fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Lie Down With Dogs…

If the Fog City Pack can't coldnose each other on the streets of San Francisco, will Putin win? Somebody should ask Kamala Harris
Screen Shot 2019-02-06 at 1.43.11 PM

Man, what a pack of perverts. If CBN reported the same facts, it would be seen as an act of anti-gay bigotry on the part of Christian media. But Slate treats it as a celebration of diversity. Excerpts:

When at their leisure, some queer people socialize and sweat it out at LGBTQ badminton games. Others enjoy hearing a reading at the local queer bookstore. And for still others, the best way to spend free time is rolling around on floor mats with each other while wearing puppy masks, collars, and tail-shaped butt plugs, barking and sniffing like real pups. Known as pup play, this is a brand of BDSM role-play where people imitate adolescent canine behavior in order to get off. When done with other pups, it’s considered a “mosh,” and it happens regularly at leather bars all across the country. For some, pup play is just for Saturday nights. But could the fetish lifestyle offer more than just a good time?

For the Fog City Pack in San Francisco, it does. Pup Turbo (human name: Phil Hammack) is one of the two alphas who lead the pack, which is a group of nine polyamorous pups. What makes them different is that they operate “on a mentorship philosophy and structure,” he explains. Mentorship in the LGBTQ world comes in all forms, whether it’s drag mothers teaching queens to contour and make it in the biz, or leather daddies showing their sub the ropes—literally. But these sorts of mentor relationships often extend to areas of life beyond craft and kink. As Turbo points out, a lot of queer people aren’t raised by queer people. They aren’t taught how to survive and thrive in the world as themselves when it comes to personal growth, relationships, or careers, since society is predominately straight and cis. Many benefit from turning to more experienced people to help show them the way. Although a BDSM puppy pack might seem an unlikely vehicle for mentorship, for the Fog City Pack, it works.

Tail-shaped butt plugs and sniffing each other’s butts like hound dogs. Nope, nothing undignified or inhuman about that. The reporter makes an onsite visit:

Turbo invited me to his pack’s “kennel” to talk mentorship in the queer pup scene. As I walked to their place, located on a busy street in the Castro, I imagined it would be a fully equipped kennel-like dungeon with slings, f-ck benches, and a series of dog cages in a warehouse space. Instead, I arrived at a beautiful three-story Victorian Queen Anne home as charming as an Armistead Maupin book cover. (Only two members of the pack live there permanently, but it’s home base for them all.) I was also naïvely expecting to be greeted by the pack, outfitted in leather puppy masks, which are called “hoods” in the scene. But in reality, the guys who welcomed me were hoodless, in their street clothes. We didn’t sit on a series of floor mats, either, like you might see at pup night at your local Eagle kink bar, but instead gathered around their fashionable dining table.

F-ck benches and dog cages. One more excerpt:

Fog City Pack and other families like it shouldn’t be confused with the recent, infamous case of the polyamorous muscle bears led by a so-called master who allegedly got one of his “pups” to inject his scrotum with silicone, leading to his death. That relationship was more akin to master-slave roleplay, and even then it was taken to the extreme. Generally speaking, pups are looking for belly rubs, not deadly body modifications.

Well, that’s a relief. Read the whole thing. Keep in mind that Slate presents this as normal and healthy. What mom and dad wouldn’t love for their son to grow up to shove plastic tails up his butt and coldnose men inside a San Francisco dungeon? If you’d like to meet the Fog City Pup Pack, check out their bios on their website. Their mamas must be so proud.

Nothing surprises me about human perversion, not anymore. What is most notable about this is the mainstream media attempt to normalize it.

By the way, check out the New Yorker‘s report on “consenticorns” who patrol a New York sex-and-dance party. Excerpt:

The consenticorn, a kind of dance-floor monitor, wore a long fur coat and a light-up unicorn horn, and stood before a table bearing free New York City Department of Health-brand condoms, ready to deliver a short lecture on the rules. Rule No. 1: No photos or video. Rule No. 2: Costumes. “Is everyone wearing a costume?” she asked. The partygoers opened their coats to reveal corsets, fishnets, lace. One man, dressed in a button-down shirt, had missed the memo.

“I’m on the guest list,” he protested.

“I can lend you some bondage tape!” someone offered. Problem solved.

Rule No. 3: Mandatory consent. “You are not going to touch anyone, in any way, without getting express, verbal consent,” the consenticorn, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “This is true for all gender variations,” she continued. “Anything that is not a ‘Yes’ or a ‘Hell, yes’ is a ‘Hell, no.’ ” And should anyone, at any point, feel unsafe, she went on, “look for one of us with a horn. We’re the consenticorns, and we’re here to help you.”

