Due to the size of this article, it has been split into four pages. At the bottom of each page will be a text link that says the next page's number (Page Two, or Page Three etc.)

Expert-itus
The state of confusing one's own expertise with the ability to pick nits and find faults in other people's play, demeanor, protocol and motives. While sharing scene knowledge is generally a good thing, it can be, and often is, overdone. Go easy on the free advice.

The Imperial-Imperious confusion
Some scenefolk, in an effort to appear imperial (kingly, of high standard, worthy of respect) conduct themselves in a manner that is imperious (overbearing, bossy, judgmental). A surprising number of scene-folk are born to this confusion. Some attain it after a few years in the community, as they assume community leadership positions, or when they decide they should be recognized as authorities, if not superiors. While some clearly feel that imperious behavior demonstrates expertise, importance, and intelligence, in truth it almost never fails to alienate potential friends and play partners, making the offender look bad. Below is a table highlighting the differences between desirable imperial behavior and the often time reality:

While pecking order tactics like those on the right are fine for beings with the spiritual depth of sparrows and chickens, in humans they are shallow, unkind and run counter to the spirit of "safe, sane, and consensual". Who can argue that the properties on the right are more admirable and effective than those on the left? Even so, unwise bystanders occasionally reward boorish behavior with attention and respect, reinforcing it and making our collective problem worse. When new people see community leaders and players of high prominence acting this way, some will try to emulate it, believing it to be proper, accepted or connoting high status.

Scaring the horses
This is one that deals with conduct between members of the community and the culture outside. Some people enjoy the nonconsensual involvement of strangers, in exhibitionism scenes in restaurants, public parks, etc. This kind of play can be hot as blazes, but can be ethically questionable, and in some cases illegal. While I have enjoyed the transgressive rush of public play myself, I have come to question whether it's right to force others to see what we do. On the other hand, there are forces in our society that would gladly forbid grown men holding hands in public. I have no fixed advice to offer here. This is a charged issue and one you must grapple with on your own.

WHY WE DO IT AND WHY WE TOLERATE IT
So what makes people act this way? There are in fact many factors that contribute to the behavior described above. As wonderful as the kink community can be, we are all exposed to subtle and seldom discussed irritants that contribute to stress, uncertainty, and the sheer cussedness I have described above. Life as a taxpaying worker, parent or citizen can be difficult enough. Compound it with the responsibility of maintaining a top secret personal life, and the job of developing and maintaining a whole new set of sexual and social ethics that neither mom, dad, or any of your vanilla friends have ever dealt with. And like water over stone, it can wear on you as the years tick by. These "stress factors" set the stage for the anxiety, impatience, loneliness, meanness, depression, and the empathy deficit mentioned earlier. I have compiled a list of these factors which surely contribute to the bad behavior we occasionally see:

