Tremendously Intense Erotic Situations
Where the Elite Meet to Beat
New Queers On the Block: Heterosexuals
. . . and don't call them "straight"
by Steve Lenius
Lavender Magazine column about "het queers" that featured TIES prominently
Leather Life Column for Issue 96 (January 29, 1999)
from Lavender Magazine
"Queer" seems to be the new umbrella term that's been chosen to be inclusive of all sexual minorities, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Is that umbrella big enough to cover kinky heterosexuals as well? Historically the gay (predominantly men's) leather/SM community and the community of kinky heterosexual folk have been parallel worlds, with little interaction between them. Some folks might like to keep it that way, but increasingly there are powerful forces inspiring a convergence of the GLBT and heterosexual kink communities.
I first heard about the concept of "het queers" from Jonathan Krall, senior congressional advocate for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. He was in the Twin Cities this summer to address a meeting of TIES, a local pansexual group of kinky people which bills itself as "GLBTH" (you can guess what the "H" stands for). He finished his talk with this admonition to the audience: "Don't let anyone ever call you 'straight'."
It's not easy for kinky heterosexuals in today's society. They are in a no-win situation: They may look "straight", but they aren't, because according to society's rules straight people don't engage in kinky activities. They therefore have a choice: By being "straight acting and appearing" they can avoid the oppression and disdain that society reserves for the queer community - but they will be ignoring an important part of themselves in the process. Or they can be open and honest about their kinkiness, and society will reward them with the same disapproval it gives queers.
Actually, the disapproval may even be greater than that reserved for obvious queers, as if society were saying "Well, we KNEW they were queer, so we wrote them off a long time ago. But we had such high hopes for you. You have a lovely spouse, 2.2 children, a stable job, a house in the suburbs. How can you be such a traitor to our ideals?" Marriages may break up over the revelation of one spouse's kinky proclivities; even if both partners are kinky, there's always the question of what to tell the children - and how to keep the rest of society from finding out, lest the children be taken away.
As a response to these types of oppression, the national heterosexual and GLBT leather/SM communities have joined forces to form The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), a lobbying group that is "working to reduce the discrimination faced by adults who engage in, write about, study, or describe alternative sexual practices in the United States." The NCSF includes gays, lesbians, bisexuals, heterosexuals, the transgendered, and individuals who self-identify as "none of the above." According to Executive Director Susan Wright, "It's time that Americans realized that one of our First Amendment rights is freedom of sexual expression. No one should ever have to suffer violence or discrimination because of their sexuality." (Contact them at NCSFreedom@ncsfreedom.org or visit their website at www.ncsfreedom.org.)
In most places the infrastructure of the heterosexual kink community is not yet as well-developed as that of the gay leather/SM community; there are few equivalents to gay leather bars where they can meet like-minded individuals. In the Twin Cities there are several organized groups for kinky heterosexuals, but TIES (an acronym for "Tremendously Intense Erotic Situations") is the only one that is public enough for me to mention in print; the rest of the groups are composed of people who, for various reasons, need to keep their private lives private.
TIES hosts a monthly gathering (called a "munch") for members and non-members; attendance at December's munch was somewhere around 150 people over the course of the evening. There are monthly discussion groups for dominants, submissives, and switches. There is also a TIES quarterly play party with attendance by invitation only. And there is an e-mail listserv featuring interesting discussions about topics ranging from serious (how do I tell my husband/wife that I want to experiment with SM?) to lighter subjects (BDSM shopping at Ax-Man). For more information, visit the TIES website at www.visi.com/~ties. [Webmaster's note: that's now http://www.ties-bdsm.org]
It was through that e-mail listserv that I first got to know some of the members of TIES - a varied group of interesting people of all ages, genders, orientations and interests. Having followed the list for many months, and having attended two monthly munches, I am finding I have a lot more in common with them than I might have expected. If I had just assumed that we would have nothing in common because they're het and I'm gay, I would have missed meeting some very nice people.
I know some male members of the GLBT leather community who are not happy about the coming of pansexuality to the leather/SM scene. For them leather is about gay men relating to other gay men, and they are allowed to make that choice. I'm sure there are lesbian feminist leatherwomen for whom leather is a woman-to-woman scene. And there are probably heterosexuals who don't feel comfortable with the label "queer." To all of these people, I have said it before and I'll say it again: The leather/SM community is pansexual, crossing all gender and orientation boundaries. The people who make up that community, however, are not necessarily pansexual, and that's okay too.
That's an important distinction to keep in mind. If a group hosts a play space and wishes to designate it as exclusively for lesbian activity, for instance, that's not politically incorrect. That's their perogative, and it would seem to me rude for a group of men to crash the party. On the other hand, no one group or faction "owns" the leather community; in order to thrive it must be open and accessible to anyone who wants to identify with it and with its traditions and values, regardless of their sexual orientation, identity or expression.
