I’m sure most of you all have heard of Dame, Dame Products.
They do sex toys.
They do things like lube, massage oil.
They reached out to me and they asked if I would give an honest review of some of their products
The Arousal Serum.
So, arousal serums for the most part if they are intended to be used on people who have vulvas are usually peppermint, cinnamon, or both.
And the idea is that the chemicals in those oils are kind of slightly irritating to the issue so what they do is they bring a lot more blood flow to the tissue which then increases sensation.
So, it gives you kind of like a warm, tingly feeling which a lot of people enjoy and which they associate with feeling more aroused or more sensitive to contact.
This one you use one or two drops.
I used some and it gave me that nice, warm feeling.
I think that like if you are someone who enjoys that like warm, tingly feeling, this would be a good one for you.
The ingredients are nice.
It has got good stuff in it.
It seems pretty high quality.
I like the cute little bottle.
I think that for me, I always feel a little bit mixed about arousal serums because again, essentially what you are doing is just inflaming the tissue.
And so, because I already have like clit growth, it just going to make that area even bigger which makes it a little bit tougher of a fit for a lot of the toys that are available on the market for people who have vulvas.
Just a pros-cons thing for everybody.
This is the massage candle.
Massage oil candles are a pretty standard thing across the market these days.
A lot of different companies make massage oil candles.
Basically, usually what they are is like either a soy or coconut-based wax.
Let me see if I can pull up the information on this.
And because those melt in fairly low temperature, when you light the candle, the kind of waxy texture turns into an oil.
It comes warm on to your skin but it’s not going to hurt you.
And it’s something you can pour out pretty easily.
Blow it out when you’re done and you can have nice, warmed massage oil that you can use.
In general, if you are using something like a massage oil, you are going to want to be very cautious about where you use it and how because oil can make most condoms not effective anymore.
It damages the material.
So if you are using latex condoms or if you are using I think it’s polyisoprene condoms, the same stuff that Skyn brand condoms are made out of, you don’t want to mix oil and those condoms.
So if you are using a massage oil, you would want to wipe your hands off really well before rolling on a condom with them just to make sure that you don’t damage that material.
The only condoms I know of for sure that are safe to use with oils are the FC2s, the insertable condoms, often called Female Condoms.
Those ones are safe to use with oil.
Everything else, you want to be very cautious.
What they recommend is lighting it and letting it burn for at least 20 minutes so that there is a nice even layer then you blow the flame out and pour it directly on to the skin or scoop it out with your fingertips and massage it in.
When I first lit it, I had to pour a little bit out so that the wick would stay lit.
But after that, it did a pretty good job.
It feels pretty nice on my skin.
It’s not super oily and gross.
It’s also not super waxy, so that’s nice.
Yeah, so it looks like they use a soy wax and coconut oil.
Nailed it.
There’s also sweet almond oil and vitamin E, a little bit of beeswax, some olive oil, some sunflower wax, some jojoba oil, grapeseed oil, avocado oil, shea butter, kava kava root extract, and a little bit of melatonin.
And it comes in three different fragrances.
If you are someone who has a fragrance allergy or sensitivity or you live with someone who does or play with someone who does, this would not be a good fit for you.
They are scented.
While they may be using essential oils to scent them, it’s not super clear on the website whether they are so you just want to be very careful about that.
I found the fragrance to be pretty nice.
It was not super overwhelming or overpowering.
It was fairly low key.
Again, anything fragrance, you want to keep away from mucus membranes.
So you want to keep it away from your genital area if you have a vulva, from the head of a penis because fragrances can be very irritating to that delicate skin.
And if you are licking it, you would want to be careful around that as well.
Overall, I think that they make very high quality products.
Everybody likes different things.
Everybody’s bodies respond to different things.
But I think again, this is a company that makes good products.
It’s just about whether they’re the right fit for you and your body.
Can you give me an update on the current trans legislation?
So as I’m sure many of you all know if you follow my stuff, there has been a huge number of anti-trans bills this year in legislatures, many of which have passed, many of which have been horribly heinous.
The good news is the courts have started striking them down.
And I don’t mean liberal California courts with democrat-appointed justices.
I mean Trump-appointed judges have been striking down this shit because it’s fucking unconstitutional.
And like surprise!
Everyone already knew this.
The thing is, almost all of these bills are copypasta from other bills.
There is one small group of people who are on a group chat, I shit you not, there is an article about this, I can send it you if you want to see it, who are just all putting the same bills in every fucking legislature.
They fly.
They are the same anti-trans, special detransitioner people out to every fucking state to say the same fucking things every time and pass the same stupid fucking bills.
Every time.
And they are all unconstitutional because there is no constitutional way to ban drag.
There is no constitutional way to ban the existence of trans people like it is a human right.
It’s a human right according to the United Nations.
It’s a human right according to our Supreme Court.
It’s already fucking established.
It has been established forever.
So the Arkansas Law which was a drag ban got struck down by a Trump judge who fucking roasted them.
It’s a great decision if you have time to read it.
It is glorious.
He says that it is so blatantly unconstitutional that he doesn’t even need to just say like a portion of the law can’t stand that the whole thing gets to just be completely fucking struck because there is no way any part of it can be valid.
And then the drag ban in Tennessee has also gotten struck down by another Trump appointee like great, so good.
And so it’s just – it’s great that we are getting these cases.
And here is the thing.
Right now, where we are at with anti-trans stuff is that they are just shitting out as many anti-trans bills as they can everywhere and passing as many as they can everywhere.
In Montana, they pulled some thoroughly illegal moves to stop Representative Zooey Zephyr from speaking who is the first openly trans representative there.
And then with her being unable to speak, they went ahead and passed the bill.
In Nebraska, a woman had been filibustering the entire freaking chamber for months because she has a trans kid and all of her fellow legislators know that and they ended up removing her again, illegally so that they could go ahead and pass their anti-trans bills.
These folks don’t fucking care about the actual laws.
They don’t care that it’s unconstitutional.
They know.
They don’t fucking care.
They don’t care that what they are doing is all completely illegal, completely not allowed by the exact rules that they have passed, that they have agreed to abide by.
They don’t care.
There’s this great scene in, what’s the name of the movie with Kenneth Branagh about the Nazis?
Where like they are in this room and they are like, “Well, but what about the law?” and he is like, “OK. How many of you in here are lawyers?”
They are all fucking lawyers.
He is like, “The law says what we say it says.”
That’s the thing.
The law says what we say it says.
That is how they are operating.
They don’t care.
They know everything that they are doing is blatantly illegal, that it is all wrong, and they don’t fucking care.
So it’s great that this shit is all getting struck down by the courts, by Trump-appointed judges.
And also, it’s not going to change anything probably.
It’s great to get these victories.
We need to keep getting these victories.
And what we are heading towards – what we are already in is a slow civil war, a cold civil war.
We are already in a place where there is a civil war ongoing in this country and it’s not with like battle lines.
It’s around all of this weird legal bullshit.
It’s around gerrymandering.
It’s around – which gerrymandering has also been recently overturned by several justices you would not have expected.
There is a very real happening in this country where conservatives are just doing whatever the fuck they want to because they can and it seems like most democrats are just hanging out being like, “No! That’s not in the rules. You need to stop. You’re supposed to stop now.”
But not actually doing anything about it.
