I'll be there, teaching and hosting Cigars Boots & Chocolate with Kamm. :)
How You Can Help: some suggestions to make a difference in light of what has been going on in the scene.
*Note this was originally written January 2018, and was based on writings on fetlife.com at the time. * How you can help instead of harm. A few key points to countering abuse, shitty behavior and making the scene (and the world) a better place. Discussions, writings upon writings upon writings on K&P, tears, heartfelt conversations, getting anxious on twitter (that last one is me), but what can we do to attempt to make improvements? Call out your friends. It doesn’t have to be publicly and it doesn’t have to be loudly. But if you see your friend do something shitty, or say something then. Something as simple as “Wow, that was shitty, why would you say that?” or “That wasn’t nice, you shouldn’t say that or do that to someone.” Will go a long way. It allows the group of people you’re in to also feel compelled to speak up. The bystander effect is real. When I started calling out the behavior of my relatives at holiday gatherings, shit got a lot better for everyone. And it ...
I may be in the minority, but I don't recommend going to DO. I have attended three major DO events, (Fusion, WF, summer camp), as a single man and as part of a couple (with a woman). I have VERY MIXED feelings about DO, the organization. First, I saw multiple instances of single men being very pushy and doing things to other people (99% of the time women) without consent. This was everywhere – in the dungeon, in the hotel rooms, outside in the outdoor campground, etc. I could get the impression that consent was not established beforehand because I could see the (not pleasant) surprise of someone new joining an ongoing scene in the face of not just the person who was the subject of the scene, but also the other people who were around the subject person. Most of these men were never reprimanded on the spot. It’s complete hypocrisy for DO to say ( as they do on their website) that non-consent will not be tolerated. The dungeon monitors (or scene monitors) were often simply other attendees and were just standing around talking to other people or even on their cell phones texting. There is a requirement to do several hours of “volunteer” work at each event for all attendees. I suspect to meet this requirement, some people just sign up to be monitors but they don’t really do the job of monitoring. Frankly, I wonder if in some of these situations, the actions by certain people (who are left unpunished) can be considered sexual assault, and therefore DO may be indirectly breaking a law by providing the environment for this sexual assault to occur. I have heard of people who have been "banned" from all DO events, while other individuals (apparently either friends of the DO organizers, or "famous" presenters or well known people in the kink world) have done exactly the same thing or worse, without a word being said to them. Second, I found in many cases the people there were very cliquish. They had already formed their own very close knit groups in which they played together, and in my experience (and “our” experience as a couple), they rarely allowed new outsiders to join their group. I suspect these people play together all the time, and have understandably developed a very close relationship and level of trust with each other. In our experience, we found it to be difficult to meaningfully play with anyone. I noticed the EASIEST persons who played with new people were inevitably the few single women (with all due respect, not all of whom were my “cup of tea” in the looks department). They were nearly constantly being approached by men, single or not. Not being a single woman myself, I felt very much like an outsider on numerous occasions. During my last experience which was Fusion, I went with a girlfriend (early 30s, athletic, blond, reasonably good looking) who is experienced in the alternative lifestyle, and we actually did not feel comfortable joining in with most of the people because of their difficult to approach attitudes and when they were “approachable”, it was usually a single man interested in my girlfriend. So we played by ourselves, and occasionally watched a scene, but that was it. The food in the cafeteria was not that great in my opinion, and we paid a lot for the meal plan. So overall based on my experiences, I would NOT recommend the DO events. We have decided that we are not going again – there are many other events where I don’t need to spend $300-500 and still meet nicer people at a better run, safer event.
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