Consent Models

One of the things you'll hear discussed over and over again in the Kink community is Consent. Everything we do revolves around the concept of Consent, and you'll rarely encounter any kind of Kink Education that doesn't have at least a quick mention of Consent, Respect, and Negotiation, which are all very inter-related concepts. 

One of the ways we talk about Consent is to present various Consent Models to give a structure to how we discuss the concept. There are a lot of different models in use, and they all really come down to saying the same thing - "be sure that everyone involved in your kinkplay understands what's included and the risks they are taking, and agrees to participate without any coercion."

Chaos Rope - Now Online!

About a year ago, I announced a new class I could teach live, Chaos Rope. I've taught that class a couple of times since then, polishing it up until I was happy with it. So now, I get to announce that I've converted it to an online format for everyone to access! Please look through it at your own pace and enjoy!

Chaos Rope: Bondage Without A Pattern

New Education Series

Community Essentials with Meronym is taking a big step! We have committed to renting out space for an regular education series! We'll be renting out the classroom space at our local kink community center, The Mark, for presentations. Every other month, we'll present a different class. I'm hoping to use this as a way to test out new classes and refresh classes that haven't been presented in a while.

I've been teaching under the name Community Essentials with Meronym for several years now. But my classes have mostly either been outside of Nashville, or in kinksters' homes locally. Starting this summer, however, I'll be teaching classes where anyone (over 18) can attend.

Toybag Class

This weekend I got to present Building Your Basic Toybag: Without Breaking the Bank at my local kinky community center. This one's a fun, slightly shorter class where we talk about acquiring all the things for a starter toybag with general applications on a smaller budget. It's primarily aimed at newish folks, but we sneak in a lot for experienced folks by talking about more inventive ways to use things we already have.

Resource List for Essentials of Kink-Aware Care

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Scene Negotiation Checklists

There are a lot of scene negotiation checklists out there on the internet. None of them are perfect. All of them are starting points for improved, more in-depth negotiations. If you're an experienced kinkster planning a simple scene, they probably aren't really needed. 

But if you're newer to negotiating for yourself, they can be a great tool. Not just for the negotiation itself, but for preparing to negotiate. Going through some of these checklists while thinking about what you really want - and don't want - with your upcoming partner in your mind, can really help you understand yourself better. And the better you understand how you feel about different things, the better you can communicate that to your partner.

And for experienced kinksters or settled partners, using a negotiation checklist can help you open up your mind to kinds and modes of play beyond what you usually do. They can be an 'ideas menu' to work through together.

I've collected a few sample checklists for BDSM/Kink play here as negotiation tools. You may find that whole sections of them don't apply to you or your scene, while others may make you rethink what you thought you wanted to do. None of these belong to me; this is just a reference list. If you have a checklist that you like that's not on here, please let me know!

Updated Slidedecks and Upcoming Classes

This last month, I've been cleaning up and updating several of our classes, in preparation for some teaching opportunities we have scheduled in June!

I've dusted off and completely rewritten Essentials of Kink-Aware Care, which is a half-day class for healthcare providers. It's been a few years since we've had a chance to present to our care providers, and it's such an important topic to get information out there. In partnership with a local trans-care clinic, we'll be presenting that in early June.

I'll be presenting Building Your Basic Toybag at our local kink community center a few weeks after that. This is one of the presentations you can find here on this blog. For this one, though, the slide deck and the blog presentation look substantially different, but I couldn't just update one, so I did both. And that meant also updating the sample toybag Amazon wishlist that goes with it, too.

Next up is Dungeon Essentials, which I'll be headed out of town to teach. It was my first class that I taught back in 2010, but it's still evolving every time I teach it. This time, I updated some colors and formatting, and added one slide. The version on this blog doesn't have the updates; those who see it live will get those!

Other classes coming up in the fall include Making a Scene and Octopus Attack. Come see me if you get a chance!

We have a new class ready to teach!

Chaos Rope

Bondage Without a Pattern

A discussion of an unstructured style of free-form rope-topping suitable for tops at any level of experience. Instead of relying on patterns and planning, this unpredictable style of rope depends on communication between tying partners and an open attitude to go where the rope takes you. Basic safety and vocabulary knowledge are helpful.

available Live only

Now With QR Codes!

I attended a presentation by a fellow educator yesterday, and he did something that got me excited. On the very first slide of his presentation - the slide which sat there while everything was getting started - he had a QR code that would allow attendees to download his slide deck.

I thought this was brilliant. For people who weren't sitting up close and perhaps couldn't see the slides well and/or couldn't hear him well. For people who couldn't process as quickly as he talked and would like to go back to the slides later. For people who saw something on the slides they wanted to refer back to later and research on their own. For people who came in late or had to leave early. There are plenty of reasons why someone might benefit from having access to the slides on their own mobile device.

Shout Out - Hello!

