If you don’t follow me on Social Media, you might not know that I’ve been blogging over on the BED site for the past few months with only occasional contributions here. Here’s the one I wrote today, which was a little meatier than most. Bonus: you get the version without all the major typos I just caught. 😱 Damn, I hate when that happens. 😂
As we here at BED have been sorting through applications and talking about which people are strong candidates, which ones need to say more about themselves, and which ones don’t yet have the credentials for listing, we’ve reviewed hundreds of links and read through long lists of achievements. What a seriously industrious, committed group of people our candidates have been! The range of their skills and achievements, the numbers of classes they’ve taught, the sheer variety of topics they cover is awe-inspiring.
It is humbling and thrilling to see how much work these individuals and groups have accomplished. Some of them have learned from the bottom-up, LITERALLY, starting out as fresh-faced newbies to the worlds of kink and taking a long, often arduous, journey to refining their own definitions of WIITWD. They formed relationships and attended conferences and sometimes sat at the feet of greats who came before them. Others have taken more academic or pedagogical paths into our world, and spent years of their lives reading and studying, with a mission of demystifying BDSM and making positive change in how BDSM is viewed in the medico-forensic communities, the health professions, the legal system, and the fields of history, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.
Together, all of us have forged a world where millions of people are no longer frightened and ashamed of being sexually different. The concepts people like us now easily grasp were beyond the ken of the generations who came before us. Today, so many myths about us have been busted, and so many important voices have found appreciative audiences.
As much positive change as we have wrought, there is still important work to do! We hope that this social progress will continue unabated until BDSM/fetish people achieve genuine social parity when it comes to health care, mental health care, and legal rights. As it stands now, many of the kinks and fetishes that are widely known and accepted on the Internet are still being prosecuted in courts all over the world.
The rest of the world hasn’t yet caught on to our enormous knowledge base. Even as I’m typing this, somewhere in America, dozens, maybe hundreds, of people are being prosecuted for sexual behaviors that the Internet and sex-positive people everywhere would never consider a crime but which the courts, based on old books and musty laws, can still jail you for. From adult prostitution to online advertising for sex workers of every kind, right up to harmless fetishes and mutually consensual sadomasochism, somewhere in the US someone is worried about losing their livelihood, their reputation, and their children. With new transphobic and homophobic legislation smacking us in the face every day, it’s obvious that consensual but non-conforming sex is still under fire in the real world, vulnerable to discriminatory laws and selective prosecutions.
To me, BED is a step towards a better future for all of us. It’s is based on our vision of a world where every human being knows they have equal value, regardless of gender, sex or orientation. And since our focus is on education, it is also based on an open-access educational platform, where adults may both receive the education they deserve and then pass their knowledge along to new generations. The ultimate goal is that facts and education will ultimately defeat the lies and ideological complaints against people like us, and eventually change the global sex-negativity that has been entrenched in world culture for millennia. And, since it took thousands of years for humans to become this screwed up about sex, the changes we need to make will not happen overnight, or even in our lifetimes. But the struggle forward cannot die. If it does, it will be right back to the sexual dark ages for us all. We must fly on the wings of our collective knowledge and continue that work through good times and bad.
BED is about sharing that collective knowledge. It’s aimed at show-casing the people who have done the work to evolve to a place of knowledge and understanding about kink and the meaning of sexual freedom; and it is in service to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who need to hear their affirming, enlightened and evidence-based messages about sexual diversity.
In his application to the Educators’ Directory, Geoff W.’s mission statement hit a home-run with us: “I can’t repay those who taught me when I was new to all this. So I pay it forward to those coming in who want to learn.” That’s what we are all about. We are very happy to announce that Geoff has been added to the directory today!
As educators, each of us has taken the journey to sexual self-awareness. As individuals, each of us has taken a DIFFERENT journey, some through sex work, others through BDSM Organizational activism, some through study. Collectively we are a new and powerful force in the BDSM world. We are, as a group, committed to building a better world by sharing our knowledge with other adults. We dream that all consenting adults may live, love and play without shame or fear of persecution or censorship. And, as a careful reading of the Directory shows, everyone involved has paid their dues, invested their time, and has volumes of practical and intellectual knowledge about WIITWD, why we do it, how we do, and who we are as human beings.
The world needs this BED. Jump right in and get involved.
Help us grow with a donation. I will thank you personally.
