How to Do It: I’m Afraid My Sex Life Is About to Destroy My Very Public Career

[minoanmiss]

Dear How to Do It,

I recently discovered a love of rope bondage. I’ve learned a lot from books and YouTube, but now I would like to learn more in-person with other like-minded individuals. I live in a large city in a conservative part of the country, but there are clubs here that offer regular tying practice sessions. The next nearest city with similar resources is several hours away.

The problem: I’m employed in a field which requires me to keep a spotless reputation (think lawyer, teacher, doctor). What if I encounter people who know me at one of the events, or later run into some of the people I would be tying (or being tied by) in a work-related situation? I have also heard stories about people surveilling the parking areas of such places and taking down license plate numbers. These situations could really derail my career and destroy my reputation if someone wanted to use it against me.

Do you have any suggestions for safeguarding privacy and safety? It would certainly be more convenient to attend the local events, but would it be safe at all? Would the out-of-town ones actually be any safer? How have others in this position handled this situation? Or should I just forget about it?

— Tied Up

Dear Tied Up,

However you do this, you’ll be taking some kind of risk. Going out of town does reduce the likelihood that you’ll run into anyone you know. You can always check in advance whether any event has a no-photos policy. For the people recording license plate numbers, you might take a cab or a rideshare app to and from the venue, or park somewhere nearby and walk over.

There’s this idea that anyone who sees you in a compromising position this way is also in a compromising position themselves, but the reality is that you might run into someone who has no issue with other people in your community knowing that they were in a rope-tying lesson. You could absolutely ask anyone who recognizes you to please keep your presence quiet, but asking doesn’t guarantee a yes or a commitment to that yes.

You might split the middle by looking for rope classes that are being held online, in spaces where leaving your camera off is allowed. You’ll want to make sure that you’re logging in anonymously (Zoom, for instance, tends to automatically display your name) and that your camera is actually off.

At the end of the day, you’ll have to decide what you’re willing to risk to explore your new sexual hobby. That’s your choice, and in today’s political climate, it is a hard one indeed.

Comments

[melannen]

LW, I would make an attempt to contact the people running the classes, anonymously if you can, with this question. It probably won't be the first time they've been asked it, they'll be able to give answers better suited to your particular city, and it'll at least give you a chance to assess how much you like their answers before you take any risks.

[lemonsharks]

Either fandom has ruined me or it's just that shibari/rope bondage is not my cake, but I can think of dozens of kinks more career-ruiningly extreme than fancy knot playtime.

Like ... Maybe talk about it with your spouse, assuming you have one?

(It is with minimal sarcasm that I go: if you're looking for a reason to move out of state, here's your sign dot jeff foxworthy.)

[jadelennox]

I know it was 20 years ago, but the memory of Paddleboro is still haunting. If anything cops are worse than they were then.

[cereta]

Our culture as a whole is more regressive now than it was 20 years ago. The stories coming out of Florida and similar states are scary. I would honestly not be surprised to find fanfic writers, especially slash writers, less public about it now than, say, in 2005.

[minoanmiss]

It depends a lot on the career. The reason I created my "Rubynye" account was because WD was quite rightfully worried about my writing erotic fanfic whilst being employed by a school. If LW's in education I can totally understand their worry. Parents are often vicious.

[lilysea]

Yeah, I've heard of US teachers being sacked or not hired because they had a photo of themselves dressed up for halloween at a party drinking a glass of beer on their Facebook page...

[minoanmiss]

Oh goodness yes, so many many stories of this ridiculousness.

[lemonsharks]

That's fair. I'm working from the assumption that LW is not actually a teacher, doctor, or lawyer, as I don't think they'd be comfortable sharing their actual field with the column.

[angelofthenorth]

One of my DW friends lost her job because of potential connection with fanfic - she hadn't even written anything that was compromising! The school were worried about reputational damage. Fortunately she picked up another job fairly quickly.

[cereta]

...I have to ask, what in letter makes you think LW has a spouse? If nothing else, the letter is quite thorough, so the odds that they (a) wouldn't have thought of that if they had a spouse, and (b) wouldn't have mentioned it in the letter ("My wife's just not into it").

Which is to say, I think you're being awfully unkind to the LW. You mention moving states like it's something anyone not hopelessly stupid would have thought of and done, but a LOT of people really don't have that option. All of the careers LW mentions involves licenses, and often tests to get them. That's to say nothing of what starting over after 10-20 years - there's nothing that gives the LW's age. Are they vested in their pension, partners in a firm/practice? They could have elderly parents who need assistance, or soon will. I'm not getting the feel of kids, but who knows? I mean, my family isn't leaving our house until my Teenager graduates high school. We don't want our choices limited by keeping her in her current school, and we very much want to keep her in her current school.

