I will, for the curious, attempt to shoot down a few of the most common responses I’ve seen to women who’ve posted on similar topics, by means of a footnote at the end of this post. So if you are about to say “You’re just a humourless feminist,” “You’re missing the point,” “You’re just a man-hating lesbian,” or “You’re just bitter/triggered/biased because someone raped you,” or simply curious about how I’d respond to any of those dismissals, scroll down.

All righty. Moving along.

Point 1. Kinky people can be, and are, sexist. Rape jokes are one form that sexism is expressed.

Despite what the research says about how kinky guys are generally pro-feminist (see part 1 of the footnote for that), the research (at least, what little research there is) still indicates that in the public pansexual BDSM scene:

• women are more likely to identify as submissives and men are more likely to identify as dominants;
• women are generally presumed submissive and men dominant (and whether this is a cause or an effect of the first element is a question well worth debating, and one which I seldom see discussed);
• women and submissives are treated with less respect than men and dominants; and
• this disrespect generally takes forms along classically sexist, essentialist lines.

Thomas Macaulay Millar deftly links “domism,” role essentialism and sexism and sums up the key related points from two major (kink-positive) scholarly studies of the pansexual BDSM scene in this brilliant post. Please go read it, it’s really quite impressive.

In short, despite any claims to enlightenment or feminism, standard-issue sexism is still clearly present in the pansexual BDSM scene.

One of the many ways sexism plays out in the BDSM scene is rape jokes, and other kinds of all-too-common comments intended to humiliate or reduce women or submissives (because of the significant overlap, both work here) within the pansexual community but outside the context of negotiated scenes or relationships. Millar’s post quotes a few specific examples from the two studies he refers to, but you can find many more if you read either one in full. They are remarkably familiar for anyone who’s spent time in pansexual scene space.

Point 2. Rape jokes aren’t funny.

I don’t mean in that in a finger-wagging way. I just mean they aren’t actually funny. They fail to get a laugh most of the time (with some notable exceptions I detail in the next point).

You know what always kills a joke? When you have to explain it, or explain why it’s funny. I often see people trying to explain why rape jokes are funny, so that tells me right away that they pretty much aren’t. There are a few classics, like “Can’t you take a joke?” or “You have no sense of humour,” both surefire lines of defence for people who don’t know how to make good ones. And then we also have a few more righteously principled defences. One I often hear goes something like, “Well, if I can joke about murder, why not rape? Are you saying it’s okay to laugh about murder but not about rape? Do you think murder’s okay, but rape isn’t?”

I don’t know why it comes up so often, but it really does. And it’s particularly relevant because answering those questions tells us a lot about precisely why rape jokes aren’t funny.

If we look at some yummy Stats Can data, it tells us that “Police reported 605 homicides in 2006 … a rate of 1.85 homicides per 100,000 population.”

Meanwhile, also according to Stats Can, “Quantifying sexual assault continues to be a challenge, since the large majority (91%) of these crimes are not reported to police. According to self-reported victim data from the 2004 GSS on Victimization, approximately 512,200 Canadians aged 15 and older were the victims of a sexual assault in the 12 months preceding the survey. Expressed as a rate, there were 1,977 incidents of sexual assault per 100,000 population aged 15 and older reported on the 2004 GSS.”

Do we see a difference here? Fewer than two murders per 100,000; just under 2,000 sexual assaults per 100,000 and that’s only counting the 12-month period right before the survey. Let’s keep in mind that a person can be sexually assaulted numerous times in a lifetime and most of us rarely answer Stats Can surveys, whereas murders by definition happen only once and, with some notable exceptions, are pretty reliably reported, what with, y’know, dead bodies to deal with and such. I’d say the scale difference here is rather evident.

What am I getting at? Well, we—many of us, at least in non-war-torn North America—can joke about murder because we’ve never met someone who got murdered, or murdered someone, or met a murderer, or been murdered. Most of us will never encounter that reality in our entire lives, so it’s distant, and that makes it easy to be callous about, to treat as banal. I’d be willing to bet that if 2,000 out of 100,000 people had witnessed a murder in the last 12 months, we likely wouldn’t be laughing much about that either, not to mention there would be 2,000 fewer people around per year to make the jokes. Rape is a concrete reality for many of us, and it’s much harder to find anything funny about it as a result. So the comparison to murder doesn’t hold up. It’s not about one being more right than the other, or more PC. It’s just about how difficult it is to find humour in serious trauma that directly affects many of us all the time.

When people are challenged about making rape jokes, I also hear a lot of them cry “censorship,” start talking about the PC police, or beat the tired old argument that we should be allowed to discuss anything we want within the realm of kink because it’s supposed to be this safe place where anything goes as long as it’s consensual. And y’know, far be it from me to tell you what you can and can’t talk about, unless of course I’m moderating the group, in which case I’d be well within my rights to shut down inappropriate topics as outlined in the rules.

But will I tell you what I think you should and shouldn’t talk about or say? Hell yeah. For instance I think you shouldn’t use racist terminology, make fun of fat people, joke about people with disabilities, or sling around homophobic slurs. Challenging people—kindly, without personal attack, and with the benefit of the doubt, until such benefit is clearly no longer warranted—when they’re being douchebags is itself dialogue, not censorship; it is a really valuable form of activism. It contributes to creating a group climate where dissent is an option, where people have the opportunity to learn about what hurts and marginalizes people who aren’t like them, where people outside a narrow range are more likely to feel welcome and included (and then everyone gets laid more). Who said it’s okay to make some people feel rotten (by making rape jokes) but not to make others feel rotten (by calling out bullshit)? I’d say it’s pretty even as far as deals go, though if I had to pick whose feelings I’m more concerned about, I’d definitely be more likely to worry about those of a possible rape survivor than those of a guy who wants to make a tasteless joke. I know, that privilege is a hard thing to look at, but really, guy, you need to get over it. I’m not much one for playing the Oppression Olympics, but for what it’s worth, on the scale of oppression, you lose.

Does that mean we shouldn’t talk about rape fantasies in the context of kink? Nope. I think we should talk about them as much as we like. It’s a helluva charged-up topic for all kinds of good reasons and that makes it well worth discussing. But talking about our individual kinks is not the same as joking about what person we’d really like to rape, how much so-and-so really needs to get raped, how rape is probably the only sex so-and-so gets, or any other similarly stupid, boring tripe. These things are not thoughtful discussion, exploration of a taboo kink, genuine engagement with an edgy form of fantasy or play. There is a world of difference between saying “I fantasize about doing a rape scene” or “my partner wants to do a rape scene and I’m not sure how” and “Jill really needs to get raped in a back alley, haha!” If you’re not enough of a grown-up to be able to tell the difference, you probably shouldn’t be playing this game at all.

We could get into a big debate here about how things are different if a woman, and not a man, makes the joke, or laughs at it, or if the joke is about a female rapist, or a male victim, and so on, and so forth. I’m not really interested in debating it much though. Sure, it might be different on some level, as many things are depending on who’s saying them. Okay. Fair enough. It’s still not particularly funny to make a rape joke. It might be less directly reflective of the reality of rape out there in the world, but really, does that make it therefore hilarious and/or justifiable? Seems to me it simply creates an environment that makes it acceptable for people who are not in these “more justifiable” categories to also make rape jokes. And really? Meh. I can think of better things to stand up for than my right to make unfunny jokes about my own possible sexual assault perpetration or victimization. They’re a bit clunky, and they still play into the fact that…

Point 3. Rape jokes directly support and encourage rapists.

For this one, I’ll refer you to yet another brilliant post, this one by Organon.