• The scene is a small world, and quarters are close, closer than we might like at times. Because BDSM is an interest that selects at random, we often find ourselves spending a lot of time with people we might not otherwise choose as friends.
• · The scene is intensely intimate. We express our inner fantasies and fears, sometimes share partners, see each other nude, watch each other come... Is it any wonder people are sensitive about how we are treated by others?
• Because our practices are scandalously diverse, we often find ourselves in the presence of activities that make us uncomfortable. The scene is a strange place and it takes a while to adjust. And some things you may never get used to.
• The pressures of closeting: The pressure of maintaining a secret life, of hiding your leather life from friends, colleagues and family adds a constant overlay of tension to daily life. Scene folk have to manage the presence of fetish contraband (toys, play equipment, clothes, literature and erotica) whose discovery might be catastrophic. The risk, real or perceived, can encompass loss of employment, friends, family, even custody of one's kids.
• · Jealousy, loneliness, and competition for partners are facts of life, in the scene. People without play partners may become unhappy or angry. People seen as getting more than their share can trigger insecurity and resentment. Even people with partners may see threats around every corner.
• · The scene, like any fringe group, attracts its share of eccentrics and outcasts, some fascinating and agreeable, others less so.
• Newcomer naïveté: New people unacquainted to the scene's protocols occasionally touch, grab or conduct themselves inappropriately out of pure innocence. Although individuals typically learn to deport themselves over time, the constant influx of newcomers means newcomer naiveté is a constant, grating issue.
• · The realities of the party circuit: It is a hard fact of scene life that most parties are private and their invite lists finite. For every guest invited there are 20 left outside. The guest list is dictated by what the hosts can afford, their circle of friendships, the size of their home and many other factors. But it still stings to hear about a party without getting an invite. And it happens all the time.
• Email (the medium of choice for many SM participants): Without a friendly face or modulations of human speech, text encounters can be easily misstated/misunderstood. Couple that with the sometimes blunt writing style of email users everywhere, the added gravity of the written word, and the ease of escalating a private remark into public rebuke with a misplaced keystroke, and you've got the makings of an online food fight.
• Guy Baldwin, keynote speaker at Leather Leadership III, and a prominent leatherman psychiatrist, found that an unusually high percentage of his SM-practicing patients had suffered abuse as children. Others - because of their SM interests - have grown up feeling alienated, alone and have led difficult lives. The upshot is that there is a lot of anger and insecurity out there that can manifest as uncivil behavior.
• · Some of the erotic roles we regularly encounter in the scene (the pitiless slavemaster, the haughty dominatrix, the abjectly helpless slave, the unhousebroken adult-baby) are not necessarily archetypes of reason, tolerance, and maturity. Within the magic circle of a scene this is fine. Bravo for you, if you can find partners to share your predilections with and send them away happy. But these roles are less appropriate in pre-scene negotiation, netwoking, and working with volunteers in SM social and support groups. It is a crucial necessity for the mature scene person to be able to switch off the attitude (yes 24/7 types, this goes for you too) and adhere to acceptable adult behavior in dealing with others in the SM community.

One of the more sobering aspects of this list is that there really are no easy solutions to any of these problems. The scene is small, people are sensitive, invite lists are short, and we really do have some truly eccentric people who will continue to behave eccentrically.

But, there is room for hope. We do a good job of establishing and enforcing play standards to make SM safe and hot. We are improving all the time as educators of play practices. But, interpersonal conduct, outside of the SM encounter itself, has not yet been made a priority, and it's probably time it should be. We must recognize incivility (defined in part by the examples in this report) as a threat to the health of our community, and commit ourselves as individuals, to improving our behavior.

THOUGHTS ON FIXING IT: A PROPOSED APPROACH
The first thing we need to do is agree that improving our interpersonal behavior is worth doing. Once we've made that decision, we need to start elevating the importance of interpersonal conduct as an attribute of mature and responsible members of our community. Through mentoring and our education programs we need to send the message that incivility defined by the examples in this article is inappropriate behavior for citizens of our kink community. While "scene etiquette" (a narrow subset of civility), is a staple in the SM educational cannon, it deals mainly with protocols of deportment and standards of interaction, and doesn't address the deeper issues of cultivating compassion, tolerance and a more attuned awareness of our SM brethren. Those are tougher ethics-driven issues, often without simple answers.

Nonetheless, improved civility should be presented as causal to the following desirable conditions:

• Making the scene a welcoming place for newcomers
• Stability of friendships
• Respect of peers
• Trust of potential play partners (civility generally means stability)
• Strengthening ones personal network of contacts
• Supporting the position that sane, responsible, well-adjusted people practice SM.
• Establishing fairness and justice (which are eternal) as having greater importance than popularity, and bureaucratic clout (which are fleeting and can vanish at any moment)
• Reducing the wasteful and exhausting melodrama that Strengthens the community and makes it healthier

Secondly (to avoid reinventing the wheel) we need only look to our most famous safety maxim. I propose that we all, as scenefolk and organizations extend "safe, sane, and consensual" into the arena of interpersonal conduct. If we turn the laser beam of SSC onto our social interaction we would surely notice the following:

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