Hi there, Prude here.

I’m very excited to be posting to this blog alongside such interesting fellow minds, and hope to contribute to ongoing and rigorous conversation. I’m a graduate of the Critical and Visual Studies program here at Pratt, and live in New York City. By way of a little bio, I’m involved in Alternative Sex & Lifestyle communities (LGBTQ, Leather Pride, BDSM and Polyamory) both personally and as an organizer for national events, most recently The Floating World. My research and writing interests include power as it relates to the right of governments to govern, public policy for gender and orientation as well as health and education, technology policy, morality and obscenity. I’m an avid photographer and am working on building my professional portfolio.

I write under a pseudonym here and on my personal blog, Adventures of an Adventurous Prude because I have not yet decided to come out, and “scene names” are a form of communication in and of themselves. I find participating in a system of private naming and the “in” versus “out” dynamic about who is “allowed to know” fascinating. Small communities using alternate identities proliferate in conditions of oppression, and from an academic perspective it’s enlightening to be able to participate in the “togetherness” this knowing of my “private name” has. (Especially when, depending on the space, my private name is my legal name.)

I hope to spend some quality time on this blog describing the realities of planning and putting on events such as The Floating World as well as dealing with the theoretical underpinnings of the power play relationships involved in the BDSM and Leather communities. I may touch on gender and sexual orientation in the interests of the topic at hand, and I am excited to engage outside the communities in which I normally move and to “speak” as it were to a larger audience. Posts that I’m currently planning are discussions about consenting to violence, security at private events, and disengaging gender presentation from sexual orientation.
I look forward (with a little trepidation) to the discussion.

Cheers!

The Prude