And so, I’m glad that these laws keep getting struck down.
It’s great.
And also, how many democrats are talking about trans people and how we need to support them?
How many of them are getting on their social media, getting on the news, talking openly about supporting trans people?
How many of them are beating their drum about how this is an on-going genocide of trans people?
The democrats, I don’t think they actually care about trans people.
I think that they don’t like drag bans and it looks bad for these bills to be passing, but I don’t think they are going to actually do anything about it.
The problem with what is happening right now is that the systems that would enforce these rulings, the systems that would ensure that we as a country follow our own laws, that we as a country continue to give people human rights that they have already earned because they exist as humans, those systems are deeply fucking broken.
They were designed for the best case scenario.
And what we have instead is people who are willing to do whatever it fucking takes to win.
When you have sociopaths, the only thing that can stop them is sociopathy.
We don’t have anyone on the left who is really standing up and making this shit stop.
The few people we have are like Representative Zooey Zephyr who is a trans woman and therefore deeply invested in it and then a representative from Nebraska whose kid is trans.
But people who are not themselves trans and who do not have a direct close relative who is trans or a partner who is trans, they are doing fuck all about this.
I don’t know how this country comes back from where we are.
Thomas Jefferson himself said that we should be rewriting the constitution every 20 years so that we aren’t governed by dead people.
Our country has not rewritten our constitution since its founding.
There have been amendments but not a ton.
And the last one was a really fucking long time ago.
The thing that we have guiding our country right now is something that is toothless and it is something that we don’t even enforce and it’s something that was not designed for the world we live in.
The second amendment did not anticipate the ability of a regular person to get their hands on an automatic weapon or something that is easily converted to fully automatic.
We are at a time in this country where everything we already have established is so deeply broken and the people who could fix it either would not or can’t or don’t know how to.
And I think that the best thing I’ve seen about this is that what this means for all of us is we need to focus on building our communities of care.
We need to focus on building mutual aid networks.
We need to focus on building the connections we have with each other, the ways that we take care of the people who are our people, that we take care of our neighbors, we take care of the queers and the trans people and the black people and indigenous people and other people of color that we take care of each other because there is no one in this country who is going to stop to fuck up and take care of us unfortunately.
There are occasional outliers for this, but for the most part, we are going to have to just take care of each other.
We are in a country that is falling apart/has already fallen apart and all we are going to be able to do at this point is just watch it go.
And that’s why we need to take care of each other.
It is great that these bills are getting struck down.
And I don’t know that the realities of day to day life for people in Arkansas and in Tennessee have significantly changed because of these court decisions.
Like yes, they can now get a permit for their Pride event but also, that doesn’t mean the cops aren’t going to still come and fucking hassle them.
There are multiple instances recently of cops coming to Pride events or to protests and explicitly helping fascists because it’s the same thing.
They are the same people.
So it is great to have some legal victories.
It is great to be overturning some laws.
And the courts aren’t going to save us.
The police as sure as fuck not going to save us.
We are the only ones who can save us and we need to start showing up for each other.
If you’re a cis person, you need to be doing 10 times more to support trans people.
You need to be buying them dinner and doing their laundry and washing their dishes and talking to every cis person you know who is even a little bit bigoted about it and making sure that they know why that’s a terrible position to have, how that makes them a fascist and that you are not cool with that, because they will not listen to me.
They will not listen to trans people.
They don’t give fuck what we think.
If you are someone who is trans or nonbinary or questioning your gender, find other people who are like you and just dive the fuck in.
We need to be closer to each other.
We need to be taking care of each other.
I’m going to be starting a monthly munch here in Atlanta for trans and nonbinary people.
No cis people allowed, not because we don’t love you but because we need a space that is ours.
And I think the first one is on August 13th.
But find events like that.
Find events in your area for trans and nonbinary people where you can get together, meet more of them, build community, get close with each other, and develop those networks of mutual aid and community care because that is what’s going to get us through.
That’s what we need to survive this time.
That’s what we need to get through this period of upheaval and potential dissolution of all the systems we’ve come to rely upon.
This is not a country that is functioning well.
This is not a country that’s functioning well at all.
This is a country where insurers have sent newborns in the NICU letters about why their care is not going to be covered.
Not to the parents, to the infant.
This is not a country that’s functioning.
So build your plans.
Come up with how you’re going to take care of each other.
Come up with how you’re going to take care of yourself.
Take good care of the people around you.
Focus on that because government is not going to save you, the judges are not going to save you, we have to save us.
I’m sure most of you all have heard of Dame, Dame Products.
They do sex toys.
They do things like lube, massage oil.
They reached out to me and they asked if I would give an honest review of some of their products
The Aer
The reason I asked for this one is because clit-sucking vibes are my favorite right now.
Usually when I’m getting myself off, I’m using a Satisfyer.
I really love that kind of sensation.
It’s something that I’m super enjoying these days.
The Aer is – it’s very sleek. It’s a little bit small.
So depending again, like your anatomy and physiology, I found it a little bit difficult to grip just because it’s short and it’s thin.
And so, gripping it to actually use it was kind of a difficult positioning for my body.
But I’m a bigger person.
I think that if you are a smaller person, it might work better for you.
The other thing I was concerned about that was a little bit of an issue is just the size of the opening for the suction.
So again, because I have bottom growth, my clit is bigger than a lot of other people’s.
And that means that with something like this, in order to get a good seal, the width of the opening often has to be a little bit wider in order to make sure that I can get a good seal around my clit.
And with this toy, I found that it was a little bit tough to get that kind of good seal because it is again a little bit smaller of an opening.
But it is like a nice, soft kind of feel there.
The other thing about it is again, this is kind of a softer vibe.
I think that overall compared to other products that I’ve used, it seems like Dame’s Products are like lower on the vibration end, which is a great.
For a lot of people, a lot of products are way too intense of a vibration.
So this is good for folks who need that kind of gentler vibration.
If you have a much more sensitive clit, like that’s going to be great for you.
It has got one button to turn it on.
Oh, I think I ran it out of battery.
And then it just got like more and less intense buttons.
The charger for it is one of those magnetic USBs which I love, very easy.
You can’t mess it up.
For me, the level of suction was a little – it wasn’t quite intense enough for me.
Again, I think that if you like – if you find the toys like the Satisfyer are a bit intense for you, if the Womanizer is too intense for you, something like the Aer would be a really good fit.
It is a full silicone body, which is nice.
The Womanizer and the Satisfyer both have plastic bodies, which is – you can’t really sanitize them in the same way.
This wouldn’t be boilable because it has electronics, but I think it is watertight, which means that you could use it in the bathroom.
It’s easy to clean in the sink with some sanitizing spray.
Again, with any of these nuzzles, you want to make sure you try to get in there to clean, and that’s a little bit trickier but I think you could probably do it pretty well.
And again, it was – for folks who want a lower level.
So if you’re someone who needs like a lower level of intensity on the toys that you play with, this could be a really good sucking vibe for you.
I do love sucking vibes just in general.
I think they are a lot of fun to play with. It’s a really good sensation.
And again, I think that overall, it seems pretty well-made.
It just was not quite intense enough for my body. And I did have that issue with my clit growth and not quite fitting properly.
Is cisgender actually a slur?
All right.
So, in the last week or two, I can’t remember exactly when this went down, Elon Musk posted on Twitter that cis and cisgender are both slurs and if you use them on Twitter, you can get locked or banned.