The consent program at House of Yes is three years old. It consists of waivers, signage (“If you feel something, say something”), staff trainings, and a policy posted on all event pages. At House of Love, where partyers are invited to “embrace the full spectrum of gender and sexual possibilities,” vigilance is heightened.

Pup play and consenticorns — and boring old Red State right-wing normies like me are considered by these people to be the bad, weird ones. Last night in her “prebuttal” to the State of the Union address, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, denounced “homophobia and transphobia,” and tweeted:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I wonder what Sen. Harris thinks about her pseudo-canine constituents in San Francisco. Does she endorse pup play? Is defending pup play a matter of national security? If the Fog City Pack can’t sniff each other’s butts in public, will Putin win?

I’m joking, but only a little. Somebody should make these Democrats draw a line on how far they’re willing to go to defend polymorphous perversity. By the way, guess who represents the Fog City pups in Congress? Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

UPDATE: For the record, I think that the Fog City pervs should be allowed to go about their business without being hauled off to the pound, or forcibly neutered. I would very much like to know, though, on what grounds progressives would criticize what they do, and on what grounds they would say that the Fog City folks have no business in area high schools doing presentations for kids as part of fighting “hate.” Or what if the Fog City kinksters wanted to host a Pup Play Story Hour at the local public library — would that be okay? Why or why not?

UPDATE.2: Let me elaborate. A few weeks back, the liberal media and commentators went through a moral panic about the fact that Karen Pence, wife of the vice president, is returning to a job teaching at a conservative Evangelical school that has a conservative Evangelical standard of sexual conduct to which it expects all involved with it to live by. Yesterday, the stalwart Establishment liberal columnist Richard Cohen demanded that conservatives “confront” the alleged bigotry of Mike and Karen Pence. Excerpt:

In certain corners of the right-wing media, criticism of Karen Pence for recently taking a job at the Immanuel Christian School in Springfield was denounced as nothing less than religious bigotry. After all, the argument went, the school is a Christian school, ultraconservative and ultratraditional, and is entitled to teach according to its deeply held beliefs. No doubt. But while the United States has traditionally given religion wide berth — and still does — lines have been drawn. Utah was not admitted as a state until the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy.

No one is advocating a law requiring Immanuel Christian to practice tolerance, both in its pedagogy and its hiring practices. But the First Amendment that guarantees the school’s rights also gives us the right to criticize. It is simply wrong to foster a belief that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are immoral.

I have been torn about Northam — about whether a single yearbook photo negates a lifetime of tolerance. But I am not torn about Mike and Karen Pence. They are figures of consequence, and their bigotry — regardless of their religious justification — has to be confronted.

It’s a stupid “whatabout” argument to get the spotlight off Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, for his blackface hijinks. Still, Cohen is expressing conventional liberal opinion about the “bigotry” of small-o orthodox Christians, and why the old “live and let live” standard is no longer operable.

Fine. I can and will defend the Pences, and schools like theirs. But if conservatives have to do that, I want to hear from progressives, including progressive politicians who go on and on about “homophobia” and “transphobia,” defend freaks like the Fog City men. I think most of us on the Right would certainly defend the legal right of those kinksters to do what they do. The First Amendment, for now anyway, shields the right of Christian schools to do what they do. But is it morally right?

Simply saying that it’s legal, and should remain so, evades the question. I believe that whatever you call what the Fog City boys are doing, it should remain legal. Not everything that’s morally wrong should be made against the law. Still, conservatives find themselves having to defend the morality of conservative Christian schools living by Biblical mandates on sexual behavior, which a growing number of liberals decry as bigotry. Well, what about people like the Fog City pack, which is being held up by the media (in this case) as exemplary, and contributing to the common good (read the article if you don’t believe me)? What about Drag Queen Story Hours, which are heavily promoted by the media and by libraries? Let’s hear Kamala Harris and other progressives who are wound up about condemning the so-called homophobia of cultural and religious conservatives explain why the pup-play movement ought to be affirmed.

If they want to say that it should remain legal, even if we disapprove of it, they’ll get no argument from me. But if they condemn people like me, and Christian schools and churches, as bigoted because of our beliefs on human sexuality, then I believe they have an obligation to say where, exactly, they draw the moral line on sexual behavior. What is beyond the pale? Would they approve of the Fog City pack giving a presentation to high school students in the name of sex education and diversity? Why or why not?

UPDATE.3: The Flecks have the theme song for the Fog City fleabags:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCF5MCx5Tes&w=525&h=300]

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now