Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather and kink where your host, Edge (he/him), shares his 30+ years of experience in the community.
in and prepare your senses for a journey into the heart of leather and kink mentorship, as we pull back the curtain on what it means to guide and grow within our vibrant communities. I'm Edge, your navigator through this landscape of learning and connection, where the ties that bind us go beyond the physical. In this season's premiere, we sit alongside Richard and Lyle from San Francisco's Leather Men's Discussion Group's Mentoring Program, unraveling the intricate weave of guidance that shapes future leaders and enthusiasts in kink.
Embarking on a nine-month odyssey of transformation, our guests reveal how mentorship transcends simple instruction, evolving into a life-altering exchange. My own tales echo alongside, from the pivotal moments under the tutelage of my earliest leather mentors to the profound satisfaction found in fostering the next generation. Together, we dissect the delicate dance of empowering mentees without overshadowing their individual journeys, sharing how the alchemy of group dynamics and in-person connections reinforce the bonds of our community.
As we forge ahead, the conversation takes a turn through the shadowed corners of mentorship: the safeguarding of boundaries, the vigilant distinction from therapy, and the ethical navigation of sexual dynamics within the learning sphere. These are the threads that, when carefully woven, craft a tapestry of trust and respect. And as we close, I'll offer a glimpse into the role of community events, the art of negotiation within BDSM relationships, and the personal touch of my upcoming leather-bound travels. This is more than a mere exchange of knowledge; it's a testament to the resilience and intimacy of our leather family.
Here are some useful links from the episode:
Ask Edge! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/LTHREDGE to leave ask a question or leave feedback. Find Edge's other content on Instagram and Twitter. Also visit his archive of educational videos, Tchick-Tchick.
Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather and kink where your host, Edge (he/him), shares his 30+ years of experience in the community.
in and prepare your senses for a journey into the heart of leather and kink mentorship, as we pull back the curtain on what it means to guide and grow within our vibrant communities. I'm Edge, your navigator through this landscape of learning and connection, where the ties that bind us go beyond the physical. In this season's premiere, we sit alongside Richard and Lyle from San Francisco's Leather Men's Discussion Group's Mentoring Program, unraveling the intricate weave of guidance that shapes future leaders and enthusiasts in kink.
Embarking on a nine-month odyssey of transformation, our guests reveal how mentorship transcends simple instruction, evolving into a life-altering exchange. My own tales echo alongside, from the pivotal moments under the tutelage of my earliest leather mentors to the profound satisfaction found in fostering the next generation. Together, we dissect the delicate dance of empowering mentees without overshadowing their individual journeys, sharing how the alchemy of group dynamics and in-person connections reinforce the bonds of our community.
As we forge ahead, the conversation takes a turn through the shadowed corners of mentorship: the safeguarding of boundaries, the vigilant distinction from therapy, and the ethical navigation of sexual dynamics within the learning sphere. These are the threads that, when carefully woven, craft a tapestry of trust and respect. And as we close, I'll offer a glimpse into the role of community events, the art of negotiation within BDSM relationships, and the personal touch of my upcoming leather-bound travels. This is more than a mere exchange of knowledge; it's a testament to the resilience and intimacy of our leather family.
Here are some useful links from the episode:
Ask Edge! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/LTHREDGE to leave ask a question or leave feedback. Find Edge's other content on Instagram and Twitter. Also visit his archive of educational videos, Tchick-Tchick.
Let's talk about mentorship. This podcast contains material intended for a mature audience. For proceeding, please check your local laws and confirm that you are an adult. Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather, kink and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he, him, and I am your host. I am so excited to be back for the third season of this podcast. I had a really nice restful hiatus and, although I planned on creating episodes upon episodes and creating a giant bank of content, I did not. However, I am recording this in February, so I am a little bit ahead of the game and very excited about this topic.
Speaker 1:Mentorship I see such a hunger for knowledge, guidance, education and mentorship. It is across my social media and it is very much in the air with the recent publication of the Leather Mentorship book by Jay Tobias Perry. It is a very timely topic and, I think, very useful and instructive. As always, I'll start by sharing my experience, both being a mentee and my sometimes disastrous experience mentoring others. Then we're going to have an interview with Richard and Lyle of the Mentoring Program, which is part of the Leather Men's Discussion Group out of San Francisco. Finally, I have an Ask Edge segment and that will round out this episode. I was hoping to do an interview with Jay Tobias Perry about his book Leather Mentorship. We were not able to get that scheduled in time for the publication of this episode. However, I'm planning on following up with him and doing an interlude simply about his book later on.
