The Diverse Dungeon

Episode 5 - Neurodiversity and what is a safe space?

• Rae • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Can you imagine a world where our individual neurological differences are not seen as deficits, but rather as unique variations of human existence? 

Links from the podcast

Books:

Events:

Educator:


To Create safe neurodivergent spaces in BDSM places:

  1. A decompression space that is not to far from central meeting spaces
  2. A quiet space for sleeping
  3. Access to variety of food 
  4. Care and Consent Team 


Background Music provided by Purple Planet Music

Social Media:


Website:
http://www.neurokinkster.com

Musical Intro:
Not So Fast (Quarantine Beats #01) by Patchworker f.k.a. [friendzoned] | https://soundcloud.com/patchworker
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Musical Outro:
The Crossover by Pyrosion | https://soundcloud.com/pyrosion
https://open.spotify.com/artist/51pxQJ5wdwSikfgYDBNXPE
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Speaker 1:

This podcast deals with mature themes and ideas. Please don't listen if you do not wish to hear about BDSM, sex or neurodivergence. Thank you, I felt a funeral in my brain and mourners to and fro Keep treading, treading till it seemed that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, a service like a drum kept beating, beating till I thought my mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box and creak across my soul With those same boots of lead again. Then space began to toll. All the heavens were a bell and being but an ear and I in silence. Some strange race wrecked, solitary here, and then a plank and reason broke and I dropped down and down and hit a whirl at every plunge and finished knowing. Then I felt a funeral in my brain by Emily Dickinson.

Speaker 1:

Hello, neurokingsters, sorry for the long delay. It's been quite a month or so. So today's question of the week is where the hell have you been? I went back to work full time and I went back to work full time and have had absolutely no bandwidth. I won't deny there have been video games and friends and all sorts of fun things, but mostly I'm just tired. Oh my God, Even knowing that neurodiversity and new experiences and all that stuff was going to make me tired. I was not prepared for the amount of tired that I have been feeling. There's some medical stuff going on and I will know more tomorrow and I will share what I'm familiar and willing to share after that. So that has also had some impact. So that is where I've been.

Speaker 1:

I have not been sitting down and podcasting and I really love and appreciate the people that actually reached out. There are people who listen. Hi, thank you. So, thankfully, past me had everything laid out for today's episode. It's not going to be one of my longest ones, but I figured I'd get back to it and so I thought it's time to actually talk about, well, what I'm talking about. So what is neurodiversity and why am I so excited about it? So let us talk. And what is? I don't think I have to explain what kink is. There's lots of places for that, but I will put one down in the links in case you need kink 101. Thank you, jay Wiseman, for SNM 101. That's where I'm going to point you to.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about neurodiversity. So what is it? In Harvard Health Publishing I found an article called what is neurodiversity by Dr Nicole Bommer and Dr Julia Frua, and to quote neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways. There is no one right way of thinking, learning and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits. Unquote. Love that she goes on to say that words matter in neurodiversity. Quote.

Speaker 1:

Neurodiversity advocates encourage inclusive, non-judgmental language, while many disability advocacy organizations prefer a person first language. Quote a person with autism. Quote a person with Down syndrome. Some research has found that the majority of the autistic community prefers identity first language. Quote an autistic person. Therefore, rather than making assumptions, it is best to ask directly about the person's preferred language and how they want to be addressed. Knowledge about neurodiversity and respectful language is also important for clinicians so they can address the mental and physical health of people with neurodevelopmental differences. Unquote.

Speaker 1:

I think that's fabulous. I do think that the same way in the BDSM sphere, we talk about gender and presentation and how we want to be addressed by either our scene name or whatever, I think the same thing should be true. If I want to be high, I'm Ray and I am neurodivergent. Well, when I probably get high, ray, and then I could say it's been 10 years, since my anyway but I really like the idea that I can identify myself and that I can ask for that respect. So that is. I mean, there's a lot of definitions for neurodiversity, but I really like that idea that it's just that we think and behave differently and there is no right or wrong or good or bad. There just is.

