There Ain't No 911 This Time.

Gay Pride month is just around the corner, but I really have to wonder right now. What exactly is it we’re proud of this year? The National Equality March is coming up in June. Exactly how do we strive and cry for equality when too many in our own leather & kink community turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the inequalities within it? How can we stand up and be heard as one when too many of the voices of our own aren’t being heard?

Yes, I know this won’t be very popular among many. Questions that address the divisions of our community seem lately to cause further division. Quite frankly, that’s because too many still refuse to see the extent and seriousness of the damage misogyny, racism, ageism, and transphobia are doing to our community. It’s because hearing those asking for nothing more than a seat at the table with everyone else disrupts a false comfort zone or challenges personal world-views. It’s because being called out for having a more privileged position in the community is a reality that encroaches on a self-deceptive sense of social complacency.

Because it means admitting that not a damn one of us in the community is perfectly innocent of having engaged in at least one of those behaviors. It means facing the fact that the paths many of us follow in our lives as leatherfolk and kinksters are strewn with far fewer obstacles and hurdles than the paths faced by our trans brothers and sisters, by POCs, by women. That’s the very definition of privilege. Construe it as you will, but the inescapable fact is that, overall, cis-gendered white males face far fewer obstacles.

When people to whom many in this community look to as role models and leaders either help profligate these inequalities or simply ignore them, all that happens is that those who look to them feel freer to engage in the behaviors - or ignore the ones they see.

If I could draw one analogy, it would be that the house is on fire. Our brothers and sisters who are transgendered or gender fluid, who are POCs, or who are women are right in the middle of it, shouting to both get out of the fire and to draw attention to the flames. Those who truly mean to be allies are taking also shouting out and trying to beat back that fire. And then there are those who seem to think it’s all a false alarm and keep on doing their thing while the fire rages in another part of the house.

There’s only one way that can end if we don’t put out that fire. People can deny it all they want. They can sit there in that other room, but they won’t escape the flames. They can hearken back to days when the house wasn’t burning, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s on fire today. (or the fact that the fire was burning unnoticed in the wall then).

Another stark reality is that there is no fire department that’s going to come and put out that fire. As I said during my step-aside as International Puppy 2014:  “…we have to look out for each other. No one is going to do it for us.” While, at the time, I was directing that at the pup and handler community, today I direct it at all of us. We’ve got a fire to put out, and only by combatting it together can we extinguish it and, hopefully, save the house.

I’ll end this with a call for discussion, for a call to LISTEN and ENGAGE, not REACT and ATTACK. Listen to what’s being said, but avoid internalizing it. The shame isn’t in admitting we’ve all engaged in less-than-perfect behavior, it’s in becoming defensive and shutting down the conversation. Idealist that I am, I believe we have it within us to rise above this. Maybe it’s true that racism, transphobia, ageism, and misogyny aren’t going to vanish from the human condition for a while yet. But our is a history of bucking the main, of coming together in the face of adversity.

We're going to be in serious trouble if we don't.