Speaker 1:Because this is such an important topic, I think it really bears some extended examination. With that being said, let's get right to it. I think it's a fantastic episode, so let's go. Part of the motivation for everything I do across social media is to try and pay forward the mentorship I received on my Leather journey, because the truth is, I have had the most amazing mentors at every stage of my journey, and early on I realized that I was blessed, that that was special, that not everyone was given the opportunities I was given, and so I was always very grateful and always felt this desire to give back because I had been given so very much. This started at the beginning. If you've listened to the Origins episode of this podcast, then you might recall Mark and Wally.
Speaker 1:They were both my gay parents and my Leather parents. They taught me a lot about gay life, but they also introduced me to Leather and Kink, and they were important mentors to me, teaching me how to become not just a young gay man, but how to become a young gay Leatherman. That meant exposing me to Kink in a safe environment and showing me what to do, what could be done, helping me to purchase my first Leathers, connecting me with people in the local community and helping me feel a part of something. But they were just the first in a line of mentors. Every time I discovered a new Kink or fetish, the universe would deliver to me an expert in that fetish, someone that I could experience things with safely and superbly.
Speaker 1:So if you've listened to the podcast, you may also recall that bondage was my very first interest, and I mean that was my primary interest for many years, and soon into exploring it I found Archie. Archie was a master of bondage and deeply in love with rope. He would put a ton of rope on a man and he was a photographer for Bounding Gagged, which was a really important magazine and resource for people who were into bondage period. As it turns out, archie lived about 10 minutes from me in the suburbs of New Orleans, and so I was able to connect with him and experience good, intense, complicated, repeated, prolonged bondage over and over and over again. So from the start I had this incredible wealth of deep experience. Then, as I moved to New Jersey, I developed an interest in uniforms, and that's when I met Dan, who lived outside of Philly. Dan was actually also into cigars, so that was slightly after I developed my cigar fetish, but he was really into uniforms and he helped me put together my very first uniform.
Speaker 1:It is a New Orleans police uniform with an authentic badge, which pre-911, was a little bit easier to get.
Speaker 1:He taught me how to put together a uniform, how to wear it, and again was introducing me to others and connecting me to this community. It's because of Dan that I met people who knew Leon, who helped me get into Bluff. The reason I'm Bluff Number 7 is Dan. If you're curious, he's Bluff Number 10. How I beat him I do not know. He's still around and he's making his own leather uniforms which are really really beautiful. My friends in Atlanta have some of his work, consider Dan probably the single most important mentor in my life was Thor.
Speaker 1:He is still an important person in my life. We're still very close. In fact, we just had dinner together when I was out in LA for the claw event there and Thor taught me how to smoke a pipe. He taught me some about boot blacking. He taught me a lot about cigar sex. He taught me about the New York leather community. He was very prominent in GMSMA.
Speaker 1:He also taught me about presence with a capital P, about power, and I learned all of that simply by serving him and being at his boots. All of these men moved into my life at the right time at the right moment, and I was thrilled to have them, and I learned so much from every single one of them. Now, ironically, as it turned out, at first I was incredibly, incredibly bad at mentoring myself. You see, all of those mentors I had were sexual relationships, and I just happened to learn, because that's what I do I observe people, part of my introversion, and I learn. So I picked up a lot from them, even if they weren't always explicitly teaching me things. And so there came a point where I was ready to sort of mentor people not that it was a conscious decision, but people started coming to me and I proceeded in these sexual relationships with a mentorship component, and it did not work because of me. The problem was that I didn't have the same level of sexual interest that my mentee had, and instead of being honest about that which of course I should have I would simply defer things and be like, oh, I'm not in the mood to play this week, oh, we'll do it some other time and I put them off and put them off, and put them off until things would come to a head and end in utter disaster. There are at least two men that I hurt very deeply because of my inability to separate sex and mentorship, because of my inability to be honest around my own sexual needs and wants. That was a very hard, painful lesson for me to learn, probably not as painful as it was for them. I regret those relationships, I regret hurting people and have done my best to make amends in those situations and I don't think that I have done that very well, but I've done it to the best of my ability. Now I realize that for me sex and mentorship have to be separated.
Speaker 1:Now I imagine it's possible that some of the men who have played with me, particularly some of the men that I've played with consistently, they, may have learned things from me. I may have mentored them without even intending to much, as many of my mentors weren't explicitly trying to mentor me. They were trying to get off right, but along the way I would learn from them. I imagine it's possible that some of the men I have encountered have learned from me along the way. But I am very clear now at this point in my life that if I am explicitly mentoring someone, sex is off the table. I am not good at combining the two the way that the men who mentored me were good at combining the two. So I acknowledge that, I accept it and I am honest about that now and that's worked. There are a few very young, extremely promising leather men in my life that I mentor Not super consistently, it's not like we have monthly meetings, but I provide guidance and share my experience and answer questions when they have questions and tell them how their leather looks or how to wear a cover or all those things.