And look, the thing is, every single argument that they are using in this current moral panic about trans people is exactly an argument they used about gay people, only they just changed the words a little bit.
There were a ton of people who were super upset that you had to call yourself straight.
It was just normal people and gay people.
You weren’t straight.
You’re just normal.
And that’s what’s happening right now with the word cisgender.
All cisgender means is you agree with the sex you were assigned at birth.
Your experience of your gender is the same as what they predicted when they looked at your genitals.
That’s all it means.
It’s not a slur.
It’s a descriptive term.
The argument that it is a slur is basically based on this idea that there only need to be descriptive words for people who are not “normal.”
And so if you are “normal,” you don’t need a descriptive word for yourself.
The problem with this is it makes it much harder to actually talk about issues affecting trans people because then we have to see well, for trans people, it’s like this, for non-trans people, it’s like this.
And that’s much less graceful language and they actually don’t like that either.
Usually when people are saying stuff that is ridiculous like white is a slur, straight is a slur, what they mean is we don’t want you talk about your problems and we definitely don’t want you to talk about us.
So no, cisgender is not a slur.
It has never been a slur.
The thing about a slur is that it is targeting people who are oppressed to reinforce their oppression.
You can’t slur cisgender people who are being cisgender because they are in power everywhere.
They rule everything.
So you can’t – they are already in the position of power.
They are not marginalized for being cisgender.
Nobody is being denied job opportunities for being cisgender.
Nobody is being denied housing for being cisgender.
And if they are, it is like such a minuscule portion of what is happening in the world at large.
So no, it’s not a slur. Elon Musk is a man baby who is throwing a fit on the internet because he is the most divorced man in the world and his mama had to tell him not to fight Mark Zuckerberg.
That’s all that this is.
It is just a temper tantrum by a child who happens to be too old to technically be a child anymore.
And it is also part of fascism.
Fascism is about normal, OK, fine people who we want to keep around and then those bad, terrible people who are wrong who we have names for and they are the ones we need to get rid of.
We need to stop them existing.
Fascism and transphobia are always the same thing.
They are always linked.
It is kind of impossible to be transphobic and not end up down the path of fascism because fascism is all about returning to this idealized history where things were simple and plain, where like everything was easy, things were clearly categorizable and that’s just not fucking real.
It is always fascism.
It’s always fascism.
If you watch people who get into transphobia, they just get weirder and weirder because it takes over their whole fucking life.
It is fascism.
It is a beautiful gateway to fascism that people have made.
If you want to argue that with me, tell me why J. K. Rowling liked the tweet by the Washington Three Percenters who are an outright white nationalist group saying that they are all Gryffindors.
She fucking agrees because transphobia is fascism like that’s all it is.
So, cisgender is not a slur.
If you say that it’s a slur, you just look ridiculous.
You look ridiculous and no one is taking you seriously except other people who already believe exactly what you do.
That’s all.
That’s it.
It’s not a slur.
Move on.
Get a life, especially you, Elon Musk.
You have so much fucking money.
Can you buy a personality?
Is that a thing you could do?
Could you buy yourself some peace of mind?
Men will buy a whole $44 billion website rather than going to therapy about the fact that they are divorced.
They will threaten to cage-fight Mark Zuckerberg and then make their mommy bail them out.
It is just the most divorced man.
I just can’t.
I’m sure most of you all have heard of Dame, Dame Products.
They do sex toys.
They do things like lube, massage oil.
They reached out to me and they asked if I would give an honest review of some of their products.
Their adorable little – it’s like a couples clip in clit vibe, which is the Eva.
So it comes in this little kind of pod packaging that charges in.
And this is what it looks like.
So, there are a lot of couples vibes on the market and I think that it’s always an interesting concept and the thing I tell folks all the time about any vibe that is intended to be worn without any kind of like support or harness or about anything that’s intended to be used while you’re doing penetrative sex is that whether or not that product works for you is going to be highly dependent upon your biology, like how your body is shaped, how your body functions.
They are designed generally for a very certain range of body types.
And so if you have a body type that is different, it may or may not work as well for you.
So with the Eva, the way that you use the Eva is you kind of squish these little arms in and put them in under your outer labia.
So if these are your outer labia, your labia majora, you kind of slide it in and then the legs open up to kind of hold on to the undersides of your outer labia, which is a really interesting way to keep something on your body.
I didn’t know if it would work particularly well for me because I don’t have particularly large labia majora and I do have very large thighs.
So when I tried it, what I did find was that because I put lube on so that the clip wouldn’t give me or so that the vibe wouldn’t give me rug burn, the vibe ended up moving around a lot especially when I used a penetrative toy along with it.
And I think that for the way that my body is built, this is just not going to work as well without some kind of external support.
Like if I had a little harness over it, if I held it down with my fingers, it could be fun and interesting.
But on its own without anything support it, this I think would not stay on my body.
For me personally how it works.
The other thing about this vibe is that whenever you have a vibe this small, most likely the motor in it is going to be fairly buzzy.
So when we talk about vibes, we will talk about vibes that are more rumbly which is like a deeper kind of vibration versus ones that are more buzzy which is a kind of more circus vibration.
Different people have different preferences.
I tend to prefer a rumblier, deeper kind of vibration in part because my body tends to require kind of a higher vibration level to respond well.
And this is a fairly buzzy vibe.
So let me see.
I don’t know if you can hear it.
I’ll turn it up to the highest.
If you can hear that like buzzzzzzz, it is a pretty buzzy vibe especially on its highest level.
It’s 3 levels, 1 button.
Like I said, my body tends to require a fairly high level of vibration.
At the lowest level, I didn’t feel a ton from it.
Medium level, kind of some.
Highest level, it was so buzzy that it started to become irritating than good for me, for my body.
I think that if you’re someone who enjoys buzzy vibes, this would be great for you.
The other thing about it is that I’m someone who has some bottom growth from having been on testosterone and I think perhaps because of that bottom growth or just because of how my stuff is shaped, the Eva didn’t quite sit on my clit where I wanted it to.
In order to get it on to like the most sensitive part of my clit, the head of my clit, I had to kind of move it down further towards the vaginal opening which then made any kind of penetration much more challenging and more likely to lock, to not get loose.
So I think that if you have a clit that sits a little higher, if you have a clit that is more sensitive and so lighter levels of vibration are better for you, this would be a really great toy.
I think that for the way that my body works, it is probably less of a good fit.
And that again, is like nothing bad about the toy.
It’s just that different bodies are shaped differently and function differently.
I do think it is like a high-quality toy.
It has got a really nice soft silicone.
It should be pretty easy to clean.
The only areas I’m worried about cleaning particularly well, I gave it a quick clean but up here at the top where it has got those little crevices, I think those could be a little bit more challenging to clean.
You may need to use like a nail brush or like a discarded toothbrush to make sure you get in there.
So yeah, the Eva I think is a really interesting idea.
I think that if you have the kind of anatomy that it works well for, it could be great for you.
If you like lighter vibrations, it could be really great for you.
So this is from a comment on one of my YouTube videos.
“I saw your interview with Watts The Safeword and have been watching your channel ever since. I have recently discovered an amazing new humiliation kink that directly reduces dysphoria and I was wondering if you might be interested in making a video about it. The misgendering kink plus hormones has reduced my dysphoria down to almost nothing. Now, I smile when the shop assistant serves me and when I give my deadname to the doctor.”
