PS041 - BDSM Roulette 2

Mar 4

Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d9937

Last March Lee was struck by the randomness on the internet, and used the experience as an opportunity to springboard between a varieties of topics. A year later BDSM Roulette is back with such subjects as “outing” of other people, anal play, leather contests and the difference between being “serious” and “solemn” in our sexuality. However, the absurdity of the internet also explodes in the form of “Sexy Platypus,” and of course, lemon whores. Join us as we explore human erotica through a roll of the dice and dive into subjects ranging from thoughtful to full of laughter (and sometimes both).

[music intro]
Announcer:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening, an exploration of all things erotic.

Every Thursday, your host, Dan and Dawn, share with you their experience and insights on kink, power exchange, and erotic life, as well as bring you interviews with exciting people from various lifestyles.

Then every Monday, you'll hear from our various guest hosts.

These nationally known educators bring a variety of experience to the mics and share with you an ever-increasing diverse world of alternative life.

Erotic Awakening is intended for mature audiences.

If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.

Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington.

It has been a delight to continue to bring this podcast to you as an extension of my website and my work over at passionandsoul.com, and also in collaboration with Dan and Dawn at Erotic Awakening.

I've been blogging since 1998 and teaching in the community since only a few years later, and I continue to be inspired by the passion and soul that so many erotic adventurers show me every turn of the way.

In this month's podcast, I'd like to take us on a game of BDSM Roulette.

Last year, last March, I had crazy hair come through my life where I decided, hey, let's see what happens because I was having this weirdness around the internet.

Strange things kept on appearing in my inbox and in just in how I was journeying online.

And I decide, you know what, let's talk about the random stuff that comes across our way.

For some of us who have been part of a kinky sex community for a while, there's a website called fetlife.com, which has a section called Kinky and Popular that feels like a stacked roulette, or a stacked game as it were so often that it's random reading and yet such standardized imagery.

I spend time sometimes looking at pornography on the internet, and again, there are times when it feels so random and at other times so pre-programmed and expected.

We begin today's game of BDSM Roulette by playing around and discussing a post that just came across my field of vision.

It's from a group called Alaska BDSM Beginners, and for folks who don't know, I moved to Anchorage, Alaska back in September, October, November, depending on how you count.

And so I've been following some of the Alaska groups.

And a gentleman by the name of Fox Finder, who's one of the producers for Northern Exposure, which is a really fantastic kink conference up here in Anchorage, Alaska that happens in July, he's one of the producers and he posted that we all make connections at coffees, munches and events.

It's a gathering of like minded people.

So of course, there's going to be connections.

We socialize, share our thoughts, our kinks and a lot of other cool personal stuff.

But what happens if you run to a fellow kinkster outside of a coffee muncher event?

What if you ran into them at your daughter's high school volleyball game?

Are you going to really say to that person, hey, Fox Finder, I watched you beat the shit out of Sarah and I loved the way you fisted her?

I sure as hell hope you don't.

How are you going to do interact, handle interactions and seeing people from outside the community at non-community events?

What's appropriate and what is not?

And seeing people's responses has been really cool.

I've been thinking about this topic recently because having moved to Alaska, it's a little different than living in New York City, where I was happy to be out as a transsexual person in a lot much broader population.

And for here, I don't choose to be out to many people.

And so if somebody runs into me at the grocery store and was like, hey, can we talk about trans rights or LGBT issues?

I might speak in a lot more coded language than I would have in New York because maybe somebody in my partner's book club is listening in as we're wandering through the Costco.

Or maybe it's just not other people's business beyond the two of us speaking in more couched terms.

Now, I messed up on this once pretty badly, but it was hilarious.

I was at an airport, and I saw somebody who I knew from various kink communities, and I saw them coming through towards my gate.

We were actually going in the same direction, towards the same flight, and I was really excited about it.

And so, to use a different name, I screamed at the top of my lungs, Hey, rubber dog, how are you doing?

And then I stopped and realized that at an airport, I might have just outed them, and it looked like outed them around their coworkers.

But instead of recognizing me and instead of waving back, or instead of being embarrassed or responding at all, she just went, she just kind of went on her way, didn't even acknowledge me, didn't even pretend she didn't even hear me.

Now, about ten, fifteen minutes later, she came back around and said, hey, and I said, yes, sorry about that.

She's like, yep, I hope you understand that I didn't respond.

And I'm like, yep, my bad.

