Boymeat gave the keynote at Rio Grande Leather, and spoke about the origin and creation of the TNG (The Next Generation) special interest groups, which supported younger members interested in SM:
Something that we realized through this process was that it is possible to build community through creating safe spaces for niches of our community. We hadn’t realized it before, but this had always been part of the community we grew up in. There was The Chicago Hellfire Club, The Satyrs, Samois, LSM, GMSMA, and The Exiles. These groups are part of our common history and look at how much they did to build the scene to what it is today. Specialized spaces for specific subgroups. Inclusion through exclusion. A community built block by block. TNG did this, too. We can barely fathom how many young people turned away from our organizations, feeling like they didn’t belong, before TNG came into existence.
Why TNG needed to happen is surprisingly misunderstood, and to clear things up right up, it was neither to get laid, nor to keep anyone else from getting laid. It was not to keep you from hitting on us. It was not to create our own world and not include you. It was not to stop anything other than the graying of our community. To put an end to the undertone that those under a certain age were unwelcome.
Read the entire speech.