So, misgendering kink or a detransition kink is not uncommon among folks who are trans.
I think that there are a lot of reasons that could be.
Answering why questions for things about sex and kink are very, very challenging because we don’t understand how the brain works.
And if you ask someone why they’re into something, they will give you their best guess but it is not necessarily likely to be the entire story of what’s going on or the truth about why they’re doing something.
So, I think that I am someone who is trans and nonbinary and I from time to time enjoy some misgendering kink or some detransition kink.
And what I enjoy about that is that it gives me a space to process the shame and the pain of what it is to move through this world as someone who almost always gets misgendered by people.
And that is an uncomfortable feeling.
A lot of what kink ends up being for people is a way to take our fears, our insecurities, our negative experiences, our traumas and process it in a safer container, to have someone who cares about us, can hold that space for us, and then we can find our way through those feelings by engaging with them more directly.
Kink is not therapy but I think both have a place.
I am not someone who thinks that like therapy is the only way to work through things or like that it is necessarily more valid of a way to work through things than another way.
For some people, they need a combination of both.
They need therapy that is affirming of their identity and helps them figure out who they want to be, and also a space to play with these more negative experiences that they have out in the world.
The experience that this person talks about, about like being happy when being misgendered out in the real world is something that works for some people.
For me, it does not.
For me, I only want misgendering kink when I know the person understands my gender and is doing it as a purposeful kink exchange.
If someone is misgendering me because they just made an assumption and they don’t know my true gender and they don’t really care to find out about it, that does not feel good for me.
That does not feel hot.
It doesn’t feel fun for me.
I think that everybody responds to this differently.
For some people, absolutely.
It could be the case that getting into this as a kink makes it easier to be misgendered in the real world, but that is not the truth for me.
For me, being misgendered in the real world still sucks and still hurts.
So the thing I will say about this is that whenever we are engaging with a psychological kink that is a long and access of trauma that we have or that is related to an area of oppression that we face, we have to be more careful than we might otherwise be because there can be a very fine line between a kink that we are using to process our hurt and our pain and a way that we are using kink to hurt ourselves.
And I think that sometimes it can be hard to know in the moment how we are approaching something and whether it is coming from that healthier place or not.
So if you are going to engage in something like a misgendering kink when you are a transperson who is dealing with being misgendered in the world, particularly right now when there is an ongoing trans genocide, just pay attention to when you are doing it.
Does it actually make you feel better or is this a way that you are like re-experiencing this hurt and this trauma over and over again?
There’s no single right answer here.
And even for the same person doing the same play with the same partner, it might go back and forth between something that is healthier and something that is less healthy or helpful.
So just be aware of it.
Keep checking in with yourself.
Keep checking in with your partner.
Make sure that you are doing this in a way that isn’t causing you more harm because like goodness knows the world is harming us enough already.
How do I support my trans friends with all of the current legislation being put in place?
So this is a really good question.
There is a Twitter account, let me see if I can find quickly what that Twitter account is, that does a weekly basically call-to-action of if you want to support trans folks this week, here is what you can do.
And I think it’s Transformations Project.
Yes.
So it’s the Transformations Project.
On Twitter it’s @the_tfp for Transformations Project and they put out legislative updates about any ant-trans bills that are happening as well as information on what you can do to help support transpeople in the States that are being affected.
So, they will let you know if there are people you need to call or email.
They will let you know how – what you can do there.
The other thing I would say about supporting trans folks right now is that to be real, what is happening right now is genocide.
If you look at the characteristics of genocide, there are 10 stages.
We are currently in stages 6 and 7 especially here in the South where there are a lot of very terrible bills targeting transpeople.
What is happening is an ongoing genocide.
That is not an exaggeration.
That is not a hyperbole.
That is fact.
And in fact, if you talk to people who are experts in things like World War II and the Holocaust, they will tell you that this is exactly how that stuff started.
The picture that you see often about Nazis burning books is the burning of the sexuality institute that was doing trans surgeries.
They kidnapped and murdered many transpeople who have been housed there for surgical procedures.
They destroyed all of the literature that that institute had collected over years about trans healthcare, transpeople stories, transpeople’s experiences.
So in Nazi Germany, they started with disabled people and transpeople.
It is not a coincidence that what is happening right now is a complete elimination of any support for or restrictions around limiting the spread of COVID and targeting of transgender people.
Fascism works by targeting populations that are easy scapegoats and eroding people’s ability to recognize that that is violence because it’s violence against people they don’t care about.
And by the time it’s violence against people that they care about, it’s already so far gone that it’s hard for people to push back.
If you live in a state that is passing these kinds of anti-trans bills, find groups who are protesting.
Talk to your representatives.
Go show up at the State House and try to talk to people.
Be loud.
Be aggressive.
Be in my face about it.
Find who is running against the shitty transphobes in your area and support their campaigns.
Send them money, volunteer for them, whatever you can do.
Almost every state has a group of multiple groups that are designed to help directly support transpeople.
So in states where there are outlying trans care, there are ad hoc groups being formed to help make sure the people can get access to things like hormones.
There are groups that make sure that trans kids have support if they are dealing with stuff at school.
There are organizations that are helping people move out of trans hostile states, particularly if they have trans children.
Find those organizations.
Support them.
Give them your time.
Give them your money.
If you know transpeople, support them.
This doesn’t mean text them and saying like, “Well, shits are real hard. If you need to talk, let me know.”
Because like that’s nice, but what I need right now is not someone to talk to about the ongoing genocide of people like me.
What I need is for someone to buy me dinner or do my dishes or fold my laundry.
What I need is for someone to come over and body double me so I can get through some of the shitty admin work for my own company that I keep putting off because it’s not fun.
Find ways for the transpeople around that are like actual meaningful support.
Give them food.
Give them money.
Give them help with chores.
Whatever it is that they need to make their life easier, just find ways to make their life easier because right now, life is real fucking hard for most of us.
I’m in Atlanta.
Atlanta for the south is actually pretty all right because I don’t look like a cishet person and I’ve run into no issues so far.
I’ve lived here for 5 months, haven’t run into any significant issues.
I get misgendered a ton like all of the time but other than that, nobody has tried to start any shit with me.
However, they sure as fuck are making it clear on the legislative level that this state is hostile to my existence.
So having someone come over and just fold my laundry would mean so much more to me than having someone text and ask how I’m doing and if I want to talk about things.
I have a therapist I talk in therapy every week.
I have trans friends.
We talk about stuff all the time.
I don’t need another person to talk to.
I need someone to help me get through my to-do list.
I need someone to get me a delicious meal so that I don’t have to choose what to freaking eat or go grocery shopping.
That’s what I need.
So every transperson might have a different response to this.
Some transpeople may absolutely want you to reach out and give them someone to talk to.
I personally don’t want that because if you are going to talk to people about trans issues, don’t talk to me, talk to the people in your world who are transphobic.
If you have family members who are transphobic, talk to them.
If you know people at work who are transphobic, talk to them.
Do some actual direct work at changing people’s minds because none of those people will listen to me.
They would not hear my opinion because I’m obviously biased because I want to survive and be able to be who I am in the world.
So if you know people who are transphobic or people who are flirting with transphobia, talk to them.
