LOS ANGELES — It seemed to be business as usual at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel last weekend. Tired business travelers trudged through the lobby as young parents struggled to corral children on purportedly fun-filled family vacations. If you didn’t know, you might have been none the wiser to the fact that just below the surface of the mainstream comings and goings at a busy airport hotel, fetish enthusiasts and professionals of the BDSM world were converging.
A few leather-clad kinksters making their way to a peripheral escalator offered the only clue as to where one might find the entrance to DomCon, a five-day networking event for the kinky community at large.
Descending, the tourists and suits from above were replaced with latex bishop's robes, men on leather leashes and a veritable mix of all things deliciously deviant.
At the entrance, a boot-blacking chair presented itself like a throne, while Mistress Cyan, creator of DomCon and headmistress of Sanctuary Studios LAX, looked on through the growing crowd from her perch at the registration table.
Passes in hand, attendees were invited to join in an experience unlike others of its ilk. Born from a fractured scene that formerly separated professionals from lifestyle players, DomCon champions community values, education and inclusivity above all else. Less of a fantasy playground and more of a meeting of kinky minds, the premiere West Coast domination convention presented an opportunity for professionals and enthusiasts to come together in kinky communion for a weekend of industry seminars, public workshops — and of course, a play party or two.
A fun-filled weekend on the surface level, the convention significantly facilitated open-forum discussions and embraced a spirit of free and uninhibited expression. Collectively, DomCon Los Angeles presented a snippet of a thriving subculture and its self-disciplinary efforts to honor tradition and yet constantly adapt to an ever-changing world.
Close Community
The exposition floor revealed a treasure trove of all imaginable flavors of impact implements and bondage gear, leather and latex pieces and the odd electro-stim device here or there.
Bunny Lampert from Sybian, the event’s main sponsor, stood poised at the entrance of the hall, welcoming guests with the pumping Venus stroker and Sybian’s classic ride-on-top vibe. She smiled as she raved about the product’s newest improvements and invited curious onlookers to feel the inside of the stroker as it pumped away.
Wandering through the aisles of kink goods and fetishwear, one saw many smiling faces. The humble collection of vendors exhibited a fraternal familiarity amongst themselves — everyone seemed to know each other, more or less. In its 16th year, the convention touted a roster of primarily smaller manufacturers. The Kinky Geek and Firebird Leather were present with collections of handcrafted floggers while The Baroness showcased various pieces from her extensive latex range. The Kink Factory, an online operation out of Arizona, had come for the rare opportunity to sell its products in person.
DomCon doesn’t attract a large audience from the general public for a number of reasons, not the least of which may have to do with popular platforms restricting advertising or posts deemed to be “offensive.” The community was largely comprised of up-and-coming professionals seeking to network with and learn from each other, mixed with a handful of long-time lifestyle players and VIPs from the local scene.
Between a number of socials, Thursday’s opening ceremonies and Saturday night’s Fetish Ball, DomCon scheduled plenty of opportunities for attendees to kick back, relax and get down with their bad selves. But perhaps the more important events of the weekend were in the “teaching moments” peppered throughout workshops and heated debates.
Designed to educate and spark discussion, the weekend’s numerous classes and seminars focused on a variety of topics, all of which, in their own unique way, lifted the veil and shed light on the true nature of domination, various kinds of play and safety. Play parties and pet shows aside, the bulk of the programming positioned the convention to be, above anything else, more of a summit for Doms to pick up and fine-tune skills and discuss amongst peers the nature of their work. Reading in between the lines, DomCon offered keen insight as to what the future of the industry might hold.
Understanding the Edge
“Sharp Object: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Needle Play” was one of several classes dedicated to edgeplay, otherwise defined as more “extreme” types of play within the BDSM world. “Sutures & Stapling” along with “Decorative Cutting” were spread out over the weekend, offering a taste of a popular subculture’s fixation with piercing, blood and body modification.
It seemed challenging to “intro” anyone to the idea of piercing another person for fun in a one-hour class but nonetheless, Miss Grey, a San Francisco-based domme, introduced herself and her longtime personal slave, M., to a group of approximately 30. Conference room B2 had been transformed, outfitted now as what looked more like a doctor’s office than a dungeon. Gauze, alcohol and a waiting sharps container set the scene.
She proceeded to explain that she and M. had been longtime partners, having played together for more than a decade. She warned, “I only pierce people that I know and trust with my life.”
Miss Grey asked M. to remove his clothes. “He’s a total exhibitionist and a heavy masochist so he’s in heaven right now,” she confided. M. smiled, a twinkle of excitement flashing through his eyes. After an extensive safety and protocol lecture, she asked him to lie down on the table that had been prepped for their demo and invited the group to gather for a closer look.
Positioning the 24-gauge needle above his right pec, she synched her breath with his. She counted, “One, two, three,” and on the exhale deftly propelled the needle point through his chest. At the climax of the demo, Grey described the rush of endorphins as a high for both of them.
Calm and meditative, their brief scene set a precedent for those newcomers in the room, positioning safety as the priority and rewriting the narrative of what edgeplay could look like.
When so much of pop culture depicts BDSM as either totally sadistic or comically ridiculous, this act, one that seems inherently cruel to the untrained eye, presented edgeplay as more of a ritualistic communion between the giver and receiver.
Not for the faint of heart and not to be taken lightly, it became clear why people are drawn to edgeplay and domination in general: it’s intimacy in the highest form.
