Old Guard Essay # 3
Copyright 1999 by Jay Wiseman. All rights reserved.


Please contact the author at jaywiseman@yahoo.com for reprint requests and other matters




I posted (in Essay # 2):

>I also am increasingly reminded of the adage that goes: "All con games start with the willingness of the victim to believe."

Somebody replied:

>How does any of this relate to a con game? Who is trying to rip you off for what?

X

Hi X (et al),

Let me see if I can put this in a relatively diplomatic, noninflammatory way...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have seen, particularly in the last few years, a number of cases in which individuals attempted to claim for themselves the status of an "SM expert" while very possibly skipping the long, hard, dues-paying process essential to gaining any actual expertise. The typical way that this seems to be done is to claim membership in some sort of "secret, elite" SM group that practices "old guard" or "ancient" practices. Because access to this group is restricted to "the deserving few" they are not able to provide any verifiable confirmation regarding their authenticity because doing so would violate their essential-to-preserve confidentiality. So sorry.

OK, fine. Actually, I could even argue that so far no problem exists.

So where is the problem?

The problem is exactly here: When "these people" step forth and claim that certain attitudes -- and, more to the point -- certain relatively specific _behaviors_ are deserving of special respect and adherence because "this is how the old guard did it" or "this is the secret teaching of the True Inner Circle SM Society" the needle on my Bullshit Detector starts to quiver.

Just for openers, I always wince whenever I see the word "the" in front of the phrase "old guard" in such discussions. As I think we are slowly starting to agree, such older groups -- and, yes, they did exist -- were often very small, relatively isolated from one another and, by the way, just possibly Not In Total Agreement even among themselves about "how it should be done." (Sound familiar?)

In any event, we could probably mostly defang this beast by agreeing to stipulate something along the lines of "this was what this particular subsection of the Old Guard recommended" instead of representing a given behavioral recommendation (or prohibition) as being handed down from some unified "code of conduct" that -- for some strangely inexplicable reason - has never been made widely available for inspection and confirmation.

The situation becomes even more worrisome when these "elite" teachings seem to be almost entirely passed along behind closed doors, in relatively isolated ways, and to relative newbies. Why aren't these "teachers of the elite ways" openly standing forth in relatively public local venues such as Janus or QSM where those of us who have been around for a while (and there are dozens of us) can check them out?

Why aren't these people showing up at national-level functions like the Leather Leadership Conference or Living in Leather so they can receive the true measure of admiration and respect they so richly deserve? This is not (entirely) sarcasm. I don't think that anybody who was part of the 100+ person audience will soon forget the incredible degree of admiration and respect that was shown to Guy Baldwin at LLC.

I don't think this is even slightly disrespectful or unreasonable to ask. After all, the people I mentioned in my first post are willing to do so. (By the way, let me add the names Mark Chester and Larry Townsend to that original list -- both of whom can be found without too much trouble.)

Given that these "teachers" seem all-too-willing to teach relative newcomers in relative secrecy, but distinctly unwilling to openly stand forth at the relative public gatherings and in full view of their (more or less) peers with such "teachings," the needle on my Bullshit Detector really starts to jump.

If memory serves, I saw something go by on this list just a while back that went something like "Those who do not follow the Old Guard teachings do not deserve to be part of the BDSM community." I gotta tell you, that was one of the scariest things I have ever read in a BDSM context.

Getting back to my original question of "what do I (personally) know for sure?"

Some of the things I personally "know for sure" are as follows:

1. I have seen the SM community (as vaguely defined as it is) grow significantly over the last 25 years. The main vehicles of such growth have been the "relatively pansexual, relatively nonprofit" organizations such as the Society of Janus.

2. As (what I believe largely to be) a function of such growth, SM has become considerably less taboo and vilified. While it's certainly still not safe to come out as an SM person, the overall degree of risk has definitely decreased.

3. Other than some relatively vague agreements regarding things like safety and consensuality, I've never seen any evidence of any unified, codified body of "elite" SM teachings that were widely adhered to. I've certainly never seen any highly specific rules of behavior regarding how to behave or not behave that were ever intended to apply beyond a specific relationship or relatively small group.

So I guess my bottom line is this: The more specific a given "teacher" gets about making solemn pronouncements regarding the proper ways to behave or not behave on the basis of a statement like "this was how the Old Guard did it" and the more isolated the environment in which such "teachings" are so imparted, and the less experience that the "worthy recipient" of such teachings has, the more I believe that this recipient is likely to be at risk for being conned.

Let this "teacher" stand forth at something like a Living in Leather conference, and openly hold forth on these "Old Guard" teachings to a room filled with people who have at least 20 years of RT experience behind them, and let's watch what the needles on _their_ Bullshit Detectors do.

If you will please excuse me for quoting myself, as it says in "SM 101": "If it's going to go bad, it tends to go bad in isolation."

That's enough for today.

Regards,

Jay (who really should be spending this time working on his next book.)


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