Speaker 1:

And I will say, as somebody who's been a project manager I love some of my neurodiverse engineers. I love the way they approach problems. I'm biased. My nesting partner is definitely a neurodiverse engineer and I love the idea that he'll just be like hmm, how can I fix this problem? And then comes up with these weird solutions that yet work, like so that my door doesn't swing close or so that when we were all working from home, we could all be online at the same time and not hear each other in different rooms or overwhelm the bandwidth of our internet provider. So I am biased because not only am I neurodiverse, but I have a nesting partner and a housemate who is neurodiverse and, while I don't want to speak for them, I'm pretty sure both of my children are neurodiverse too, and I think we are all really awesome. So if you're looking for someone to go. No, people should be neurotypical. I am not your girl, so that is what is neurodiversity, and I can't really speak to anybody else's, so I'm going to speak to what makes me neurodiverse, since I don't think I've actually covered it.

Speaker 1:

So I was identified as gifted and talented, like probably most of us were. I was a little late to the game. I didn't get identified until I was about nine or ten years old, and about the same time I got identified. I also was identified lacking fine and gross motor skills and some social problems, like I didn't quite interact well with people. Some of this was because I was raised as an only child by two neurodiverse parents, although back then my parents were just weird. So I had to actually take classes on how to write and throw a football and how to run, because I just didn't have the coordination to do it correctly and my parents didn't know how.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if my father had ever picked up a baseball in his life. Actually, no, I know that's not true. I have a baseball and a baseball that he had as a child and they almost look new. So no, he really. He did pick up a baseball once and went nope and went on and did other things. So let's talk about dad. My dad probably had a genius IQ. I don't remember the number, but I know it was above 140. Dad spoke Spanish, french, vietnamese, german, a little bit of Russian and a little bit of Chinese. He was fluent in Spanish and French, but the other languages he picked up because he did. He got a master's degree. He loved trolleys and trains and buses. He had hypergraphia and he remembered all sorts of stuff, and probably about half of my love of history comes from dad.

Speaker 1:

My mom makes quilts by eye. I mean, she does measure things out on a piece of paper, but she really just doesn't understand why other people look at her and say wait, you don't like puzzles, but you put together quilts. She also makes anything that requires very precise measurements, like jam or sugar cookies. My mother is amazing at Bless her heart. She can't cook. To save her life, that was. I learned how to cook at eight as a survival mechanism. Don't tell my mom. Both my parents had hyperfocus.

Speaker 1:

I thought it was perfectly normal to go to the library and then come back and read for three hours. Doesn't everybody do that? I think I spent most of my young adult life reading books. My best friends were Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls and later Taran of Pridane and the Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan from the Narnia books, and then I graduated from there to Dorothy and Oz and just kept on going. I've always loved science fiction. I started reading grown-up science fiction as soon as the library let me into the science fiction room. Blood Music by Greg Baer is one of the first ones I remember that is a strange book. I cannot recommend it enough.

Speaker 1:

So I've always felt like I didn't quite belong. I really didn't find my people until I got to high school Actually middle school where I met people who were like me. And then I got to college and I met more people who were like me and I am still friends with some of those people. We still get together in game. I love the fact that I have geeky friends from 30 years ago. I think I really found my spot where I felt like I belonged to a larger part of the community. When I joined the Renaissance community I met my first partner and the father of my first child there. I learned how to dance there and that was a big deal because I had been told all my life that I was uncoordinated and incapable. And no, I just needed to do white people dancing. So I learned how to do English country and Irish folk dancing Irish-Kaley. Then I went into ballroom. After that I don't think I've ever looked back.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if I've ever really dated anybody or had a friend that I would describe as neurotypical. Mostly I just dealt with them at my job, and most of my jobs were in computers and engineering so I could speak fluent neurotypical. I just didn't like to be around them any more than I had to. And when I went into teaching it's even better, because boy does my neurodivergence work well as teaching. I am interrupt driven and I'm fast. The only bad thing is the ADHD gets in the way of doing homework, grading homework, reading homework, interacting with homework. I hate dealing with homework and apparently I'm not the only teacher who says that. So that's a little about me and how I came to neurodiversity.