Here’s a quote that sums up the post:

“6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act—and that’s the conservative estimate. Other sources double that number.

“A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

“Rapists do.

“They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

“Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.”

So basically, if you make a rape joke, casually banter about doing non-consensual things to that hot woman or submissive over there, or treat rape as though it were something banal and normal and nothing to get terribly upset about, well then sure, you might be triggering the one in four women sitting nearby who’s been raped. And sure, you’re making yourself look like a complete douchebag (no, sadly, you don’t come off as a super-sexy “edgy” kind of kinkster, despite how desperately you might like to—if you are that edgy, surely you can come up with a more creative strategy). But mostly, what you’re doing is inviting the one guy of the proverbial twenty, who is also sitting nearby, to rape someone, quite possibly someone in that same room. Because he doesn’t think you’re joking. He thinks you’re completely serious, and that it’s completely okay to do that.

And you know what? Even if you’re not sitting near that one-in-twenty guy? The women sitting nearby? They might think you, yourself, are that one guy in twenty who might actually rape them, given the chance, considering how completely blasé you’re being about the topic.

And even worse? Maybe you actually are that guy. You sure do exhibit all the signs. Really you’re kinda advertising it, wouldn’t you say? This, right here, is about the only reason I can think of why you might want to continue making rape jokes, or laughing at them—at least now your targets can see you. So if you are that one in twenty, please, make all the rape jokes you want. Because if all the non-rapists in the room stop making them, and stop laughing at them, but you keep right on keeping on, then we’ll know exactly who to avoid. In the meantime, there’s a degree of mistrust that sorta has to be extended to everyone, because it’s sometimes hard to tell which one of every twenty is the one-in-twenty who’s truly dangerous.

And with that in mind…

Point 4. The BDSM community does not keep anyone safe from rape.

The research doesn’t talk specifically about the BDSM community on this point, but the statement applies there as much as anywhere else. In fact, no community, network, or set of trusted friends and acquaintances keeps anyone safe from rape. Why? Because 70% of rapes are committed by someone who knows the victim.

That figure, or higher, is repeated all over the place—the Toronto Police Service, the Rape Victims Support Network, Victims of Violence (with research funded by the Department of Justice Canada), and even good ol’ Stats Canada.

Some of those perpetrators are relatives, colleagues or neighbours. And some of them are friends and acquaintances. In other words, even if we drop all the husbands, boyfriends, dads, work colleagues and so forth from the list and focus exclusively on the “other acquaintances” category, the simple fact of knowing people—like, say, from attending the same munch a few times or seeing each other at the occasional play party—is no guarantee of protection. Quite the reverse. The people habitually found in a given social setting are the ones most likely to rape the other people in that same social setting.

So please, let’s stop with the idea that we police the SM world and magically make it safe for everyone because of our focus on consent. If 19 out of 20 guys (and yes, I am focusing on guys here, because the studies above also note that around 97% of sexual assault perpetrators are male) believe in consent-only activity and practice it 100% of the time, that still leaves the one guy out of twenty who doesn’t and who is still happily ensconced within the community. And let’s recall that many of those 19, along with a few gals, may be making that one guy feel perfectly justified about what he does, because while not being rapists, they may still be helping to create an environment in which rapists can flourish, or at least get by relatively unnoticed. So if you’re one of those folks who thinks that if you say “consent” often enough, you’ve paid your dues and can now also make or laugh at a rape joke, think again. These things do not cancel each other out.

Point 5. People vastly under-report incidences of rape and sexual assault, mainly because of fear of repercussion or ostracization.

If you were an oppressed sexual minority—say, a kinkster—all your life, and you finally found a community where you could meet like-minded people, and explore this very deep and compelling part of yourself with people you find attractive, wouldn’t you want to make sure your membership in that community wasn’t jeopardized? And if that community distrusted the cops because the cops had been known to arrest them for their enjoyable consensual activity, and possibly even take away their kids or get them fired from their workplace, wouldn’t you be unlikely to bring the cops’ attention their (your) way? And if you knew that because you were a pervert, the cops might think you were really asking for it anyway (much like if you were a sex worker, or a gal with a short skirt, and so forth), wouldn’t you be less likely, in the midst of your own trauma, to risk adding the further trauma of being disbelieved and your charges dismissed? Yeah, well, layer all that on top of the existing reasons why 91% of your average not-kinky people who get sexually assaulted don’t report it to the police, and you have the perfect storm.

I don’t think we will ever know how many people get raped or sexually assaulted within the pansexual BDSM scene because those people have a whole fuckload of reasons why not to ever tell—way more so than their non-kinky counterparts.

Conclusion: Reality bites.

We can talk about consent, safewords, negotiation and safe calls, and we can trot out the existence of female dominants and male submissives all we want. None of this makes reality go away:

• The pansexual scene both displays the idea that men are in charge (dominant) and women are not (submissive) and reinforces that as a norm.
• Discourse about the proper roles of dominants (men) and submissives (women) within the pansexual scene commonly steps way outside the bounds of negotiated relationships or scenes, which is not okay.
• Rape jokes (which are not okay even outside the scene) are made within the pansexual BDSM scene directly or indirectly as part of that discourse.
• Rape jokes in any context reassure rapists that what they do is normal, okay and approved-of; in BDSM spaces, they reassure rapists that even here, regardless of a parallel “consent” discourse, rape is still okay.
• So-called community self-policing does not erase the occurrence of rape and sexual assault.
• The pansexual scene’s internal community codes as well as the pansexual community’s relationship to the dominant society may directly act as deterrents to the reporting of sexual assault, whether to the police or within the community itself.

Consider this: a rapist walks into a pansexual BDSM event. He looks around and sees that mostly, the men are dominant and the women are submissive, and there’s a whole complex language around consent. But then he also notices that people aren’t really practicing what they preach, or at least they seem to do so inconsistently, because clearly sexist dynamics are playing out outside scenes or ongoing D/s connections. And the people joke about rape in a way that makes it seem like that’s just as cool here as it is anywhere else—and not only that, but they’ve got fancy things like collars and cuffs and rope to make it all even easier! All he needs to do is learn the “in-crowd” language to avoid being easily detected. Cuz really, once he’s got that down, he’s not very likely to encounter much resistance, and even if he did, she’d never take it to the cops. And she wouldn’t risk saying anything in the community either, cuz she’d get snubbed. Sweet deal.

It’s a bit sobering, isn’t it?

And that’s why rape jokes aren’t funny, even if you’re kinky. They are only one part of a larger system in which many other things happen that are not funny, but they are also one of the easiest to simply stop. So let’s stop making them. We’re a creative, intelligent bunch, or at least we sure like to think of ourselves that way. I’m sure we can find plenty else to laugh about.

***

And here is that promised footnote on my response to classic dismissals.

