Recently on Fetlife someone emailed me to let me know there was some tempest brewing about the recent TES Fest (09). You know the drill by now if you are involved in any community organization. Someone got the bad touch and is all huffy, someone else took of their cause and a sort of self styled hard ass Al Sharpton is now in town whipping up the mobs and calling for a lynching.<\/p>\n
Imagine my shock. Imagine my surprise.<\/p>\n
Imagine my apathy.<\/p>\n
Anyway, you can read the drama here<\/a> and here<\/a>. As usual I will post a copy of my response below so if some over zealous moderator deletes it you may still bask in my glow.<\/p>\n \u2026post begins\u2026<\/p>\n Let\u2019s set out a few things before I get to the meat of my post.<\/p>\n All that said, I got this link in a message and then went off and read the wall discussion (though the term \u201cmob\u201d may be more appropriate) and my conclusion is this\u2026<\/p>\n There is an awful lot of heat being generated here \u2013 and a whole lot of people demanding this and demanding that all the while making a big racket but I haven\u2019t seen any reason at all why I, as a member of the lay public, am supposed to be outraged. Not only am I supposed to be outraged some how, but I am supposed to see in these vaguely discussed incidents behavior so heinous that TES should be dismantled (along with all other organizations, apparently). That’s before we get to the notions of a cover up I am supposed to be all pissed about.<\/p>\n In short, it\u2019s another round of Big Drama(tm) \u2013 everyone’s favorite community politics reality show. Frankly, I am not sure that this season will be any more interesting than last years, or the year before.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s unpack a few of the things at play here.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Someone (or some people) have a big axe to grind with public BDSM organizations, including TES<\/strong><\/p>\n This is useful information \u2013 it underlies all that follows. This outrage is to some degree being inflated and whipped up not as much because of genuine upset at the situation, but because in addition someone sees a chance to make a political point and push an agenda. In this particular case the conceit seems to be that somehow the large BDSM organizations are keeping us Real Sadists(tm) down. Or something. Frankly it all gets a little hazy when the ranting gets going. There is foam. Lots of fist pounding no doubt.<\/p>\n Now, I can rant along with the best of them about how annoyingly touchy feely the world of public BDSM is. Hell, our podcast is frequently discussing that very topic (Power In Practice). The thing is \u2013 this isn\u2019t because organizations like TES are fluffy bunny pushers \u2013 it is because large organizations with elected officials are ALWAYS going to gravitate to policies that are geared for the lowest end of the risk-o-meter. That doesn\u2019t mean these organizations are useless or evil, it just means they are not now _and never will be_ the perfect representation of everyone on the planet.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t join. Or start your own. Or join and get elected and work to change it. Or whatever. Hell, join and complain, its a completely valid form of activism. You\u2019re welcome to do all of that. However if you want me to take you seriously the thing you probably should avoid is telling me what a big, strong, hard assed individual you are then claim that TES is somehow keeping you down.<\/p>\n I will laugh at you.<\/p>\n I am frankly also not sure about how this is all supposed to be connected anyway. A board member gets out of hand, a security person gets rowdy and somehow this all connects to The vast SSC Conspiracy(tm) and a long winded rant about there being no home for hard asses or something. <\/p>\n Hint: Your supposed outrage about this \u201ccrime\u201d would be more convincing if you didn\u2019t mix it in with your political rantings<\/em><\/p>\n Anyway, keeping in mind that this incident is now doubt being seen and used as a political opportunity\u2026 let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Someone (possibly a board member) may have done something inappropriate with someone\u2019s submissive.<\/strong><\/p>\n Why \u201cpossibly\u201d? Because I didn\u2019t see it, and I don\u2019t have any reason to consider overly credible the recounting of a situation by people on a message forum. You\u2019re welcome to be offended by that if you choose\u2026 but it\u2019s just common sense.<\/p>\n For the sake of argument, let\u2019s allow that the story as presented is true and complete. Let us grant that a TES board member got out of hand. Let\u2019s accept that we live in a society where such behavior is somehow conflated with raping someone at gunpoint (we do). Granting all of that\u2026<\/p>\n I still don\u2019t see why people feel they have the right to demand public disclosures, instantaneous removal and all the rest of this stuff. I also fail to see how this incident is supposed to show that TES as an organization is somehow corrupt and evil. <\/p>\n Here is the reality of organizations \u2013 accusations are used as political weapons _all the time_. Folks bring complaints against people they don\u2019t like alleging all sorts of things. People try and get other members thrown out of organizations in the aftermath of a break up. Everyone and their brother feels compelled to \u201ctell the teacher\u201d about every sleight \u2013 real, imagined or fabricated.