Speaker 1:

How I came to kink is a whole other story and I think will be a different episode. I got passionate about what a safe space for neurodivergent people look like because of being at a camp that was not for neurodivergent people, although I'd say about half of us in attendance were, and I saw a friend of mine, somebody I had connected with, and I saw what happened when somebody who is neurodivergent and who was using the defense mechanisms they'd grown up with clash in what was, quote-unquote, a safe space. They had felt that they were in a space where they could be themselves and in doing so, they had put somebody else who wanted to be in a safe space in an uncomfortable position. I don't think anybody was wrong or anybody was right. The person who was, who had made the you know, the neurodiverse person who had made somebody else uncomfortable, apologized and tried to work on their behavior and upgrade it. But their reaction was how do I put this? It wasn't extreme. That's not a fair work. Their reaction made me see how many better ways there could have been to do with that, and that is when I sort of codified this making safe spaces in BDSN places. So one of the things that we have in psychology and education is what we call universal access, and the idea behind that is that if you make a wheelchair ramp, which to benefit somebody who is in a wheelchair, it also benefits everybody else who needs to pull something with wheels People who are carrying, pushing a baby stroller, people who are pulling wagons, people have those little rolly backpacks everybody benefits. It's universal and so I think making a safe space in a BDSN place will benefit everybody but specifically will make things better for those of us who are neurodivergent.

Speaker 1:

And as somebody who has been speaking to neurotypical people and has worked and project organizing for a long time, I think I have a lot I can offer, except time. I had all these great ideas. I was gonna write letters and I was gonna communicate and I have done squaddo and I'm just gonna have to give myself a little bit of grace because apparently I am not superhuman and you think with all the mutations I have I get some superhuman powers, but here I am just like everybody else Too much to do and not enough time. Happily, one of the kink spaces I was in recently was the most ideal place for neurodivergent people and I want to give a full shout out to them. But before I go, I'm going to talk to you about what a space for neurodivergent people doesn't look like, and it was the one I was in just a couple days ago.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about Folsom Street Fair. It was its 40th anniversary and I have been going to Folsom Street Fair since 2008, I think was my first time there. Maybe 2007 and that was well not my first experience in the kink community was certainly one of my early ones. If you are new to the kink scene, a big street fair that is called Kinky Christmas and draws people from around the world is not your place to go. Well, okay, strike that If you're going to go to Folsom Street Fair, which I realized that this is either a couple days late or a year early. So I guess I'll have to redo this part.

Speaker 1:

Here are some hints. One get there early like five minutes to 11. Walk in early. Usually by then the vendors are mostly set up. Make sure you give your donation You'll have to find somebody, but that's fine and check out everything. Go look at the shows, go look at the vendors and then get the hell out of there by 2.30, unless you happen to like being around loud crowds of people, because it can be overwhelming.

Speaker 1:

So let's break it down. We'll do all the senses. So the first one see, it is absolutely overwhelming. There are so many things to see. There are people who are dressed up. There are people who are there to have sex. I heard one guy say I'm here to get as many dicks in my mouth as possible. You go, sir, you go. There are costumes, there are demonstrations, there was suspension scenes, there was BDSM scenes, there were people having sex right there on the street Blowjobs and handjobs and all sorts of things. So if you want to, you can see it. Most of the public sex I saw was between men. That doesn't mean there wasn't other kinds of sex, but that's what I saw.