A New Generation
While operating under less-than-ideal conditions in terms of facilities and allotted time, workshops like “Intro to Needle Play” and others offered significant value to the conference. Especially for younger doms from outside of Los Angeles or other major metropolitan cities, who are just starting out and who may not have a community of their own to turn to for advice, these workshops offered invaluable mentorship and insights.
In creating opportunities for seasoned players to teach curious newbies (or simply those looking to fine-tune a skill,) DomCon itself has become a way to preserve some semblance of tradition within the community.
Not unlike the mainstream, elders in the kink community deride the younger generation for shirking tradition and having “no respect.” The internet has unleashed a flood of new players who assert themselves as Dominants without receiving the formal hands-on training many of the seasoned professionals had customarily completed. The sudden and unprecedented rise of online “financial domination” has proven to be an especially hard pill for many in the community to swallow.
While some have bemoaned the dawn of the digital age as the death of tradition within the community, Cyan affirms that the changing tide is neither better nor worse for the future of BDSM.
“It used to be that people had mentors and you learned from the bottom up but we also used to not have classes and conferences,” she said. “Now, there are many avenues from which newcomers can learn about the lifestyle — it’s overall just different.”
Perhaps a greater threat to the community than millennial findoms is the increasingly restrictive political climate that has forced the community further underground in recent months.
During the “Ask a Mistress” panel, Cyan recounted earlier days when BDSM existed strictly in the shadows, remembering: “I grew up in a time where leather bars were raided and men could be arrested for holding hands in public.” While we may have progressed past those exact circumstances, concern over FOSTA/SESTA and porn being declared a “public health crisis” cast an ominous cloud looking ahead.
“With this current administration, I see things slipping back,” Cyan prophesized.
In spite of the general swing towards more conservative policies, industry stalwarts aren’t backing down.
“This has brought us all closer together,” countered Goddess Severa from the BaadMaster-moderated “Future of BDSM” panel.
On a similar note, vital to the discussion of the industry’s future was the topic of representation in the mainstream.
“BDSM is still this dark, dirty secret,” said Mistress Justine Cross, owner of Dungeon East and Dungeon West in Los Angeles. “People don’t understand it.”
There have been few representations of BDSM in mainstream culture, and fewer still that do any favors for the community. While the consensus regarding Netflix’s verified faux-domme account on Twitter promoting its new show "Bonding" is that it’s in poor taste, the more nuanced controversy surrounding the half-hour comedy speaks to the larger debate over whether or not any press is good press.
Goddess Moon, a “switch-service bottom-little” with 20 years of experience in the scene, offered that media attention has its positive effects. “The good thing is that it brings people in and then we can give them better information,” she said.
“At least people are talking about it,” agreed Severa.
The Netflix show has been vilified for depicting scenarios that blatantly fly in the face of the lifestyle’s SSC (safe, sane, consensual) code. Many younger doms have taken to Twitter to crucify the series and its creators for misrepresenting an already-marginalized group but in discussion over the weekend’s panels, members of the community’s older generation have found ways to appreciate the content for what it is.
“We can’t take it too seriously,” stated Cyan, frankly. “When I was first introduced to the scene, I saw a woman suspended in a garage getting candle wax dripped between her legs. If we showed vanilla people what we really do, it would scare them and set us back 10 years.” She continued, “There is risk involved and to the untrained eye, [BDSM] can look scary — you have to put it in terms that people can understand.”
Indeed, for the vast majority of people who are unfamiliar with BDSM and kink in general, ideas of dark dungeons and the screams of terror that emanate from them are popularly what come to mind. While there certainly is some truth to the narrative of a sadistic mistress who enjoys inflicting pain on a masochistic sub, the impetus behind those relationships and entire other factions of the community are largely misunderstood. There seem to be hazy misconceptions about what it is the community stands for and what it is exactly that its members do.
Forward Momentum
Looking ahead, Cyan predicted that the days of coding sexual deviance as a character flaw and painting kinky folk as the degenerates of society were on their way out.
“I had three shows shooting at Sanctuary in the past few months and all of them were positive,” she said. The increasing demand for first-hand storytelling and the slow but steady integration of kink into the mainstream (even if it’s not 100 percent accurate) is gradually working to rewrite the ingrained narrative that popularly equates fetish with evil.
In a small way, the many panels, socials and workshops over the weekend acted as caucuses for industry members and lifestyle players alike to converge and discuss the issues that matter to them most. But in spite of the many hurdles the community faces, the mood was generally jovial and optimistic with the focus being on inclusive celebration of anything, everything and everyone kinky.
DomCon may not be the largest event on the fetish enthusiast’s calendar but it certainly occupies an important space. In bringing together the frequently separate lifestyle and professional communities, the sensationalism of kink is stripped away, offering instead an opportunity for peers to come together in celebration and in the spirit of improving their craft.
In DomCon's infancy, Cyan set out to create an inclusive event that would bring together the many camps falling under the banner term of "kink." Now, 16 years later, the five-day event welcomed more than 1,700 participants with specific spaces for trans and non-binary folk, POC, industry-only and more. As kink as a culture continues to grow, DomCon will remain an important event for the community to explore and collectively self-regulate.
Organizers are looking forward to presenting DomCon New Orleans for its third year in the Big Easy this coming October.
For more information, click here.
Zoe Tamara is the News Editor for XBIZ. Twitter: @zoeeetamara