I've had several interactions in the last few weeks where someone has told me that they were reading something on this blog and learned something. People who were either in my kink community, new to my kink community, or connected otherwise. I wanted to take a brief moment to say thank you to each of you for reading, and for letting me know that this is helpful to you. Sometimes writing something on the internet is like shouting into your own space, and you don't know that anyone else notices. So every time someone mentions reading something here, it just sends a huge jolt of happiness to this author's brain. Thank you!

Bondage Essentials

 

I'd like to announce a new class! 

Bondage Essentials: General Bondage Concepts and Simple Rope Ties

A Kinky History Lesson

It's hard to celebrate where you are, if you don't know where you've been. The Leather/Kink/BDSM community has a very rich history. It's a mixed bag of gay leather, transwomen, kinky het folk, and BDSM enthusiasts, all supporting each other. War, motorcycle clubs, Stonewall, our government, and popular media have all left their mark. A lot of our history was lost to AIDS. And that history is being made right now, today, as well.

Advice For Healthcare Professionals Treating Patients With An Interest in Kink & BDSM

Every now and then, I get the opportunity to teach basic kink concepts to a room full of healthcare professionals - doctors, nurses, EMTs, counselors, therapists, social workers, etc. These opportunities get me really excited, because I recognize that I'm not 'preaching to the choir' in these classes, but instead I have the opportunity to influence the quality of healthcare that kinky folk will receive from their providers. A provider that understands even a little bit about kink is going to be more accepting of their patients, creating a better relationship, more openness and acceptance, and leading to better care for people in my community. 

Making a Safe Call

In several of my classes, we talk about using a Safe Call when appropriate. But what is a Safe Call, when is it appropriate, and how do you go about setting one up?

In vanilla dating, especially for women, there's already a safe-call concept. If you have a date starting at 8pm, you might have a friend plan to call you at 8:45, so that if things aren't going well, you have an excuse to cut things off because of something that has come up. But in the kink world, we take that concept and flesh it out a bit more, applying consent, privacy, and safety concepts as our community usually regards them.

In most cases, you'll never have a situation where a Safe Call was actually needed. But the very act of setting up and negotiating a Safe Call will put safety in everyone's mind and prevent possible issues.

Teaching a Class Is My Favorite Way to Top

One of my top kinks is teaching. "Now wait, that's not really play!" someone says. But isn't it? Teaching can certainly be a scene all on its own.

As part of a scene in a playspace, I love teaching a new top how to do something that'll I'll enjoy as their bottom, but I also appreciate the chance just to impart knowledge to someone that values it, even if we never do that thing together. I love watching the brain-bulbs light up when something connects.

So how much more, then, when I have a room full of people to teach? Whether I'm teaching one of my Community Essentials classes, or just providing a demonstration to a small group at the dungeon, it's absolutely a scene for me.

Labels

Labels that we give ourselves are important. Not as a restriction, but as a starting point, as a description of who someone is right now. A warning - I'm going to use the term 'weird' all through this writing, and I mean it in a positive way - different from the norm, interested in or involved in things that aren't completely middle-of-the-road mainstream. I'm weird... I'm very weird, in a lot of ways.

My profile here says, "I am kinky and poly and queer and multiple. I'm also a mom, a daughter, a wife, and a friend. I'm a writer, a geek, a Trekkie, a gamer." My Discord profile says that I'm a "kinky multiple poly queer author educator actor." My FetLife profile says, "we are openly kinky, poly, multiple, geeky, gender-fluid, primal, androsexual, recipro-romantic... just generally queer," and a more detailed writing lists that we are a multiple personality, genderqueer, geeky, polyamorous, androsexual, and openly kinky, multiple, poly and queer.

Kink Belongs at Pride - But Consensually

Someone asked me recently - knowing what my answer would be, of course, "Does kink belong at Pride? And followed it up with, "To what extent? With what limits?" So of course I decided to write about it. I'm using the term Queer a lot in this one, and in this case I'm using it as an umbrella term to cover folks who are gay, lesbian, trans, bi, pan, poly, kinky, of all different sexualities, of various gender identities... all the colors of all the rainbows. All the people who are part of Pride.

New Class: Fit to be Tied

 

We're working on a new class! Coming soon: Fit to be Tied. It's a class for Rope Bottoms. 

- Preparing to Play - making yourself ready for bottoming in rope

- Playing in a Rope Scene - fully engaging in the rope scene

- Playing with Rope Over Time - managing risk levels and accounting for experience

Presentations now updated

I got to present Making a Scene this past weekend, so I went through and updated the presentation here with the latest slides and a little bit of updated talking points.

Making a Scene

And since I was working on that one, I went ahead and updated Dungeon Essentials, too!

Dungeon Essentials

Consent Openers

- "Can I kiss you?"

- "Do you want me to hold you against the wall?"

- "I'd like to touch your boobs."

- "Can we talk about spanking?"

- "Please do that again."