Questioning the Quality of Mentors

In kink circles you’ll frequently hear the suggestion to learn from and be guided by mentors. This is often good advice. But be cautious about which mentors you choose.

“You need a mentor.”

“If you want to enter the leather community properly, find a mentor.”

“Everyone who explores kink should have a mentor.”

If you’re a kinkster, and especially if you’ve hung out in what’s typically referred to as the leather community, you’ve probably heard someone say something about mentors.

Let’s start with the definition of mentor from Merriam-Websters dictionary.

2a: a trusted counselor or guide

“a mentor who, because he is detached and disinterested, can hold up a mirror to us” —P. W. Keve

2b: tutor, coach

Hmm, the 2a definition works, but the additional definition content from Keve bothers me. Detached? Disinterested? Would I really want someone guiding my kink explorations to be detached and disinterested?

The 2b definition works for me too. Tutor and coach are both roles many experienced kinksters can adopt when helping newcomers explore and learn.

All that’s great. Counselor. Guide. Tutor. Coach. I have no disagreement that mentors of any of those versions can be a good thing. In fact, they’re often the best path for people to become acclimated to kink and kink communities. But what I’d like to strongly suggest is that people exercise some caution when taking on a mentor.

When I was recently reading “Who mentors the mentors” by Srdjan Delić, I came across this and it seemed entirely applicable to kink as well as the world of software programming the writer was discussing.

How often do we question our mentors’ knowledge and background about a subject?

All too many times, we are plainly ‘assigned’ a mentor figure by some higher-ups. Right there, there’s the first wrongful step of presumption that the assigned person has the necessary knowledge and know-how to pass some of that knowledge onto us. The truth is, as so many times, much murkier than that.

Many of the mentor figures we take for granted are there by default. Maybe it’s their years in the industry, title or simply lack of staff in a company. A good mentor figure will introduce themselves and present their role and background, their expertise and their shortcomings.

Upon reading this I thought to myself that the kink communities often make the same mistakes regarding mentors.

Equating “years in the industry” with “years in the kink scene” is an appropriate comparison. How often has a kinkster heard the main selling point about a mentor being “Oh, they’ve been in the scene 25 years” or something like that? Often. It’s far too common to assume that someone who’s been in the kink or leather scenes for a long time necessarily has the knowledge, insights, and skills to mentor someone else. I contend that’s often not true.

Here's an example from my own life. A while back I was standing in my local leather bar with a bunch of other leathermen. A newcomer to kink had joined the group and was introduced around, which was a lovely gesture and I wish more people did that with newcomers.

But when the newcomer asked for advice, someone in the group pointed to a guy in the bar and said something to the effect “You should see if he’ll be your mentor. He’s been in the scene for decades.”

Well, yes, the guy had been around for decades. I happened to know the person pointed to rather well. Nice guy. But his entire claim to mentorship credentials amounted to him dressing in leather and hanging out in leather bars for a few decades. I knew from firsthand experience (yes, that kind) he wasn’t kinky in any other way than his singular leather bar look. I knew from conversations with him that his only connection to kink or leather community was leather bars. To the best of my knowledge, he’d never attended a play party, took a kink education class, read a book about kink, or attended any kink community functions outside of hanging out in a bar.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being that guy, but that is not the mentor you want. I’d rather point someone to a mentor who’s taken a deep dive into a wide swath of the kink world for just a few years than someone who’s simply hung out in the scene for decades.

If there’s a danger to the “elders” concept within kink and leather, this is it, the sometimes-erroneous assumption that simply because someone has existed within an aspect of a kink community for a long time they must therefore be a good mentor. That assumption can be problematic and, in worst case scenarios, dangerous.

Mentees should question a mentor’s level of experience, involvement, and skill. This also applies to when we take a kink education class or workshop of any kind. Even in such cases, we should not assume the instructors, speakers, or panelists are all appropriate mentors or teachers.

On a recent social media post of mine this topic was discussed. A true life example was given of an instructor at a kink conference laying out to his class an extremely rigid and specific set of rules and guidelines around leather protocols. A hand went up in the audience and that person gently challenged the instructor. Pretty soon, a bunch of hands went up challenging the instructor’s comments. Eventually, because the instructor was so intransigent, the entire class erupted in outright rebellion against the instructor. Frankly, I was happy to hear that story because I’ve too often seen bad or dangerous advice given that goes unchallenged because the giver of it has been deemed an elder, mentor, or instructor.

A while back a nonfiction book also about leather protocols came out and much of the community erupted in outrage because the author appeared to make up some important facts out of thin air. The author had been around the leather scene for a long time, but would they be a good mentor? Absolutely not. Yet, I was told that person was still teaching classes and being looked to as a community elder in many circles. I’ve seen similar scenarios play out far too often in our kink scene, especially in the leather realm of the kink scene.

Anyway, check out mentors. Carefully. Ask more than one person about them. Interview them. Never take someone’s expertise or character quality at face value upon just one person’s suggestion.

Oh, two more things.

You do not need a mentor. I know. This is heresy to some, but it’s true. Why do I know? I didn’t have a mentor. I learned in the school of experience and it worked out just fine for me. Why? Because even back then my instincts told me to judge each person individually on their character, experience, and skills, rather than assume such things by default. Did that make me overly cautious at times? Absolutely. It also kept me safer and gave me a deeper appreciation of those in the scene I did find worthy of learning from in some capacity.

And if you choose to have a mentor, you can (I contend you should) have more than one. Every single person in the kink and leather communities can serve as a mentor of sorts. Everyone knows something. Even a person who you see demonstrating bad judgment or skill can teach you what “not” to do. I’ve learned and keep learning from countless people throughout a range of kink communities. I think this is how most people learn, and as long as appropriate caution is taken, it works as well as having a specific mentor.

Take on a mentor if you want, but be cautious. Good mentors are worth their weight in gold. Bad mentors will hold you back from real growth and learning and may even put you in danger.

If you don’t want a specific mentor, seek out a bevy of kinksters from disparate aspects of the scene and learn from them. If you start getting a buttload of certain advice from most of them but one outlier disagrees, maybe the outlier is that mentor you’ll be glad you avoided in the first place.

As with all of life, it is so with mentors – buyer beware.

You can use this link to access all my writings and social media and ways to support my work.