Comments on: of fame and money: on paying bdsm presenters

By: nomen nescio

nomen nescio — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:27:07 +0000

obviously you should get paid a honorarium. in other (social movement) communities it is not uncommon for speakers (etc) to publicise their honorarium on their website. often this is a scale according to how much money is a resource for the event and they have access to this resource (by raising money etc). i really do not see how the bdsm scene is, in that respect, different from other communities?

money is a financial currency, it is also a resource that expresses power and gives access to power. not needing payment is an expression of structural privilege according to socio-economic, racial and gender power structures. not recognising this is, in itself, an expression of privilege (or blatant ignorance, which is an advantageous currency in itself) and perpetuates the system of unequal power relations

in other words: demanding payment is, next to income, a political act!

By: carly

carly — Sat, 26 May 2012 05:58:50 +0000

if yr bein’ transparent and standin’ yr ground, yr doin’ it right.

By: V

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:02:28 +0000

I’m a class/event organizer.
The problem that my group came across lately that the scene has become diluted. It seems everyone is a party promoter or class promoter these days.
There are less and less people coming out to us, because they have other places to go to as well.
Unfortunately, presenters expect the same pay they did 5 years ago, before Fetlife made a promoter out of everyone.

After the venue gets paid, in most cases, the promoter is lucky if he/she break even.
So, the quality of our presenters went down because of that.

By: Robert (Dr Bob) Rubel

Robert (Dr Bob) Rubel — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:52:59 +0000

You seem to be saying that if an event is run by a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit that the residual monies are used to expand the event or for the next event.

That’s possible but you’ll never see the books to prove it.

It would be up to the group’s governing board how those monies could be spent. They could certainly be spent to provide salaries to anyone the board so chose. And the salaries are not particularly limited because small (c)(3)s are not audited.

So say that you have 400people paying $80 each: $30,000. Let’s say the hotel -related costs are half that. The balance can certainly be used to pay for presenters or to pay the organizers. Personally, I have no idea about the economics of these conferences, but the idea that the money is returned to further conference-related activities is not necessarily true. Up to the board.

[I have started and run two (c)(3) organizations, one for five and the other for 17 years (not at all kinky). I also spent a year obtaining my "Certified Association Executive" credentials.]

As an aside, for the one year I actually kept track of it, I made 13 presentations at national kink conferences and — including selling my own books — still lost $8,000. I can only afford to present when my expenses are paid.

By: sable

sable — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:26:59 +0000

My apologies for making an assumption you were cis identified. To be honest, this is the first post of yours I’ve had a chance to read and so I mistook connection you made with Midori and Tristan Taormino and statement of fitting in that same criteria.

Thank you for clarifying. I should have gone with my initial instinct of saying something more along the lines of “cis female or CAFAB and conventionally attractive.”

I will say it is still far easier for CAFAB/AFAB individuals (cis women, trans men/trans masculine, and gender queer CAFAB individuals) to get recognition as edgy, cool, and desired presenters in our communities, followed closely by cis men. There are a lot of reasons for this, but this is not really the place to have that discussion.

No matter. You should be paid. We should all be “paid” for the work we do (as in compensated in some manner a in comparable to the level of the work being done). But the real problem is the dynamics of the unhealthy system which is non-consensually forced upon us. As educators in a system now wholly dependent on these abstract, intangible numbers we can no longer survive off trades the of chickens and rabbits and goats we once were able to.

So yes, continue to fight to be paid in the manner the current system demands. Because doing so makes the work for all of us a little easier.