It gave her a choice that she had the power, instead of being upset about something, or instead of being frustrated, to just ignore it.

That you, as you're wandering through life, if somebody from the kink community waves at you and is like, hey, hey, you have the right to not respond.

And later when you see them, to explain why and what was going on.

Now, mind you, as we're walking through the world, it's best not to share details, including say, hey, it was great that you hosted the play party last Saturday, might not even be appropriate within the kinky sex communities or the swinger population or the pagan population saying, hey, it was great that you hosted the ritual last weekend because maybe we're around people who weren't there and weren't invited, that maybe it's not a party that's known about by everyone.

And so sharing and outing that information isn't necessarily appropriate.

Some people, as I mentioned, have different nicknames.

Other people go by different nicknames in different communities.

So maybe they go by one name in the swinger population and another nickname within the BDSM population.

They don't want necessarily people to know that if they're swingers, they don't want other swingers to know that they also are really into singletailing.

So it's something to consider.

And if you run into somebody at your family's basketball party, you know, sorry, at a gathering for people who are playing basketball, is it even appropriate to bring it up?

Consider saying things like, hey, and letting them make a choice about how well you know each other, that there is a difference between we met at a friend's party and we met at a friend's kinky sex party.

And if you run into somebody from work at that kinky sex party, remember that they're there too, that they're at the same party, that outing you is going to involve outing themselves, but pulling them over in the social area and saying, hey, so can we not talk about this at the office?

That'd be great.

It is completely reasonable.

So with that said, it is time to roll the dice again and see what we get on the internet.

And so I'm going to type in a couple of random words.

And let's go with sexy platypus.

Let's see what we get on sexy platypus.

Okay, on sexy platypus, we get to a deviant art post of somebody posting a single platypus.

Okay, the next one down on soupynuts.blogspot.com brings us to an entire post of sexy platypus images.

Wow, I'm impressed.

Now, what's fascinating to me about this entire string of sexy platypus images where there are female platypi or platypuses or maybe it's just platypi or I don't know what word you would use.

Multiple platypus, platypus riding on a stripper pole, one in a bikini showing the bottom of its tail, one with burlesque fan dances, somebody with a sexy platypi 2009 wall calendar.

Now some a little bit more polished of images than others, including one at the bottom that is simply a platypus coming out of the water.

Oh no, the platypus is naked, just like a platypus.

What surprises me about this post is that the second image down is a whole bunch of guys in front of an airplane.

Like I'm not...

Oh, I figured it out.

It's because they have a nose, a nose decor on it, like on the side of the plane that has a sexy platypus, which means a group of guys that I'm guessing are World War II had a plane named Sexy Platypus.

I'm impressed.

Now, what impresses me is not that a wide variety of people have made artwork of Sexy Platypi.

That's cool.

That tells me that it's that it reminds me that if you're into something, there's someone else out there into that thing, too, that you can't possibly be alone because if you're into platypus sex or platypi or you're in the furry community of people who either enjoy being animals or dressing up in fur suits or going in yiffing where it is involved in those while you as those characters or in those costumes are being sensual or sexual with another, it reminds me that you are not the only one who gets it.

If you are someone who has a jelly shoe fetish, awesome.

I do too.

If you are someone who is going, you know what really, really turns me on is being spanked by math books.

There was someone at a Dark Odyssey event a couple of years ago who did that exact scene.

That it was a school boy and his math teacher and the math teacher in his button down, his suit and button down vest, the boy was not following his math homework and so the teacher beat him with the math textbook.

It tells me that not only is there something for everyone, but there's someone else out there who can go, you know what, I get it.

Maybe it's not an even match.

Maybe it's not perfect, right?

Maybe they're not the person who's going to play with you, but there's somebody else who will get it.

And that impresses me.

It also impresses me that apparently various Platypi tend to like red high heels.

I find that interesting.

I'm not sure what that's all about, but it tells me something.

Again, I'm not entirely sure what it tells me, but I think it tells me something.

Now for the next spin, let's go, and we are going to type in one of my favorite sources for leather and BDSM news, which is leatherati.com, leatherati.com, which has a great crew of editors and is the premier way to find out what's been happening in the leather community and parts of the BDSM community.

Good, good crew.

And I'm just going to look at what the top article is on here, which is apparently a review of the Oregon, First Annual Oregon Puppy Contest 2014.

It was held at the PDX Eagle, the Portland Eagle, which I've got some mixed feelings about that venue.

I really do.