1. “You’re just a humourless feminist.” Feminist? Yes, and honestly, unless you are a frothing idiot, you are too, or at the very least, you believe a lot of the same things feminists classically believe whether you label it as such or not. In fact, most kinky guys do, according to this article by Patricia A. Cross and Kim Matheson. In their research, they found no appreciable difference between sadomasochists and non-sadomasochists in terms of their attitudes and beliefs regarding feminism. (Though it sure is interesting that their findings also indicate that, while still well within the range of pro-feminist, men in SM communities generally have a higher belief in traditional gender roles than women do, regardless of kink role.) Humourless? Well, I make no claim to stand-up comic prowess, but I think I’m pretty funny, and by all accounts most of the people I know would agree, but I guess that’s up for argument. While we’re at it, shall we debate the equally subjective notions of “attractive” or “smart”? I’ll pencil you in for that discussion sometime in 2080, ‘kay? Call me.
2. “You’re missing the point. This discussion isn’t about rape, it’s about (insert stated topic here).” If you made a rape joke, guess what? Now the discussion is about rape. Oopsie for you. Next time, stick to the topic at hand and you will not have a much-deserved shitstorm on your hands.
3. “You’re just a man-hating lesbian.” If by the word “lesbian” you mean “woman who likes to fuck women,” you’re bang-on. Mmmmwomen. But I’m not a lesbian, properly speaking, because I also have a long history of dating, playing with and fucking men, as well as trans folks who identify all along the gender spectrum, the latter of which includes my partner of five years. I suppose it is possible I could have done all that and still hated the men and other non-female-identified people I’ve been with, but that would be an awfully significant waste of time. And also? I have three brothers who are the awesomest guys in the world, so anytime I’ve been even remotely tempted to say “I hate men,” I have always caught myself, because seriously? These guys would give hope to the most man-hating of man-hating dykes. (On a side note, most dykes who don’t sleep with men don’t actually hate them. It’s more that most men are just kinda irrelevant to them, which I suspect gets some guys’ knickers in a knot way more than any actual hating would.) More important than my sexual history, though, is that I don’t really think hating anyone is the most productive of places to put my activist energy. I’d much rather invest in coalition-building and avoid grossly stereotyping groups on the basis of a single shared characteristic given that, y’know, that’s kinda what gets done to me, and I don’t like it. Also, I was born at least a decade too late to get caught up in the Sex Wars. Hello from the third wave.
4. “You’re just bitter/triggered/biased because someone raped you.” Actually, no. I’ve never been raped or sexually assaulted. I am one of those fortunate women—and how awful that one should have to be fortunate in living to their mid-thirties without being raped. Hey, I’m not saying nobody’s ever tried. If you have a spare day or two, I could list you the many, many times I’ve had guys (always guys) attempt to get me drunk, try to corner me in a room alone, or flash me in a subway station. There’ve been so many I’ve lost count—and I’m hardly exceptional in that regard, and my stories are hardly the most dramatic. Certainly I’ve had plenty of non-consensual touch inflicted upon me, including in kink spaces. But nobody’s ever managed to get it any further than a single unwelcome move. Whether because my big bad scary dominance has given them pause, or my strategic escapes have left them in the dust, or my physical self-defense has been enough to show them there be dragons there (or just really sharp fingernails), or I’ve just been plain lucky, I don’t know, but suffice it to say I have no directly personal triggers in relation to the topic of rape. That all being said, if you’re going to disqualify someone from speaking about rape precisely because she or he has been raped, I’m seriously not impressed. If you follow that logic for a step or two, what topics of significance to you are you no longer qualified to speak about? I bet the list would get long awfully quickly, so let’s quit while we’re ahead, hmm?

With that in mind, here is a message from me, potential and actual leather contest judge, to you, potential and actual contestants.

You need to know, going in, that a lot of people in the world think leather title contests are kinda silly. And I’m not just talking about vanilla folks who don’t “get it.” I’m talking about your very own fellow perverts. I am, in many respects, one of those people. In the decade or more of activism and teaching work I’ve done in leather/BDSM/fetish/kink communities, I have to say, it is extremely rare outside title contest circuits themselves that I’ve encountered anyone who understands what the point of contests is, and I’m not even sure I understand it myself. You prance on stage in sexy black clothes and get crowned leader for a year; during that year you bop around to several dozen events in which other people are doing pretty much the same thing you just did; maybe you help pick one of the next leaders-for-a-year; and then it’s all over. What did you accomplish? I’m still not clear on that part. Most titles don’t require you to accomplish anything at all, other than show up places wearing a vest. I fail to see how this is anything other than an exercise in vanity, and many others feel the same way, whether they say so out loud or not.

This is not to say that titleholders don’t accomplish things. Some of them do. Those rare and valuable creatures are basically smart, interesting, driven activists who decide that the fame and visibility afforded them by a title will get them access to new opportunities and contacts who can help them to do the activist work they’re already doing. And they’re right. The catch is, they were already doing cool shit before they ever entered a leather contest, which is why they won. But a lot of people who are already doing cool activism are too damn busy doing cool activism to dress up in chaps and shimmy around on stage, let alone commit to poncing about the continent to tons of places where other people are doing the same thing. This is the issue with leather titles: because of the time and travel commitments, a lot of awesome activists are actively discouraged from entering the contests in the first place. As a result, the vast majority of contestants in the vast majority of contests just aren’t that interesting. They don’t do much. They don’t know much. They don’t have much of substance to say. So we end up with contests that, much of the time, elect the best of the mediocre to represent the community, rather than the best of the best, because the best of the best are working their damn tails off outside the spotlight.

With that rather cynical viewpoint in mind, here is some concrete advice for the prospective titleholder.

First, let’s make a distinction. Some titles are beauty-pageant titles. They are popularity contests for perverts. There is nothing wrong with this. It is a fantastic form of entertainment, if you’re into that sort of thing, and as a pervert, frankly, I am. I like watching hotties shake their booties on stage in the minimal wear category.

If you want to be in a beauty pageant, do exactly that. Don’t pretend to have an agenda. Make it clear that you’re there to have fun, be sexy and encourage others to do the same. There is not a damn thing wrong with this; we are here for sex, after all. And if you’re not—if you are one of those extremely puzzling individuals who just wants to wax your buttcrack, oil your pecs and raise money for children’s charities—go away, please. Seriously. That shit is creepy. Put on a Santa hat and ring a bell instead, and wear your leather when you’re horny, and have some damn boundaries.

Some titles are activist titles. They are intended, to greater and lesser degrees, to elect representatives for the local/regional/national/international leather community. It is debatable whether this is a successful venture—see my earlier framing of this issue. But even if the title circuit is a less-than-ideal manner of accomplishing this end, it is sometimes sincere in its desire to do so.

If you want to be an activist, do that. Have some meaningful politics—don’t just recycle ideas about how the community needs to come together and stop infighting. Even if that is your message—and I would encourage you to think long and hard about that message before you go with it, as it’s tired and trite and not very useful—you should be able to defend it solidly. Who needs to come together? Why and for what concrete purpose? How, precisely, will you encourage that to happen, and why are you the right person for that job? On the other hand, if you have a more original platform—and I hope you do—then what is it? Be precise, know what your motivation is, tell me why the thing you want to accomplish as a titleholder is important, tell me what your strengths are, and tell me how you’ll compensate for your weaknesses. Have some historical knowledge about your local community, your regional community, and (if you’re competing in a big contest) the place of both of those on the national and international scene. Do some reading. Have something thoughtful to say about men, about women, about trans people (including those who identify as men or as women), about race, about age, about dis/ability, about straight people, about queers (including, but not limited to, gay people). Have at least some perspective about the fact that the vast majority of kinky freaks out there can’t afford your outfit, your plane ticket, your hotel and possibly even your last meal, and tell me why you should be representing that majority.

Some titles try to mix these two purposes together: beauty pageantry and activism. I find these exceedingly bizarre, but they are frightfully common. If you’re on a stage for such a contest, then while you’re being sexy, pour it on. Show me that you’re really into this shit. Make me believe you were born in your leather, or that you’ve earned it with blood, sweat and tears, or at the very least (and it really is the least important part, not the most important one) that you know how to find a good stylist and a decent tailor. Be proud of your bare skin too—yes, that includes if you carry forty extra pounds around your middle, or you’re five foot nothing, or you’ve got a hump from your HIV drugs. Believe you are sexy, and be sexy, because you are, and for fuck’s sake don’t be ashamed of it. Show me that you are the perviest perv who ever perved, because we are not clean-cut soft-spoken inoffensive people who just happen to like the smell of leather—we are the sexual margins. We do shit in bed and in public that most of the world only does in their wank fantasies. Embody it. Own it. If you are going to represent me, I want to know that you are a perv through-and-through, because if you’re not, frankly I don’t trust you to represent anything beyond your own damn self, and you shouldn’t be in a leather contest.

