To quote Wikipedia, a munch is:

a low-pressure social gathering for people involved in or interested in BDSM, usually at a restaurant. When available, munches often use a private room. In the UK, the venue is usually a pub, and people are free to arrive and leave within the specified hours. The primary purpose is socializing, though some munches also have announcements from local organizations. Munches often help those who are curious about the lifestyle meet others who may be able to help them become more comfortable and better informed. Munches can also be a place to get advice about or pass on anecdotes about BDSM experiences.

Unlike a play party, most munches are casual affairs that exclude fetish attire or BDSM play, though a rare few include covert Master/slave interactions or other play. Some munches may have a specific focus, such as spirituality or whips. Others may be restricted to a specific group, such as women or submissives. (emphasis mine)

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s take a look at the parts of the definition I’ve bolded. Why is it so important that munches are strictly social gatherings that exclude kinky play? There are two main reasons. One, munches are usually a new person’s first experience of the scene, and two, they’re almost always held in public places.

Not everyone wants to be part of the public, in person scene, but for those who do munches are a way to get to know people in a safe, friendly setting. If you’re planning to start going to play parties, they’re especially important because they’re less intimidating and they’re a better way to get to know people. On the other hand, if you aren’t planning to go to any play parties they’re especially important because they are your best opportunity to spend time with other kinky people.

Going to your first play party is pretty fucking scary. You don’t know just what’s going to happen there, you don’t know if you’ll accidentally make some terrible faux-pas and be shunned forever, you don’t know what you’re going to say if you run into a vanilla friend on the way there, you don’t know if you’ll fit in or if you’ll spend the entire party awkwardly standing around, you don’t know if actually seeing people play will freak you out, or if anyone will want to play with you, or if you even want to play. That’s kind of a lot to worry about. Doesn’t it make sense that we’d have separate events with simpler expectations (ie, show up in normal street clothes and try not to be a jerk) so people can have an easier time getting into the scene?

Not everybody even wants to go to a play party. Some people are only interested in the d/s part of the BDSM acronym (newsflash: you can be kinky and not like impact play!). Some people only want to play in private with their romantic partner/s. Some people just aren’t interested in watching other people play. If play parties aren’t for you, munches are just about your only opportunity to socialize with other kinky people.

As Crimsonjen commented on my post on tolerance, “Freak them out on their first night and they don’t inform Someone In Charge. They quietly leave and never come back.” That’s why it’s so important to make munches friendly and non-threatening. Everybody struggles to accept their kink. Meeting other kinky people tends to be hugely helpful to people who are freaked out by their own desires. If we fuck up people’s first introduction to the scene, we can set them back years. YEARS. How can that possibly be less important than getting to have a coercive group spanking scene at a munch?

Even if it were possible to have a non-coercive group scene at a munch (hint: it’s not, but that’s a separate rant), playing in public in any visible way is would still be completely inappropriate. Most munches are held in restaurants. This means that there are often vanilla customers near by, and even if the munch is held in a private room there is still the waitstaff to think about. Did they consent to watch your scene? While you can tell munch goers to just leave if they don’t want to watch (as if that wouldn’t be tremendously awkward, but again, separate rant), the staff literally cannot leave. We cannot talk about consent being one of the most important values in the scene if we’re willing to just ditch it when it’s inconvenient.

Also, we tell people who are scared of being outed that it’s safe to come to a munch, that as far as anyone who sees them at the restaurant will know, they’re just having dinner with some friends. If we have spankings at our munches, we’re saying that those people can go fuck themselves. Even people who probably wouldn’t face any serious consequences if they were outed (students, for example) might not be interested in justifying their interest in kink to their friends/parents/coworkers. They have the right to make their own decisions about if and when to out themselves.

Not only am I still waiting to hear a single good reason why there should ever be any play whatsoever at a munch, but there is simply no argument that you can possibly make that trumps our core values of consent and being welcoming to scared newbies. If you have to argue for something like birthday spankings at a munch, at least have the balls to admit you’re a selfish douchebag who puts your own amusement ahead of the core values of the community.

There seems to be some confusion in the local kink community about the concept of ‘tolerance’. Dictionary.com defines it as:

tol·er·ance [tol-er-uhns]

noun

1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.

2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own.

3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one’s own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.

Or, as we say in the kink community ‘your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay’. What this means is that while some of us are squicked or outright triggered by some kinks, we do not demand that no-one practice those kinks at a party we happen to be at. If we choose to attend play parties, we do so with the understanding that we may be exposed to play that we are personally uncomfortable with. If that happens, we look away, leave the room, or perhaps leave the party entirely if we’re particularly bothered by what’s happening on the play floor.

What tolerance does NOT mean is that I have any obligation to participate in your chosen kink. Tolerance does NOT mean that you get to play anywhere you like with no regard for the people around you, either.

To use an example from my local community, there has recently been some controversy about whether we should start having birthday spankings at munches again. Apparently it’s intolerant of my friends and me to oppose coercive group scenes at events that are supposed to be a safe place for newbies to meet other kinky people. It’s fine and dandy, however, to tell people like me to not come to a munch if I don’t want to be pressured to be part of a group scene.