It's a fun space.

Back when I was involved with Bad Girls of Portland, I got to do a couple of fundraisers there doing burlesque shows.

I've gotten to go for drinks and hanging out with friends there during my six years that I lived in Portland.

I've gone to other events in that location, but I feel mixed because around a year ago or so, there was a brouhaha around the fact that a drag performer who does Blackface did a performance there.

And that's troubling to have people doing Blackface and other forms of racist performances in venues that I perceive should be safe spaces for people of all orientations and genders and ethnic backgrounds.

Like, that's really not cool.

And I'll post some links to the Blackface stuff on the notes.

But it's really neat to me, this movement to create a sense of validation for different individuals exploring their personal erotic paths.

That there are international pony competitions and puppy competitions and not just master slave title holders, but dominant and submissive title holders and all of this stuff.

Now, for those who don't know, title holding competitions and this idea is about being able to step up and in some places it's a political title, and for other places it's a way to say, this is fun, I'm awesome, or that this is a way to just go and have a good time one night and somebody gets to have this title for the year.

Some people think of it as a kinky version of a Miss America pageant, and other people think of it as a way to just get down and dirty and raunchy.

So, for example, if you were to go to your local bar and they had, you know, hottest in tighty whiteys, you know, hottest in white underwear competition of 2014, what you'd probably see is guys getting on stage in white underwear with the audience hooting and hollering and people showing off their asses, smiling, strutting their stuff, it getting narrowed down to a couple of people, various games happening perhaps, who can take a deep throat of this dildo the most easily, who can dance and do a little bit of showing off with the most pizzazz, and at the end of it, somebody's given a sash, maybe a couple of discount coupons or gift certificates to local vendors, etc.

Other titles are player titles.

I hold the title of Arizona Leather Sur 2010, and the Leather Sur and Leather Boy titles tend to be very, I'm actually into this stuff based.

It's hot, it's horny, it's sexy.

They had me come on stage in a couple of different rounds.

There was a round that was street leathers or streetwear, where it was jeans, t-shirt, boots, leather vest.

What would you wear to be a hot leatherman walking down the street?

There was a round that was formal leathers.

So I had my cover, my leather shirt, leather pants, like was very buttoned up and formal.

There was the jock and boots round, where I was on stage in nothing but a jock strap, a pair of arm bands, and a pair of calf-high boots.

Now, that was nerve-racking for me, because as somebody who has a different gender history than other men that were at that competition, here I am standing with scars on my chest and a little bit more weight than I wanted to have in nothing but a PVC jock strap and a pair of boots, feeling completely on the spot.

And it was the pop question round, and so I got to answer a random question, and I was seeing somebody down in Australia at the time, and the pop question was, if you could be a type of fruit, what would you be?

And I'm like, really, people?

Add a kinky sax leather, the Arizona Leather Sur competition, you're going to ask me what kind of fruit I am?

But what came out of my mouth was, I would like to be a kiwi, so I would be closer to my boy down in Australia.

Sweet, romantic, I got the romance vote as it were.

But I came off stage and a guy pulled me over and said, do you mind if I ask you a question about one of your body mods?

And I start telling myself this internal story that, oh my God, he's asking me about my transsexuality, he's asking about my gender history, he's going to ask me about my scars, what are they?

And I start stressing out, but that was my story.

And so I paused and took a quick breath and went, what would you like to know?

And he said, who did your calf tattoos?

They are awesome.

And in that moment, I let out a breath because I was happy to tell him where my tattoos were from and he didn't care and I was just a dude hanging out with a whole bunch of other leather dudes and it was a good time.

It was Leathermen Amongst Leathermen being Leathermen.

And the other part of the competition, right, the introduction, the pop questions, strutting your stuff, all of these other costume changes.

There was pre-interviews before the competition ever began so the judges could know me better than what was happening for the hour on stage.

We also had our fantasy competition piece.

Now, fantasies are the equivalent of in classical beauty pageant the skill set, right, twirling the baton or being able to sing on stage.

It's the equivalent of it but for perverts.

So in my case, it was asking a friend of mine if I could tie him up and do a fantasy enactment where the idea was that I was a gutter trash punk leather boy or leatherman depending on how we look at it and that he was a preppy guy on his cell phone and that I was cruising him, I checked him out and then I grabbed him, threw away his cell phone, threw him down to the ground, pinned him down, tied him up and then pulled down his zipper and rode on top of him.