And then, once you’re done showing me that you can have dirty sexy fun with the best of us, show me that you can be serious too. Show me that you have a brain behind that sharp-looking military fade, that you care enough to learn some shit before you get on the stage, that you have opinions you’re capable of stating clearly and defending firmly, that you can get a crowd of hundreds to listen to you and that you can get them to think, not just get them to clap.

And if you want to really impress me? Do both of those things at once. I want to know you can hold six hundred people’s attention, while nearly naked, with the power of your words, not the size of your package. Make me believe that you, in your hairy-chested, heavy-booted glory, are actually going to go out there and accomplish something that will change the world, even if it is a small step (it is always a small step), even if it is something that most of the world will think is insignificant or shameful. I want to know that you can write a speech while wearing a collar or getting your dick sucked, and that your speech can still make me cry; I want to know that you can get on a stage in nothing but fuck-me pumps, a G-string and nipple tape and whatever you do next will still have me talking about what you said, not what you wore. This is a very real challenge, people.

In short: you wanna win a leather contest where I’m the judge? Don’t just make me applaud. Make me admire you.

***

UPDATE Jan. 15, 2012:

As of this weekend, I’m now allowed to officially say that I’ve been invited to be a judge for International Mr. Leather of this year, which is by most accounts the world’s biggest and most prestigious leather contest. I received the invitation several months ago, and wrote this post in full awareness that it might cause some stir both before and after the judges were announced.

I know that some people are concerned that a person who doesn’t believe in the title circuit is poorly placed to be a judge within that very system. They may well be right. I enjoy all the fun stuff that happens on a big leather contest weekend, but I don’t buy into the pomp and circumstance and the celebrity culture of the whole thing, even when I’m placed at the heart of it, and as I’ve expressed in detail above, I don’t believe it’s the best way to create or sustain leadership within the leather world.

My lack of buy-in to the system is nothing new. I first blogged about it several years ago, in direct response to an invitation to compete in International Ms. Leather—an invitation which I turned down. Following that, the inimitable Glenda Rider, IMsL’s owner and producer, invited me to judge the event, and I chewed on that for a bit, and asked a bunch of questions, and put my doubts on the table quite frankly. Glenda’s response was, “As a judge, you are not being asked to put aside your prejudices and your opinions. Your opinions are exactly why I’ve invited you. You are here TO JUDGE.” It made a lot of sense to me at the time, and still does now.

I’m not shy to share my critiques of the leather community and its various institutions. I’ve blogged them, I’ve expressed them in keynote addresses, and I imbue all the workshops I teach with a healthy dose of them. (And I am not the only one doing this by any stretch. The illustrious Laura Antoniou, in her trademark hilarious and whip-smart style, roasted the entire title system in her IMsL keynote address a few years back, and went on to judge IML herself last years. She also inspired Mollena, IMsL 2010, to run with her critiques in mind. I tip my hat to her.) But I don’t make my critiques from a place of dismissal or hatred. I make them precisely because I have an investment in the leather community, both personal and political, and I would really like to see it shift in directions that I think would be healthier and more productive. I’m also a firm believer in being the change you want to see in the world, so with that in mind I do my own organizing work—the annual Canadian leatherdyke event An Unholy Harvest, which I co-organize with Jacqueline St-Urbain, and a Toronto-based book club called the Leather Bindings Society—in a way that doesn’t place importance on leather celebrity or titleholding.

I don’t seek out contest judging gigs and never have; they come to me. But I make a solid judge precisely because I have concrete opinions about where I’d like to see the community go. If there is an opportunity for me to bring my values and visions into a system that I see as flawed, and to influence its next leaders who may find themselves in a position to make changes in that system, then I feel I should take that opportunity. If my participation as an IML judge means that the contestants who take some time to research their judges end up realizing (for those who didn’t already) that in order to be a strong IML candidate they might want to know a few basic things about anti-oppression politics, that they might want to do some leather history reading, that they might want to have some kind of platform that’s intelligent and original and not a weak rehash of the same-old same-old… well, then I’m acting exactly in accordance with my politics. For all that I don’t think the title system is the best way to get good leather leaders, at the very least, if you put me in the judge’s seat, there’s some chance that a guy with some brains and some good politics will end up on the podium for the next 12 months. And regardless of the fact that I don’t think the title circuit is a good idea, thousands of other people do, and the holders of the biggest titles on the continent do get listened to, and are given opportunities to wield a lot of influence and do a lot of good work. If I have any say in the matter, which I will, then the guy who wins this year’s title will be worth listening to, will wield his influence wisely and judiciously, and will do good work.

Someone recently asked me why, if I don’t believe in the title circuit, I don’t just step down as a judge and let someone take my place who does believe in it. For the reasons I outline here, I don’t have any inclination to do that, but if the organizers of IML have reason to think I’m the wrong pick for the job, I will of course bow out and let someone they deem more suitable take my place. But I don’t expect that to happen, since they read this post too, weeks before they announced my name, and showed no hesitation in keeping me on the roster.

I’d like to clarify one last thing before finishing. I have plenty of criticism of the title system, but it does not follow that I think poorly of the individuals who operate within it. I really, truly wish the community were structured in a different way, and placed its focus on other matters, but there are plenty of fine people organizing, competing in and attending leather contests. Some people have doubtless been offended by this post regardless, but I do hope they can at least see that I intend no personal slight to anyone here—my critique is of systems, both the title event system proper and the value system that underpins it, but it is not in any way a personal attack on any individuals. I am standing within a community I love and saying out loud that I’d like it to change for the better. I’d like to see more political awareness and less politicking. More embracing of difference and less focus on money, fame and status. More sex and less shame (read: fewer attempts at self-redemption as perverts via fundraising for unrelated charities, a pet peeve Guy Baldwin articulated in brutally honest terms at last year’s Leather Leadership Conference). More knowledge of (and concrete, peer-reviewed scholarship on) leather history and less rosy idolizing of the mythological past. More awareness of privilege and less reiterating of tired old ineffective messages. I’m doing my bit as best I can, and I will use whatever influence I’ve got to ask others to do the same.

Here are a few of my favourites in the past couple of months:

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Q: What’s the technical term for when a bunch of guys jizz in a condom, freeze it, and use it to fuck someone?

A: Devil’s Dick. (It took a rather extensive squeezing of my social networks to find this term, and in the end none of my leathermen friends were able to help, even the ones who do porn—the answer came from a dyke!)

***

Q: Where can I source industrial quantities of lube, and what’s a good venue for me to hold a pervy party where a mixed-gender bunch of us can roll around in it?

A: Ask your local progressive sex shop about bulk purchasing the first item and talk to the edgier public play clubs or gay men’s saunas in your city for the second—if they allow gender-mixed crowds on certain days they’re less likely to freak out about female cooties, and if they have large communal showers, they’re more likely to be equipped to handle big mess. If you have a women and trans bathhouse event in your city, ask the organizers which clubs are most amenable to being approached about things slightly outside their usual mandate. Straight swingers’ clubs are an option but you may have to deal with a lot of cumbersome and expensive membership requirements, and not all swingers clubs are especially perv-friendly, so ask them frank questions before you book.

