Damn near every community in the last year has had some sort of drama at their doorstep. Rightfully, we ALL NEED to understand consent backwards and forwards, protect each others' privacy, and be on guard for asshole abusers. Responsible kinksters go to classes, read up on best practices, spend long hours considering. All good things. We all should be thoughtful in our interactions with each other.
If you're anything like me, the drama as well as all this thought and consideration has also created some anxiety. Most of us are intent on “doing things right” - not just as it relates to consent but in play. No D/Top-type wants to cause physical, mental, or emotional damage, and no s/bottom-type wants to be on the receiving end of damage. We all want to have a fabulous time every time we indulge in our kinky lifestyle.
Guess what? That's unfucking realistic. And we NEED to talk about it.
An impossible expectation of perfection in a scene/play currently exists. However, no matter which side of the D/s or S/m slash you may be on at a given moment, we need to allow ourselves to fail. Yep, I said FAIL!
~gasp~
In fact, I’m going to argue that we should actually embrace failure in order to find the greatest success we can in the delightful wickedness that we do.
(IMPORTANT Sidenote: For the purpose of this concept, assume all play is between responsible, sane, intelligent, trustworthy, compassionate, vetted partners no matter what their experience level. This post is NOT about idiots, habitual intentional consent violators/abusive partners or incidences of negligence where someone has to receive emergency medical attention to avoid serious irreversible injuries. I don't want comments to be filled with "Yeah, but..." and keyboard warriors advocating whatever side of the latest social drama might be. Explore the idea don't get on a soapbox.)
I go to at least a half a dozen local events a month. Over the last year, I've heard failure/mistakes mentioned in passing maybe three times and only once discussed in a roundabout way. That's it. We never get in depth about our fuck ups or our shitty scenes or when someone made a mistake in aim or effort or when a s/bottom completely misjudged what might or was happening. We don't OWN our shit in the community and maybe not even with our partners, and that is an incredibly lost opportunity.
Yes, it's a lost OPPORTUNITY.
In the world of entrepreneurs/agile businesses, Fail Fast/Fail Often is an approach to running a company or developing a product/service where the organization openly embraces many little experiments with the belief that some will work, grow, and be successful/productive/profitable and others will fail and die. (Don't think it's a realistic approach...ask Amazon how much they're worth today.) Corporate leadership fully accepts, acknowledges, and encourages some agreed upon level of investment in time, energy, and money withOUT the guarantee of success/profitability and (in theory) no one gets fired or bitched out for failure.
Why?
To learn something. About their market. About the product. About the design. About their employees. About possibilities.
Even in FAILURE there is KNOWLEDGE to be gained.
This message is missing within our community and between each other.
Failure in play is just as or maybe even MORE insightful than success. Failure allows us to learn about our bodies, our emotions, our responses, our implements, our approach, our mentalities, our sexuality, our Dominance/submission, our Sadism/masochism, our relationship/dynamic, our selves. Yet we rarely allow ourselves room to fail let alone room to openly acknowledge our failures. There's so much KNOWLEDGE to be gain in those moments, if only we could learn to embrace/risk failure.
When was the last time you said to someone who mattered to you...
"I'll love you even if this doesn't work."
"I care about you, and I won't be mad if this sucks."
"Even if this doesn't turn out great, we can try again tomorrow/next week a little differently."
Once someone has the "basics" I believe establishing Fail Fast/Fail Often expectations might be an incredibly productive - not to mention fun - way to explore kink. Imagine...
- Less pressure to achieve perfection.
- More fluid discussion of possibilities.
- Less egos/pride wrapped up in play/results.
- Faster realization of what works/doesn't work for you or between partners.
- Guiltless post-play discuss of success and failure and next...experiments.
Even if you've been at this for a WHILE, changing your mindset(s) toward mini-experiments or small experiments within a proven scene could add a breath of fresh air to your kinkalicious play.
Thoughts? Criticism? Flaws in my thinking? But before you let me have it...own one of your kink failures and share the insight(s) you gained. ")
~DominaKat
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