Clearly my right not to be part of a group scene (even if I’m just spectating, I’m part of the scene whether I want to be or not) is less important than the birthday spankers ability to have a scene at a munch instead of at a play party where it would be appropriate. Not to mention the fact that we have our munches in full view of the other patrons in the one LGBTQ friendly pub in the city. Who the hell are we to tell queer people that oh, by the way, your safe space isn’t safe today?

If we want tolerance for ourselves, we have to be tolerant of other people too. If we want to be welcome in the pub where we have our munches, we need not to be assholes to the other patrons. Tolerance in the form of basic courtesy lets us all share the space.

Speaking of courtesy, asking people to play at play parties and not munches is no more intolerant than asking people to keep needle scenes toward the back of the play floor. Needles are a particularly common phobia, and choosing to play with them where that scene will be obscured by other players and equipment is a simple courtesy that makes it easier for needle-players and needle-phobics to enjoy the same party. By contrast, what would actually be intolerant is if needle-play were completely banned at all kink events. What would also be intolerant is insisting on having your needle scene at the very front edge of the play floor, so that every time someone enters or leaves the party they have to walk right past your needle scene. That would be extremely intolerant of other people’s right to choose what scenes they watch closely and what scenes they turn away from.

Asking people to be courteous is not the same as being intolerant. If I ask you not to masturbate in public, I am not being intolerant of your right to masturbate (and doing whatever you want with your own body is in fact a basic human right). I’m just asking you to respect my right not to be involved in your sex act. If you insist that jerking off at the dinner table is perfectly fine and I should just look away if I don’t like it, I’m afraid you’re the one who is being intolerant. There is an appropriate time and place for both spanking and masturbation, and that time and place is NOT at a public munch.

There is a word for trying to force your scene into a munch over the objections of multiple people, and it isn’t tolerance, it’s bullying.

Fortunately, some fucktard has taken it upon himself to cleanse Fetlife of women by suggesting that Fetlife add a function to search for people by Location/Sex/Orientation/Age. Out of 1,919 suggestions this is the shit that gets voted up to first place. What the fuck is wrong with all you? Is it that much of a problem that there are women on Fetlife? Is it too easy to get laid? Are you all plagued by hordes of women actually replying to your messages?

There are certainly problems with Fetlife, but the relative lack of spam is not one of them. If you think being able to spam all of the women within x miles of you is a good idea, pull your head out of your ass and think for a second. What makes your desire to spam women different from every other straight guy looking to get some kinky pussy? Let’s be honest, no one who wants to be able to message every woman in the same time zone is planning to send a carefully considered email talking about why they chose her and why they think she’d want to talk with them. If you do send messages like that, having a search feature wouldn’t change anything for you because you’re probably messaging people you met through a discussion group.

But back to the spammers. If you stupid bastards could search by gender and location, you’d spam everyone while telling yourself you’re such a special snowflake that no one else is doing the exact same thing you are. Now instead of only getting spam from people who are patient enough to page through everyone in their city, all the women on fetlife get a flood of shitty, one line messages asking if they have any pics from every man with one hand free. What do you suppose happens then? Does she go through those messages one by one on the off chance there’s a needle in that haystack?

No, you waste of space, she gives up on messages entirely and participates only in discussions if she doesn’t leave the site entirely. People, if I wanted to have my time wasted by every stupid fuck from here to India, I’d still be active on collarme.

If you want to spam people, go back to collarme. Oh wait, you say there’s no-one there but pro doms and scammers? Gee, I wonder how that happened. It’s almost like women don’t enjoy getting spammed constantly.

Have you all learned nothing from the dismal failures of alt.com, bondage.com, and collarme.com? By all means, campaign to ruin fetlife if you think the abnormally high percentage of women active on the site is a problem. If you’re not a fucking moron, you’ll appreciate Fetlife for making it easier, not harder, for you to meet people.

Apparently some people actually believe there’s such a thing as a kinky hierarchy, in which some doms are more dominant than others and get to boss the less dominant people around. As an aside, I imagine there are also a lot of topless pillow fights in all girl dorms in this fantasy land.

If you have anything at all going on between your ears, it should be obvious that this idea is completely fucking ridiculous. A hierarchy, really? Next thing you’ll tell me is that there really are secret European houses.

When you’re face to face at an event, nobody gives two shits who is supposedly more dominant. Decent human beings don’t order each other around if they don’t already have an agreement in place to relate to each other that way. If you show up at a play party and assume you get first dibs on the equipment because you’re the domliest of them all, you’re really not going to have a good  night. You can get away with that shit on the internet, but in real life no one is going to be impressed.

The one place that I know of where this kind of hierarchy actually exists is in some families in the leather community. My understanding of leather is that everyone starts at the bottom and some people decide to become masters. That’s not for me but I do respect the values of the leather community. However, strict leather families where junior masters follow orders given by senior masters seem to be a pretty small part of the whole kink community.