Speaker 1:

So it is overwhelming visually and when you are there to listen, what you hear is amazing. You can hear voices from all registers, from very high feminine voices to very low, deep, rumbly voices. You hear people shouting and people who are barely whispering. There is club music, trance music, live music. There was a guy roaming around with an accordion. I kid you not. So lots of noise. It's loud. I would not. I don't know that I would bring earplugs, but I know that some people might appreciate them For the nose. There is the wonderful smell of pot, smoke, cigar smoke, human sweat and just people. Not bad, just lots of them.

Speaker 1:

Taste there's so much good food there. We're in San Francisco people and there are food trucks from all over the bay. We had fish, tacos and ice cream and there were snacks. It was great, so tasting was great. And then for touch, I got jostled a lot. There's just so many people there and they're really not paying attention. If you do not like to be touched, if you like to keep a don't touch me field around you, you are out of luck. Nobody was rude, nobody was violent. Everybody, if they noticed, said excuse me, but just be aware, by five hours in I was cooked. I was just ready to call it a day because it was just too much sensory overload and I'm still processing it through.

Speaker 1:

Did I have a great time? Absolutely, but I'm prepped. I've been going to Folsom for a long time. I know what I need to do Bring lots of water. Make sure that I have a couple of safe spaces. Know the places I can go and duck into where I can be out of the crowds. Get there by 11. Usually I'm gone by two o'clock. I actually stayed past three o'clock this year and that was worthwhile. It was really cool.

Speaker 1:

But I would not call that a safe space in a BDSM place for the neurodivergent. I think you really just need to prep yourself and I made sure I had a friend who knew what to do and how to take care of me, and they were very solicitous, for which I'm greatly appreciative. They're also really generous too. I did do a scene. While I was there. I had a friend of mine who specializes in single tails and so I got my very first whipping very lightly done and it was wonderful. And that was fabulous. And we checked in today and that was great too. So that is what a bad BDSM place looks like. Not that Folsom Street Fair isn't wonderful. It is definitely an experience, but it's not what I would recommend for a neurodivergent person to use. So what does it look like?

Speaker 1:

So a few weeks ago, before I stopped podcasting on a regular basis, I went to a place called the Boundless Retreat. The Boundless Group is a local group and they're in the Bay Area, and this is my second time in their retreat. The first time I went there, I actually went as an educator. I taught a class on neurochemistry and kink, and I'm supposed to talk to them, hi, boundless, about doing some more education for them, because I've also done some online classes, which is how I found out about them, and I decided to come out and see what they were all about. I have not had the wherewithal to teach a class, but I decided to go to Boundless anyway because Midori, who is probably one of my most favorite abjectors in the entire world and if you don't know who she is, I am putting a link to everything I can find in the notes below, because she is just mucho fantastic. Anyways, midori was their educator in residence, and so that basically meant that I got to hang out with Midori and talk education shit for like two weeks, two hours. It was great, and she did a class on humiliation, which was even better, also did a really great class on how to do a harness for a dildo with just two scarves. Woman is freaking amazing.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so here's what a safe space looks like, one at Boundless. It is a campground, which means that if you want to go and be quiet somewhere, there's an entire freaking campground. You can either have a camping space like an, a tent. There is car camping. I managed to get a space for my RV, which I'm so glad I did. They also do have camping in lodges, and I think you really just have to pick what you can afford and what you can do. Again, earplugs Earplugs are your friend. You will need them. At night it can get a little loud. It was also hot, but I don't think Boundless can do anything about the weather, so I'm just going to give them a pass on that.

Speaker 1:

They had classes and the classes were well spaced apart that you never felt like you were rushing. The classes were published well ahead of time. They had wonderful presenters. The presenters were all had mics and they had good sound system. I happen to know the sound guy. He was somebody I've known, for I mean like I wouldn't call his friends, but I definitely say acquaintances, so I feel like I can say their sound guy is freaking amazing and did such a great job with the sound. So there was no trouble hearing. They had wonderful presenters. They had different spaces for the presenters. Not all the spaces were outside. When it was too hot for one of the presentations they moved us inside. They did it really quickly. So lots of classes to go see.