***

Q: My girlfriend really wants to vaginally fist me, and I really want to get fisted, but when she gets to the fourth finger and tucks her thumb, I tighten up and I just can’t let her in further. What should I do?

A: That’s often the biggest challenge point of a fisting—the thickest, widest portion of the hand. A lot of people would tell you to just use a ton more lube. While using extra lube may be a good plan for you depending on your hydration levels, the state of your hormones, your age and various other factors, in principle I believe that you’re better off listening to the body and treating it gently than dousing it with slippery stuff until you can force things to happen when the body is sending you the message that it’s not ready yet. For this particular challenge point, a favourite trick of mine is to have the top stop pushing, and simply hold steady. The bottom can then relax because she doesn’t feel like there is any “threat” to her tender inner bits, and she can essentially use her vaginal muscles to gradually, slowly pull the steady hand inside her at whatever pace suits her best. She can stop at any time, ask for adjustments, masturbate if it feels good, and so forth. Make no mistake about it: being the receptive partner can be a very active process!

But also remember that inserting the entire hand shouldn’t be a goal to achieve as much as a really super sexy enjoyable process to get into together. Anytime you impose a sense of deadline, obligation or accomplishment on a sexual act, it’s guaranteed to load it with the kind of stress that sends a lot of us into a state of increased muscular tension, which doesn’t help the whole “relax and have fun” thing to happen. Trust is paramount here, and pressure is often at odds with trust-building. Chill out, have fun, and if you get there, great—but if you don’t, at least you’ve bonded over hot sex rather than over performance anxiety.

***

Oh, there have been more… many, many more. I have often dearly wished I could share them with the world, because the questions are often so brave and the situations at times so very intriguing. At the same time, I did a reader survey here a couple of years back, and y’all were quite clear about how even if you like sex advice columns, you didn’t want this blog to become a Q&A blog, because you could get that elsewhere.

So this is kinda the best of both worlds, right? No Q&A here, at least not of the classic variety (this post excepted, and only for demonstration purposes). But now you have a place to send ‘em if you would like to hear my take on whatever you’re going through in your sex life. And yes, I mean you. This is definitely the part where you come in. I wanna hear your questions, so fire away! I’ve got 500 words (one question and one answer) once a month for the next coupla months at least, as In Toronto and I figure out whether we’re a mutual good fit. Y’know, kinda like having sex a few times before you shack up. That sort of thing.

Let me specify that while the editor is quite enthused that I’m approaching things from a kinky-poly-queer perspective, this isn’t a kinky or poly or general edgy-sex column per se—it’s broad enough to include the whole spectrum, so don’t feel you need to have a totally freaky out-there question in order to ask. Bring on the basics as much as the bizarre! I promise I’ll aim to answer with clarity, pith, politics (always), and a good dollop of geekiness. Just e-mail me at veryqueer3 at yahoo dot ca and specify that your question is for the In Toronto column. Or, if you’re comfortable being more public and less anonymous about it, feel free to post ‘em here. If you want me to use a pseudonym, feel free to make one up, or tell me and I will.

I look forward to hearing from you!

I read your recent posts to your blog last night and had a few comments. My big one is I don’t have any sense of why you (or anyone) want to be in a 24/7 “Thing.” My question is very simple, and I would love to see you address it in a future blog: what needs are being met by being in this relationship? (Obviously, I would be interested in both the perspective of the PIC and the POA.)

(Note that in my earlier post, I used the terms Person In Charge, or PIC, and Person Obeying Authority, or POA. They aren’t perfect but they’re pleasantly generic and they get around all of the problems I have with some of the other terminology out there.)

Well, for starters, I don’t think there’s a single answer to this one. People do this in extremely different ways, for a wide array of reasons, and of course any given pairing brings their own personalities, language, and sets of beliefs to the experience.

Speaking for myself, for a long time I actually wouldn’t have said it met a need—in fact it was really uncomfortable for me to get used to the idea that 24/7 worked for me at all, let alone being something I might want or seek out, and from there to saying I “need” it is even now a stretch, though it’s probably closer to true now than it ever has been. I don’t need 24/7… but it feeds me like no other kind of relationship does, and it would take a radical shift for me to decide to enter a serious relationship where that wasn’t part of the package.

Like all of us, I live in a culture that both celebrates and condemns overt power dynamics; that shames people for being powerful; that tells me that especially as a woman, I’m not supposed to want power or enjoy it; and that doesn’t teach us much about how to hold power responsibly, gracefully, or in ways that benefit others.

The introduction to Tammy Jo Eckhart and Fox’s new book, At Her Feet: Powering Your Femdom Relationship (which I have not read in full yet) contains the following paragraph:

“Neither of us has lost or lent out our individual power. By working together toward the mutual goal of a healthy and successful M/s relationship, we help each other improve as people and as a couple, enhancing and increasing our power and therefore directing a higher quality and greater quantity of power toward the dynamic itself. Beyond just the two of us, this power expansion also gives us the foundation from which to contribute to the well-being of everyone around us.”

That sort of leads into one of the things I’d say I get out of M/s, which is extreme intimacy that’s mutually constructed and that benefits all involved with greater self-knowledge, greater health and more generosity of spirit. For me this is about the experience of cultivated, detailed deliberate attunement between two people; a sense of each person’s place, responsibilities and expectations of each other, and a shared clarity about the relationship framework. Somehow that also ends up being exquisitely sexy, in this sort of primal lizard-brain way that I simply cannot explain so I won’t even try. But I must say that no other kind of relationship, in my own life, has ever gotten my brain and pink bits fired up in quite this intense, reliable and lasting a way.

I threw the question “What do you get out of 24/7?” out on Twitter (@sexgeekAZ if you wanna find me there), and a few people responded with their own answers, and have given me permission to share them here.

“I get a sense of being taken care of, that someone I trust has my back, that I have an emotional safety net. What we DO is a mix of domestic stuff (dishes to errands to chauffeuring), time-management, and body-access, by & large. It’s also very, very tied into the romantic relationship I share with my servant, though that’s not how it started out.” – Amazon Syren

Amazon (a PIC) points to another thing that really works for me, too—that sense of being taken care of. It’s a really mutual thing and it’s largely based in differentiated styles of caring. Some people really gravitate toward caring for others in a very anticipatory way, figuring out what they might like and making it happen seamlessly. Some people like to surprise, distract, entertain; some like to listen, analyze; others like to be uber-reliable, and position themselves as a rock to be leaned on. Still others tend toward caring for others in a more directive way. I have a fond memory, for instance, of a friend a number of years ago who knew I was really busy and overworked, and she was pretty pushy about making a date with me anyway; and then she called me and cancelled it at the very last minute and insisted that I was to take the evening to myself in order to relax, with just as much a sense of commitment to that as I had been willing to put into clearing my schedule to spend time with her. She even went so far as to prescribe a hot bath by candlelight, if I recall. It was pushy, but it felt wonderful.

D/s and M/s relationships are great for people with polarized or complementary styles of expressing love or care to go all out and use them on each other. The example above notwithstanding, I tend to gravitate toward providing care in a directive way, and I tend to gravitate toward people who provide care in a service-oriented way. But ultimately, we’re each in service to the other, if you really think about it.

“I get to be me. Not just for a moment but all the time. I don’t have to try to fit society’s roles. I am loved, valued and secure.” – Tonya

(Interestingly, I can’t tell from this whether Tonya’s a PIC, a POA or both—and even more interestingly, it doesn’t matter, because what she says works equally well in all cases.)

