AEL Kinkskills Makes paddles!!!!!!

On June 23^rd T of Tease  taught the “make and customize your own paddle” workshop for AEL Kinkskills. The host house was wonderful, thank you so much G, and the group was so much fun!  We went way overtime but everyone was patient and laughing, and T was an amazing and attentive teacher as always. I had the best time! At first I was sitting on the sidelines, I didn’t know if I had it in me to join, but k convinced me, and I am so glad that she did! I had the best time talking and feeling up my table partner, and thinking about what I was going to imprint on my paddle- also known as my paddle manifesto!

It was so great, and it was a wonderful way to say good bye to this project that I have put blood, sweat, and tears into since its inception in 2009. 

This was the last AEL Kinkskills that I will be organizing. It was a huge success, and gave me everything that I had hoped for. The paddle that I made was in memorial to the event, and hangs proudly on my rack.

I am going through a lot of transition now and ending my part of AEL Kinkskills is a big part of that. It is hard leaving this project but I am very happy about the Master and slave group that will be starting in August. We are also moving soon and so far our housing prospects are so much better than I ever thought possible, and lastly I have put out an application to an online BSN program. The college has accepted me as a student, but I haven’t heard from the nursing program yet, however, this is the beginning of me fulfilling a dream that again, I never thought possible.  

Right now there is a lot of movement followed with a ton of support and love coming at us. So many people are coming forward to offer their help and words, and have given us so much hope that even though things are scary right now I feel enveloped in a cocoon of community.  Funny, huh, that in this time of such uncertainty the overriding thing that I feel is surrounded by love.

So with  all of this change I got to thinking about  the things that I have experienced from AEL  Kinkskills that have stayed with me over the years. There are so many skills that I now have thanks to this program. Before AEL  Kinkskills I couldn’t pierce, cut, do basic bondage,  or needle bondage,  I had never made my own  toy, and I didn’t understand the intricacies of violet wand, tantra, impact, or caning.

Over time I have seen others who have attended these classes take those skills that they learned and improve on them. The first time  that I saw someone do  needles after the class it made my heart sing, and I felt like I had really done something that made a difference.

The first time I saw a woman experience her inner dominance as she stood by a towering male partner because of something that I taught her- the ah-ha moment  on her face will always be with me.

The first time that I saw CBT and had it explained to me still makes me wince, but smile.

The first time I mummified my slave after a class, and the first time I ever saw saline injections!

I loved watching people come in smiling and laughing, my slave sitting at that front table welcoming all, and the talking and friendships that developed after the class.

I loved showcasing our local  experts and am  so  grateful for all that gave their time to teach, to  host, to  volunteer, and to  make this project the beauty and joy that it was.  For me it was a labor of love, and something that I am very proud to have been lucky enough to   have co-founded and facilitated.

Thank you everyone who was right along there with me learning and laughing. 

Thank you for making the last four years everything that I had always wanted it to be.

Very Sincerely,

 Master Bear

Criminal Minds, BDSM, and Us

I have this thing for the show Criminal Minds. It isn’t the blood and the gore that kind of thing has never interested me; it is the fact that those that do harm have a psychology. As a survivor myself, one of the reasons that I am so addicted is that the  show takes the blame off of the victims, it talks openly and strongly about the actions of the perpetrator having nothing to do with the victim and everything to do with the perpetrators need to fulfill their own  fantasy. How perpetrators are extremely skilled at what they do, they study people, and every time they fail at gaining a victim they learn and get smarter at attaining their next victim. The show is ahead of its time when it comes to talking about being victimized  not being a person’s fault , and how sex workers are just as important as the rest of us, and their victimization matters. It has also addresses quite blatantly and openly the gay conversion camps, both male and female sexual assault and the fact that crimes cross the class barrier.

That being said Aaron Hotchner is hot. He is hot because he leads, because he is brilliant, because he loves his team and understands that they need his support to do their jobs well. He is hot because he provides the ultimate safety, the safety to the team so that they can focus on the job and the people while he provides an emotional safety that all leaders that know how to lead instinctively do. 

Criminal Minds has multiple times addressed BDSM in their shows. In the 7^th season there was an episode called the Company. It was about a man that had non consensually kidnapped and beaten a woman,  gotten her to sign a slave contract , and  ultimately  kept her under control by  using the idea of “The Company” as well as keeping her child from her. 

Despite the severity of the actions of the perpetrator, BDSM was by the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) represented openly and fairly. The team talked about how BSDM involved role-playing that uses the concept of the Company, and how this is usually understood by both parties to be part of the role playing.  They talked about how this case was about abuse, control, and kidnapping, and took the focus off of BDSM and put it onto the actual crime.

 That is important because people that have been kidnapped in real time and have had the concept of the company used in real time as part of their mental manipulation have existed. The company is supposedly a large underground group of people that watch over, control,  that provide slaves to willing Masters; they will also hunt down a runaway slave, trade slaves to other Masters, register slaves and so on.  This type of psychological terror assists in keeping the kidnapped victim complicit and creates an air of being watched, with dire consequences for misbehaving.  

Who knows maybe such a thing does exist somewhere. Slave auctions are still alive and well, both consensual and not, as are the trading of slaves, with all of the old time non consensual training methods still being used. If someone has enough money, anything is possible.  Mail order brides, bringing over children of all genders from foreign countries for domestic and sexual servitude, and human trafficking are all still happening, and huge money makers. 