Talk to them about it.
Help pull them out.
You can help pull them out of it.
Let them know that that’s not actually something you agree with.
That that’s not something that’s OK. Do that work.
I think that when people ask these questions, a lot of times what they want is a very simple answer of like, go to this link and donate $20.
And like if supporting trans people is easy for you, you’re probably not doing it enough because we need way more support.
We need so much more support.
It is spectacularly – it’s shocking and also completely not at all surprising how little even people on the left are talking about this ongoing genocide of transpeople, particularly on a national level.
Folks are doing nothing.
They are waiting for the fucking referee to show up I guess and give the fascists a red card.
I don’t know.
But just do things.
Go talk to people.
Have those hard conversations.
Make that dinner at home awkward as fuck.
Dive into that because we need you to do that.
You doing the thing that is easy is not going to help us.
You need to do the thing that is hard.
Us living is hard.
Us existing is hard.
Us being ourselves is hard.
Every day is hard.
So you can talk to your family.
You can talk to the bigot at work.
You can do that.
Do that work.
You can a transperson dinner.
You can take care of their laundry.
You can do their dishes.
You can clean their house.
Do the stuff that is hard because that’s meaningful.
What is rainbow capitalism and how do I know that I’m actually supporting queer companies?
So, rainbow capitalism is the term for the way that on June 1st, many, many, many companies all of a sudden have a rainbow logo and are talking about like, “We support Pride!” even if for the rest of the year, they do literally nothing to support queer people or in fact donate to the kinds of folks who are trying to get people like me eliminated from the world.
So, it is a way of pandering to the LGBTQ+ population because they have realized that we have dollars to spend.
Now, rainbow capitalism is something that is very controversial that has a lot of different discussions about it within the queer community because on the one hand, I do not think that our Pride celebration should be dominated by the floats from Wells Fargo and AT&T and Verizon and the Police.
On the other hand, when companies think that you are worth pandering to, it means that you are accepted enough that your dollars are worth spending.
Target, over the last week or so, there has been a lot of controversy about Target in particular because Target has been kind of dogpiled by a bunch of people on the right for their yearly Pride collection this year and people were going into Target stores and violently threatening associates, tearing apart displays.
And so as a result, they decided to move the displays to the back of the store and to also remove some items from being in store in order to support the safety of their workers.
And many people have had very strong responses to this.
Because on the one hand, it’s rainbow capitalism and like painting themselves and the flag, who cares?
But Target as a company actually has been remarkably queer-supportive for a very long time.
For ages, Target has let people use the bathroom that aligns with the gender they identify us.
They don’t ask.
They don’t care.
They’re not going to force it.
So even in states where there were anti-trans bathroom bills, Target refused to obey those.
Target has put out huge Pride Month collections for many years, long before most other stores or major companies were doing it.
And it was one of the first companies that was like, “We will take your dirty gay dollars.”
On a corporate level, I agree that there is a lot of cowardice in removing merchandise from the store or moving it to the back of the store.
But on a worker level, a lot of the folks who are working for low wages at Target are queer and trans people or otherwise marginalized.
And what we talking about here is not a bunch of people coming into the store and complaining to the manager about the stuff that’s being sold.
We are talking about people who are coming into the store and destroying things or threatening people with violence.
There is no one who is getting paid $15 an hour who should be putting up with that.
And since we all know that cops are also the bigots.
It’s not like they can just call the Police and be like, “Come to Target. There’s another bigot.”
Because cops aren’t going to help like at the bestest, they might show up in like half an hour to an hour, but by that time, this violent bigot is going to be out of the fucking store.
And the people who are working in security at Target, they also aren’t getting paid very much.
So on a like worker level, Target making this decision to remove some stuff from their stores and move it to the back of the stores in order to keep their workers safer is one that I can’t disagree with.
I wish that there is a way on a corporate level for them to stick to their principles here to say like, “We are not removing the stuff from store. It’s important to have there. We are going to keep it.”
But I do not know how on a realistic level they do that without subjecting a whole bunch of people who are young and marginalized to a whole bunch of danger.
So, there’s a comment that like if someone sold a pair of socks, the cops would be like, “Whatever.”
Actually, not true.
So a friend of mine, their husband had been working in security at Target and it takes them – they will – security will not stop people and try to detain them unless they are stealing a certain amount of goods.
And even then, the police would take an hour to two hours to get there with someone who had stolen multiple hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.
Police don’t respond.
They don’t, especially for burglaries.
Any kind of like property crime, you’re lucky if a police officer comes at all.
And so again, like I think that when we are talking about the reality of the people who are working in this space, doing something to protect them is a good call.
Rainbow capitalism again in general, not great.
Lockheed Martin, probably shouldn’t have a rainbow logo.
Why are they doing that?
What’s that about?
What are they actually doing to support queer people?
There’s a thread on Twitter that I saw that talked about like what companies should do if they are going to put out a statement saying that they support queer people for Pride Month and it was stuff like do you have a way for people to change their pronouns and name in your system?
Is it quick and easy?
Are you making sure that people are using folk’s pronouns that they want to be used?
Are you making sure that people have full access to healthcare if they need gender-affirming care?
What are you doing to actually meaningfully support the queer and trans folks who work for your company?
If you aren’t doing anything for them, why are you now suddenly saying you support that community when it’s June?
On the other hand, it is better for companies to want our money.
It is better for companies to do the math and see that it is more beneficial for them to make a whole bunch of rainbow merch and drip themselves rainbows for a month than for them to think that it’s not, because when they think that it’s not worth it, that is a sign that we are in big, big trouble.
As much as it sucks, we live in a capitalist hellscape where the acceptance of corporations of your identity in life is a big part of what tells the world what is acceptable, what is normal, what is here to stay.
MeUndies for instance, is a company I get my underwear from.
In 2021, MeUndies had a ton of different of Pride patterns that they were selling for the month of June.
They had at least five that I can think of off the top of my head.
In 2022, MeUndies had two patterns for Pride Month.
That’s a sign of things going backwards.
That is a sign of problems.
Rothy’s who makes shoes that are highly – they are expensive but they are like super durable, super comfy.
I love my Rothy’s.
They did Pride shoes in 2020 and 2021.
They did not do Pride shoes in 2022.
As far as I can tell, they’re not doing any this year.
When we see rainbow capitalism takes steps backwards, that is a sign of a troubling larger trend that things that previously were considered, worth marketing, worth pandering to no longer are, that we are no longer enough of a money block for them to risk the backlash from all of the bigots and assholes.
So I have a lot of very mixed feelings on rainbow capitalism.
I am a person who brings a lot of nuance to this debate because again, in a country that is run by big money, you want big money to care about your group.
It sucks that that is how it is, that is how it is.
So, the thing that I would say is, if you are going to be buying Pride stuff, get some stuff from Target for sure.
Target is great.
Their stuff is always super cute.
I get stuff from their Pride collection basically every year.
And find people who are queer and trans who are making stuff themselves.
Part of what makes Pride collections at places like Target really appealing to people and more accessible to people is that because it is mass-produced and is produced at larger scale, it is often much more affordable.
I can get a Pride t-shirt at Target for like 20 bucks, whereas, this shirt on my website is more than $20 because it’s print-to-order.
So there is a premium associated with not creating a whole lot of stuff that you then have to figure out how to sell and offload.