<\/p>\n So while it is possible that this incident happened ( as an organization of humans, TES will get board members who are either bad people or make mistakes or both, it is inevitable ) my point is that simply because there is an accusation would be no excuse for the organization to publically draw and quarter the person accused until it was satisfied about the veracity and circumstances.<\/p>\n This is a good thing<\/em>.<\/p>\n Why would anyone want to be part of an organization where all someone had to do was accuse you of a crime before your name and the allegations were plastered all over the website? <\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have any idea how abused and misused such a policy would be? Is that _really_ a good idea? Of course not. <\/p>\n * I want<\/em> something as potentially damaging as public censure on a website with national and international reach to be a process that grinds slowly. <\/p>\n * I want<\/em> the presumption of innocence. <\/p>\n * I want<\/em> a BDSM organization to err on the side of maintaining privacy of it\u2019s members. <\/p>\n * I want<\/em> there to need to be more than an angry accusation before board members are removed or members publically ousted.<\/p>\n Because if there is not that sort of inertia, if accusation leads instantly to censure, public accusation and open condemnation then it will be used even more freely as a hammer for political and personal in-fighting.<\/p>\n Now, none of this precludes the possibility that TES is engaged in some manner of cover up. My point is simply that these calls for the name of the board member to be posted on the website before an internal investigation into the incident are simply not ones I support. <\/p>\n Of course, I strongly suspect that many of the people doing the calling also<\/em> know it would be a bad organizational policy to do so \u2013 but they see here an opportunity to advance their political agenda.<\/p>\n On a related note, the topic of TES and sadism<\/strong><\/p>\n Having mentioned above that large BDSM organizations by their nature gravitate to fluffy bunny-ness. Let\u2019s talk briefly about TES in specific. TES is certainly driven by the same forces to tend to the middl<\/p>\n e, However.<\/p>\n TES is also home to some truly fucked up (in the best possible sense of the term) people, and TES has never shied away from granting us a voice. <\/p>\n Hell, TES Fest \u201808 let Flagg run the dungeons. Flagg<\/em>. Within the bounds of the local laws Flagg ran the most permissive dungeon spaces conceivable. Mistakes aside (and there always will be when you are coordinating a large number of volunteers) the odds that you\u2019re scene was going to be stopped at TES Fest \u201808 simply because you are too much of a hard ass were less than your chances of getting hit by a meteor. And that wasn\u2019t his first year being the final judge of all things \u201cover the line\u201d, either.<\/p>\n Now, I don\u2019t know what happened in the dungeons at TES Fest \u201809 (other than Saturday, when I was there as a attendee) but I do know the person who as running safety\u2026 he was Flagg\u2019s second in command in \u201808 and is someone I have respect for. He is about as far from an SSC \u201clet\u2019s only use suede floggers\u201d zealot as anyone I know.<\/p>\n Hell, behind the scenes of the BDSM community TES Fest\u2019s are routinely criticized as being permissive to the point of being dangerous. I have heard and read discussions in outside groups where people were warning novices not to go to TES meetings because TES let\u2019s the \u201cextreme\u201d people talk. <\/p>\n All this is to say that while no large organization will ever be free of the SSC \/ Fuzzy Bunny mantra ( and the reasons for that are as much legal \/ survival as actual ethical motivations ) TES is among the most tolerant I know of in the nation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n By all means, rant away, and if you have been genuinely wronged of course you should press for \u2018justice\u2019. As an outsider looking in, however, don\u2019t expect me to not notice how forced most of this outrage actually looks and how transparent your agenda is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently on Fetlife someone emailed me to let me know there was some tempest brewing about the recent TES Fest (09). You know the drill by now if you are involved in any community organization. Someone got the bad touch and is all huffy, someone else took of their cause and a sort of self […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n the moderate and the safe. All of that is true.<\/p>\n\n