Speaker 1:In all those situations, no sex, that is not going to work for me. I also try to broadly mentor through the work I do on social media, and that includes this podcast. That includes the videos I do for Instagram and Twitter I refuse to call it X as well as the questions I answer when people contact me in my DMs on social media. In all those instances, I try to do one simple thing share my experience, and that's something I really learned in a 12 step context.
Speaker 1:The fact that I am in 12 step recovery has not only provided me the tools to recognize my character defects, ie the things I do poorly, ie combining sex and mentorship. I can recognize that. I can do my best to amend the relationships that are damaged, to try to correct my behavior going forward. And I have learned how to practice a kind of humility where I realize what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. I'm good at teaching. I can do that. I'm good at sharing experience I can do that. I am not good at mixing sex with that. And 12 step recovery is fundamentally about sharing experience. We gather strength when other recovering addicts share experience, and that's what I learned to do.
Speaker 1:I learned that I didn't have the answer. I don't know the way to do things, but I can talk about my experience, and that's not just the how to here's how I clean my leather, for example but it's also about the sets of feelings I've had, because sometimes the actual logistics of life don't match. You don't identify because someone's different from you for any number of reasons, but a lot of times we can identify on what they're feeling. We can identify with the emotions, and so that's where I try to focus. I don't know if I will ever be formally a mentor, as in you are going to be my mentee.
Speaker 1:Here's your reading assignments. Let's meet every third week, or anything like that. I don't know that that structure works for me, but I know that I receive a lot of joy and fulfillment when I am able to help others on their leather journey, and part of that is the giving back because of the amazing mentors I've had, and part of it is because I love leather. I love a particular style of leather, a particular way of doing it. Until I am deeply invested in making more leathermen like me, and when I share my experience, when I help younger leather people or older younger in experience, I should say doesn't have to be a chronological age when I help other people who are starting their leather journey, I am making more people who do leather the way I like to do leather.
Speaker 1:I win they win, we all win. I wish I could say it's easy to find a mentor. I think, in my own experience, part of what that story represents, part of the takeaways here, is that mentorship can be really fantastic or utterly disastrous, and I have lived both parts of that equation. I have had mentors who will always be in my heart, who I owe who I am as a leather person and who I am as a human being, as an adult, as a man. I owe who I am to these men who mentored me, and that's the fantastic potential of mentorship. But just as easily I have done some real harm to others in trying to mentor them and in not understanding how to make that work, in misunderstanding it in such a way that I caused real hurt. So these are the risks when you seek mentorship. It can be an incredible experience, it can be a really painful experience and everything in between. So I don't necessarily have real guidance in how to find a mentor.
Speaker 1:What I have is my experience, and my experience is that when you seek people who are lying with your fetish, sometimes you will find people who are good at it and who will share that knowledge and experience with you. And when you have that opportunity, soak up everything you can.
Speaker 1:None of my mentors or well, few of my mentors actually sat down and gave me lessons or taught me things. We just had sex. We had really really good sex. We played, it was great, kink, it was everything, but I was constantly paying attention. So when you encounter people who are aligned with your fetish, when you have those amazing opportunities, be so present that not only are you in the joy and pleasure of the scene you're having, but you are so present that you are taking notes on every word said, on every action taken, and you are reflecting on those and how to incorporate them into your experience. And when you find mentors who cause trauma as I caused trauma do your best to learn from that as well and to heal and to not give up hope, but to continue to seek new ways of connecting to others and to learning, and I am thrilled to have with me today Richard and Lyle to discuss the mentoring program of the Leatherman's Discussion Group in San Francisco.
Speaker 1:Richard and Lyle, welcome to Fulcow.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1:It's great to have you here. Could you start by each introducing yourself and telling us your pronouns and how you identify in the community?
Speaker 3:My name is Richard Sprote. I use he, him pronouns and I identify as a master or dominant. I have several slaves and a pup in my leather family and I've been part of the leather community in San Francisco since about 1990, definitely involved in the community since 1995.
Speaker 2:Lyle Hi, I'm Lyle. I use he him pronouns. I identify as a slave and I'm the own property of Master Richard. I've been. I started exploring kink late in life, when I was 59. So that's about what 14 years ago. And I've been in service to Master for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, fantastic. Can you start by giving us a quick overview of the mentoring program and sort of how it works and what it does?
