my life, every time I've allowed those fears to inform my decisions, I've been left at the same place in my life, and I've felt horribly bound. And every time I choose to overcome my fear, I've always been rewarded with a better life.

That's why, I've finally made the decision that I'm going to embrace the Melbourne Leather Community. It's not worth letting my fear of not being good enough stop me from taking this chance to really be part of a community again. This is something I can do, and if I can't, so what? I've been part of and left plenty of other communities before. If it turns out I'm not cut out for Leather, then I can leave. My fears are not rational, and even if they are, I can overcome them. I can be a Leather Boy.

As of yet, Daddy hasn't arranged for any kind of ritual to mark the decision, and we're sorta still just going where we were going before. I'm not worried, since I know Daddy has been under a lot of stress, and these sorts of things do take a lot of brain to come up with a decent ritual. But I do look forward to it being marked properly. We don't know if my leathers are going to be taken away from me or not, whether I'll have to earn them again. I'm not sure if I'll be made to earn black leathers, rather than blue leathers. Really, the answer is we just don't know yet, that conversation really hasn't been made, and Daddy's not in a place to have that conversation right now.

But soon, I think. Soon it will all happen, and I look forward to it.

Fear of Community.

I freely admit - it's been a while since I've been part of a community.

I was heavily involved in the geek communities when I was at uni - to the point where I was making clubs, being on committees, organising things. I was there whenever I could, I'd participate however I could, I was a part of that group.

And then I graduated. I left uni for the outside world. For a while it was still okay - I was still living around some of my friends so I still had tethers in that community, but once I moved across the city, Those tethers started getting a whole lot more tenuous.

And so, for the last couple of years, I haven't really been connected to any community, certainly not in the same sense. And I think that needs to have some explanation. See, I do go the kink events, and I help Daddy out with events that he holds for the Kink community, but me? I don't really make much of an effort to really be part of the community as a whole. And while I have a lot of friends in the kink scene and a lot of queer friends, they're so dispersed it's not really a community.

I bring this up because me and Daddy had a discussion last night about my feelings on becoming an honest-to-god Leather Boy. And after a lot of discussion, the main thing that seems to be holding me back is becoming part of a community again. And let me tell you, that's a bit strange - you'd think that I'd relish the opportunity to be part of a community again, but I have this real reluctance to get back into another community.

Daddy, of course, made the perfectly valid observation that I've been resisting it because to become part of a community I'd have to engage with said community, and I've been in a heavy cycle of disengagement from the world around me. I've been happy to interact with the world around me, but only as an outsider, because the beauty of being an outsider is that you never have to commit - you can say your piece and leave scott-free.

So, I guess, the main fear isn't really about community - it's about engaging, and we already knew I had that problem. I've alway been more comfortable being distant, but that's not something that I can keep doing.

So, what was the answer to whether I want to be a Leather Boy? I'm still not sure yet. I think it's going to turn out to be yes, but I may have to get dragged kicking and screaming to get there!

Day 18: Pet Peeves

Part of my 30 Days of Kink

Day 18: Any kinky/BDSM pet peeves? If so, what are they?

Not many, honestly. I think the peeves that I generally have with the kink community are the same peeves I have with humanity in general. Like, for example, the general ageism of the populace, and how younger kinksters never seem to get a lot of respect (particularly bad for the young-but-experienced doms like Daddy, but also bad for young subbies whom everyone thinks are easy marks).

I mean, I could get peeved with the silly little protocols, like Capitalisation for Doms online, but honestly, I just can't summon the rage. I don't even really have that rage of "WHY!? WHY ARE KINKSTERS JUST AS BAD AS THE REST OF HUMANITY?!?!", because honestly, that's just assumed these days for me. Pretty much ever community has bad people in it, the real hallmark of a community is how it treats those bad people. I'm not going to say that the kink community is any worse at this than other groups I've been in, but that does still mean there's a lot of improvement needed. But that's politics for you.

About the only peeve I really have is the constant language wars about the right terms and the constant attacks on other people's languages. But again, that's nothing specific to the BDSM scene - Language wars happen pretty much everywhere on the internet, and really, it's just going to continue to happen, so long as people invest the energy they do into their language as identity. I could rage about it, but it'd be kinda pointless.

I guess tonight I'm just not feeling the rage. I'm sure there has been huge pet peeves in the pasts, maybe even into the present, but I just can't summon them up tonight.

Day 17: Misconceptions

Part of my 30 Days of Kink

Day 17: What misconception about kinky people would you most like to clear up?

I think probably the biggest misconception that I'd like to point out to people is that kinky relationships are not equivalent to meek, subsumed little subby with domineering, control-freak dominant. It seems to be a really common misconception, and honestly, it bugs the hell out of me. Not least because I'm most certainly not in a relationship like that (although admittedly, you wouldn't know it if I'm with Daddy in an unfamiliar environment - I can be pretty shy if I don't know anyone around me). Kinky relationships look exactly like regular relationships - there's still that back-and-forth that goes on, with people on both sides making compromises and (preferably) communicating between each other. I'm sure there are relationships where one person never has any input into the relationship, and I'm sure there are even a few people who are happy with such relationships, but I don't think, somehow, that these are the majority relationships in the BDSM community.

Because those are the sorts of things that healthy relationships do. Any sort of relationship is a living, breathing thing, constantly changing, and thus constantly needing to be renegotiated. Now, a Dominant in a relationship is certainly going to have more power to get what they want out of these negotiations, but the Submissive needs to get something out of it as well! If they're not getting anything out of the relationship, why are they still there?

So yeah. When I see this conception of kinky relationships where the sub is just basically this shell? It bugs me a little. That's certainly not what my relationship is like, and honestly, I'm not sure that such a relationship is that healthy, in most cases.

Birthdays, Service and Community

In a previous post I talked about the surprise I was planning to give my Daddy for his birthday. Yesterday I got to give that surprise to my Daddy, and believe me, it was every bit worth the effort.

It's rare that you get to render your Daddy speechless, but that was pretty much his reaction to me organising with his friends to raise over $2000 for a suit for my Daddy. It just proved to me that this surprise was the very best thing I could have done.

Also, it had the added side effect of bringing my Daddy into greater esteem with his friends - a lot more people remembered his birthday this year than they normally would, and honestly, that makes me almost as happy as the present itself. Part of service should be to add to your Daddy's good name, and not only have I provided him with good publicity in his community, but now they know what kind of a Boy he has serving him.

And everyone knows that a Boy's behaviour reflects upon his Daddy. I hope that he is pleased!