Went to a BDSM movie last night.

So, I went to a BDSM documentary-and-discussion event last night (=Tuesday night), part of the same series as the polyamory movie.

I waved to the swingers I knew from last time on the way in, and the guy smiled and the lady waved back; he was wearing a wishbone on his neck-chain instead of a medallion like last time, and she wore a silver theme necklace with miniature handcuffs, along with her usual black.

The BDSM host with her beginning announcements regretfully reported that the upcoming regional polyamory convention had been cancelled, because not enough people registered.

"It's tough with today's economy to get people to travel," that goateed polyamory (and BDSM!) dude Steve was like.

After the movie -- they weren't that good, they had people gushing about fetishes with little explanations, or showing people licking boots and shit; the only part that engaged sympathy was when this one top guy ran the tip of a knife on the hand of his bottom woman and he was like, "See, it's just sense play, imagine her blindfolded and tied up and I do that all over very slowly, that's a whole scene right there" -- we all rounded up chairs, and me and my friend I went with (she does rape crisis hotline work) ended up in front of the swingers, so I turned to them and was like, "Should we scoot these chairs in, or will be blocking your view?", and when they said we were fine, I was like, "Sorry, but I had to make sure to negotiate before dominating your view," and the lady laughed and was like, "See, you're learning already!", and I used that as an opportunity to segue into meeting them formally and we gave introductions all around.

All the practitioners at these things seem to have a healthy sense of humor, for the most part, and to have the same sort of eyes as people in the New Age movement, probably because most of them are in that too.

Anyways, what I took away from this was that the same people who are into sci fi and fantasy and polyamory are into BDSM mostly -- there's even sci-fi debates that mirror some of sexuality ones, like how at conventions there's debates between the popularly-stereotyped positions of "Fandom is a Way of Life!" and "No, It's Just a Goddamn Hobby" -- except for this big black dude with a goatee ("Lord Faroah") who had begun to explore BDSM recently, and always played football in high school, and who discovered he likes to spank but has a problem because a lot of black women are closed to that because of the legacy of abuse under slavery, and the white women who want a black man usually don't have "nice big bottoms, like that" the guy said, holding out his hands about three feet apart.

(In fact, one of the black dominatrices in the documentary refuses customers who want to be domineered by a strong black woman, and is like, "You are dealing with me, a person, not a strong black woman, so get to know me first," she's like... She doesn't do "race play".)

One of the repeat people was the big moustachioed, ponytailed, overweight, leatherjacketed (and a darn nice guy!) polyamory dude who has a few girlfriends and used to have a government job and keep pictures of his girlfriends on his desk. Supposedly, he is a master of creating "scenes" that are a delight for all five senses, and his most famous one ever, as someone in the audience mentioned as an aside (everyone likes to seem to talk about their sex lives as an aside), prominently featured a woman being smacked by a dead fish.

Overall, people disliked how popular representation of BDSM left out all negotiation and made it seem like anonymous sex, rather than sex within a relationship. They particularly disliked how C.S.I. does laced-with-inaccuracies fetish episodes during sweeps week, and when someone mentioned it and said that that's where the majority of people get their information, not from the BDSM community, the wonderful swinger lady behind me shook her head all seriously, and saddly, and was like, "They sure do."

That said, all the people there said the BDSM people on Yahoo! personals were freaks, and that a lot of the people who domineer for money don't like it and don't know what the heck they were doing, though the hostess kicked off the discussion by talking about how some dungeons in NYC recently got shut down by undercover cops who had gotten hazard pay to go there a few times as customers and collect info to shut the place down, the hypocrisy of which she denounced since she said that "word on the street was that they visibly enjoyed it."

The only person out of place was this older mentally ill guy who had asked a question about the Great Porn Debate, and tried to talk about how all his life no therapist or psychiatrist could help him and he only dreams of sex with a woman, and he would interrupt a lot of people and occasionally ask people to repeat the website names for informational resources on BDSM.

At the end of the lecture, the dude asked a long crazy question again, so my one friend who I went with and I got up to leave, as do the swinger people. Somehow in the foyer we started talking, and the lady was saying how she went to a lecture by Bill Ayers on his new book and that that same crazy guy older mentally ill guy was there asking questions and they see him a lot at events, and that Bill Ayers has been demonized by the media too and is a really nice guy.

During the Q&A, she also said that being a swinger is a spiritual practice that makes you in touch with who you are and how societal norms are malleable and can be changed, and that that's why the government hates it and goes on prosecution binges against that and BDSM, because it opens people's minds and puts them in touch with who they are.