In which I go to my first leather con...
Apr. 22nd, 2007 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfwhich sounds more epic than it actually was. Leather Leadership XI (http://www.leatherleadership.org/llc11/index.html) was in town this weekend so I carved out a few hours to check it out on Saturday. The draw for me was that Laura Antoniou was going to be there and since we don't get too many big name erotica writers coming through these parts, I usually try and check out whoever's in town. I was also pretty curious about what a leather con would be like.
While I write a fair amount of BDSM fiction, I've never been into the whole embracing it as a lifestyle thing so I was attending as a tourist. I have to say that overall I was favorably impressed. It was well organized and people were pretty friendly. I did less social topping in 6 hours at this event than I would have had to do in an average hour at my day job which was refreshing. :-)
The crowd was also a lot more diverse in terms of race, gender, gender and sexual orientation and probably a few other things than I had subconsciously expected. There also seemed to be less emphasis on having a certain 'look' than I expected but then I didn't go to the play parties so I may have missed out on where that became more of an issue.
Among the few downsides, programming was geared very heavily toward planning leather events and leather organizing, something that persuaded some of my friends to skip the conference altogether. There also seemed to be some intraorganizational problems - apparently the board decrees that some topics are more 'controversial' than others. You'd think that a BDSM organization would have fewer problems with this but such is not the case.
I attended the breakfast speech by Laura, which was amusing and worth listening to if not precisely ground-breaking. After that I attended a panel on working with the media. This turned out to be a great brainstorming for me on book publicity so it was very worthwhile. I followed this up with a panel on Diversity in leather communities/organizations. It was pretty disjointed but provided a lot of food for thought. I've spent a lot of time attending diversity trainings and such in other parts of my life so it was interesting to see how common issues cut across so many boundaries. After that was a very pleasant lunch, which I ended up eating with some of the panelists from the Diversity panel and some local leatherwomen I hadn't met before.
The last panel of the day was on putting sex back in leather events. Since I haven't been to any in 5 years or so, I had no idea that sex had ever been taken out. Discussion on this panel focussed on why there was a growing emphasis on what I'll call 'power playing' as opposed to sex-related playing. This seemed to be the result of the various screwy local laws around BDSM and sex toys, as well as self-censorship by the participants, coupled with the ever-increasing size of leather events. Interesting stuff but by then I had a killer headache and needed to head home.
I did make it to Laura's very entertaining reading at DreamHaven on Saturday night however so I felt like I got what I hoped to from the conference.
All in all, still not sure I want to live in Leather Lifestyle Land but I'd be inclined to visit more often than every five years. :-)
While I write a fair amount of BDSM fiction, I've never been into the whole embracing it as a lifestyle thing so I was attending as a tourist. I have to say that overall I was favorably impressed. It was well organized and people were pretty friendly. I did less social topping in 6 hours at this event than I would have had to do in an average hour at my day job which was refreshing. :-)
The crowd was also a lot more diverse in terms of race, gender, gender and sexual orientation and probably a few other things than I had subconsciously expected. There also seemed to be less emphasis on having a certain 'look' than I expected but then I didn't go to the play parties so I may have missed out on where that became more of an issue.
Among the few downsides, programming was geared very heavily toward planning leather events and leather organizing, something that persuaded some of my friends to skip the conference altogether. There also seemed to be some intraorganizational problems - apparently the board decrees that some topics are more 'controversial' than others. You'd think that a BDSM organization would have fewer problems with this but such is not the case.
I attended the breakfast speech by Laura, which was amusing and worth listening to if not precisely ground-breaking. After that I attended a panel on working with the media. This turned out to be a great brainstorming for me on book publicity so it was very worthwhile. I followed this up with a panel on Diversity in leather communities/organizations. It was pretty disjointed but provided a lot of food for thought. I've spent a lot of time attending diversity trainings and such in other parts of my life so it was interesting to see how common issues cut across so many boundaries. After that was a very pleasant lunch, which I ended up eating with some of the panelists from the Diversity panel and some local leatherwomen I hadn't met before.
The last panel of the day was on putting sex back in leather events. Since I haven't been to any in 5 years or so, I had no idea that sex had ever been taken out. Discussion on this panel focussed on why there was a growing emphasis on what I'll call 'power playing' as opposed to sex-related playing. This seemed to be the result of the various screwy local laws around BDSM and sex toys, as well as self-censorship by the participants, coupled with the ever-increasing size of leather events. Interesting stuff but by then I had a killer headache and needed to head home.
I did make it to Laura's very entertaining reading at DreamHaven on Saturday night however so I felt like I got what I hoped to from the conference.
All in all, still not sure I want to live in Leather Lifestyle Land but I'd be inclined to visit more often than every five years. :-)