Con and Consent

I have a big, philosphical post coming up about some things that got brought up on Twitter, and as I write the printer is churning out CD labels and cover art! But first, some more stuff from Dragon*Con.

One of the most entertaining things about going to events - whether on the scale of Dragon*Con or not - is meeting new people who are interested in hypnosis but uncertain about it. One of the downsides of Dragon*con in specific is a specific cosplayer. There's no point in naming her or her character. The locals all know who she is and are already nodding. Everyone else can just take our word for it, seriously... she really takes character a bit too far. Bear in mind that this is coming from a woman who thinks that roleplay within hypnosis is one of the most entertaining and even fulfilling things one can do with it recreationally.

One of the points I make repeatedly when speaking about hypnotic roleplay is that scenes need to have a firmly defined beginning and ending. Another is the use of safewords to make sure that every scene is consensual. This becomes even more important when dealing with people who may not be involved with or aware that roleplay is taking place - and that applies to all roleplay, whether hypnotic or not. Billions of electrons have been used to make posts on this topic when it comes to LARPs (live-action roleplays), and there's a lot of discussion in the D/s community about public play and whether it is safe, sane, and consensual if people unaware of the scene are involved.

Into this comes this cosplayer. She comes to the panel which is essentially a Hypno 101 panel, meant to dispel myths and falsehoods about hypnosis for a general audience. Right off the bat, she starts in on the panelists about her vulnerability to hypnosis and how it affects her crimefighting superpowers. She was shut down pretty darn quickly, but when one of the panelists asked the assembled group to close their eyes and take a deep breath, she promptly went into trance and stayed there for the whole rest of the panel. Everyone else in the room understood this to be a demonstration of how trance sometimes feels so normal because we experience it so much. She just stayed that way. (The guy with her, who I assume is either her boyfriend or her caretaker, asked some good questions and contributed a lot.)

Now, as a Domme I'm very used to people IMing me and promptly talking about how my words are putting them into hypnosis. I ask if they've ever listened to my word, even my free stuff. No. Have I ever talked to them under another ID? No. I'm a HypnoDomme, and so therefore every word I say is by definition hypnotic. While there are some people who are probably that easy, for the vast majority of these people I'm really a sentient sex toy. They want to go into hypnosis, therefore they're going to do it... whether I take any real action or not. Most of the time, this is amusing. Sometimes, it's annoying. I know very well people like this are not going to contribute to my well-being in any meaningful way, be it by buying session time, buying CDs, or even admitting "I'm broke, let's just be friends and talk." I'm a masturbatory object, and I really wish they'd just whack off and go away. I did not consent to hypnotizing them, therefore it's not really D/s.

(Note this is not applicable to the whole giant class of people who approach me for honest conversation and friendship. Bless you. You keep right on messaging!)

The people at the panel, panelists and audience alike, did not consent to be in on this woman's roleplay. They did not consent to her game. Watching the audience's reaction, it became clear that most of them considered her at best clueless, most likely rude, and at worst actually possibly mentally ill. It was also evident, given that she chose to sit in the front row right on the aisle ("front and center"), that she was coming in with the intention of being noticed.

I don't know whether the cosplayer enjoyed her "fun." What fun there may have been, though, was at the expense of other people who didn't ask or give their OK to be props in her game or even just bystanders. My friends, that just isn't cool at all. Please, when you roleplay or cosplay, consider the people around you. That panel room emptied a lot faster than it normally did, and people didn't get to ask questions of one of the panelists because of this. As I left, a total stranger was commenting on how creepy the woman in the front row had been. That's just sad.

In a D/s situation, whether you practice RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) or SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual), the word consensual is in there. Please apply consent, not simply or only to your partners, but to others who might be involved - whether it's D/s or not.