Now, mind you, this was a bit radical because there can be a story that leathermen who are leather sirs, that a sir should be the penetrator, the top, the active person as it were in a sexual encounter.

And what I was saying was I can be dominant and fierce and still have a cock up my ass.

And that could be a pretty radical statement, not just in dominant and submissive gay men's communities, but in the heterosexual community as well.

There's a great piece called Bend Over Boyfriend by Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence that is about that, that men can receive anal pleasure and enjoy themselves.

And it has nothing to do with being gay, nothing to do with being submissive.

It's a sexual activity that people can enjoy if you do it with patience and lube and speaking your needs as you go.

Because good anal sex shouldn't hurt folks.

Mind you, unless you're an advanced player, in which case you are consenting in advance to have it hurt because that's what turns you on.

But really good anal sex is about a sensation of experiencing either penetration or power or whatever it might be.

You could have your own reason for doing it.

But if it's traumatizing you, hurting your body, harming your body, you need to really look at what makes these things successful.

Both Tristan Taormino and Charlie Glickman have great books on the topic of successful anal sex that I would strongly recommend and that you can check out.

Now, having looked at anal sex, the natural transition is of course to type in, because I think sometimes about anal sex, and I think of anal sex bloopers.

Those scenes that just kind of go a little bit wrong, that, you know what, as a friend of mine says, you can't go looking for honey sometimes without finding a few beads.

And I've had some anal sex scenes where you just, you smile, you nod, you wipe stuff up, you go on, you just don't make a big deal of it.

But it triggers the notion of hilarity in my head.

So I just typed in hilarious porn.

And what I got, I just watched this Minute 17 video, listed under, I think this might be the most hilarious porn intro ever.

And I am both baffled, flabbergasted and laughing.

So this video has this couple talking about their lemon trees.

How beautiful their lemon trees are, how lovely their lemon trees are, what they would make out of their lemons, how they should get lemon tree insurance.

And as they're talking about lemon trees, for a full minute, desperately trying to fill with dialogue this minute, a woman in a bad wig and a see-through swimming suit is stealing their lemons.

I don't know how the rest of this video goes.

I don't know if I need to see how the rest of this video goes.

But it pleases me that a video like this exists on the internet.

It pleases me greatly to know that some porn producer went, you know what we need?

Lemon tree porn.

That's great.

That's a great idea.

In general, videos with interesting topics, or just movies in general, fascinate me that there were multiple minds that went into this.

That there was somebody who wrote the script, somebody who decided to fund the script, somebody who shot the script, some actors and actresses or whatnot that decided to be part of the videotaping, and then the editors and then the distributors.

Now, in the world of pornography, are there people who are all of these things?

Absolutely, that there is only one person who wrote the script or had the concept, who videotaped it, who bankrolled it, who hired the actors and actresses, or in the case of gonzo porn, they were the actor or actress and they were holding the video camera while they were doing things to that person, to that other person, and that they then edited.

Yeah, there are a number of pornography sites that do that.

But the higher production stuff that leads me just blinking is interesting to me, like, that I do wonder how all of these people said, okay, yeah, lemon tree porn.

That's what the world needs.

Or, in a video that I saw, pterodactyl porn.

That that exists.

That there are people out there who go, you know what, pterodactyl porn.

That's what needs to happen in the world.

But I do really feel sorry for, slash, I'm incredibly impressed with the actor and actress who are romantic and devoted to one another and profoundly invested in their lemon trees.

Who, that actor and actress who are clearly struggling in this video to keep their shit together.

So I'm wondering, like, just take a moment for yourselves and wonder and think about those moments where it's just been hilarious in the bedroom or in your sexual erotic journey.

Those moments where you queefed or you farted in the middle of sex.

Queefing, it's that noise that vaginas make that release a little bit of air.

Those moments where you came so hard that there was a little bit of pee.

Those times where you were trying to do erotic role playing and the wrong sentence just came out.

Where you're like, you know what?

I really want you to be my lemon whore.

That those moments happen and they could turn the scene just wrong.

That you could just get mad and angry and frustrated and be, you know, like, why did you have to ruin our role playing scene?

Or you can laugh at it and embrace it that it was just a little goofy, a little silly, and sometimes serious things just don't go over very well.

Or you're someone who chooses to embrace that a very serious thing, like sex, doesn't have to be solemn.

