The Myth of Irresponsibility
by Jack Rinella

I'm taking a two weeks' trip to my ancestral homes in Sicily, so my slave Patrick is going to be on his own. Knowing that, a friend casually asked if I had appointed a guardian master over him for the duration. Later I joked to Patrick about my absence and he told me of the question.

He also noted that he had made an adult decision to be my slave and was adult enough to take care of himself when I was gone. "Well said," I thought, when he gave me that response.

Because so much information about our lifestyle deals with kink and sex and has fiction as its source, there is this myth that we live irresponsible lives. In fact, for folks really involved in our lifestyle (as contrasted to cyber-players) nothing could be further from the truth.

I might grab my dictionary in a minute, but before then I'll write that responsibility is the ability to respond. As adults we know how to appropriately respond to various situations, keeping our priorities correctly aligned, and our responses correct (we hope). In that light, there is, nor can there be, no abnegation of duty or safety. Sure we're in this for fun, but we recognize that there is a time and place for everything and we keep everything in its place.

As David Stein, one of the authors of the GMSMA preamble that gave rise to SSC, notes, safe, sane and consensual was "intended to draw lines between S/M behavior we wanted to encourage and other behavior we wanted to distance ourselves from." To distinguish our behavior from that which is irresponsible and abusive is a burden that lies upon us all; to foster positive, healthy, and enjoyable sexual activity and to discourage the opposite is up to us.

In this regard there are many distinctions that may and should be made. Slaves, for instance, are not children when it comes to their ability to decide correctly. One can never renounce their freedom to choose, their obligation to decide rightly. "Because my master told me to" is never an excuse for misbehavior, carelessness, injury, or the like.

Though fiction feeds our libido and in some ways instructs our imagination, we are still subject to life on this planet, including its legal, moral, social, and physical rules. You all know, I hope, that I am far from being a conformist but that gives me no right to be dangerous, illegal, or immoral. The truest forms of our lifestyles are honest and trustworthy, neither deceitful nor dangerous.

Sure we take risks and play on the edge, but we do so with information and appropriate safeguards. We are risk-aware and take steps to minimize injury, disease, and contention. We insure that we are consensual and in control of ourselves and our play, even when we knowingly give that control to another.

Any studied approach to a "slave's" life, for instance, will show a hard-working, conscientious, and caring person, living a life that in many respects is much like anyone else's. The myth of captivity in the basement or continuous bondage is just that, with no substance nor basis in reality. Slaves generally work outside the home and have substantial responsibility domestically as well. Patrick, for instance, maintains our home, decides our weekly menu, and makes millions of daily choices that affect how we both live.

Masters, too, have the responsibilities of chores, employment, and life in general. Just because our stories all take place in the dungeon doesn't mean that the rest of the week doesn't look like anyone else's typical week. There are appointments to be kept, bills to be paid, and duties to be done. The vast majority of us have to work for a living and have the same problems, concerns, and challenges as any other human on this planet.

I was inspired to write this column by more than Patrick's passing remark about my going away. Last week I met an attractive young man at the Eagle. During our conversation he told me he was new to Leather and in fact this was the first time he had ventured out in his new kinky attire. Like each and every one of us when we were newbies, he was still feeling his way around our subculture, exploring and experimenting, trying to find out what we were really all about.

In that conversation he indicated that he didn't want his involvement in Leather to interfere with the rest of his life, mainly his employment. There was this unstated reluctance to throw away everything he was and did in order to be kinky, as if being kinky meant that he would wear chaps and a harness to work. In due time, of course, he will learn that each and every one of us maintains appropriate priorities and decorum, knowing when, where, and how to act according to truthful, honest, and mutually acceptable norms.

The fact of the matter is that we are human in every situation and living an alternate lifestyle does not diminish our humanity. We are doctors and lawyers and teachers and parents and spouses. We are students, unemployed, laborers, clerks and salespeople. We are young and old, ethnically, religiously, culturally, and racially diverse. When you leave out the kinky aspects of our lives, we fall on the bell curve of humanity in the same way as any of group of humans. We spend the largest part of the 168 hour week in the same way as any other people do: we sleep, eat, wash, work, and attend to a myriad of domestic, social, and employment obligations.

The daily drudgery of life has no place in hot fiction and steamy porn. Hence our literature in a real sense misrepresents a great part of our reality. That's not to knock it. Literature is meant to distract, amuse, delight, and give pleasure. In the same way, we look for dungeons, play spaces, and bedrooms to be places for relaxation, pleasure, and renewal. Our goal is, after all, to have fun. We don't want to have the burdens of laundry, dusting, and dishes interfere with a good scene and passionate sex. Happily they need not.

Every once in a while, though, it's good to remind ourselves that our lives are lived on a real plane in a real world and to assure all who seek us out that we are safe, sane, and consensual, that we are part and parcel of humanity's totality.

It's helpful, too, to remind ourselves of our humanity, lest we blame our faults and foibles on the fact of our kinkiness. The pest at our munch is probably a pest at home and at work as well. Those among us who are socially awkward, to put it nicely, in the dungeon are most like the same everywhere else. Sure our sexual expressions vary from the norm, whatever that means, but for the most part we are no different than our neighbors, co-workers, and the families that raised us.

Given that fact, feel free to join us, you have nothing to lose and a lot of fun to find.

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Have a great week. You can leave me email at mrjackr@leathermail.com or visit my website at http://www.LeatherViews.com . Copyright 2003 by Jack Rinella, all rights reserved.

This is a free weekly column of serious leather sex information and advice. Feel free to pass this on to a friend, or better yet, ask them to subscribe. To get your own FREE subscription go to http://www.LeatherViews.com/myezine.htm.

Jack

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I want to take this opportunity to remind all of you that the Pantheon of Leather will be held in Chicago on February 14-16. I would especially invite you to attend my slide presentation "Kinky History Timeline" at the Leather Archives and Museum (6418 N Greenview Ave, 773-761-9200) on Sunday, Feb 16 from 2-4pm. For more information visit the Pantheon website at http://www.theleatherjournal.com/pantheon.htm

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