People who are individual queer and trans creators have to charge higher prices for the items that they make because it takes more of their individual time, more of their resources in order to make those things happen.
Mass production, producing at scale reduces the cost per item of everything, which reduces the sales price per item for everything.
And so, if you have a budget that you’re thinking of for your Pride Month merch, try to figure out what portion of that you can set aside to support queer and trans creators who are making their own stuff and not just the major corporate entities.
And like look, if you are broken, all you can afford is the stuff at Target, you do you, right?
I would love to support more queer and trans creators and I do not have the money right now.
I don’t know that I’m even going to be able to get anything at Target this year for my Pride collection.
But if you have money, see if you can spread it out.
Places like Twitter and Instagram tend to have a lot of people who support each other, retweets each other, put together large threads of queer and trans creators who have stuff that you can buy for Pride Month.
So, those are good places to look.
You can also in a lot of Etsy shops just kind of like read and usually people who are queer and trans who are making stuff that is for queer and transpeople, self-identify in their bios and that kind of thing.
So, look into that.
If you are looking to buying stuff from a big corporation, look into like how do they actually treat the queer and trans people who work there, are they treating those people well or poorly?
That’s another thing that you can look at.
And again, this is hard time for most people.
Most people have not seen significant pay increases in years and they have seen significant cost increases all across the board.
Housing is more expensive.
Gas is more expensive.
Groceries are more expensive.
Bills are more expensive.
Everything is more expensive.
And we are trying to pay all of it with the same amount of money that we had before at most.
So if you are someone who has money to spare, make different choices.
But if you are someone who is in a tougher position, make the best choices you can and I don’t think that I can judge if what you need to do is buy your stuff from Target or from another big corporation that can afford to mass-produce these things.
It would be great if we could all afford to buy stuff from queer creators, and that’s just not reality for a lot of people, particularly people who are queer and trans.
We make a lot less money on average than people who are cishet.
And if you don’t have money to spend on these specific queer and trans creators, do the best you can, right?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, which doesn’t mean like do whatever the fuck you want and it doesn’t matter and there are never any consequences.
It means you’re never going to be perfect at this so figure out which bargains you’re making.
Figure out what the exchange is for you.
Is the exchange for you that you need something to wear to Pride so you need to buy something and you can only spend 20 bucks on it?
Is the exchange for you that you just save up and you buy something new for Pride every few years?
How do you want to do it?
But figure out what the bargain is that you’re making and accept that the choices that we are making have consequences that are wider than us.
If you are buying the stuff that’s mass-produced at a place like Target, almost certainly, there are people in the global south who are suffering to make that cheap for you.
So just understand that the choices that we are making have far-reaching consequences.
Do the best that you can.
You are never going to do it perfectly.
You are never going to be a hundred percent clean in terms of how you do these things.
Your hands will always be dirty, but be aware of the bargains that you are making.
Make them with a clear mind and accept that those are the bargains you have to make right now.
Dr. Liz: What is aftercare?
What does it mean?
What does it look like?
What are your tips for aftercare?
So for anyone who doesn’t know, aftercare is a term in the kink community that refers to the things that you do after a scene to help the top and the bottom kind of recover, process, figure out what they need in order to be able to come back to the real world.
The reason I said both tops and bottoms is because tops also need aftercare.
There is a often a misconception that the only people who need aftercare is bottoms, and that is not true.
As someone who has been a top who needed some serious aftercare and had some trouble getting it, tops need aftercare too.
How would you describe aftercare or like what people look out for it?
Rebecca: I mean I think I would describe it similar to how you just did.
It’s what the bottom or the top need after a scene to help them rebalance, to feel grounded again, or to kind of return to their more baseline state.
So you’ll hear or you’ll talk about subspace or top space kind of that place that your brain and body get to during a scene.
And for a bottom, it’s often kind of that drop or kind of the disorientation a little bit or just feeling …
Dr. Liz: Almost a trance-like state often.
Rebecca: Almost a trance-like state.
I can’t describe it very well for top state but …
Dr. Liz: I mean it’s kind of like a rush.
It’s like I’m an adrenaline junkie.
I’ve been a skydiver.
I own a motorcycle.
Top space feels like that to me.
It feels like the middle of a sky dive.
It’s this like high that you are riding and you feel huge and powerful and energized.
And that’s amazing in the moment and then as the scene ends, all of that adrenaline your body has been dumping starts to crash and a lot of times it can bring up a lot of questions of like, “Am I a terrible person for what I just did?”
If you said some horrible things, if you’ve hurt someone real bad even if they enjoyed it and intellectually you know that they enjoyed it, because your system is crashing, your frontal lobes are less functional, your limbic system is more functional and those feelings and fears and anxieties, it’s really easy for them to start running away.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: So aftercare I like to think of is having a bunch of different components.
There is a physical component so like what does your body need?
Pretty much everybody, that’s going to be water at the very least.
You’re going to need water.
Both people will need water because both people’s bodies have been dumping a lot of adrenaline and adrenaline uses up a ton of water in your body system.
Also, electrolytes can be really helpful so like a Gatorade or electrolyte tab can be good.
Bodies, we talked about sugar from like gummy bears, chocolates, something that has quick access sugar for your body to utilize because it has used up a lot of its energy source.
Physical stuff like something soft.
Rebecca: Stretching.
Dr. Liz: So movement and stretching can be really helpful.
Sometimes like massage or light touch or calming touch.
I usually have a soft robe or blanket if I’ve been bottoming that I put on because a lot of times, while you’re in the scene, your body temperature is very high and as the scene ends, your body temperature crashes.
And so having something to keep you warm is really helpful, and that soft sensation for me is really like grounding after I’ve been – especially if I’m doing a lot of pain work.
I think physically also, looking at like if there has been any restraints, making sure that you’re checking nerves, that they are also going well.
Checking on if there’s any bruising, where that bruising is at, what you might need for recovery for that.
So just checking in with your body, seeing what your body needs.
Then there is …
Rebecca: And responsiveness or alertness, depending on the type of play you’ve been doing, just making sure that the other partner is again, especially in subspace, you’re going to feel – you may feel kind of out of it or loopy but still are your pupils reactive?
Are you still kind of oriented?
Some people might need more balance or support as well coming out of the scene.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
And that transitions into mental which I think would be the second component.
So like when I top someone for a scene, part of what I do after we’ve cuddled for a few minutes is I’ll start asking them questions that require them to think and make judgments because it brings my frontal lobes back online.
So I’ll ask them what their 3 favorite things were and what 3 things I could do differently better, not all next time to make it even better for them so that they have to look through what we did, make choices about it, analyze it, come up with examples, and speak them to me.
And that that does pretty effectively is get them out of that trance-like sub state and out of that limbic system arousal and back into the prefrontal cortex where they are doing more logical thinking, coming back to a more standard consciousness.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: I think for a top, a lot of times mental aftercare is about this reassurance component, which is like a mix between mental and emotional because I think that the same way that when you’re in the middle of a race, you could run forever.
When you’re in the middle of a scene, you could insult someone forever and then you come out of the scene and you’re like, “That was in my – the thing that came out of my mouth were in my brain.
They came from my brain and that was me in some way saying this thing.” And that’s a really tough thing to process.
