"Bizarre Magazine" and that "Kaotian" master/slave cult again
Posted by Tanos on Thu 24 Aug 06, 1:26 AM
There's been some discussion on IC about this month's issue of
Bizarre Magazine, so yesterday I went
and found a copy for the first time in more than a year. There always was
some BDSM or Fetish content, but this month has features on BDSM and the
law, flesh hook suspensions, and that Kaotian "slave master" in Darlington.
As well as the features, there is a double-page spread with a report on the
Club Noir burlesque night in Glasgow (a borderline fetish fashion event);
Club Rub and LAM listed in the calendar of events; and "Bianca's Diary" on why
there's nothing to fear from fetish. And then lots of Bizarre's usual
assortment of pictures showing necrotic limbs, huge wasp nests and corpses.
The cover story is about BDSM and the law, with the subtitle "While
handcuffs and paddles can now be bought on any high street, UK laws remain
prudish, and a lovebite could land you in jail." We're pretty used to BDSM
or Fetish images being used without any substance, and the cover girl is
decked out with Clejuso leg-irons and handcuffs, leather wrist and ankle
cuffs, clover-clamps, various bits of chain and yet is flexing a riding
crop. However this time we're not disappointed, as the article does indeed
deal head-on with what SM really involves and the legal issues that result
from it in the UK.
The Spanner Case is set out in detail, with references to the judges'
comments and the 1861 act, and there are quotes from Spanner Trustees
Derek Cohen and Tuppy Owens, and Demolition Red of Backlash (Unfettered and
Kinkfest also get mentions  ) All excellent stuff, and the article
includes sound advice, including the danger that a video of your consent may
turn out to be evidence of aiding and abetting your top's illegal "assault"
on your body, and put you, the bottom, in prison. Bella Roivas also gets a
sidebox, and discusses some more of the consequences of these laws for people
doing BDSM.
So that's all great. Good publicity, both for BDSM as a consent-driven
activity done by responsible adults, and for the legal grievances we have
about the Spanner precedent etc, with URLs to find out more.
Then there's the article on flesh hook suspensions, which consists of a
short introduction (saying that participants are willing and mentioning
endorphin highs) followed by ten personal accounts of people's experiences,
with a mix of those endorphins, the pain and very spiritual responses. This
isn't BDSM as such, but the overlap with endurance SM is pretty clear (and
Bizarre manages to paint it as something closer to a "roller-coaster" day
out than anything like a date with Dr Lecter.)
But then there's the feature on the Kaotian slave master from
Darlington.
I've posted about this
character in the past, and at the time I thought he was a
relatively harmless roleplayer. But the statements he makes in
the Bizarre article expose him as perpetrating a variant of the
Ancient European Training
Houses chatroom fraud that I posted about a couple of years ago.
He came to the notice of the press when the police investigated (untrue)
claims of a Canadian sub being held against her will in his house in
Darlington - an unremarkable market town in Northern England. Nothing
illegal was taking place, but the local paper was tipped off and it
escalated from there: headlines of "sex slave cults" in the tabloid
newspapers; appearances on BBC radio and "Trisha Goddard" (a daytime
showcase of dysfunctional families.)
All this was back in May, and then Bizarre got his full co-operation for
a 7-page feature, which is sympathetic in the sense that it allows him
to state his side and doesn't criticise consensual slavery at all. But
in doing that, they're really just giving him enough rope to hang
himself.
The feature opens with a photograph of Lee a.k.a. "Slyway Kaos"
enthroned with his sidekick Zach standing, and two slaves before him.
(This is a nod to
Boris
Vallejo's cover painting for "Assassin of Gor", and the rest of
the articles photos are recreations of Gor cover art too.)
Lee has the bald head, goatee beard and beer gut that has become the
uniform of the wannabe Satanist or Magick-cian, but today he's being a
Master, and a Kaotian Master at that. Unfortunately, his slaves are all
back in Canada etc, so the magazine had to supply a couple of models
instead.
So where do the Kaotians come from? Apparently they were started by
Lee's grandfather, who later introduced him by lending him a copy of
"Assassin of Gor" (even though Kaotians "splintered from the Goreans
because of the latter sect's mistreatment of slaves.") Lucky Lee was
being groomed for higher Kaotian things, and at 16 he was "taken to the
secret High Council building in London", located "sort of near the
middle" of that great city. By 21, he had become First Sword of the
Kaotians, and assumed a name based on his CB handle "Slyway", and so
"Slyway Kaos" was born.
This is a fairly run of the mill variant of the Ancient European Houses
myth, with a big, secret headquarters building in a city and a longish
history (older than Lee at least.) It's tempting to speculate about what
really happened: boy finds chatrooms, boy discovers Gorean chatrooms,
boy figures out what Gorean things are said to impress newcomers, boy
creates Kaotian chatroom to lure female newcomers from Canada,
without all those pesky Gorean Masters fishing in the same pond...
Anyway, none of this publicity is doing the image of BDSM or the ownership subculture
any good. It's true that Lee's opposition to Gor may allow people to
read between the lines, and decide that he's been shut out of the Gorean
"mainstream" for being a fantasist. But other people are going to think
M/s or even D/s = wackos all the same.
But maybe they would anyway, and as I've posted before, this kind of
publicity is leading some people to find our sites, after typing
phrases like "goreans how to join in" into Google.
Edited Fri 25 Aug 06, 10:40 AM by Tanos
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