Speaker 3:Happy to. The mentoring program has evolved over time. We started in 2012 and, based upon feedback from people who've gone through it, we have made changes and updates. So now today it is a fairly robust program. We usually get 25, 26 people who come through. They go through basically nine months of formal mentoring. In the beginning, all we did was we just created an opportunity for people to meet, and then we figured out some sort of match between an individual mentor and a mentee. But what we heard often over the years was a desire on the part of mentees to meet each other and to support each other as they are doing this kink journey, and so we have now built in a fair number of like group events group meetings where all the mentees and all the mentors get together and we discuss a number of different topics or provide some demos. So now the group part of the program is probably as intense as the individual mentoring that we try to provide. Is there any other thoughts on the program overall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of things this cycle. For example, there are 27 mentees and 16 mentors. They met each other in an orientation meeting, excuse me. And then last weekend we had what I call I know Master doesn't like this term our speed dating round. Each of the mentees meets with at least an interview with at least three potential mentors and for a short meeting and they haven't written application. Also, they review and they give their written feedback to Master and he takes all of that information and tries to get the best matches that he can. The mentors and the mentees are asked to meet at least twice a month, once in person if that's possible. And yeah, that's sort of how it works out, and we go through September until the week after full soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited to know this program exists. I know my work on Instagram and Twitter. I do a lot of educational videos and there's such a hunger for knowledge and guidance and with the recent publication of the Leather Mentorship Book by Jay Tobias Perry, there's a real hunger for this. But how did this program originate? Like? Who saw the need? Who said we need a mentoring program? How did it start?
Speaker 3:I've been involved in the Leather Mentz Discussion Group the San Francisco Leather Mentz Discussion Group since probably 1996, really, I've been on the board a couple times About 2012,. I approached I wasn't on the board at the time and I approached the Leather Mentz Discussion Group board and said I really want to do this special project. I was inspired by a sort of like a negative lesson, which was when I got into the Leather community. I spent really the first five years just kind of hanging on the edge of the community and not really finding an easy connection and there were like a few classes and things like that being done and some educational effort not like today, but back then there was a little bit, but still that didn't seem to connect very well. So it took me a long time to find my place and when I did, I joined a group one of the Leather clubs modeled on motorcycle clubs in San Francisco at the time, the San Francisco Defenders and that was my first experience really having a mentor, having a couple of mentors, people that I still consider to be incredibly good friends and role models since then, and I realized in 2012 that there's got to be a better way than just like stumbling upon this right Stumbling into the community, and certainly, as a university professor, I am very familiar with mentoring programs in academia and I thought, well, it actually would be helpful, it would speed things along, if we sort of organized this a little bit better, if we actually had a program that would help to connect people.
Speaker 3:And so that's where I saw the need was my own experience and sort of like how long it took for me to really grow into this and in spite of the fact that I was very willing and very eager and very enthusiastic, still it was difficult to find a way in and to be guided. So, and as I said, it's been a labor of love since 2012. Every year I'm like, do I want to do it again? And every year the answer is oh yes, this is all very well brought in. Doing this program is an amazing. It keeps me connected to what it was like when I was first starting out and it is deeply gratifying to health people really on their King journeys.
Speaker 1:Lyle, would you want to add anything to that?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. The one thing I want to add is when I started exploring kink, I was really fortunate and I had a good friend who became my non-official but informal mentor, and I realized very quickly how lucky I was, because he made sure that I connected to the right people in the right groups and didn't get involved with things that were more risky. And that connection and that the fact that he was always there that I could pepper with questions and get things answered pretty rock questions was really helpful, and so when I started Serbiamaster, working with him on the mentoring program has just been an incredibly good experience. I'm surprised I think we all think that people that are being mentored and other things are new and have no experience, and this is a way to get them some experience. And what I was surprised to find is that when we have a group of mentees like this cycle, they are very diverse.
Speaker 2:There are 20-year-olds and 65-year-olds, there are people who just are putting their toe in the water and people that have been doing kink for 35 years, and so their goals in coming into the program are really diverse. There are a couple of really common ones, but there are people who are wanting to do everything from. You know they've always been a dominant or a top and they want to explore their submissive side. Or they would like to figure out how to connect with and become part of the informal leadership in the men's kink community in the Bay Area. Those kinds of things, of course, a lot of. I really need help connecting and finding my place. Or I want some people want to learn a whole lot of technique. I want to find out how to be a better impact player. So it's very diverse.
Speaker 1:And some of the things I'm hearing you say that I both of you say that I love is the sort of you know, richard, when you were talking, I was thinking about the disappearance of our real communities, public spaces where you can actually see leather men and connect with them, and this move to the virtual makes it even harder kind of to find your way, and you're even more on the edge in some ways.
