If it’s not consensual, it’s not leather.

HeadSpace, a Santa Barbara queer organization, held a BD/SM – bondage and discipline, dominance and submission and sadomasochism – seminar Tuesday night at 7 on the second floor of Girvetz Hall. The event was held at the request of those who attended a previous seminar in October last year. BD/SM 102 was touted as a way of “Further Exploring Power, Sensuality and Sex in the Leather Community.” Approximately 25 students, staff and community members took advantage of the opportunity to learn a little bit about leather.

“Some of the greatest myths in our culture are myths about sexuality,” organizer Jessica Eve Humphrey, a UCSB graduate student in the English Dept., said. “A specific aspect of my sexuality is one of the most prevalent jokes in pop culture right now. If you look at movies and TV and things like that there are all kinds of places where leather activities are used to signify that which is funny, or that which is just totally unthinkable.”

HeadSpace came together in May 2002 “to provide education, support and a safe space for leather and BD/SM in the community,” group member Eve Shapiro said.

“As somebody who is a leather queer person it became really important to me as an individual, and also to our group as a whole to dispel some of the myths about what is and what isn’t leather,” Humphrey said.

The seminar stressed SSC: safe, sane and consensual sex practices. In order to educate the audience, demonstrations of bondage, dominance and submission were held.

The first element of the bondage demonstration was the collar, which was used throughout the seminar. Stressing safety continually, wrist and ankle restraints made from canvas and velcro were placed on the bottom, or submissive, participant.

“If their hands are purple or cold, they’ve been tied up too long,” said the top, or dominant, demonstrator.

The group also demonstrated dominance and submission. The new pair began by standing in the center of the room, warning that the demonstration “may get a little intense.” The top dominated the bottom, who gave her submission by allowing a collar to be placed around her neck, a symbolic act of power exchange.

The seminar ended with flogging. The implements varied from a short bullwhip to a riding crop. Snapping and slapping filled the room after the demonstration as each of these were passed around to the audience.

For more information about BD/SM send an e-mail to .