Rage

I came to the leather scene when I was 18, two weeks after my 18th birthday, I wandered into my first TES meeting, and never really wandered out. I had the crappy abusive relationship that all guppy subs seem to have to have before they get to the good stuff in the scene. I met people and made friends. I'm very lucky to have met the people I have, to have had the opportunity to make friends within my community. Of course, when I first came to TES, I had no idea that TNG existed. In fact it would be about two years before I was taken to a meeting, where I met Terra, my leather sister and best friend. Ironically the meeting I first went to was run by one of the founders of the TNG movement, but that's another story.

This story, I'm sorry to say, is steeped in rage.

I often tell people that my best friend when dealing with the community is the buddy system. And people laugh, I even laugh, but the truth is I utilize the buddy system because I don't feel safe in my own community. I don't feel that I can go to a party, or any other kind of kinky event alone because I get hit on constantly and obviously by creepy men who have no concept of personal space or finesse. Men who get all up in my junk because at 21, I still look like a 16 year old girl. And you know what? It sucks. It sucks that I don't feel like I can go out and enjoy my own community and feel safe. And I am outraged by this.

I'm not the same girl I was when I came to the scene, in the time that I've been here, I've learned how to stand up for myself. I've evolved into a heavy bottom, and I'm smart about it. I have rules, very strict rules that govern who I play with and how I play with them. I don't deviate from my rules. I had a scene that went bad a while back. I'm not blaming anyone, it's just that I had medical staples in my chest, and we couldn't find the staple remover, so we wound up having to remove them using pliers. It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced in a scene. I've learned that the most painful things that happen to me during a scene are never intentional. And one of these aforementioned creepy men, who shall remain nameless showed up and was watching this like it was some hot amazing scene. And I looked at him, already in an intense amount of pain and said loudly and firmly that he needed to go away because I couldn't deal with him.

Or at the Pirate Party a while back, I did my first single tail scene. I was whacked out of my gourd on endorphins and adrenaline and feeling more than a little bit fragile. My top had gone to get some water for us, and this man saw me sitting there topless and staring off into space. He came over and actually had the audacity to touch me, I don't even remember what he wanted, all I registered was a threat. I said as loudly as I could "Get your hands off of me!" He backed away quickly, and I was grateful when my top came back.

I'm tired of these men who really need to stop using the same tired old 'Wanna look at my toy bag?' line. I'm tired of having to literally hug the wall on my way to the ladies after a scene, because chances are I'm still naked and probably more than a little bit spacey. It's like those construction workers who constantly hit on women on the streets, catcalling and yelling sexual comments at these women. They never seem to change their tact, they seem to think that eventually it will work in their favor. It's the same thing in the scene, the same sad, pathetic, terrifying approach is used time after time on whoever their target is. You think they'd get the clue.

I've told Terra that I want to teach a Miss Manners class, and she continues to remind me that I will in all likelihood get up there and revert to my Jersey girl nature and spaz out and start ranting for an hour and a half solid at these people about why they can't get anyone to play with them. Us Jersey girls play dirty sometimes, Aimee speculates that it's something in the air that comes to us by way of Refinery Row and the Pulaski Skyway. Personally I've always said that it's something in the water.

But the point is is that this has to stop, I desperately want to be able to go to a party on my own, or maybe meet people there and get there early and not feel obligated to stand outside in the dark street because I would rather take my chances getting mugged than having to deal with people who never learned the concept of personal space.

It seems to me that these behaviors are so common that they are accepted and tolerated by the rest of the scene. Now, I know that my paltry three and a half years doesn't come close to some of my friends' time spent in the scene, so I might be missing some really big piece of the puzzle here, but why is this tolerated? Why are these people just accepted and ignored?

There seems to be a new strain of classes about how to get people to play with you. It seems odd to me that we need classes on common sense things. I think it's idiotic that people need to pay some small fee to be told to act how they would in a vanilla situation. I just want to understand this. I want to work towards a better community for everyone. I can't be the only one who wants this, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who wonders why this is, and tries to figure out how it can be changed.

I don't know, I've only been here for so long. And my so long is really very limited. Maybe I don't know something everyone else does. But if we all know the same things, then why isn't anything being done to change it? My goal here is not to offend, it's to learn, to understand why things are the way they are. It's to help stop people from being hurt, to bring people into our folds instead of turning them away. There are so many wonderful people in our folds. There are wonderful people from age 18 up through 110 and beyond. Truly lovely people who are worth your time and energy and love and trust. They are people who can teach you things, and learn from you as well. I know they can be found, because I found them, they are my friends. But I also know that I had to drag myself through countless leering stares and bad pick-up lines. I had my bad relationship with an abusive man, who I later discovered had a pattern to go with it. I know that I wasn't the only one.

I want things to change so that people can come to our community and see that everyone is worth their time and energy and affections, and that they don't have to sift through the predators and creeps to find the diamonds in the rough. Everyone should be a diamond. There's no reason why it should be a mix of coal and gems. No reason at all.

So why tolerate the predators?