When a kinky person runs for office, here's what they should say.

[elfs]

So, a few years ago when Omaha was doing a lot of political things, one of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party asked her if she ever intended to run for public office. Omaha said no, she hadn't, because she feared she had too much historical baggage, starting with putting herself through university as a stripper (AKA sex worker), and followed through by ending up as Washington State Ms. Leather in 1997. In the current atmosphere, a background like that could be a serious detriment. Around that time, someone asked me if I thought Omaha's history, since she's completely unapologetic about it all, would be a problem. At the time, I hemmed and hawed because I wasn't sure. I've finally figured out what to say:

Have you been to a professional or political conference in the past few years? Did it have a Code of Conduct? Did you read it?

Every conference code of conduct you've ever read started with one written by a kinky person. In the late 1990s and very early 2000s the internet started to give women an outlet to complain about all the creepy, awful crap they put up with whenever they go to professional events. Men getting drunk and handsy, groping and even assaulting women who came to teach and learn, not be leered at or mistreated.

At some meeting where event organizers discuss these things, someone said, "This is awful. Women will stop coming if we don't get this under control. Our reputation is at stake." And someone else said, "I have some experience with this. Let me gather some documents and we can discuss this at the next meeting."

That person went home and found the Code of Conduct for their local BDSM dungeon, typed it in, cleaned it up so that it didn't mention all the sexy stuff, and presented it as the starting point of the conversation. Every Code of Conduct you've read since descended from that document.

Kinky people have been dealing with this issue for thirty five years. Ever since Pat Califia published the S&M Safety Manual in 1982, we have discussed and experimented and studied how to manage when creepy guys invade a public space where deeply intimate and possibly dangerous things are happening. If we can do it, then so can professional events where not so intimate or physically risky things are going on.

The whole MeToo thing, the conversations about consent and negotiation and using your words and learning to be unafraid to talk about what you want and need in an intimate setting— that vocabulary came from kink, and it belongs to kink, and we give it to you as a gift, because you vanilla folk need it. How to deal with creeps, and event codes of conduct, and explicit rules about keeping your hands to yourself, is also ours, and we need you to have it, because it's the only way to move forward in a world where health care and birth control mean women aren't shackled to their beds for the first 20 years of their adult lives trying to have babies.

Do I think Omaha's past is a problem? Hell no. I think it's a benefit. Aside from all her other passions about the environment, about quality of life issues in urban spaces, alleviating impoverishment, invisibile disabilities, or transportation issues, when it comes to talking about issues like workplace harassment or teaching students consent, Omaha has more experience with the debate, and more familiarity with the solutions, than any other candidate you could name.

It's totally l'esprit de l'escalier and theoretical at this point, but it's useful to have this idea in my head.