Tonya speaks to another piece, about the range of permissible expression of (or desire for) power in society at large. To me this resonates as well. D/s and M/s allow us to be who we are all the time, rather than squeezing certain aspects of ourselves into prescribed containers. I often describe M/s as relaxing. It’s work, to be sure, but it’s work that goes in line with who I am, rather than the everyday work I do to appropriately function within what the rest of the world thinks is okay—which largely requires that we ignore, apologize for or politely minimize power dynamics (and which, I might add, therefore makes room for enormous abuses).

It’s incredibly delicious when someone not only gives me permission to be all the way myself, but who actually desires that in me. Speaking of their submission, a partner of mine once said, more or less, “You mean you really want this? You actually like this? All my other partners have found it annoying.” It was such a sweet moment for me to be able to say “No, that is beautiful, it’s exactly what I want, and do not ever be ashamed of that.” It’s like we each give each other permission and encouragement to be who we most deeply are. It’s just so damn easy.

Of course there was, and sometimes still is, a lot of work for me to get through all the “nice people don’t do that/want that” and “what gives you the right?” and “how is that possibly good for him/her/you?” messages that society imposes on people who take up power. And I know that for people on the submissive end, they often have to fight messages like “but that makes you weak and pathetic” or “you’re just immature and dependent” or “be a real man” or what have you. We all face that in plain old SM play, so just imagine how much more of it there is to deal with in 24/7—unless of course you’re a sociopath or just a totally insensitive clod. But for me at least, the evidence shows me that I’m on track: I have happy, healthy, vibrant, sexy, turned-on, honest, communicative, caring, kind, lasting relationships with people; and even when it comes to the ones I’ve split up with, I still maintain trusting friendships and a sense of family with them, every one. Peggy Kleinplatz lists some of the things that society at large can learn from SM relationships about trust, intimacy and mutual vulnerability—“Lessons from the Edge: Learning from Extraordinary Lovers” in the book Sadomasochism: Powerful Pleasures if you’re curious. A lot of those apply quite nicely to 24/7 dynamics.

zbeline, a POA, writes a longer reason for her interest in 24/7, which I’ll quote here in full because it’s really kinda beautiful:

“I do it because I found the right person to do it with. I do it because it still works amazingly for us after 18 months. I remember longing for it, a long time ago, and having evening-long discussions with a friend of mine, now in a live-in, 24/7 M/s relationship, who was not quite there back then, but had been there in the past with more or less success. She said I opened big eyes (not surprised eyes, just very hopeful ones, I guess) when I asked: ‘Can people really do it?’ I knew people who said they were in that kind of relationship, but I was still doubtful that was completely true.

“By the way, why am I into power exchange in the first place? The short answer would be because it is hot in many, many respects. I mean, for me. Kink-wise, power exchange is what works for me. Oh, I can take part in hot SM scenes without a deep involvement beyond the scene, of course, but there has to be an exchange of power, if temporary. Other scenes in which some hard struggling or sensation play are involved, for example, without the surrendering of one’s power into the other person’s hand, can be fun, and I can enjoy them, but they don’t make me deeply wet. That is also true when I top: I need to be given the power over the other person, and I have no interest in fighting for it. It’s fun to watch, but that’s not my personal cup of tea.

“Now back the the 24/7 part of your question. Same answer: because it is hot. With an extension: because it is deeply hot. Because I need to surrender my power into hands that I trust, I tend to be hesitant to just jump in and play with people I don’t know much. Or sometimes I will do scenes just to experiment some new sensations or try a new technique, but as I said above, that doesn’t completely do the trick for me. I need to have a connection with the person I submit to, obviously, and I need to be around people who feel the same need. And although it’s interesting to explore horizontally, and play with a variety of people, I also find it a bit more rewarding, in the long run, to explore vertically, with the same people, to deepen the experience.

“I know I wouldn’t have to be in a 24/7 D/s relationship for that. I could have relationships with people I love and trust deeply, and D/s could just be a part of the deal. That happened in the past, and that was fine. I do it now because I met someone with whom my naive description of a 24/7 D/s relationship (‘What I know is my ideal D/s relationship is one in which the other person would have the power to shift the mood from the mundane to the kinky’) hit the target. It brings me peace to know that I don’t have to pretend there is no power exchange between the moments when there is (in the bedroom, in the dungeon…). For, to me, D/s always tended to colour other aspect of a relationship anyway, even when it was agreed it wouldn’t. I like it now, because everything is clear.

“I find myself at home in that kind of relationship also because it is based on openness. In other relationships, in spite of my need or quest for sincerity, I have sometimes found myself… mmmm… not really lying, but tempering down the truth to protect the other person. Hiding emotions for the same reason. A D/s relationship is based on openness. Also, the fact that I don’t shut down my vulnerability between moments of intimacy means not only that I have to remain open, or want to, but that I become incapable of closing myself to the other person. I like the ‘absolute’ aspect of a D/s relationship. At least, in its ideal expression.

“What I get out of it, is a sense of rightness, of peace. Things are just as they should be, and nobody has to pretend they are something else. Of course, it is a work in progress, and not always a rectilinear one, with glorious moments, a few spectacular failures, but always rewarding in the long run. And erotic, of course.”

I can’t say these snippets represent the perspectives of all PICs or all POAs, of course, but it’s at least a start, right?

Second, you use the example of choosing someone’s outfits, but there’s not much at stake there. This leads to my second question: Is it desirable or even possible to make all the decisions in a relationship?  

No, on both counts. You’re totally right about the choosing-outfits example—it’s convenient for illustrative purposes but isn’t particularly deep.

The way I’d describe 24/7 relationships is not that one person makes all decisions and the other makes none. It’s more like the decision-making process shared by the two people looks different than it might in a non-power-based relationship. Any good dominant knows they can’t make decisions without consultation or discussion, or make decisions without explaining them to or running them by the submissive. The dominant may technically have the right to do so, but they can’t realistically exercise it outside extreme or urgent situations, and rarely at that, because that sort of thing damages trust, and trust is the currency of the entire relationship structure. Dominant-only decisions can work in small matters, such as shirt colour choices, but even then, not without a lot of work at the beginning, and never without exception.

It’s just that the mutuality of the decision-making process may lie in a different place. To arrive at a good decision, the dominant has to ask a lot of questions, really probe to find out what the submissive needs and wants, and really listen to those responses and filter them through what they know of the submissive’s desire to please or obey; the dominant needs to make saying “no” a safe thing for the submissive. On the flip side, the submissive needs to work on clearly stating desires, needs, particularities; on answering questions with accurate information and not with what they think the dominant wants to hear; and so on, and so forth. (Of course the particular challenges look different in each individual power pairing, and are even reversed in some cases; I’m just describing some typical ones here.) Sure, the final decision may lie in the dominant’s hands, but if he or she makes the wrong call, you can be certain that the next time around, the submissive won’t really be “as submissive,” because he or she won’t be as trusting. Do that for a few rounds and the relationship falls apart—and so much for 24/7. So there’s no way that decision-making in 24/7 is a one-sided process. It’s deeply mutual, it’s just coded through the mechanisms of a power dynamic.