On the other hand, a depressingly large part of the kink community (by which I mean more than zero people) is made up of poor deluded schmucks who are terribly attached to the idea that some people in the kink community somehow outrank others. How do you even measure who is somehow ‘more dominant’ anyway? I’ll make you a deal: if you can get the International Bureau of Weights and Measures to define a standard unit of dominance, I’ll treat ‘who is more dominant?’ like it’s a meaningful question. Until then, fuck off.

Even if there was a way to measure and rank doms, it still wouldn’t matter. BDSM is not a competitive sport. You can’t win at being a perv anymore than you can win at having a picnic (although come to think of it, competitive full-contact picnicking would be fun to watch). I firmly believe that the point of both picnics and kink is to enjoy yourself. If you’re not having a good time, does it really matter that some random jackass approves of your selection of sandwiches?

By the same token, if my partner and I enjoy my very low key style of dominance why on earth would I care whether some dickbag thinks they outrank me because their slave girl is trained to assume slave position #43-a when she requests permission to use the bathroom? If you honestly believe that doing things I don’t enjoy for the sake of appearing stereotypically dominant would somehow make me more dominant, you’re too stupid to be here. Go play with the youtube commentors, you mouthbreathing fuckwit.

The awesome folks at Adventurotica just started an Indiegogo campaign for a new novel called “The Golden Mask”. The book trailer they’ve put together is amazing, you need to watch it just for the epic background music.

If you’ve never read any of Adventurotica’s work, you’re really missing out. Go to their samples page and fix that! I’m reading Sky Pirates of the Rio Grande right now, and it’s fantastic. When I’m finished I’ll be posting a review here. While I can’t comment on the last 1/5 of the book just yet, the previous 4/5 are full of gloriously ridiculous action scenes and hot, hot sex.

Go donate, you’ll be helping awesome people and they have some pretty sweet perks. You could get your very own wanted poster!

 

Goddammit, I’m just a fucking nerd. I’m not more worthy of respect just because I like being on the non-pointy end of the knife. I’m not more important because I like getting my way. I’m not some sort of superior being because hurting people gets me off.

It drives me absolutely crazy that some people seem to think doms deserve special treatment just because they woke up one morning and decided to call themselves dominant. Newsflash: anyone can call themselves dominant. They could be a 22 year old who got into the scene last week. They could be 37 and still living in their parents’ basement. They could be a predator who figured out that kinky people are even less likely than non-kinky people to go the cops if they’ve been abused. They could be a role player who enjoys making up elaborate fantasy scenarios (not to knock elaborate fantasy scenarios, which can be awesome) but has no interest in doing any of that stuff in real life.

The label ‘dominant’ doesn’t tell you anything about the person behind it. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re reliable, whether they’re honorable, whether their electricity got cut off for a week because they couldn’t get it together to pay the bill, whether their life is one crisis after another, or whether they’re even the age and gender their profile says they are.

I’m sure it’s hot to imagine that all doms are effortlessly commanding, astonishingly good looking, and always in complete control of themselves and everything around them, but I’m afraid I have to rain on your parade. We’re just people.

Sure, I’m a mighty dom, but I’m also someone who can’t keep a houseplant alive. Once I even killed a cactus. Four of my five moves in the last six years were because I suck at picking apartments (you would think I’d learn that cheap apartments are cheap for a reason). If I had to do without reminders in my outlook calendar and on my phone, I would never show up on time for an appointment ever again. I make grandiose plans about what I’m going to accomplish over the weekend, then spent the whole time fucking around playing facebook games and reading through the entire backlog of The Oatmeal. I’ve let myself be led around by my (purely figurative) dick for the sake of a few hours of play. Prior to the ridiculously adorable boyfriend, I had a string of bad relationships caused by combinations of wishful thinking and my inability to tell the difference between people I should be friends with and people I should try to pursue a romantic relationship with. I have a vicious temper. I’m mean to stupid people for sport (okay, so I’m not really sorry about that one). I’m a grammar and spelling snob to the point of being ableist. I’m extremely judgmental and refuse to change my mind about people once I’ve decided I don’t like them. If someone makes me really angry I will never, ever, let it go. And I’m a shitty housekeeper to boot 🙂

Tell me again how I deserve special treatment just because I’m a dom.

I’ll admit a lack of skill is harder for a dom than a sub to get away with, but that absolutely does not mean that doms are magically worthy of more respect than subs. If anything it means we oh-so-special doms aren’t paying enough attention to the differences in skill levels between bottoms.

It’s also dehumanizing to put me on a pedestal without knowing anything about me. It’s not flattering to know that your fantasies are more important to you than the person you’re projecting them on. If you respect my writing, great! If you’ve seen me play and liked what you saw, fantastic! But if all you know about me is that the role on my fetlife profile starts with a ‘d’ instead of an ‘s’, for god’s sake put your fantasies aside for a minute and treat me like a human being. One last time: doms are not special.