Conversio Virium

Summer CV: Too Darn Hot!

Hello ladies, gents, unaffliateds, undecideds, all.

Summer CV meets this evening! Pehaps someone will sing Cole Porter in honor of the weather!

We meet at Bid Daddy’s Diner! They are expecting us! At 8pm! That’s 239 Park Avenue South between 19th and 20th Streets on the upper level in the back of the diner, in case you didn’t know!

Cheers,
Sara!

Summer CV: Tech Power!

Welcome to our first website-delivered super-special notification and excitement delivery. Conversio Virium has made some enormous technological steps forward, and can only continue to benefit.

Summer CV this evening! Big Daddy’s Diner, located at 239 Park Avenue South between 19^th and 20^th Streets, at 8 PM. See you there!

Sara (is a tech geek groupie)

Tech note: The message above should have been delivered to your email inbox. If you didn’t see it there, please check your junk mail just in case that’s where the CV notification has ended up. To ensure you receive the CV newsletter and future notifications such as this one, please be sure to add conversio@columbia.edu to your contacts list and/or add an email rule to allow messages whose subject line begins with [Conversio Virium] to your spam filtering software.

Summer CV: Redux

Seriously guys, do I even need to write the copy any more?

Summer CV will take place tomorrow, Monday July 16^th, at Big Daddy’s Diner on Park Avenue South between 19^th and 20^th streets, at 8 pm. Don’t tell anyone, but I may possibly be planning to drink a milkshake.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the CV website!

Sara

CV Newsletter Subscription List Update (Important!)

The CV newsletter subscription list is being moved to our new database. If you want to continue to receive CV mailings, you will need to subscribe on the CV site and provide an email address. Don’t worry; your email address will be used only for CV mailings and your CV web site account and will never be distributed or displayed publicly.

We will send a reminder via the old CV subscription list but we plan to switch over, by the beginning of next semester.

A lovely little citation

Doing one of my frequent Google searches of CV, I found this little scholarly piece which cited us in 2005. While I was not very involved in CV at that time, it makes me proud to know that the information this author found so helpful still stands on our new site, even now. The bit where the author, Nicole Eitmann, cites our site discusses our faithful old motto, SSC.

From Nicole’s paper, On Sadomasochism: Taxonomies and Language:

A final complication concerns the slippage in the public imagination from S/M to physical abuse and forced sex. Conversio Virium, a BDSM (bondage and discipline S/M) support group at Columbia University, has developed a policy statement outlining the differences between S/M and abuse. According to the group, “S/M includes intimate activities within the scope of consent that is freely given”, while abuse is defined as “acts inflicted on a person without their freely given consent.”⁴⁸ A popular phrase among the S/M and fetish communities is that all sexual encounters should be “safe, sane, and consensual.”⁴⁹ The limits of S/M encounters are mutually agreed upon by both participants, and a safe word that when uttered means the scene must end immediately, is arranged. The “safe, sane, consensual” benchmark is also adopted by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), an advocacy group supporting the rights of sexual minorities, specifically practitioners of S/M,⁵⁰ although some in these communities question the applicability of this slogan to all who practice BDSM. One S/M participant noted that, “Sane is so close to meaningless for me that I find it useless. Who is to say what is sane? Shall we pass judgement on each other, as to whether people and/or activities are sane?”⁵¹ Such individuals do not question the propriety of the standard of consent, but do raise an interesting issue of how safety and sanity are determined, and by whom. Even the S/M guidelines published by Conversio Virium highlight consent as the most essential aspects of S/M, and stress the importance of mutual pleasure and respect in the S/M relationship.⁵²

Things like this remind me that, even when our club is spoken of by sensationalist bloggers who can usually only see dirty side of CV, we are actually making a positive difference in the way the community to which we belong (and have, to some degree, created) is viewed by the rest of the word. Hooray for taking some of the bias against BDSM and its practitioners out of sociology (and for my run-on sentences)!

Summer CV wants you (hungry)!

As usual, this upcoming Monday, July 9^th at 8 PM on the upper balcony in the back of Big Daddy’s Diner, between 19^th and 20^th Streets, 239 Park Avenue South, we’re having another Summer CV dinner. There’ll be burgers and snacks and delights of all sorts aplenty to munch on, so come hungry.

Also, as a reminder or if you’ve not yet been informed, the CV newsletter subscription list is being moved to our new database. If you want to continue to receive CV mailings, you will need to subscribe on the CV site and provide an email address. Don’t worry; your email address will be used only for CV mailings and your CV web site account and will never be distributed or displayed publicly.

Pleasure Salon excursion to the beach

Pleasure Salon is a relatively new (several month old) social mixer for the sex-positive and alternative sexuality communities in New York City that typically occurs on the fourth Thursday of each month at a downtown bar and lounge. Their next outing, however, is taking place at Sandy Hook, a clothing-optional beach on the not-too-far-away Jersey Shore and, naturally, you’re invited! A bunch of us CV folk are planning on being there (some may be naked, some may not), and of course the more of us around the merrier we tend to be.

Conversio Virium chats up Kink on Tap

Recently, I started a podcast featuring conversations about kink and BDSM called Kink on Tap. In the latest installment, I got the chance to chat about CV with Hannah and Tyler, El Presidente and our notorious President of Vice respectively, and I’m thrilled to get the chance to post the recording. Check it out!

Summer CV: Happy July!

It’s hot, it’s sticky, it likes to spontaneously burst into tears. No, it’s not your sexy overly emotional girlfriend. It’s July in New York City.

Summer CV continues to be predictable! And awesome!

Monday, July 2^nd.

8 PM.

Big Daddy’s Diner, between 19^th and 20^th Streets, 239 Park Avenue South.