Still on the Edge in Sumas

Greetings you'all...

So in an effort to maintain my once flawless but now hopelessly soiled celebrity status, I feel the need to clarfiy the motive behind the Matthew Shepard Playset. So if you'll bare with me--

For the record I'm sure that the Bellingham BDSM folks, straight or gay, IN NO WAY advocate or condone the torture and killing of hated minority members--least of all gay men living in Wyoming. Nore would they likely approve of sexual bondage games that attempt to somehow mimic what happened to Matthew Shepard. Points I once took for obvious, no more.


Now then...the MSP should be taken in as what it is--a playset that allows children to imagine what it might be like to tie someone to a fence using barbed wire and leave them overnight to die. Now most of the time, the children I have in mind are over 18 years of age, but not always. The MSP could also be used to demonstrate the tendancy of people to behave in accordance with the rules of the pack. It might even allow a child to imagine cruelty in at least one extreme--and hopefully why it isn't okay. I think all children everywhere would do well to have an oppurtunity to play with a MSP every once in a while with their little friends.

At any rate, it seems to me that what we collectively teach our children is exactly what they will deliver back to us both in our old age, and in the larger social realm. And, what we collectively teach our children these days would seem to set them up for the same old tired gender assumptions that kept many of us who are in our '40's--in the closet in high school. Its still okay these days to consider gay people as the lowest social order; or as somehow disposable--deserving to die. Naturally the MSP reflects on the person who created it--me. It might as well have been called the Michael Web Playset, or even the Oscar Wilde Playset.

I'm simply saying that what we learn as kids, sticks. Tell little girls to wear pink and little boys to wear blue and you assign them a one-size-fits-all straight jacket that they may very well wear the rest of their life. As a result, those kids just might learn that any of their friends who don't fit the assigned gender norms--are subject to punishment, abuse, or worse. I think we as a society are improving over-all when it comes to human rights but not so much as to prevent the yearly killing of more than a score of gay kids and adults. Its not just in places like Iran.

The MSP evidently mislead and confused many due to its proximity to the B'ham leather community's booth. I am ever so misunderstood.

Apologies for all these words; as recompense, I'll leave the Apocolypticop to speak for itself.

One more thing--all the art actually speaks for itself. You ask me to "explain" it and I tend to get all preachy. Sorry. Here's my explanation: My mission, apparently...is to at least try and expand your collective minds around the narrow confines of perception we take for reality these days. The cleansing effect of a really good laundry soap, or an eye enema, as Gnarlene once said. When it comes to relating to gay people you haven't yet met, and for that matter when it comes to meeting strange people in odd circumstances in general--rather than pass judgement and walk away, consider a more unassuming approach that accepts an individual as is, and that accepts difference as a part of the natural order. Gay people are supposed to know a bit about difference and being singled out, aren't they?

Thanks for reading, W

Well for anyone who's interested, the Apocolypticop is on the web in video.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightsinge/862963370/

What is that about? Hardee harr. I will learn to love Flickr some day. Meanwhile,

"In Poor Taste" she says:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightsinge/862946526/

No, honey, what would be in poor taste would be to put up with a system that teaches our children that gender related roles, stereotypes, and assumptions may be assigned to a person before they even have an idea of who the FUCK they are. Simultaneously, we as a society may teach an EAGLE scout that its okay to torture and kill someone because he or she is GAY. Its about education. Its about roles. And its about toys, and how we learn to play with them.