Speaker 1:

There were a few vendors. It was very low-key, it was very non-pressure, it was great vending. I really wish I could have afforded to buy more than I did, but I did make sure to grab the cards and hey, why not? I'll see if I can throw those vendors into my links Because Wolfram is awesome and the other guys were there. They were wonderful too Beautiful stuff and more vendors than there had been the year prior.

Speaker 1:

The way they did food was fantastic. There was a bit of a line you had to wait in, but the reason we were waiting in line is because they never wanted the food trays or the food line to get overwhelming, so they were letting people in. There was always a place, ways to get the food and there was always a place to sit down, which I thought was fabulous, because I've been at conventions where everybody rushes the food like they're college freshmen and you have people standing around trying to eat off of a tray with, you know, holding it with one hand and eating with the other, which is just terrible. And the nice thing is, if you really wanted to, you could get your food and you could leave and go sit somewhere else, which I saw some people doing. I chose to usually eat with people, but you know you could Plenty of water, you could buy ice.

Speaker 1:

And then let's talk about the BDSM spaces. There were two BDSM spaces in that there was equipment and toys. One was outside, one was inside. While it never felt super crowded. It felt like there was plenty of access If you wanted to play. People seemed to be really comfortable and really aware. There was also a quiet what they call the temple, and it was a sex positive space. That was not for BDSM and it was also relatively quiet. So I'd like you to hear the things I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

For safe BDSM spaces One lots of places to be quiet. They had a little's retreat. They had a couple of aftercare spaces. Boundless had lots of places where you could decompress, either in small groups or even by yourself. They had easy access to food. They had and it was never overwhelming. They had plenty of things to do for the day, but not so over structured that you felt compelled and always rushed. There was lots of social time.

Speaker 1:

I think there could have been a little bit more about getting people to meet each other, but that might not be fair of me because I did miss some of the Friday evening stuff because I was just tired. So we're going to give them. So I would say 9 out of 10 on all of that, because getting people to socialize is really difficult and I say this as an extrovert. But the nice thing is also the teachers are really good. It wasn't a lot of lecture, it was a lot of let's talk to each other, let's ask questions, let's get each other talking. I never felt like the teachers were like I know this and you're here to listen. I felt like the teachers were here. I have some experience to share, but please add to my experience and enrich me as much as I'm here to enrich you. So all of these are why I would give boundless 10 out of 10 for being a safe space and a welcoming space for BDSM people.

Speaker 1:

Here's the last thing, and I know how hard these people worked because I volunteered on the radio for three hours, which meant I heard the crosstalk I was just doing, you know, basically I was doing camp momming for three hours. I made sure that everybody who you know that all the baskets were filled with stuff and that everybody had the stuff they needed. It was an easy job. I was glad to offer something back, but I heard the Kair and Consent team. They had a team of people whose job it was to make sure that Kair and Consent happened. If it got violated, they had people who would talk.

Speaker 1:

These were well-trained people. I saw them cope with somebody who had a full on meltdown and they handled it in a way where they spoke to the person having the meltdown. I saw them give lots of chances for the person to work things out on their own and when that didn't happen, they removed the person from the situation in a way that I felt was kind. I feel bad for the person. The person is, in fact, somebody I consider a friend, but I also realized that they had a camp of over 100 people and one person you know, and they had to make that very difficult decision of who do we give into the one person who needs us a lot or the other people who need to be in a safe space, and they had to choose. You know, for the majority and I'm hoping that I can follow up with my friend who had to go home and find out more about what's happening with that and how long they are they have been asked to back off out of the program for a while and I hope that they can work their way back, but I don't want to tell that story. It's not mine to tell. So, all in all, if I were going to go to a BDSM space and I've got two more events coming up these are the things I would look at and I'll make sure I put this list in writing and I've told this to a couple of spaces already.