And so figuring out what processing you need as a top or a bottom in order to be able to integrate that scene, check on who you are your self-concept and separate out who you are in a scene from who you are as a person because again, you don’t walk around the street punching people in the butt but I absolutely will punch the crap out of someone’s butt in a scene.
So like helping to remember that distinction that just because you said or did something awful in a scene doesn’t mean you are awful especially if the other person enjoyed it.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: Any other mental stuff you can think of?
Rebecca: I’m trying to.
I mean I think for me, a lot of it is, it’s that just grounding again or kind of the mental questions to help get the frontal lobes back online to help kind of reorient to time and to space and to place.
That’s kind of the main thing for me.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think too looking at – so this is kind of like a combination of mental and physical is like the cleanup and the putting the gear away.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: I think for a lot of people, that ritual is really helpful and grounding because it’s about like if we are mindful in opening a scene, it’s the way that you mindfully close a scene that you clean your things, clean your station, put the things away.
And some people make the bottom do that.
Some people, the top does that.
Some people, it’s a shared task.
But however you do that, that’s a really good like almost ritualistic way to help you come out of the scene and back to a more standard consciousness and way of being.
Rebecca: Yeah.
And I think for – I think sometimes as a top, you can go into – some people might go into almost a kind of hyperfocused or meditative type state where like all of your focus, all of your energy is on that bottom or on what you’re doing.
And so, some people – Midori I think actually talks about thought squirrels in one of her workshops and I think for some people, being in a scene really helps shut off those thought squirrels or all of those thoughts that are constantly running through your brain.
But when you have that laser focus or that hyperfocus, I think coming out of a scene then having that ritual of maybe it’s how you take care of your bottom or putting your gear away or cleaning up your area helps so that the thought squirrels don’t just come all the way back online or go wild again.
But you have that ritual to kind of help again reorient and regroup.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
Like the questions I ask of a bottom when I top, they are also mental aftercare for me because I’m asking them to give me compliments.
I’m asking them to tell me what I did right.
That’s why I ask for 3 good and 3 changes because I need to know that they enjoyed it.
I need to be reminded that I’m not a terrible human being.
I need to hear from their mouth what was good for them.
I think the third component would be like emotional.
And emotional I think is the component that has the longest time span.
So there is this stuff you do immediately after the scene for aftercare that release the emotional component but depending on the kind of scene, that may be also something that you check in a couple of days later, a week later just to see how stuff is setting.
For me when I bottom, emotionally, one of the best things is that cuddle time and then getting praise like I did such a good job.
I need to know that I did such a good job because my brain will tell me I did the bad job.
So I need people to tell me very explicitly that I did a good job.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Yup.
And I think that’s true for a lot of people.
I think aftercare can really often look like that cuddle or that closeness and then that reassurance and that praise.
Absolutely important.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
And I think for tops, again, aftercare emotional, also that praise, right?
I’m like, “What was good?”
I think sometimes bottoms and I get this way when I bottom as well, forget that their tops are also people who have brains that can be mean.
And so, there is this way that almost everyone who is a top has learned about praising, reinforcing, making the bottom feels heard and seen and appreciated, and there is not necessarily as much focus in reverse.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: So just like making sure that the top also gets those emotional needs met.
I think the intimacy of it, like this is a very intimate moment that you shared with each other and you might be transitioning out to being intimate with other people or moving to different spaces.
And so thinking ahead of time about how do you make that transition smooth and gentle as much as possible.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: Hey, Kenzie!
Hi!
Hi!
Hi!
Welcome to the live.
Emotional aftercare also, some people have like specific objects that are like helpful for them in terms of either bringing them back to regular consciousness or grounding after a scene.
So some people have the specific blanket that it’s their aftercare blanket and their brain has associated that with like the warm, fuzzy after feeling so that it helps them feel more held after the scene.
Some people have like a stuffed animal or whatever it is for you but figuring out what it is that you can have that’s like your anchor point that you can associate with that good after scene experience so that every time you get it out, it gets you back in that better space.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Dr. Liz: Yeah, because our brains, they love learning things.
Rebecca: They love conditioning.
Dr. Liz: They love conditioning.
They love it so much.
So if you start building those associations, you can really help make stuff easier for you.
And I think overall what I would say is that in general, our society, we talked a lot about being mindful in how we start things that we tend to talk a lot less about being mindful in how we end things, and I think it’s important to be equally mindful both ways.
However much time and energy you put into negotiating what’s going to happen in a scene, you should also be figuring out what’s going to be happening after because your on- ramp and your off-ramp are going to the same height and if your on-ramp is nice and gentle and your off-ramp is steep, that’s going to be a weird freaking journey, man.
So level it out.
Try to make sure that you’re putting as much of that gentleness in the transition out as you do in the transition in.
Rebecca: Yeah, well-said because I think we could all get caught up in just the immediacy of afterwards or of cleaning or picking things up.
Dr. Liz: Someone is waiting for the station.
We need to fix it up and get out of the space.
Rebecca: Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was probably didn’t see it that one time.
Dr. Liz: We’ve all done that.
We have all done that.
Rebecca: Someone else is waiting.
We need to move.
Come quickly.
And that also – I mean that detracts from the scene and from that – because you’re missing that aftercare, and to me it’s the totality of the experience, how you negotiate, what you do during the scene and that aftercare, and if you try to rush that or you don’t have that thoughtfulness that you did at the start of the scene or the lead up into it, it detracts from I think the whole experience.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
I would agree.
Rebecca: Other people can wait and they will.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
I think most people’s aftercare is not taking an hour.
It’s like 5, 10 minutes at most usually.
So take the time.
It’s going to be OK.
People will wait.
You will be fine.
I think too like aftercare is something that I wish more vanilla people cared about because I definitely had times where I was having relatively vanilla sex with someone and I wish there was more aftercare that happened afterwards.
So I think that again, it’s this idea of like if you’re going into a space of a lot of intimacy and intensity, making sure that you have an off-ramp for it that’s going to help take care of you and the person you did it with.
Dr. Liz: What tips do you have for preparing for your first kink event?
I mean the tips that I would give folks is like number one, you don’t have to do all of that.
I promise.
All the shopping you think you need to do, all the preparing you think you need to do, you’re going to go through the whole schedule and try to highlight every single class you want to go to but you don’t need to.
It’s OK.
Rebecca: We had backups to like if we can’t get into this one then which one?
We had a whole plan.
It’s not necessary.
Dr. Liz: Right.
Rebecca: We overthought.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
And that’s the thing is that I think whenever you’re going into a new event, it’s pretty normal for a lot of people to feel like they want to overprepare so that they are ready for everything.
And I think especially with these kinds of kink events, you’re not necessarily going to know how you want to experience that until you’re there.
There have been several years I’ve gone to big kink events and I’ve taught one or two classes, attended like two or three more and spent most of the rest of the time in the vendor hall, hanging out with friends, doing other things because what I needed was more community and those kinds of experiences than like a bunch of classes or learning.
So I would say like do less.
You don’t need to bring 3,000 costumes.
You can.
I support you.
But you don’t necessarily need it.
You don’t need to have every toy you think you’re ever going to need because you’re going to want to buy a million toys there.
Rebecca: Take money or be prepared to spend money.
Dr. Liz: Set your budget before you go because you will talk yourself into spending so much more than you thought you were going to.
Rebecca: Or just have the self-control to follow your budget because we definitely overspent.