Maybe if I hadn't just read a story about teachers losing their careers in FL because it's now literally illegal for them to talk about their legal same-sex spouses, that included a line about a teacher being fired for "admitting" her pansexuality to her students (the article talks about students finding even the smallest crumbs of info about their teachers online and then asking them about those crumbs), I'd be more skeptical of LW's worry. But it's a scary place out there right now.

[lemonsharks]

I was really just surprised that LW considers rope bondage of all things to be career-ruiningly kinky.

[lethe1]

Maybe rope bondage is kinky enough for LW and I can well understand why they don't want their conservative employers/parents in their school to find out about it. Seeing the current backlash against LGBTQ+ rights and even reproductive rights in the US, I think their fear is justified.

[lemonsharks]

I'm queer and XX enough to be concerned/worried/shocked/appalled about the current state of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights myself.

Not wanting ones parents' and employers' knowing about one's sexy hobbies isn't a fully overlapping venn diagram of would be socially and professionally ruined the sexy hobby was made public knowledge.

Depending on LW's sex, race, and gender, "tying people up/being tied up" is closer to "normative" than they seem to realize. (They ping me as cishet white man, as people who are not tend to specify that, although it is an assumption on my part.)

[lethe1]

Sorry, I see my original comment wasn't very clear. I wasn't talking about LW's own parents, but the parents of the children they teach (if they are actually a teacher).

[cereta]

If there is one thing I have learned in the last, oh, ten years or so, living in my tiny blue university town surrounded by a sea of red, not to mention the last three years of my Teenager's life, it's that I have zero sense of what will and what won't scandalize people. Kids from big Catholic families are coming out as trans/non-binary with the full support of the parents who teach youth group bible study in their old parish. Meanwhile, another adult in spouse's junior navy program is whispering to him that a female cadet is "not that innocent" because she writes fanfic, and some of it is (whisper) gay.

Spouse, with a straight face: "People do that? No kidding."

There's also the complication that I don't think most of the population knows what "rope bondage" is, and probably just mixes it into a leather-and-blindfolds stew with stuff they saw in the Fifty Shades movies.

TL;DR: I am really not going to second guess someone else's assessment of how a kink might be received by their colleagues/clients/students' parents/etc.

[lemonsharks]

On the point of fifty shades: the movies made half a billion dollars; the books earned EL James almost 60 million.

I'm going to continue second guessing the LW's grasp on the scandalousness of their new kink.

TL;Dr I don't see any point in continuing this conversation, either.

[jadelennox]

I like the idea of online classes, but if they want to try in-person. Phew, it's hard. Some kink communities have really strong codes of conduct, and LW probably should risk one that isn't front and center with theirs, but kink communities are also composed of human beings, and human beings both (a) screw up, and (b) are sometimes petty, vindictive drama llamas. LW really has to do a risk benefit calculus here, where the variables are: how much they want to experiment with bondage with strangers; how willing they are to travel several hours whenever they want it; how much it will destroy their career and social life if it comes out; how much they're willing to change jobs or regions in a pinch. (eg. Might LW lose a kid if they get outed? vs. Might they lose their job at Dominionist Christian Homeschool Corp, but they could probably still get a job at Hippie Private Academy?)

I mean, there's a reason that queer communities and other minority groups have often self-sorted into particular geographical areas and careers, and it's because of the desire to live one's life openly can conflict with safety.

[xenacryst]

I'll just note that self-tying, while fun, is really limiting, and online classes where you don't have someone else to, like, get behind you and do the knot properly, can be really logistically hard. Point being is that there's a limit to how much you can do, and if LW is hitting that limit, they may need extra hands.

[likeaduck]

There’s this idea that anyone who sees you in a compromising position this way is also in a compromising position themselves, but the reality is that you might run into someone who has no issue with other people in your community knowing that they were in a rope-tying lesson. You could absolutely ask anyone who recognizes you to please keep your presence quiet, but asking doesn’t guarantee a yes or a commitment to that yes.

Okay sure, but you can also find out what the community standards/norms are for a given event or space, and build some idea of what the general expectation of discretion is, and, I think it's worth noting to that someone who is able to be out and unconcerned is not the most likely to maliciously out you to your boss without some other motivation to make your life difficult, and that someone who is interested in using this information to shame you might be less willing to risk being outed themselves, there's self-selection that happens there. And so then, we can differentiate between just seeing someone from kink events in a professional context (potentially awkward, unsettling, or a boundary issue) and being outed (potentially professionally, economically, socially damaging): these can feel like the same problem when we're feeling scared or ashamed, but they're actually pretty different and call for different responses and different levels of vigilance.