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David Stein was kinky long before he knew he was gay. Having started tying himself up around the age of 5 or 6, he came out into the s/m-leather scene in the mid-1970s in Pittsburgh. After moving in 1977 to New York City, where he still lives, he co-founded Gay Male S/M Activists (GMSMA) in 1981. He helped lead GMSMA in various capacities for the next 11 years, during which time it became one of the largest and most influential s/m organizations in the world. Although GMSMA disbanded in 2009, it had accomplished most of what its founders set out to do toward opening up the largely underground gay s/m scene. It was for GMSMA that David coined, in 1983, the phrase "safe, sane, and consensual s/m." Subsequently sloganized as "Safe Sane Consensual," or SSC, it spread widely, becoming a "credo" for many and a straitjacket (not in a good sense) for others. For a downloadable PDF of David's published essay "Safe Sane Consensual: The Evolution of a Shibboleth," please go to the "s/m-leather history" page on his personal website. That website still identifies him as "slave david stein," as most of his online writings are signed, though he has no Master now that Master Steve of Butchmann's, his long-time mentor, has retired from the leather scene. In fact, David now doubts whether he can identify as a slave anymore or truly wants to be owned. He will write about all that once he figures it out, but regardless of his own journey, he'll always have the deepest respect for committed, ethical Masters and their loyal partners. David's published fiction includes his mammoth 2002 novel, Carried Away: An s/m romance (Daedalus), perhaps the first erotic work to depict a Master/slave relationship that could actually exist, and a 2009 collection of shorter pieces, Boots, Bondage, and Beatings, from his own publishing company, Perfectbound Press. In that same year he also wrote and published a unique nonfiction book, Ask the Man Who Owns Him: The real lives of gay Masters and slaves. Based on extensive, face-to-face interviews with 16 long-term Master/slave couples or families, it won the Geoff Mains Nonfiction Book Award from the National Leather Association-International. Perfectbound Press recently published two books of gay erotic stories by other authors that David edited and designed: Thom Magister's The Slave Journals and Other Tales of the Old Guard and Christopher Pierce's Winner Takes All. |
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| Models for Command Relationships: (Course overview) | ||||||
Most of us acknowledge that there are many different kinds of erotic relationships in which one partner issues commands while the other obeys. But we tend to use the same few terms for these roles — Master/slave, Dominant/submissive, Owner/pet or Owner/property, Daddy/boy/boi/girl — and then get into endless arguments about what these terms really mean and who they apply to! The problem isn't that our usage is unclear or nonstandard, let alone deceptive, but that our discourse is threadbare. Humanity's history and endeavors offer a tremendous variety of more precise or evocative terms. For example, a bond servant is not the same as a vassal or a gladiator, just as a trainer is not the same as a captain or a majordomo. A junior officer or a samurai is a very different sort of subordinate from a maid, butler, or clerk, just as a house pet is not the same as a show horse or a working dog. And your human property might be more like a piece of real estate or an Old Master painting than household chattel. We'll explore these and many more terms and constructs that can provide models for command-driven erotic relationships. |
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| Making It Last: Strategies for Long-term Master/slave Relationships: (Course overview) | ||||||
All human relationships end, but Master/slave relationships tend to end in weeks or months instead of years. Is it something we say, or something we do — or fail to do — that leads to a quick breakdown or a slow decay in the M/s dynamic? What are the fundamental differences between playing at Master/slave and living as Master and slave? For my book Ask the Man Who Owns Him, I interviewed 16 real-life gay M/s couples and triads who were together for at least three years. Starting with their experiences, we'll explore practices that can give Masters and slaves of all stripes a better shot at achieving happily ever afters. |
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