Speaker 1:So to create like an actual meeting place where people can physically see each other and interact creates those sorts of bonds of connection and community. And I also love, lyle, when you were talking about the diversity of experiences, because mentorship is a lifelong process. It's a lifelong journey and we move into and out of different kinds of mentors at different stages of our journey. So I love the sort of fullness of the program and that you'll emphasize not just virtual meetings with your mentor mentee, but they should be meeting in person, and that the cohort should meet in person as well. Those are all great. Let me ask you, though, in your dozen years of doing this, what have you learned? Not to do like what has gone wrong that you'll have to fix in the next cycle.
Speaker 3:Oh, let's see what has gone wrong. Let's see. Well, we certainly have had some challenges, and I'm not sure that we've been able to fix them. So one thing we really try to emphasize is that this program, and mentoring in general, is not therapy. Sometimes, though, people come and they see the program, they see the possibility of trying to get into the community or to further themselves on their king journeys, and actually what they're dealing with is issues that are actually more appropriate for therapy, like really sort of pretty bad levels of social anxiety. It's like okay, so if you get so anxious in a group setting and like going to a public, a dungeon or some sort of leather event where there's lots of people, and that just you find yourself so anxious that you can't even really talk to people, I don't know that mentoring is going to help that, because mentoring is about hey, here's this event you didn't know about, you should go here, or here's another community event that you might want to attend. So there's a lot of what we've learned is that we often have to be very clear that what we're doing is not therapy.
Speaker 3:Now, from the very start, being a psychologist myself, I knew the importance of having sort of a counseling or therapy backup. So from the start we have asked some kinky men who are therapists and counselors in the San Francisco Bay area to volunteer to be sort of like a sounding board or a consultation so that any mentor or any mentee who thinks that maybe what's going on requires therapy or counseling can talk with someone, talk with a professional and go and then they can like yeah, that sounds like something you really do need some counseling over as opposed to mentoring. So we've definitely learned that the line between mentoring and actually therapy is. It's important to maintain it and to be very clear about it. But things bleed over and things come up, and so being ready for that has been important for our program. I don't know why. In some ways I look back and I think, gosh, richard, that was really kind of stupid on your part. It was how important it was to connect with each other the mentees.
Speaker 3:They started saying that like pretty early, but definitely every year they have reiterated that over and over again, and in the beginning I thought, oh, you know, this is a mentoring thing. It's just like a one on one, you know, it's really that kind of special relationship and interaction. So, you know, I just need to match a couple of people and we'll check in with them from time to time to see how things are going and if they need any help, but otherwise they're on their own. And oh, that is, that was so.
Speaker 3:It did not live up to the potential of what mentoring is. To treat it like it's a one-on-one, private kind of thing, even though that's what my experience was, you know, coming into the community, the idea, the ability to share the journey and to know that there are people who are exploring, you know, in exactly the same way that you are, even though their kinks and fantasies might be completely different, they're still doing this and relatively new at it, and so that has proven to be really important and I'm kind of surprised at myself that I didn't think about it earlier. On Any slave vial, any particular lessons or challenges.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll just add on to what you said and then highlight one more. We make changes to the program every year based on feedback from the mentors and the mentees in the completing program, and this year what we. Last year, what we heard from people was we had a lot of meetings, but many of them were virtual for lots of reasons. People were still a little concerned with COVID, and you know. That way people didn't have to drive into the city or we were saving money by not having to rent space, and what the mentees said was that's all nice, it's really better when we meet in person. So we went to a lot more in-person meetings and actually had someone take on the responsibility to try to coordinate after meeting events like let's go to the Eagle for the beer best or get together, go let's go have pizza, and that has turned out to be really positive.
Speaker 2:As they said, one of the common themes of people coming in is I don't know people.
Speaker 2:How do I connect? And what these people realize is they show up, like at Dorae Alley to staff the LDG clothing booth and they walk in and they realize they know everybody that they're going to be working with. All of a sudden, they're part of it. I think that a lesson for me as a mentor since I'm now doing that too was letting the mentor drive the bus. Letting the mentee drive the bus. They will get out of the program what they want to get out of the program, and me trying to decide for them what they should be doing and how they should be doing it and how often to meet was a huge mistake, and what I had to do was to be more willing to just offer to be there, and if they didn't want to meet, they didn't want to meet. If they wanted to meet three times, that's great too, and really let the mentee make the experience as much as they can what they want it to be, rather than me trying to push them to learn a particular way and experience a particular way.