As for whether it is possible for one person to make all the decisions—no, not even by the kind of process I describe here, at least not directly. This is where a concept like “protecting the property” comes in handy—this one I borrow from a grateful slave and Guy Baldwin, who co-authored the book Slavecraft. They write about the idea that the submissive is in charge of properly managing themselves because they are the property of the dominant. A person’s thinking changes when they are considering themselves to be the highly valued and treasured property of another, and required to respect another person’s value system. So for instance on their own, they might not eat greens every day, but knowing that their dominant wants them to be healthy, they might be motivated to do so. A 24/7 relationship can essentially build in a requirement for the submissive’s self-care and self-management. On the flip side, if a dominant is requiring high standards of self-care for a submissive, it becomes important to set a good example, so a dominant is often challenged to take better care of themselves too, and ask for the submissive’s assistance in that project. It can be a great little feedback loop. The question “what would my dominant have me do?” also comes in handy—it’s a way for the submissive to make decisions based on the agreed-upon adoption of the other’s value system even in the absence of that person. This is a concept that some refer to as internalized enslavement. It’s very deliberate, very chosen, and very pleasurable. And it’s all about the submissive making everyday, ongoing choices to engage in the dynamic as much as the dominant. There is absolutely no way this kind of relationship can work if it’s about force, guilt, coercion, and so forth. It only works when daily, moment-to-moment choices are being made by both participants, and that requires enormous self-discipline and agency on the part of the submissive as much as on that of the dominant.

In short—24/7 can allow the reach of the two people’s influence in one another’s lives to extend into extremely intimate and vulnerable places that most relationship structures don’t typically account for or have the language to discuss, and the mutuality of that influence is crucial to its maintenance. Beyond that, 24/7 not only codes and makes explicit the power dynamics that are going on, but it engages with them deliberately, and deepens and enhances them rather than simply naming them; and this whole thing (often) happens with a strong correlation to erotic gratification, which saturates the entire experience with the kind of pleasure—intellectual, physical, emotional—that most other types of engagement with power dynamics don’t really include.

Third, I think reflective couples think about and discuss the power dynamics in their relationship all the time. I’m not remotely convinced being “vanilla” makes you less thoughtful about power dynamics — it certainly doesn’t play out that way among my friends. There is a lot more discourse about power in certain politicized communities — therapists/social workers, lesbian-feminists, socialists, leather folks, and that may make people who participate in those communities more reflective about their personal power dynamics OR NOT. There is no shortage of irony or hypocrisy or just plain bullshit floating around. As my partner is fond of saying, there’s no cure for human nature. 

Yup. I agree. I certainly don’t think there’s any automatic relationship skill set that comes with being kinky, and I’m not at all saying that vanilla relationships can’t be thoughtful about power dynamics. Also, in no way am I extending my statements about 24/7 to the entire SM/leather community—24/7 practitioners are actually a very tiny minority therein to begin with. And I’m also not saying that everyone who does 24/7 is doing it with the kind of consciousness, care, thoughtfulness and sense of responsibility that I describe here and in my earlier post. In an ideal world this would be true but I’m not so naive as to think we live there.

As for discourse about power in other communities, yes, you’re quite right on that count too. I can imagine a pair of therapists, say, who discover that their intimacy can go far deeper with a fellow therapist because they too have shared language around relationships and power dynamics. So I certainly wouldn’t want to try and stack my preferred kind of intimacy against theirs and tell them mine comes out the winner—I don’t know why that would be useful to anyone, and I certainly don’t think anyone would be qualified to judge such a thing in the first place.

What I am saying is that 24/7 dynamics provide a particular set of concepts and language, and allow for a particular range of pleasures, that frame and sustain intimate relationships in a distinct way—not better or worse, but certainly distinct from any other. For a lot of the people who do 24/7, the kind of deep intimacy and pleasure that we experience in these relationships does vastly outstrip any other kind we’ve had—but that’s perhaps because we’re cut out for relating this way (in terms of our thinking processes, our spirituality, our sexual proclivities, and so forth) and so of course when we discover it, it works well for us.

I think the distinction, for me, between 24/7 and other types of relationships in which power is discussed openly and frankly, is that in 24/7 power is not just discussed but deliberately increased—in the sense of continually deepening the power polarization—and this process is explicitly enjoyed as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end (though it may well be that too). I don’t know of any other structure in which this is the case. This still doesn’t make it better or worse than anything else, but it does make it distinct.

I’m writing this post from my laptop on the highway that leads from Haines Junction to Whitehorse, Yukon. This summer I’m taking an intensive reading course on psychoanalysis and sadomasochism, which has me reading a ton of Freud and later theorists. One of my typical reading strategies when dealing with heavy material is to read sections interspersed with a bit of light reading to clear my head—sort of like the sorbet they serve between courses of a heavy Italian wedding meal. Most of the time I choose porn, but occasionally something else strikes my fancy, and it was with that in mind that I purchased a copy of Book Love, subtitled A Celebration of Writers, Readers, and The Printed & Bound Book (inconsistently and excessively capitalized in an oh-so-charming fashion), edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson.

The book is partly what it purports to be—a collection of 600 delicious quotes about the beauty and value of printed (yes, on paper) books. Considering that I’m currently lugging no fewer than 25 books with me on my little seven-week summer jaunt away from home, and that I have not (yet?) opted for an e-reader (mostly because when you’re reading a stack of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, more than half of the stack won’t be available in e-format anyway), the topic of this little gem seemed quite apropos.

But the book is partly also a thinly veiled, and at times not veiled at all, diatribe against technological innovation. Some of this anti-technology sentiment is expressed with what could potentially be read as self-deprecating humour, such as this quote from Sarah McNally:

When things get tense in a book, you start doing things like stroking the edge of the pages. When you do that on your iPhone, the next thing you know you’ve frozen the thing.

Others read more like the kind of overblown hand-wringing that makes one roll one’s eyes, such as this one from Jill Carpenter:

I miss library card catalogs terribly, and I hate searching for books using the on-line catalog. Reading books on a computer seems like having one’s hand cut off.

Um, really? Perhaps Jill Carpenter might like to have her hand cut off and see if the experience is anything like looking at a computer screen.

Or take this one, from William Gibson:

The (digital) present is more frightening than any imaginable future I might dream up. If Marshall McLuhan were alive today, he’d have a nervous breakdown.

Or this one from Russell Baker:

The oversell on the “information superhighway” exploits the same public gullibility that true atomic-energy believers exploited decades ago. It’s a gullibility that flows from a touchingly credulous eagerness to believe that new miracle ages are constantly lurking just around the corner.

Or this one from W. Scott Olsen:

I think that, fiction, poetry, and essays on the Net are heading toward the status of junk mail.

(Apparently in addition to odd capitalization, the editors have decided that misplaced commas are also charming. Perhaps they might invest in paying someone to practice the age-old and quite respectably fusty art of copy editing. They could even insist that it be done on real paper with a real red pen. Or maybe a quill and ink-jar, just to keep with the theme.)

At least William Gibson had the courage to say what’s going on here outright: fear. Russell Baker chooses condescension—a classic manner of retaining one’s threatened sense of superiority—and W. Scott Olsen opts for some more hand-wringing (as if the quality of fiction, poetry and essays somehow magically drops if they pop up on a computer screen instead of on a piece of paper). But these writers are all essentially saying the same thing: we are terrified of change.

To be fair, the book is also filled with wonderful quotes that do, indeed, celebrate the joy of the printed word, with great eloquence. Unfortunately the inclusion of what more or less amounts to a lot of rather pathetic-sounding technology-bashing leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.

In my mind, advocating for the sensual pleasures of the book does not require that other avenues for publishing be denigrated. The printed book’s many virtues are sufficiently strong without that kind of dubious assistance. A book is a meaningful object in a way that a PDF cannot ever be. A book has a look, a smell, a feel, a weight in the hand. It is tangible in the way that a scratchy blanket or a lover’s slightly damp skin or a cool, pleasantly rounded stone is tangible. It lends itself to physical enjoyment—for instance, burying one’s nose between pages to catch a whiff of the rot of old bindings, the pungency of fresh ink, the vaguely plasticky scent of photograph gloss. If a book were only ever meant to convey information, then it wouldn’t have become such an artistically produced object in the first place. Monks would never have toiled for a lifetime at illuminating biblical manuscripts, nobody would ever have bothered inventing hard covers and sturdy gold-embossed leather bindings, and today’s publishers wouldn’t invest in commissioning cover art, developing original typefaces, choosing paper weights and so forth.