When I'm educating, that's a big belief of mine, that if I am talking about death and sorrow and destruction and pain and suffering, that sometimes giggling about it helps us remember it and listen and learn, rather than carrying that pain and sorrow and suffering.

And I know that can happen for our sex lives as well.

And if you're just looking to giggle and have a good, fun time, fantastic.

Let your sex life be good and fun and frolicky and silly, that if you want to do a role playing scene where you are a lemon-stealing whore and that I am going to chase you down and make lemonade on your body, I'm making that up, who knows, maybe that's where the video goes.

I have no idea.

But let's say you want to make lemonade making role playing scenes.

Go for it.

And you can have that be as serious, as solemn or as silly as you want to have it be.

And on our last spin today on BDSM Roulette, I'm going to go back to a classic and type in the word BDSM as one word, four letters, that for those who don't know is bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism or sometimes slave and master.

It's a speed acronym that allows for quick conversation, though I find it hilarious that the words BDSM and BDSM community get used to also include fetishism, swinging, bathhouse play, all kinds of other stuff that don't actually fit anywhere in those letters.

So I'm just going to throw that out there.

Now, on this first page of BDSM, you get urban dictionary, you get Wikipedia.

You interestingly enough get stuff for The Crucible, which is the BDSM nightclub slash play space in DC.

Something from Zero Mag, Carol's page, which is a great resource.

And then immediately after it, you get, at least on my search for it here, you get the mall directory, which is findamunch.com.

Now, the person who's been directing Find A Munch is incredibly inspiring to me.

She started out this project as a way to just, where can I go, to find out different things and what's going on out there.

And it became an obsession, a fascination, and she got together a whole group of people.

And I first found out about this project when she wrote me and asked if she could copy the entirety of my Phoenix Arizona and Greater Arizona kink resource list that I'd constructed a number of years ago for fascinations.

And I said, sure, go for it.

It's a great starting point, but please keep doing additional work.

And she's kept growing it.

Like, it's been quite the project.

And if you go to findamunch.com, it's about local groups gathering munches, meetups, coffees, etc.

where people who are kinky in different ways get together or have discussion groups.

And it's really interesting to me, looking at this website, that she has stuff from non-specific continent of Africa, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, and the list just keeps going on.

You know, like, are you visiting Ireland?

Here's stuff from tons of different areas.

Malaysia?

What if you're going to Myanmar and you want to meet up with people?

It's fascinating to me.

And there's people exploring their sexuality and their passion all over the globe.

But again, you're not alone.

Now, in a lot of these countries that are listed, like in Dubai, you got to consider, especially if coming on as an outsider, the laws of those areas.

Even within the United States and Canada, for our listeners here in North America, there are some states where, you know, there have been busts in Mississippi of sex toy shop owners or people who are selling sex toys.

There are places where having different types of pornography is illegal, where creation of pornography is something that can have your children taken away from you.

So think ahead of time before you get, depending on where you're at, what choices you're going to make around getting together in public communities.

But to me, what is inspiring is that there are all of these groups that in the face of oppression, in the face of oppression, choices are still being made to embrace sexuality.

And if you don't want to ever go out to a munch, a gathering, a coffee, doesn't mean you can't still be kinky in your own home space.

Right?

Awesome stuff.

So I encourage everyone, whether you're already involved in the kink communities or not, to just go out and be exposed to the types of variety that's out there.

Go to findamunch.com.

And looking at Alaska right now, there's a group for 40 below.

Alaska body modification fans, Alaska kinky Dungeons and Dragons players, Alaska people who do Shabari, people who are adult babies and diaper lovers, folks who are erotic writers in Alaska, people who are into, some of them are listed by clever names, like the Inside Passage for people who are in Juno, or people who are kinky nudist gnomes in Alaska.

I am fascinated and delighted by the variety of groups that are even out there in my backyard.

So thank you for joining me for today's game of BDSM Roulette.

My hope for you is that you go out there and see what's out there in the world and then ponder it.

Consider it.

Find out what the stories are there.

That if you hear about puppy competition, that you go, oh, what is that about?

Ask the additional questions.

Have fun and delight in each other.

And with that, my name is Lee Harrington.

My website is passionandsoul.com.

You can go to my website, scroll all the way to the bottom, and there's a section named Stocking Made Easy, which allows you to find me on Facebook, FetLife, Twitter, and all kinds of other social media, as well as if you want to drop me an email.

I really appreciate all of you having joined me on Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington, and until next time, have fun, play safe, take care of each other, and be authentically you.

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