Speaker 1:I'm actually, you know, I'm surprised y'all haven't had problems with sex because in my experience being mentored was all of my mentoring took place in the context of sexual relationships, and my experience being a mentor is that when I do that it's a disaster, and I can imagine people showing up thinking like here's where I get my daddy, and I can imagine some people being very predatory. So how do y'all work out sex? Are there guidelines, boundaries, good practices? How do you deal with sex?
Speaker 3:Well, from the very start we said, hey, this is not, even though Slave Lyle says we do the speed dating kind of thing, right between mentor and mentee. We are also actually very clear this is a mentoring relationship and, yes, you're going to get you know in your kink journey. You're going to get mentored by your sexual partners, no question. However, what we really want to do here is focus on this mentoring relationship as opposed to something else. So what we basically say is this is the other thing right, mentoring is not therapy. Mentoring is not speed dating. Right, mentoring is not. We are not a matchmaker in that sense. So what we say is we don't want mentors and mentees having sex If they find that they really do want to explore a sexual or romantic relationship because they're getting to know each other and maybe developing feelings. We're not afraid of feelings right in this program. And so basically, what we say is well, if it starts going in that direction, then you have a decision to make, which is do you step away from the mentoring program and go pursue that and that's outside this mentoring program, or do you promise, really essentially, not to engage in that until after the program is over? So we don't. I try to take a sex positive viewpoint about these possibilities, at the same time trying to keep the emphasis and the clarity, the boundaries, so that what's really happening is mentoring and not something else. So that's our policy.
Speaker 3:Now, having said that, sometimes in some mentoring relationships we do have, like I mean, what we say is the default is oh, my mentee wants to experience a fisting and they really want to learn more about that and they want to try to experience that.
Speaker 3:I, as a mentor, am going to point them to some people that I trust in the community and help facilitate a meeting or help facilitate a connection. But sometimes the person who knows a lot about fisting is the mentor and so as long as and what we say is basically so yeah, you can get together and actually do a hands-on, hands-in kind of fisting thing, as long as the focus really is on teaching, as long as the focus really is on learning rather than trying to have a fantastic, be good, sexual experience. So sometimes our mentors and mentees will explore things physically, but as long as the intention is clear, that it's about teaching, then I'm not too worried about that. But again, you know, we just remind people, keep an eye on on where your emotions are going and try to keep very clear that this is a mentoring relationship and not something else.
Speaker 1:I mean that gets back also to so much of what SM is about in terms of clear communication, setting boundaries, respecting boundaries. I mean those are basic skills you would be learning in any sort of community-based education anyway, so great to have them practicing that through mentoring as well. Lyle, did you want to add something?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean I heard you ask you know comment about worry about predatory things or, and one of the things that helps a great deal is most of the mentors that are mentoring had been doing it several years, mm-hmm. Of the 16 mentors we have this time, only two of them are new Mm-hmm. Some of them have done 12 years of it. So we have lots and lots and lots of experience with these people that make us feel pretty comfortable that there isn't going to be the predatory stuff going on. New mentors get recommended and we really want to make sure that we have some sense of who these people are before we pair somebody up with them. But so the longevity and the continuity in the program itself really provides us with a great deal of comfort and some assurance about these are people you can trust. These are people that know the ropes and will make sure that this is the best experience that Manti can have.
Speaker 1:I literally could talk to you both for an hour because there's so much I want to know, but I'm gonna try to wrap this up because podcasts can only be so long. In some ways it feels like you're really privileged. You're in San Francisco, huge gay community, huge leather community. For people who live elsewhere, who don't have all the privileges of San Francisco and wanted to start a program like this, do you have any tips of how people could start their own local mentorship program? Where would they start? What should they think about? What are some logistics they need to consider? How could this get replicated elsewhere? Because to my knowledge, there's nothing else like this in the country.
Speaker 3:Over the years over and, frankly, about a month ago, I've often had conversations with some people who are thinking, noticing exactly what you noticed right and thinking about could I start this in my own community? And so we've given them lots of like here's how we do it, here's our policies, here's our practices. This is what we've learned, so we're definitely I'm definitely ready to talk to anybody who wants to do seriously thinking about it.
Speaker 1:You're opening a big door. I hope so.
Speaker 3:And, as Slave Lyle said, part of it is it's successful because, yes, we're in a special privilege place where there is a big enough community, but we've consulted with a number of other organizations that have attempted to do this, and so I often think that every region, every community has its own challenges that it's got to figure out, and I'm not sure that we've got any insight or advice on that, on those challenges. But you know where we. I think that how we started is probably the best way to start, which is you've got to know your community before you start setting this up. You've really got to know who's out there, who's a good teacher, who has mentored before, even informally, and then you do have a certain need for a certain kind of organizational skill keeping track of all these people and everything that's going on. But still, if you don't really know your community and who you can tap as a mentor, then it becomes really easy to go off the rails and for things not to work out.