It seems to me that rather than spouting fear-based anti-technology rhetoric, we should instead be considering the questions of purpose, pleasure and access.

Purpose: Why are we reading? To keep up with friends? To study? To masturbate? To better understand history, or science, or art? To have our perceptions of the world challenged, or perhaps affirmed? If you’re like me, you read for all of these purposes and then some at various points in time, and that means that you may choose a wide range of methods and formats for your reading. None of these methods is inherently better or worse than the others. They are simply more or less appropriate to a given goal.

Electronic reading presents advantages that paper books do not. Most people don’t extol the sensual virtues of the latest cheap pocket novel, the papery pleasures of leafing through a scholarly article, or the wonders of the morning paper’s typeface. That’s just not really what these items are for. The first is for fast, forgettable amusement; the second is far more about content than form (and with the average scholarly article that applies as much to the writing style itself as to the format of its delivery!); and the third is about immediate access to a steady stream of swiftly changing information.

Pleasure: Where does pleasure come into the picture? What kinds of pleasure do we seek in our reading, and how is that pleasure attained?

If I’ve learned anything from all this Freud I’ve been reading, it’s that we constantly seek pleasure and seek to minimize pain. As such, it doesn’t make much sense to rage about what “should” be taking place in the realm of reading, as though we’d learn to hate search engines and love Crime and Punishment by sheer force of an external guilt trip. Reading is pleasurable. Even when it’s hard, perhaps especially when it’s hard, it expands our minds and nourishes us in places we sometimes don’t know we’re hungry. If people want to sacrifice the pleasure of the printed page for the convenience of the e-reader, but they are still reading, what on earth is the problem?

Access: What kind of material do we, or can we, gain access to with new technology? What kind of material have we lost access to? Are there ways to bring back lost access?

As a scholar, I can say without a doubt that my academic work is immeasurably facilitated by the existence of electronic access to reading material. I’d much rather spend my time actually reading and thinking than hauling my ass 90 minutes across town to my university library unless absolutely necessary, or laboriously poking through a card catalogue for the sake of indulging in misguided nostalgia instead of using a fine-tuned search function. Also, the technologies that have emerged to assist readers with learning disabilities are making books more accessible to people who might never have been able to read them in the past. To me, these are clear gains.

As a reader who values marginal, emerging and local voices, I am deeply disturbed by the death of small and specialized literary presses, because I think they provide a much-needed relief from the slew of interchangeable bestsellers out there; some works that twenty years ago might have become underground classics will simply never see the light of day in the publishing world of 2011. These deaths are intimately related to the deaths of small bookstores and the growth of giant booksellers whose aim is profit, not love of literature. These giants are interested in sales growth by any means necessary, which means they underpay authors, negotiate punishing bulk discounts with publishing houses, and stock sure sells rather than taking a chance on emerging writers. As a culture we have supported these giants in their rise, and in so doing we’ve killed far more interesting and culturally valuable works of literature, publishers and booksellers. This, to me, feels like a terrible, crying loss.

But let’s be clear: this situation has not come about because of electronic access to literature. In fact, new technologies, while certainly hawked ad nauseam by the evil bookselling giants, are also potentially one of the routes to salvation for the little guys. ABEbooks.com gives you instant access to thousands of small and secondhand booksellers worldwide; author and small publisher websites and e-books allow us to buy directly from the source rather than give a chunk of the profit to the middleman; print-on-demand publishing means less overhead for small publishers, who can then focus their resources on the actual work; social media and online presence allow authors and publishers to promote their work directly to current and potential readers, and in some cases, a blogger with a good following can demonstrate to a potential publisher that their work will sell because they can show exactly how many people already read them. Technology is a tool. Like a fork, like a gun, like a piece of rope, it can be used for any number of purposes.

So let’s point the finger where it should be pointed: profit-hungry multinationals, not technological progress. It is terribly shortsighted to scapegoat e-books, of all things, for the current rotten state of literary culture, which is quite simply about capitalist greed, the soulless appropriation of literature by profit-hungry corporations, and our own willing participation in the whole system. I don’t see anyone in Book Love coming out guns ablaze against Amazon and Chapters-Indigo. Why not? I applaud those who wish to celebrate the book, but I deplore their lack of courage in focusing on false enemies when there are real ones looming ever larger, fed by our own hand.

Book Love’s preface, written by Henderson, bemoans the popularity of social media:

Twittering away, we never stop to think. In fact, we may be losing the ability to think. Nicholas Carr in his The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2010) notes that his friends, after years of digital addiction, can’t read in depth anymore. Their very brains are changing, physically. They are becoming “chronic scatterbrains… even a blog post of more than 3 or 4 paragraphs is too much to absorb.”

I’d love to know what kind of “science” Carr used to come up with that little idea. Unlike Henderson and Carr seem to think, I don’t think my brain is turning to mush because I like Twitter—as a reader I’d like to be given a bit more credit than that, thank you very much. Last I checked, using social media is not a sufficiently powerful experience to single-handedly strike a death blow to my ability to read a book. Those who only ever read tweets may well lack the patience for Dostoyevsky, but that’s not Twitter’s fault—these are probably the same people who fall asleep halfway through a movie or topic-hop mid-conversation. Rather than pointing the finger at electronic media, you’re probably better off blaming excessive sugar intake, a lifetime of lowest-common-denominator advertising copy, and an upbringing or education that simply did not instil a love of meaty reading. Thirty years ago, people were blaming television and Archie comics for the state of kids’ intellects. A century ago, they were probably upset about typewriters causing people to lose the ability to write by hand. I mean, really, it’s all a bit silly, don’t you think? (Also, there is a particular irony in the idea of decrying the 140-character tweet in the introduction to a book that is entirely made up of one- or two-sentence quotes.)

Truly, though, beyond a purely logical deconstruction, what makes me cringe about the “it-was-better-back-when” comments is that they sound a whole lot like the kind of comments that homophobes and other bigots make. Fear of change, nostalgia for “simpler” days—people who rail against progress on principle make me twitchy. They sound far too much like the people who’d rather we go back to the simpler days when marriage was just between one man and one woman, and women’s place was in the home, and “we” all ate the same foods and read the same canon of (dead white male) literature which of course was only ever in English (except maybe for some French because that’s sexy), and “we” all went to church and there was no such thing as all those “other” holidays and so all “we” had to do was say Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays, and by gosh everything was so much easier because “we” didn’t have to think about the diverse needs and perspectives of a diverse range of people, or bother learning very much at all about the world outside “our” happy little white middle-class English-speaking heterosexual bubble, unless of course it was excitingly exotic in a way that both titillated us and shored up “our” sense of superiority.

I’m not accusing those who prefer books to e-readers of homophobia, sexism or racism per se. But holding a preference in terms of how you like your reading packaged does not require that you start pooh-poohing other people’s choices. Close-mindedness has a terrible tendency to spread, and in some ways this type of stance is particularly shocking when it’s taken by writers and booksellers—the people who, in theory, are some of the most concerned with providing as many people as possible with access to new ideas. If you’re resistant to the new because it’s less comfortable to you than the old, if you don’t wish to learn new things or be challenged or stretch your brain, then your mind is already far more atrophied than those of the tweeters and blog followers and e-book readers you accuse of having precisely this problem.