Speaker 1:

The big thing that you need to make neurodivergent comfortable is a chill space, a quiet space that can be easily accessed. It needs to be you know, you can't ask people to go walk 500 yards to go to the chill space. It really needs to be somewhat central. It doesn't have to be huge, but it does need to be accessible. In the case of Boundless, their chill space was probably 100 feet from one of the dungeons and really close to where, like the main lodge where we were all meeting for food, so it was very easy to get to. It was just a little space that they put aside and it was fabulous, and there were other areas too, but this was like this is the chill space. So a chill space is definitely needed, a place that you can go for sleep, where you can be uninterrupted.

Speaker 1:

And of course, that also relies on the neurodivergent person and I think at Karen Consent Team, people who know how to talk to not just neurotypical people but neurodivergent people, kind of a peer mentor type of situation. They don't need to be trained psychologists. There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I think you've gone above my pay grade, but who can listen and say, okay, you feel like your consent's been violated? Let's talk this through and figure out how to resolve it, both in the short term, like right now, but in the longer term, who do we need to talk to? How do we need to resolve this? And again, I want to give Boundless full props for having an amazing team. I wish I could steal them for every event and every event going forward. That is going to be the first three things. I recommend to you One you need to create a Karen Consent Team. It should be about five people per 10 hours of event time. So if you have a three day event, you're going to need about 16 people give or take, and that's just so. Nobody is on call 24 seven and they and I can train. I can train them. Anybody who understands how to do peer mentorship can train them, and I will see if I can find a couple links to put into the podcast notes.

Speaker 1:

For that, you need to have access to food, be easy and comfortable. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see most kink spaces make. They make it difficult to get to food and like I was at one space this was back east and they had this big thing about like you don't want to have crockpots and you can't have Instapods and blah, blah, blah, and I was like, okay, you have one restaurant and it's expensive, or I can leave the restaurant in freezing weather, like you need a coat and boots kind of weather to get to the other nearby restaurants. Eating at that place was really difficult. I thankfully had a microwave in my room that the hotel had provided, but that was extra and I only got it because I got there really early, because it did some touristy stuff before the convention started. So access to food.

Speaker 1:

And then the third thing is, of course, those chill spaces. It just needs to be a quiet room and that room cannot get used for any other things. It needs to be available 24 seven and its only purpose is being quiet and not crowded. And I know that space is at a premium, but you can assume that everybody has a hotel room or an RV to go back to. A lot of people who come to these conventions are coming on their shoestring budgets and if you want them to come back or you want them to volunteer. You need to give them that space to go to and I promise you the lack of drama will be so worth the cost of that room. So that is what I've got today.

Speaker 1:

What is neurodiverse? What does a safe space for neurodivergent people look like in the eyes of me? I've got a touch base with everybody I haven't talked to and find out about putting together my schedule. I will try to get back to publishing by Wednesdays no promises, but I'll try. I miss everybody. Thank you for the comments and the encouragement and the referrals to classes. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Anyways and I will again put it in the links, but just it goes without saying, you can find me at neurokinkster on Instagram, and you can find me at neurokinkster and a lot of other places too. It's on all my social media. Not that I've been doing anything with it, but now that I've gotten a podcast on tap, I will try and start updating and get a little more back into communicating. I think the key is going to be shorter podcast episodes, and more of them is going to be what I need to do, because this is something that's important to me and I want to make sure I do it.

Speaker 1:

Our musical intro was not so fast. Quarantine Beats number one by Patchworker, formerly known as FriendZoned. Our musical outro was the Crossover by Pyrosion, and you can find the links to their music in the notes. My social media is at neurokinkster, on Instagram and Facebook, and the Discord server is neurokinkster, where you can leave comments or just get a conversation started with me. If you want to Until next week, remember your anxiety is lying to you and I'll see you then.