At one point in the show the Master and the slave are separated and he is put in jail. She turns up a little while later with a lawyer, who is also supposedly in the Company, and gets him free stating that she loves him, and that she needs to make his dinner. Instead of representing her as a stupid woman, they take that time to show the bruises on her neck. Illustrating that she is operating on a different emotional level, one based in survival.  After all, if he would do that to her when she was behaving, what would he do to her when she was not behaving?

In the end, she is freed with her child, and everyone is reunited.

I love this show because for me, it really points out how far we have come in some parts of the media in portraying BDSM. What Criminal Minds did was separate BDSM from abuse and kidnapping. They took this very complicated case and broke it down into a series of crimes; they weren’t interested in that fact that she signed a slave contract, they were interested in what he did to force her to do it. They never once referred to BDSM as those sickos, or those perverts, and they were not interested in the other couples that engaged in Master and slave relationships.

This was all about consent versus non consent, consent versus coercion, and consent versus abuse. Those borderline issues that we deal with everyday, not just from the outside world looking in, but from ourselves. At what point is it what we do no longer consensual and starts being a trained response, with some coercion thrown in? In many Master and slave relationships consent happens once in the beginning of the relationship and then   is assumed from that point forward. But considering that the beginning of a relationship involves hormones, and a considerable amount of NRE, is that really a time to consent?  Can it be argued that NRE in and of itself be considered an altered state, and therefore making consent invalid and questionable?

Something to consider.

And nice to consider them while watching a little Hotchner……..

PERV May 25th

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Emotional roller coasters

Emotions  are transitory. Emotions change, grow, and  dim. What a person  feels one day doesn't mean that they will feel it the next.
Sometimes in relationships when the emotion  of love changes, doesn't come as easy or is challenged by time limitations or emotional fatigue, it is easy to fall into the thought that the feelings  are gone and will be gone forever and then panic.

This can  create a roller coaster affect in the relationship. Where the people in the relationship  chase the high of being in love, chase that feeling of euphoria that comes with  the intensity of love and lust. Then crash  emotionally when the love is felt to be  not as strong, or is felt to not be returned, or is threatened in  some way real or imagined.  
Usually this is where a fight happens. The fight is based in  something that really doesn't matter,  but the intention of the fight is to turn the other persons attention back to the relationship and their partner.
So the relationship  goes from the high and euphoria of love  to the angst of a fight to the high again.


Healthier relationships learn to find a middle road.  They understand that there are closer times and  further times and  times when instead of causing a conflict to create closeness, they  simply ask for closeness  and act to  create it.

So this has what to do  with BDSM exactly?

Because these are people patterns, they exist in  all types of relationships, and when you take those patterns and put them into relationships that are based in power exchange you get different outcomes.

Because we view our identities as such  a deep part of who we are, the roller coaster pattern can have a very different significance to  a Master and slave couple then to a  vanilla one.

So  in a vanilla relationship  maybe the partners  fight it out, get up and leave for the night, or tell each other off. Maybe they show each other love and euphoria by getting extra oohy gooey, and maybe they do  more things for each other, or get little gifts for each other, or do something along those lines, until they fall back into fighting.

For M/s couples though the options are different. In some dynamics slaves are not allowed to voice feelings against the Master. So although they may have them , speaking them is forbidden. The slave may  not have the physical ability to leave for example they may not have access to  a car, money, or even  clothes to be able to leave the house.

The Master may react badly to  feelings of disconnect from the slave and intentionally or unintentionally make the slaves life harder to create that feeling that was there before.

During the loving times the Master may not feel that they as a Master can be overly loving because of their  identity so they may withhold their love and affection.



The other end of this is when the slave starts to feel disconnected and starts making the Masters life a living hell until they feel that they (the slave) matters  to the Master.  Then things calm down and the slave becomes very attentive and loving,  until the need for the connection  happens again, and the living hell ensues.

 When it does happen in this direction the Master many times will feel that they  cannot discuss what is going on because of the fear that others will view them as not in  charge of their slave, or less of a Master, or not a Master at all.
It can  become very paralyzing.


Because of our identities we go through other thought processes then the vanilla folk. Things like if I were more of a slave or submissive then I could have fulfilled my Master in a way then they never would have left-- maybe I am not a slave or a submissive at all. So if I become  a dominant maybe that way I can't be hurt again, I don't ever have to be that vulnerable again.

We aren't talking about the ending of a relationship here-  we are talking about the ending of an  identity. This goes both ways, Masters that leave their path of Mastery because they don't feel that they are able to lead. If they were a stronger  Master the slave would have been more obedient, more loving, more responsive, more something....  So it must be the Master.

Kind of like when  a lesbian relationship goes wrong and someone freaks and thinks that if they were in a straight relationship that their lives and relationsips would somehow be easier.

So finding the middle road, knowing and having peace with the thought that what a person  feels will change and grow and dissipate depending on a lot of things. 
Sometimes just reminding the self that feeling of love and lust and euphoria is going to  change and  morph into something else. It doesn't mean that it has to go away entirely, but it does change. 

Sometimes it changes off of the roller coaster and onto  a long and beautiful road where the love is the constant and the fights are rare and resolvable.

And sometimes,  well sometimes it is time to buy  a ticket to another ride.  Not necessarily change how you identify, unless you are changing,  but change the ride.