I don’t usually post on politics but there are a few stark facts I want to look at
I have to admit that I read the Master/slave forums on Fetlife and a few other sites and see people bashing the President, or voicing support for his opposition and I just say “WTF.”
Look, I’m a moderate. While my personal politics may be left-leaning, my idea of Socialism is Tony Blair or Alan Stockdale not some long haired bolshevik. I identify with Labor in Britain and the Liberals in Australia. These aren’t countries that are particularly wildly liberal or badly governed. They haven’t had riots or bizarre corporative nanny states.
And I don’t neccessarily think that people with politics like me should govern. I have the politics that I do because I feel there needs to be weight dragging things to the left so that the government ends up in the middle.
But I think that people on Fetlife and in the power exchange and kink communities in general simply do not understand what the current GOP means. My fiscally conservative friends are telling me they are probably going to vote Democrat because the GOP no longer represents them.
I want to try to get one thing across…
They mean you. There’s no divorcing of social issues and fiscal issues. There was a time when there was. There was a time when I said “I don’t support Bush but I don’t think it will be a disaster if he is elected.”
They mean you.
Let’s talk about porn.
“The Republican Party placed a strict anti-porn plank in its platform, at the request of Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, reports Mediaite.com.”
This isn’t an exaggeration and bears out on a dozen other sites, just Google it, it’s well documented.
“The anti-porn platform says, in part, that ‘the Internet must be made safe for children’ and ISPs must ‘ensure that the Internet cannot become a safe haven for predators while respecting First Amendment rights. Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.”
First of all maybe you know somebody who actually works in the porn industry? Maybe you think you don’t because you don’t know any Hollywood porn stars. Do you know anybody who works or worked for Kink.Com or Insex? Friend of a Friend?
Let’s understand. The GOP isn’t going to ask questions. They don’t just mean Vivid. They aren’t going to say “oh you’re just a rigger.” They aren’t going to say “it’s more about the power dynamic so it’s okay that you tie girls up and beat them.”
They mean you. They mean the pictures that 90% of us on here watch. They mean the livelihood of people whose lives have been built around rope and bringing legitimate BDSM to a viewing audience. They mean people who practice non-traditional lifestyles. People who are probably more responsible for the actual growth of BDSM…and in many cases showing people fairly legitimate views of it…than all the people who ever posted in a forum put together, including me.
And they don’t mean to stop at pictures of naked girls. They mean PORN.
They mean our communities.
If you aren’t sure if they mean “Fetlife” they do. I don’t care if your fiscally conservative friend doesn’t think Fet is porn. Try getting it at any worksite that filters adult content. The people who wrote this plank do. They are not going to look at writing about slavery, and flogging, and sex and say “oh it’s okay it’s just personal growth.” Adult alt-sex communities are porn.
Will they be able to shut down sites like Fetlife, or attack your local organization. Maybe not. They still have to act within the law. But they were willing to use quasi legal maneuvering against entities like Insex, going well outside the written law to use the draconian powers allowed by National Security to combat terrorism in order to attack their payment mechanisms. Again, this is fairly well documented at this point.
Fetlife is based in Vancouver Canada, but the US has a long arm when it comes to money and even if it didn’t do you want to live in a nation that represses your lifestyle? Even if they can’t hurt you directly, these people are not your friends. They are poisonous to everything people here stand for. They will never be in your corner. You are scum to them. Get that straight. You are the problem.
The people who worked in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Office carried out a personal vendetta against Insex, one of the pioneers in bringing actual legitimate BDSM to a video audience, a concern that launched some of the best known names out there today. They badly damaged the business and drove much of its talent away. And that was under a dramatically more liberal administration than the one we’d be getting.
You think SOPA was a bad idea? The one thing that Chris Dodd’s Democratic Film Mafia and Romney’s zealots will agree on is choking down the internet. They don’t want to do it for the same reasons, but they’ll happily agree it should be done.
Fetlife is a sea of porn if you have this mindset. These are not people who are going to cull through the pics and posts and say “but this person was getting something emotional out of their being beaten bloody.” They’re going to scream in horror and make it a priority.
You are not safe.
They are not going to say “it’s okay you have whips and chains because you’re a macho good ole boy.” They are not going to say “it’s okay to have sex outside your biblical marriage if it’s for personal growth.”
And because they are ever more in the driver’s seat they are going to be able to push these agenda items. In fact they’ll need to as emotionally appealing smokescreens for their conservative fundraising base to mask the fact that they can’t do anything more about the world economy than Obama can.
They will hurt our lifestyle
They will hurt you
Yes they mean you
If you secretly feel guilty about the lifestyle, and on some level feel that you should support the grownups that oppose it because they must be the responsible ones…and I know people who have this perverse drive, think for a moment about what you are condemning your friends and partners to. Surely somebody somewhere along the way has been good to you?
I’m not saying Obama is any friend to porn or power exchange, and I wouldn’t want to see former Democratic Legislator Chris Dodd in a public office either. But by and large the Democrats currently sponsor individual freedom and personal choice and the GOP sponsors moving our country to be in lockstep with the agenda of the superchurches and combines that fund it. You are what you eat and the GOP is gorged on money that comes from people who do not want you to fuck anyone you are not married to, let alone post pictures and talk about it on the interwebz.
I work in Washington. I am not an alarmist. I do not think these people will win. I think the reason their platform looks so desperate and radical is that the majority of moderate people just don’t see them as representative and have deserted them, leaving the fanatics and true believers to set the rules. I think they will go down in an epic rejection of their socially backwards agenda.
But there’s a chance they can eke out a victory on electoral votes and state majorities.
And people in the kink community need not to be neutral or indifferent about this. You need to know which side your bread is buttered on. These people will never be your friends. They do not approve of your lifestyle. The world they create will be a chilling place for us to exist. Will we survive? Certainly? Is that something that you or I want. No.
This hits close to home. It hits people you know. It hits your lifestyle.
I am not a campaign flunky and I am not going to go so far as to recommend a specific activity. But I have three simple pieces of advice for anyone in a kink lifestyle looking at this election:
Think, Talk, Act.