Photo courtesy of Liz Highleyma
"Discovering Your Potential: How You Can Make a Difference in Your Community"
Two of San Francisco's best-loved, most accomplished and charismatic community leaders discuss what they've learned about leadership from their own experiences in BDSM, kink and leather. Their insights will encourage you to consider what impact, large or small, you could have on your own community. Topics will include: identifying individual strengths, involving others, fund-raising and finding sponsors, developing a strategic overview, how to ask for help, and defining goals.
"Social Sex in the New Millennium: a Fresh Paradigm for Public Play"
The internet and now social networking have inundated newcomers to BDSM, leather and kink with pics, profiles, and the Reader’s Digest version of our lifestyle. Many newcomers have little or no exposure to the Whys and Wherefores of who we are, what we do, and why we do it.
“Old Guard” and “New Guard” now appear to be complemented by a newer, “What the Fuck” generation with not much use for rules, roles or protocols. Still, community play parties tend to be organized and produced by folks who pretty much follow “Old Guard” standards and principles.
Race and Larry, drawing from combined decades of experience in producing play parties, will explain how and why their approach has evolved and suggest formats for public play that represent a fresh paradigm for a new generation (or for anyone tired of the same old thing).
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE
Larry and Race are two of LDG's favorites: they've been booked to do this program for six months. And now, as serendipity would have it, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has just announced that its prestigious Leather Leadership Award for 2013, honoring a lifetime of distinguished service and leadership in our community, will be awarded to RACE BANNON. Race will be rushing off to Atlanta after his LDG program to receive it at NGLTF's Creating Change conference that very same weekend.
To allow Race's many admirers to join us in giving our local hero the sendoff and the cheers he deserves, our friends at Folsom Street Events and the Bay Area Leather Alliance have generously offered to co-sponsor this LDG program in the spacious Rainbow Room on the second floor of the LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street.
This award is a big deal in our little world. It's only had a handful of recipients before this — people like Chuck Renslow, Vi Johnson, Hardy Haberman, Graylin Thornton, Guy Baldwin. We in San Francisco always knew Race was a rockstar: now the whole country will know.
Please join us for the LDG's first program of the new year, a special event sure to be informative, provocative, and possibly just a little rowdy.
LARRY SHOCKEY has been a member of the kink and fetish communities for more than fifteen years. During that time, he served as President of the Steering Committee for Leathermen’s Discussion Group for three years, as Chair for the planning committee for Leather Levi Weekends 2007 and 2008, as well as serving as a member of the Advisory Council for Leather Leadership Conference XII (San Francisco 2008). In 2007, 2008 and 2009, he organized and coordinated the BDSM demonstration area at Leather Alley for SF Pride. He has done public demonstrations on a wide array of play for the Stop AIDS Project, SF Citadel, The Society of Janus, LLW, LDG, the Ring, ACLC, Sacramento Valley Leather Corps, LLC, and the SF Leather Daddies, among others. He is now focusing his efforts on strengthening and enhancing the fisting community in SF.
In 2008, Larry began organizing weekend fisting retreats, known as Spring FFling. In September 2008, Larry brought a public fisting venue back to the SF sex scene for the first time since the closure of The Sling. Known as Hell Hole, this monthly play party, which focuses on safer-sex and drug-free play, has been widely and well-received by men not only in San Francisco, but from across the US and around the world. In January 2010, the Handball Academy was born, dedicated to providing an educational setting where novices, the curious, and those wishing to further develop their fisting skills can come together in an informal setting to learn, share and grow.
In June 2010, his booklet, “The Sacred Art of Fisting,” an outline of play, practice, and safer-sex techniques, was published, thanks to a grant from the Stop AIDS Project. A second edition is scheduled for publication in January 2013 in both print and Kindle formats. In 2011, Larry and his partner Loy had the opportunity to begin producing Fist Fest in Palm Springs, and in 2012, they brought the Fist Fest weekend to Augusta, GA for its East Coast debut.
RACE BANNON has been exploring nontraditional sex since 1973 as an organizer, educator, commentator, activist and leader. With Guy Baldwin he founded the Kink-Aware Professionals directory (now managed by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom) and initiated The DSM Project, a grassroots coalition dedicated to changing the way psychotherapeutic professionals view BDSM and its practitioners. He is the author of the best-selling classic LEARNING THE ROPES: A BASIC GUIDE TO SAFE AND FUN BDSM LOVEMAKING (revised Version 2.0 newly available on Kindle), and founder of Daedalus Publishing, the first publishing house dedicated to non-fiction books about leather/SM/fetish sexuality.
Among Race's many honors and distinctions are the San Francisco Bay Area Leather Alliance Philip M. Turner Lifetime Achievement Award for 2011, the Mister Marcus Hernandez Lifetime Achievement Pantheon of Leather Community Service Award in 2010, and the National Leather Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. He is known to thousands in the U.S. and beyond from his nearly 400 speaking engagements. He currently sits on the boards of the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS), the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), and the Leather Hall of Fame. Race writes extensively about BDSM, kink and alternative relationships on his blog at bannon.com.
Presentation materials
Larry and Race have made their presentation available.