Speaker 3:So I would say that's probably the first thing is, really do a check yourself if, like, yes, I can point to five people that I would trust to really get to know them, five people that I would trust to really mentor someone and start with that. And, like you know, okay, I've got five people I can probably. You know, sometimes we often have asked our mentors to take on two mentees rather than just one because we have so many. But even if you can just do, you know, five, it builds. It builds on itself and that's what we've discovered is that you really have to start with those relationships first. That means you really need to know your community.
Speaker 1:And I imagine some mentees can go on to become mentors, particularly in a smaller community. Like you're really growing the next generation of leadership as well.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:What would you add? Well, I would say that we have enough with several mentors, current mentors that were mentees. I would say that there has been, even in the Bay Area here over the last several years, a couple of other attempts to start mentoring programs with, and you know, people consulted with Master about it and they started and they sort of petered out and my impression is that it's a lot of work. Sure, you know it's a lot of the commitment. Every year there are particular times, like right now, for two or three weeks. It's just an intense amount of work and it's hard to get people to be willing to be committed to that over time and not get burned out.
Speaker 2:And that's what we worry about with our mentors too. You know we tell them if you need to cycle off, you know, if you need to be, you know, not get burned out, please do that. But that's my impression is that people have all these good intentions and they get it going and then they just don't have the commitment or the energy from enough people to keep it going. I mean, I know that Onyx here in the city has their own mentoring program with their group. I have no idea how it operates or how well it works. But they do have one, but it's the only other one I know, and the others have started and closed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean undoubtedly it helped that you were attached to an existing functioning organization the Leatherman's Discussion Group, like, so, I would think, a freestanding mentoring program. You're inventing the organizational structure and finding the volunteer hours and all of that from scratch, versus glomming on to something that's already been kind of successful. Did you think that helped?
Speaker 3:Oh very much, and in fact that's recognizing that I would need a lot of support and help is why I went to the Leatherman's Discussion Group. It's also mentoring overall was in the spirit of what the Leatherman's Discussion Group was about, even though you know so they do a lot of. You know, once a month, some sort of educational event, and so along those lines it was like, well, this is a natural fit with this organization, so I would think that that's probably I mean being able to have the support and basically have a home in a community organization that is, you know, is focused on education, is a very good fit for a program like this, so definitely helpful.
Speaker 2:It's also symbiotic. I mean, one of the good things is, ldg itself is a conduit for new mentees to the mentoring program. They go to the events and all of a sudden people talk about the mentoring program or they see it on the website and vice versa. We have people who come into the mentoring program who really haven't become engaged directly with LDG much and we refer them the other direction. So they connect and it is symbiotic. It works really well.
Speaker 1:That's great because I think, you know, not every place has a huge community, but a lot of people have leather clubs that could then morph into this right, and then you get that symbiotic relationship. So I appreciate that tip for people who want to start Again. I could keep talking, but this is already going to be a really long episode. I think it's going to be fantastic. I might have to pull y'all back again in the future for another episode, if you'd be willing.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, but for now, thank you so much for joining me here on FullCal. Thank you Welcome to Ask Edge, the segment where I answer questions from all of you. I want to encourage you all to submit questions either through email at ask at fullcalshow, or even better.
Speaker 1:You can leave me a voicemail at speakpipecom. Once again, that is speakpipecom and that information is always included in the show notes. This time we have two questions from Bluff Leather Bear. The first one is how important do you think things are done by mutual agreement rather than by the DOM taking charge to ensure the longevity of a productive Sir Boy dynamic? And he has a second question as well Do you have any plans to come to the UK to an event like Hunter, and how valuable are events like these at keeping the community together In an ideal world? How frequently do you think these should be held? Submit questions.
Speaker 1:For the first one, the question of mutual agreement versus the DOM taking charge, what I like to say is that kinky relationships are first and foremost relationships and therefore you must come into it with all of your relationship skills. That means communication, that means compromise, that means negotiation. In fact, as a community, negotiation is pretty fundamental to what we do. So everything I do is by mutual agreement rather than me taking charge. And in fact, when I am encountering new submissive peoples who want to play with me or want to serve me, I prefer them to be pretty specific about the things they might want to experience, rather than just saying you can do anything. Now, that is just a dangerous thing to say to a sadist, first of all, but more importantly, it really doesn't give me a place to start or direction. It doesn't really give me any orientation of where we're going to go.