Dr. Liz: I never followed my budget. I never do that ever.
Rebecca: I don’t regret it but we overspent.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
And again, I think figure out what it is you want to get from the event.
What one thing do you want to make sure you get from the event?
Is it one class you want to make sure you make?
Is it one meet-up you want to make sure you go to?
Is it meeting one new person who you feel like to be a good friend or a good play partner?
What one thing do you want?
Because I think focusing on just one thing that’s the most important to you is going to make it way easier to make choices when you’re more tired than you thought you were going to be, when you haven’t eaten in 12 hours, all of a sudden you’re realizing you’re going to have start making choices about what to cut and get rid of.
And so knowing your main goal makes it easier to prioritize.
Another thing I would recommend especially if you are going to a kink event, get on FetLife.
Make a profile on FetLife.
You can be as anonymous as you want.
I actually have two FetLifes.
I have one as Dr. Liz and then I have one to be horny on.
So you can find my FetLife, IAmDrLiz, that’s my Dr. Liz one.
I’m not going to tell you my horny one because I need to be a little anonymous.
Everybody sometimes needs a little anonymity for different reasons.
For me, I have that more anonymous FetLife because I don’t want people to talk to me just because I’m Dr. Liz.
I want people to want to play with me because I’m me, the person, not Dr. Liz, the public figure.
So get a FetLife, FetLife.com.
It’s very straightforward.
It’s the ugliest social media you’ll ever use.
It has a horrendous geocities type interface.
You will feel like you are in 1990s internet land.
But it’s totally – it’s largely usable for the most part.
Most of the bigger kink events will have a group on FetLife that you can join where they will have different threads.
You can start talking to people.
Frolicon, which I’m going to next weekend had a wish list thread and so I put together a list of all the things I might want to do at the con, posted it in the wish list thread, now I’ve got like a dozen people I’m talking to about possibly playing with.
If you are someone who doesn’t know many people and you want to meet with people, volunteer.
Doing even just one volunteer shift will help you feel so much more at home.
If you are going alone without a partner or a friend group, doing a volunteer shift gives you an anchor point where you’re going to meet people, get entry to the event, have a way to figure out what’s going on, that’s a lot easier.
I think also another tip I would give for your first one is just go with an open mind because people go to these events for all different reasons and approach it in all different ways.
So I know some people who go to these giant kink events don’t attend a single class.
That’s not as important to them.
They would rather spend the daytime kind of resting up or like hanging out with friends at the hotel and then go and party all night at the dungeon.
Then there are some people I know who like go for the classes and they might pop in the dungeon but that’s not really what they’re there for.
So give yourself the space to try it out and see what feels better for you, where you want to be spending your time.
Don’t feel like you have to be at certain things or you have to be there for a certain amount of time.
Just listen to your body.
Listen to what’s working for you.
A good rule for any conference weekend is 6-2-1, a minimum 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals, and 1 shower every day.
That’s the minimum.
That is not the maximum.
So if you’re getting less than that, it’s time to check that and make sure you take care of your body.
I think the other tip I would give for your first big kink event is figure out what you’re going to need after because the crash can be a motherfucker.
Well, what’s your experience after this time?
Rebecca: I mean I think we came home like high as a kite and rode that for several days and I never felt the crash in the way that I’ve heard some people talk about it.
But about 4 days later, I just – I physically was not able to stay awake anymore.
I would get home from work, we make dinner, we do all the kid things we needed to do, and I would want to like sit down and hang out or talk or watch a movie or do something and I’m like, “Honey, it’s like 7:30. I’m going to bed.”
I just – I could not physically stay awake.
And so I needed more rest for a couple of days.
Dr. Liz: Right.
Rebecca: But I didn’t have the same emotional crash that I’ve heard people talk about.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
I do tend to get the emotional crash.
I would get super depressed two, three days after an event and feel like I am super alone and nobody cares about me and nobody loves me and I’m going to be alone forever.
I mean look, my brain has been really on the, “I’m going to be alone forever” train for a while so like that part I’m kind of used to in some ways.
And there can be a very big emotional crash particularly if you’ve done heavier scenes during that weekend or if you’ve really like pushed the limits of your body in terms of sleep, energy, all those things.
If you’ve done a ton of classes, that is very energetically exhausting because your brain is working so hard.
So just make sure that you’ve built in some kind of cushion as much as you can for when you come back.
The same way that like if you do a heavy scene, you need to have aftercare in place.
Going to a conference is going to have its own aftercare.
So just have some space for that.
Make sure that you have some resources for that, some backup or friends who can help you, just something to help you get through that period.
Rebecca: I have two other quick ones.
Dr. Liz: Do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Go.
Rebecca: Pack food because depending on where the dungeon is or what you’re doing, there may be lots of food options around.
Dr. Liz: No food options.
Rebecca: Or there may be very little or no.
Dr. Liz: The one you went to, almost nothing.
Rebecca: There was so little food option.
But pack food.
Pack good food that helps your body feel well, whatever that is.
I also found like late at night, we pack some gummy bears or some quick sugars like that.
That was super helpful.
And then also depending on what you want to do there, so we did a lot of workshops and then we like take time to go back to the hotel, we get some dinner.
One of the days there, I wound up taking like an hour and a half nap.
Dr. Liz: Yes, nap.
Nap as often as you can.
Rebecca: Exactly.
That was super helpful because otherwise, I was like, “Oh gosh! I don’t know if I can do this staying up so late thing.”
So I took a nap and that helps me rebound.
It gave me the energy I need to go do some other things we wanted to do.
Dr. Liz: Yeah, naps are great.
And I love bringing food especially like at kink stuff especially if you’re going to be bottoming, make sure you have some quick sugar food, so stuff that will make sugar hit your bloodstream real fast because part of what causes bigger subdrops, bigger crashes after scenes is that your body has gone through your blood sugar supplies and it is making you slow down completely so that you don’t die.
If you put sugar in it, it will be fine again.
There’s actually a lot of fascinating research on it.
There’s a whole radio lab podcast where they talk about this and it’s amazing research that you should totally look up where like they had people doing biking or like running and they were measuring their energy levels and their endurance then they have them swish an energy drink with actual sugar or an energy drink with fake sugar and the ones with real sugar, their bodies were like, “You can have more energy, keep going,” even though they didn’t swallow it.
Just like tasting the actual sugar on their tongue, their body released more of its stores to make sure that they can keep going.
So like bodies are weird.
They do weird stuff.
But be prepared.
Gummy bears are great.
I know a lot of people who love dried mango for that.
It works really well for them.
I like chocolates especially if I’ve been bottoming for a heavier scene, having my dom pull out a chocolate bar especially like a real nice chocolate bar and feed it to me piece by piece is a beautiful, beautiful aftercare activity that I really enjoy because it gets my blood sugar up and it’s very like connected and there’s a big sensory experience to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s a lot of fun.
And I think also like these events are almost always way scarier in your head than they are in real life.
Most of the time at these events, people are super friendly, happy to meet new friends.
If they know it’s your first time, they’re going to introduce you to everybody.
It is a very community feeling for most of these events.
And so, it’s going to feel way scarier before you get there than it will once you’re there.
Rebecca: Absolutely.
That is a thousand percent our experience.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
Rebecca: We worked it up in our heads way more than we needed to.
Dr. Liz: Yeah.
