Preface: I had originally planned to not post this call for opinions on this blog, because I wanted to solicit answers from more narrowly-focused groups of BDSM-identified people. But frankly, I'm not getting any takers! Everyone seems to be voting for for Obama. It would be interesting to think that all the kinky people in the world are Democrats, but I happen to know that ain't so. I am personally acquainted with some very kinky Republicans who are smart people and who have thoughtful views on the issues. So perhaps they'll offer me their opinion.

***

"Why I’m Voting For John McCain..."

That’s what I’d like to know from you – if you are. I’m interested in doing a column about people for whom BDSM/kink/whatever-you-prefer-to-call-it is an active/daily part of their lives, and who intend to vote Republican in the Presidential election.

I know that a lot of people who are not all that kinky read me. I'm pleased to have those folks here. But the people I want to hear from around this issue are the serious, but serious BDSM people. So let me channel Joe Biden in the debates last night and say it again: what I’m looking for is Republican voters who are sincerely wedded to their identity as a BDSM person, and for whom that is a defining feature of their life.

(Or their identity as a D/s person, or a kinky person, or a fetish person, or whatever term you prefer to employ. Master/slave, female-led relationships, domestic discipline households - insert whatever term you like into that sentence. )

I would like to hear from people from whom what-it-is-we-do is a daily or constant feature of their life. While I loathe and despise the term “lifestyle” in any context, I suppose that’s one way of expressing what I mean here: lifestyle BDSM people.

If you’d like to be quoted, send me an email telling me why you’re choosing McCain, and how that fits in with your identity as a BDSM person. (Or whatever you call yourself, please tell me how you'd like to be described.)

Now, some guidelines: I have very limited space and I want to offer a lot of people’s responses, so I’m looking for answers that are short and snappy, about fifty words or so, max. Equally, your identity label needs to be short, three or four words.

And answers that are just about how much you don’t like Obama probably won’t make it in – I want to hear about why you do like McCain and think he’s the right choice, not about why you don’t like the other guy.

Tell me what name you'd like to be called, and what state you live in, please. And thanks in advance for your participation.

Mistress Matisse @ aol.com

The new column is up at the Stranger. Enjoy...

Also, just because it's cool and very good advice: the Red Light District Chicago site - information for and about sex workers. The video about "what to do if you get arrested" is sassy and savvy, and it applies to people besides sex workers, too.

Now I need to finish writing up my outline for the class I'm teaching in ten days at a romance writer's conference, and then get a column in the can before I leave for Vegas on Sunday, because I don't want to be working on that while I'm in Sin City.

Thank you to all the pet-lovers who dropped me nice notes wishing my sick old cat well. She seems better...

Greetings from San Francisco...

We are having a perfectly lovely kinky time down here. The weather for Folsom Street Fair was great, and the four of us got there early enough to walk around and see most things before the crowd got too oppressive. After about 1pm or so, the fair is pretty much 13 solid blocks of crowds like this:


And that's a bit much for me. Here's a brief article about the Fair in the SF Chronicle, with more photos, and if you want to see some snapshots I took, click over to my Flickr stream. Puck and I have taken some better-quality photos, but truthfully, we've not had time/energy to process them. So look for those when I get home.

Today I have a different type of photo op - my shoot with Craig Morey. I hope that goes well, and that we get some good images. Since I've worked with him before, I'm more confident about it than I was last time, and I think we'll have fun. We will also NOT shoot for eight freakin' hours like we did last time, I was wiped out after that. We planned three hours, which means it'll be four, because that's how these things go. But that's completely do-able.

Can I also mention, in connection with nothing else I have said, how amazingly mean and evil Puck is? I mean, really. I intend that as a compliment, of course. I don't see her very much in her dominant persona. But I have certainly seen it the last two days, and sweet Jesus Christ, it's slightly terrifying. She was looking very elegant at dinner last night, with her hair pinned up artfully, and there was something about her that made me think of a decadent old-world Russian aristocrat - a Marquise de Merteuil of the Romanov dynasty. Maybe it was it was the coolly sadistic pleasure she was taking in commanding and tormenting people. But it was charming. One does like to get to know new sides of of people.