Too Comfortable to Grow
Curated events and gatherings serve an important purpose, but without struggle, attendees may never learn to self-advocate, negotiate consent, or connect authentically.
This newsletter focuses primarily on a collective of alternative sexuality and relationship communities. Along with socialization offerings that embrace the entire spectrum of people, those communities also do a relatively good job of creating spaces, venues, and events that cater to specific subset demographics within those larger communities. That is a good thing.
But good things sometimes have downsides. For example, in our fervor to construct easy, no-friction experiences for specific segments of communities, we can sometimes ignore that the perfection we seek can smooth out the edges of the experiences so much that people never develop the interpersonal, negotiation, and self-empowerment skills we need to thrive.
That is the message of Fran Tirado’s “Is This a ‘Libido Crisis’ or a Crisis of Humanity?”
Almost everything wrong with the current state of dating and intimacy among young people in the modern era comes down to an astonishing drop in our threshold for friction.
I see this in leather and kink communities, not just the queer communities who Tirado is speaking to in the article.
So many people meet, communicate, negotiate, and socialize through their screens that they’ve lost the vital “friction” that presents scenarios and situations with which we must wrestle and struggle, experiences that teach us how to self-advocate and best socialize.
There is an abundance of kink events and gatherings so precisely targeted for certain orientations, presentations, and interests, some with highly detailed rules of engagement, that someone can easily commune and play entirely within such a bubble of total comfort without wrestling much with interactions.
As a result, I think some people have lost the people skills that can only be learned and improved in person and when everything isn’t necessarily ideal.
Not long ago, I watched a young person at a kink event become essentially paralyzed into total isolation for most of the event because they were “afraid to do something wrong.” What they learned online and in highly curated spaces didn’t help them at all “in the wild.”
Life is clumsy and imperfect. When we try to craft perfect environments, scenarios, and interactions, the downside is that we might be simultaneously doing a disservice to people who will never adequately learn to take charge of their learning, safety, or growth.
As our dear James puts it, the best human experiences do involve difficulty, but that difficulty is what makes life ‘something you’re living, rather than something you’re watching other people do through a screen.’
Like much of life, it’s all about balance.
Sometimes creating an event catering only to a slice of a community can empower them because sometimes we absolutely need affinity spaces.
There are times and there are places that are and should be frequented entirely by people who closely resonate with the cultural norms, attractions, erotic practices, and sexual mindset of those most like them.
However, equally important is creating environments that encompass a wide cross section of people who must necessarily struggle and embrace the accompanying friction created by needing to communicate, socialize, and come to agreements with people not exactly like us.
Struggling in social and erotic situations can help us better define our values, build our resilience, mental toughness, and self-discipline, and even improve our brains and thinking. If everything is easy, we learn and grow less.
As a side note, this is also why I think the way we deliver sexuality and kink education, primarily through lecture or show-and-tell formats, is inferior to having students dive into the learning directly in a hands-on approach. The best learning takes place amid struggle, not ease.
Show someone how to erotically tie rope and they’ll maybe learn it. Provide a hands-on experience of learning by doing and it’s perhaps six times more likely they’ll learn the skill better.
The same applies to individuals learning how to negotiate consent, learn skills in a collaborative manner, and conquer social anxiety. The easier a situation makes skirting around such challenges, the less likely those involved will emerge better off than when they entered.
So, what am I proposing here?
My hope is that we will as a set of communities create spaces, venues, classes, events, and social and play gatherings for subsets of the overall communities, especially if those subsets are typically marginalized or under-represented. But at the same time, I hope that we’ll also create plenty of scenarios that require those in attendance to struggle a bit, to challenge themselves, and to figure out how to get along with those unlike themselves and who have different subcultures, perspectives, and social mores.
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