Speaker 1:I much prefer people who work with me to develop some sort of sense of where we're going to go together, together, because this is a relationship, there's more than one person involved and therefore my desires are only important to the extent that they match your desires. That my quote taking charge is something that also gives you pleasure and that doesn't violate your boundaries, your consent does not activate your people, pleasing your codependency, but instead works together. So I'm a huge believer in mutual agreement. I would recommend it and that's my answer to that as far as me, coming to UK, to an event like Hunter and the value of those events and keeping community together.
Speaker 1:The UK is pretty far away from Florida.
Speaker 1:I am actually about to go to Dublin on Wednesday I am recording this on Saturday, january 20th, and I'm going to Dublin for Dublin leather weekend.
Speaker 1:That will be long over by the time this podcast comes out, but I can only get to Europe probably about once a year, and that's not just based on the cost of airfare but also my available time off from work. So am I going to get to the UK for an event like Hunter anytime soon? No, I've often joked that if there are enough fans in the UK, they can all pull their money and fly me in and I can hang out with you all. It's a little bit of a joke because that just seems a bit silly, but no, I'm probably not getting to the UK for an event like that. However, how valuable are events like those, critical? I've been paying a lot of attention to the British Isles, shall we say, in part because of my inordinate fondness for Irish accents hence returning to Dublin as well as my fondness for Scottish accents, and one of the things that I find quite striking is, to my knowledge, to my knowledge, in all of the British Isles in.
Speaker 1:Ireland and in the UK there's only like one leather bar, I want to say, in Manchester. London has no leather bar, Dublin has no leather bar, edinburgh has no leather bar. But what's amazing is what's been popping up instead are a number of leather socials. So in Dublin there's a group called Oink and they do socials that gather at different bars. They've just recently also started play parties. At Glasgow there's a leather social, there's one in Newcastle, there's one in Bournemouth and I believe Hunter is essentially a leather social in London.
Speaker 1:These are extremely critical because real estate is expensive and opening a leather bar is expensive and it's really hard to meet the costs when you're really going to be busy on Friday and Saturday night. I don't really know all about bar business, but I know that that's a really expensive enterprise and that you're probably not going to be able to support it as an exclusive leather bar. That could be wrong. That's my impression. That's why I think there are so few leather bars left. But socials are critical because not only do they provide a place for community to gather and see each other and have fun and hang out and get to know each other. More importantly, they provide visibility and a visible point of entry for people who want to join the community. So I know, for example, when I was in Scotland, that a bunch of people were having sort of private kinky, leather, rubber, eurovision viewing parties where they'd get together with their friends and gear and watch Eurovision. It's a thing, right, it's a thing that's fantastic, that's community. But if you're curious about leather or rubber or kink, you're not going to know about that, you're not going to have an entry point. Being a regular social in a public space allows people who are curious to enter into that space. In fact, when I was in Glasgow, when I first went to Dublin, by accident was there for the Oink event and I had such a great time. So when I went to Scotland I planned it to make sure I was there for the leather social in Glasgow and as part of that I had been flirting with someone on recon and I convinced him to meet me at the leather social. He was kind of leather, adjacent, slightly outside the community, and it turns out he already knew some of the people there and it turns out he had a great time. So those spaces are critical because they don't require the investment of real estate, because they provide space for community, to connect to each other. But most importantly because they provide an entry point, that they are visible spaces where others can see the community, become curious about the community and enter the community. Because once you go to the social you meet a bunch of people, you make some friends. Then you get invited to the leather dinner at someone's house, then you get to watch Eurovision sitting in a cat suit.
Speaker 1:How frequently should these be held? I would think ideally monthly, to have at least a once a month event where people can show up at some amenable bar or pub or restaurant in gear to see other people in gear. Doing that once a month seems manageable, and I'm saying that because I happen to know that a lot of these happen once a month, which means people are able to make it happen. Here in the US we still have a fairly good bar scene. Like most cities might have a leather bar not all of them, but I suspect that these social environments will grow. The other reason I love and here in Fort Lauderdale we actually have a couple of leather socials, including one that's just sort of a dinner where you can just sort of show up and hang out at a restaurant and I think if we start to de-center these from bars, then it's not all about drinking and that's also good. In fact, if you live someplace that doesn't have a leather bar, think about trying to create some sort of leather social, because not only do I think they're valuable.
Speaker 1:I think they're invaluable at keeping community together, but I also think that they are possible, that you can make one happen yourself. So thank you for the questions Bluff, leather Bear and I would encourage all of you to submit some sort of question. It doesn't have to be profound, it doesn't have to be about leather. You can just ask about edge. It's called ask edge. So come on, people Ask edge, because without you I don't have this segment. And that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing or you can send feedback to edge at fullcowshow, as always. May your leather journey be blessed.