Conversio Virium

TES Meeting: Lapdancing 101 with Rita Seagrave

Rita Seagrave is presenting at TES on Lapdancing 101:

First and foremost, this class will teach you how to give a great lapdance! The relationship between lapdancer and customer is overloaded with power exchange, so we’ll also explore how to incorporate this unique form of “tease and denial” into your erotic D/s play. There will be opportunities for volunteers to participate and interact, no partner necessary. Rita Seagrave has worked as a professional dominatrix, adult toy salesgirl, Lusty Lady stripper, sex advice columnist, and college instructor.

(Do you know of an event that you don’t see on our calendar and want to share? Please send it in!)

CV expands its calendar to include unaffiliated events

If you’re subscribed to our calendar feed (Google Calendar instructions), you may have noticed quite a few new events popping up. Recently, yours truly and Tyler have been making an effort to share more of the sexuality community events with Conversio Virium members, so we’ve been posting information to the calendar about all kinds of fun stuff we think CV members might be interested in.

For example, Tyler discovered what promises to be an interesting exhibit at the Museum of Sex. I’ve added some preliminary information about the Seventh Annual Polyamory Pride Day, and about an exciting presentation at LSM about breaking out of rigid kink stereotypes. And, of course, there’s plenty more!

Even though none of these events are officially related to Conversio Virium, we think it’s immensely beneficial to publicize these events to the rest of you, our fellow kinky and pleasure-positive New Yorkers.

What’s more, we want to invite you to help us fill up our calendar so we’ll all always have something fun to do around town! Simply let us know about an event and after briefly reviewing it, we’ll put it on our calendar. If you’d like to submit events on an ongoing basis, we encourage you to request contributor status to our site, which will allow you to submit any kind of content for publication, such as news stories. (You must first be a registered user to be a contributor.)

Just imagine it: a calendar full of alternative sexual lifestyle events right at your fingertips. Brought to you by, well, you!

LSM meeting: Beyond Twisted: Permutations of Kinkiness with Midori

One of the reasons I suffer from clit-envy has to be that I can’t get in to see Midori present at women-only events, like this one called Beyond Twisted: Permutations of Kinkiness being hosted by the Lesbian Sex Mafia. From LSM’s events page:

A sadist must of course be a dominant. A submissive must of course be a masochist. Right? Wrong! Come along as Midori explodes the standard definitions of kink roles and expands the idea of what kink is all about. In Beyond Twisted, she maps out a fine-tuned and flexible framework that anyone can use to help describe their deviant desires. And as we all know, that’s the first step to fulfilling them! This is a class for those who don’t quite fit into the standard boxes…and for anyone who’s curious about their own possibly untapped potential!

This sounds like an absolutely fantastic meeting, one for which I’m already envious of the audience, because rigid stereotypes plague the BDSM community with much more oppression than many people realize. Midori, an excellent speaker, is sure to have some wonderful insights on this topic.

Oh and hey, don’t forget to tell the lesbian mafia that a boy from Conversio Virium sent ‘ya!

(As an aside, since I don’t check the lesbian sexuality events with any regularity for obvious reasons, I’d very much appreciate someone’s help posting such events to our calendar who does keep up-to-date with the lesbian scene. If you’re interested, please check out the CV announcement about our unaffiliated events calendar.)

TES party: Punky reggae beach party

Our friends at TES are throwing a party at Paddles:

Calling out all yardies, rude boys and dancehall queens! Swing those floggers and paddles to the riddims of the islands at TES‘ Punky Reggae party! Let your dreads down and shake it mon to rockin grooves! Great music, righteous food and cool vibes will be runnin! Irie!

Remember to show your membership card, since CV members get a discounted admission price at the door!

DSF Meeting: How to develop rules & protocols in a D/s or M/s relationship

Tonight’s DSF presentation is titled How to develop rules & protocols in a D/s or M/s relationship with Master Paul and Slave Monique. For those interested in exploring more about D/s or M/s relationships, hearing about what other people think of their relationship dynamics can help inform one’s own opinions and ideas. Of course, if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t buy it.

From the Dom Sub Friends web site:

As couples come together in this lifestyle to first explore and or even ultimately choose to guide their relationship under a power transfer dynamic they have to figure out a way to “negotiate” what rules and protocols they will use. Such negotiations can only work for a long term successful relationship if both people have not only input but are given an opportunity to at some point discuss the successes and failures of the rules and protocols put into place.

This presentation will cover how to get started in developing and modifying your own set of rules and protocols for your own unique relationship. How and when relationships should take a step back and review what they have put into place, and just who’s responsibility it is to do so in either a D/s or Ms relationship. How to make sure each person is getting what they want out of the relationship without breaking or violating the power exchange.

Sensationalized Village Voice article makes front page thanks to BDSM

There are always BDSM topics being covered in the news. In most instances, these stories make it to the “freaks-and-geeks” section of your local newscast and usually don’t get more than 30 seconds of air time or a little corner on the bottom of a page buried in the middle of the newspaper.

Not so in the Village Voice, however, when this week’s cover story is all about how the now-defunct Vault club closed.

Anthony Marini was the manager at the Vault, the old S&M club in the meat-packing district on the western edge of Greenwich Village, during its heyday in the 1990s.

As such, he never lacked for entertainment.

[…]

Marini was there right up until the day when the State of New York stepped in and spoiled all the fun by condemning the property.

The article, titled The State Pays for Sex: How a mob-run S&M club put your tax dollars to work, comes to the the anti-climactic realization that instead of dragging out a court battle with the Vault owners, city officials paid them the appraised value of their club totaling about $1.8 million as judged by the Vault’s own appraisers. Even the article itself says there was nothing wrong with anything that happened there. Not with the alleged unsafe sex accusations, or the re-appraisal:

Mayor Giuliani had already tried to shut the place down for unsafe sex practices; club lawyers beat him in court.

[…]

Asked to review the case, state transportation department officials say that regardless of the kinky nature of the business, the payments reflected prudent decision making.

“The operators exercised their rights under the law and sought a ruling from the courts on initial payments they had received,” says transportation department spokeswoman Jennifer Post. “After subsequent talks with the parties, a settlement was reached which involved additional moneys.”

State officials noted that the Vault payments were just a small part of the $104 million that was spent to acquire properties for the West Street project—a task that required condemnation of some two dozen properties in a three-and-a-half-block stretch.

So after all that, why did this rather mundane article make the front page of the Village Voice? Well, for the kinky sex, of course! Everyone likes to ogle the “kinky freaks”, but I think this is pathetically adolescent behavior coming from adults—not to mention the Village Voice, which is a newspaper that should know better.