[Dan] Our question of the day is how do you, if you do, separate your professional and kinky lives? Have your jobs ever been at risk? This person says they are starting to give classes and they are concerned about the consequences.
[Dan] So, let me take that last bit to start with. If you’re going to be presenting classes for the alternative, poly and the kink lifestyle….. 90 percent of the time when we book presenters, we require face shots because we want the people that are coming to our events to know who is going to be there and you and I obviously here we are on youtube and we’re on video and all that kind of stuff.
[dawn] We have our real names on our books.
[Dan] We are a little more extreme than most people. We’ve been very fortunate to not have had a situation where I’ve gone into HR and they’ve said “here, look at this book that we picked up, which apparently you’re big kinky fucker.”
[dawn] And how did you pick it up? And who was looking for it? Just like we were in a local magazine with our picture and our names. So I mean, and that’s a local magazine that’s like in the coffee shops. So that would have been easier for anybody to pick up. So, we’re kind of passively, and this is what I was talking about last night, we’re kind of passively out, right? So it’s not like at work, I tell everybody I’m poly, but I’ll have a picture of me and you and a picture of me and big D on my desk. You do the same, right? You’ve got those pictures. So, we’re kind of passively out.
[Dan] And if you go to the Columbus Space’s website, our picture is there. I do draw the line at facebook. Nobody from my work is on my facebook. I’m fine with that. I don’t know that I’ve ever told anybody. You know, the “oh, what are you gonna do this weekend?”. And I’ve never said “I’m going to go present at a kink conference”. I say, “I’m going camping”.
[dawn] I say I present… and because I’m between jobs right now. So I need The Space to be one of my jobs, one of my previous jobs. But I don’t say The Columbus Space for Alternative Self Expression. I just say The Space. Things like that. So, I have ways that kind of skirt around it. I say I present at relationship conferences. I do. Right? But it’s skirting it.
[Dan] We’ve been very fortunate in that we don’t take any special guards against being outed. We don’t out ourselves on purpose. I’ve never said to anybody……… I haven’t recently told anybody at work that I’m polyamorous. I actually outed myself….. You remember Luna? I outed myself to her.
[dawn] That was many years ago. Oh my god.
[Dan] It’s not my fault that I outed myself at work to luna. I was trying to pick her up.
[dawn] Do we have recommendations for this person though, that doesn’t really want to out themselves?
[Dan] No, we don’t because we are simply….. what we’ve done…… the path we’ve taken …..is to be ourselves and hope for the best. And currently I have a career, I have a job at a fairly well known company. I have an ass load of PTO and I make a good dollar. Right? If I were to lose my job because of what we’re doing here, it’d be a pain in the ass. It would hurt. It would be much more bothersome to try and not let ourselves be publicly seen. ..or to avoid this part of our lives. I mean, this is a pretty key part of our life. The whole…. not only the fact that we run The Space, we do this podcast… but we also present. We do all this shit. We have our face on a book and I feel good that my face is on a book.
[dawn] I like it.
[Dan] So what do you think?
[dawn] I know some people that won’t use their real names when they present. You only ever know them by their fet name, right? We’ve seen a couple just over the weekend: Blue and blue frost. Obsidian and namaste. ObvIously not their real names. But they also go to Leather events. Leather events allow cameras. So kink events don’t. Leather events do. But, if you’re wanting to be in a runbook in a program book and things like that, we require facial pictures. We’ve had one person at the last minute say, “no, no, no, I got this new job. I really have to be on the down low”, so she replaced her picture with some sort of icon. But that’s not the preference. And know that even if you try to go that route to cover all your bases, it’s not guaranteed. Know, you’re taking a chance by doing this.
[Dan] I’m just saying we don’t have good advice for you
[dawn] No, we’re out there and, and we may have to pay the price.
[Dan] Yeah, because we are rolling our luck…. because again, we love our patrion supporters… Puts a little extra money in our pocket, helps us get a little webcam.
[dawn] It can do this stuff (waving at camera), but it won’t pay the bills if we get dumped from our jobs.
[Dan] It’s (EA) not a job. So, there’s that.
[Dan] Maybe you’ve got some great experience about this and we hope so. So we’re going to take this conversation or at least the question itself, we’ll put it out on our facebook page, erotic awakening and tell us what you think. So head over to our facebook page or erotic awakening podcasts, all one word and share your thoughts. I’ll try to get the question out there tomorrow.
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